LinkedIn is one of the most powerful platforms for leveraging business to business marketing (B2B) to make connections with influential business leaders and top-level employees. Unlike Facebook, YouTube, or other social media sites, LinkedIn users interact with the platform specifically for their business needs. Though other platforms may have larger general audiences, none top LinkedIn for B2B marketing, and it shows, with several reports showing that 92% of B2B marketers prefer LinkedIn over all other platforms. As of 1 October 2019, LinkedIn has added advanced options to improve its targeting and help businesses better reach their ideal audiences through planning, implementing and analysing ad campaigns. The best part is, unlike other platforms that often roll out limited new features to only select test users, these LinkedIn Ad features are instantly available for all users.

Planning: Audience Forecasting Updates

In LinkedIn's Campaign Manager, you have the option to see Forecasted Results when creating a new campaign. The forecast gives you an estimate of several factors to account for before launching a LinkedIn Ad campaign including audience size, projected number of impressions, clicks and cost. Though it cannot guarantee results, the tool will help advertisers have a better view of what their upcoming campaign can accomplish, and tweak and change aspects of the campaign before launching.

This round of updates to the forecast panel allows for more customisation of audiences to filter for parameters such as years of experience and company size. These types of filtering have also been implemented through updates throughout the additional steps in the LinkedIn Ad campaign process and are described further in the following sections.

Implementing: "And/Or" Targeting

According to LinkedIn, Boolean targeting was one of the most desired features among platform users, and now it has finally arrived. The ability to use Boolean targeting also called "And/Or" targeting, will allow advertisers to be even more detailed with audience filtering for LinkedIn Ad campaigns. As with the audience filtering in the Forecasted Results panel, you can target your audience by job title, industry, and a variety of other specified audience characteristics. With such detailed filtering, you can pinpoint the exact audience you want your LinkedIn Ad to reach, and not waste precious time and ad funds reaching the wrong audience. These added features make LinkedIn able to hold its own when compared to the extensive targeting capabilities of Facebook Ads, with the added advantage of LinkedIn's more singular focus on business among its users.

For a live demonstration of this new feature, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions created a quick video showing an example of the new audience targeting features, complete with Venn diagram.

Analysing: Demographics Reporting

Once a LinkedIn Ad is in place, tracking and analyzing ad engagement is vital to improving ad performance for future campaigns. LinkedIn has continued to improve this step in the process as well, providing detailed information about who engages with ad content and how. Detailed information is provided on audience behaviour such as clicking links and watching video content, and sorted by audience demographics. In addition to audience characteristics, Demographics Reports can be broken down by time frame, show performance metrics such as impressions, clicks, and conversions, as well as lead generation metrics such as form opens and completion rates.

With a better idea of who the ads are reaching and which types of ads they prefer, marketers can be sure to tailor future LinkedIn Ad content and campaigns to those audiences it found the most success reaching. These reports will also allow marketers to demonstrate the concrete benefits of these campaigns to other departments and interested parties.

With so many options for your business' advertising on LinkedIn and other social media platforms, it can be immensely beneficial to have the guidance of experienced social media professionals that are up-to-date on the latest improvements and platform features. Digital Stand is ready to help. Contact us today to find out more about how you can use our services to expand your brand's growth.