Chapter 4: Incorrect Targeting Implications of LinkedIn Ads

Incorrectly targeting LinkedIn ads can result in wasted spend and poor performance:

• Targeting too broadly: Putting your entire Total Addressable Market (TAM) in a single campaign with a broad, generic message.
• Misusing audience expansion: LinkedIn Audience Expansion allows LinkedIn to identify additional users who are likely to engage with your ads. Our data shows that campaigns using Audience Expansion experienced significantly lower CPMs and CPCs, making it an efficient way to drive more traffic at a lower cost. However, more clicks don’t always translate to more conversions. While Audience Expansion increases engagement, it’s crucial to track down-funnel metrics like lead quality, pipeline impact, and cost per conversion.
• Neglecting job function and seniority: Targeting by job title alone might miss relevant decision-makers in different organizational structures.
• Incorrect Location Settings: Confirming that the location setting aligns with the campaign goals, whether it's based on a member's profile location or their IP address, is crucial for effective targeting.
• Using LinkedIn Audience Network without block-lists and allow-lists: Failing to properly manage the LinkedIn Audience Network can lead to ads being shown on irrelevant sites, wasting ad spend. We’ve prepared a comprehensive block and allow list to he We analyzed
• 8,000 Campaigns

Targeting: Best Practices

1. Define your ideal customer profile precisely before building your audience
2. Use a combination of targeting options like Job Function + Seniority or Skills + Seniority for more accurate targeting
3. Avoid hyper-targeting—aim for a minimum audience size of 300,000 for sponsored content
4. Utilize LinkedIn's audience templates as a starting point
5. Increase reach with custom targeting options like Matched Audiences
6. Monitor campaign performance and adjust targeting as needed
7. Tailor ad content to resonate with your specific target audience

A point to note here is that your ads are not distributed evenly across your accounts. In our analysis we found that around 67.3% of companies are receiving less than 20 impressions per month. With Factors’ AdPilot you can control ad impressions per account, making the most of your ads. More on this in Chapter 10 (Introducing Factors’ AdPilot: 2X your LinkedIn Ads ROI).