LinkedIn offers a variety of targeting options to help advertisers reach their ideal audience on the platform. With over 850 million members worldwide, LinkedIn provides access to a large professional audience across many industries and job functions. The key targeting options on LinkedIn include:
Location Targeting
You can target LinkedIn members by location at the country, state/province, city, or zip code level. Location targeting allows you to geo-target your ads to only be shown to members within a certain geographic area. This is useful if you have a physical business location you want to drive traffic to or if you are trying to recruit employees in a specific region.
Country Targeting
With country targeting, you can choose to show your ads to LinkedIn members in one or more countries. For example, you may want to target just United States or target US, Canada, UK, Australia etc. Country targeting is the broadest location targeting option.
State/Province Targeting
You can target more regionally within a country by choosing specific states/provinces to focus your ads on. For instance, targeting New York, California, Texas would reach LinkedIn members within those three states only.
City Targeting
For greater precision, LinkedIn ads can be targeted by city name. So your ads could be set to only reach LinkedIn members located in Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston etc. City targeting allows tight geographic focus.
Zip Code Targeting
At the most granular location level, you can target by zip code on LinkedIn. So if you wanted to hyper-target members in specific neighborhoods or areas within a city, zip code targeting would be the way to go.
Company Targeting
You can target LinkedIn members based on the companies they work for. Options include:
- Target by Company Name – Specify individual company names to target people who work at those companies.
- Target by Industry – Select specific industries like healthcare, finance, retail etc. to target members who work in companies in those verticals.
- Target by Company Size – Reach members who work at companies above or below a certain employee count threshold.
Company targeting is great if you want to reach decision makers, hiring managers, or employees at specific businesses that are your ideal customers or relevant to your recruiting efforts.
Job Title/Function Targeting
LinkedIn’s depth of member data allows you to target by job title and function. You can specify individual job titles like Marketing Manager, Software Engineer, HR Specialist etc. Or target by broader job categories like Marketing, Engineering, Human Resources. This allows you to laser focus your ads on your ideal roles.
Member Targeting
You can target individual LinkedIn member profiles through a few different options:
- Target by LinkedIn Profile URL – If you have specific LinkedIn profiles you want to reach, you can use their unique profile URLs to target just those members.
- Target Your LinkedIn Connections – A simple way to target is to select your own LinkedIn connections as the audience. This reaches members within your existing network.
- Target Your Company Followers – Similarly, you can target followers of your LinkedIn Company Page to reach fans of your brand and existing leads.
Interest Targeting
Target LinkedIn members based on their professional interests listed on their profile. Options include:
- Target by Industry – Reach members interested in certain industries like Technology, Healthcare, Education etc.
- Target by Job Function – Target members with interests related to certain roles like Engineering, Marketing, IT etc.
- Target by Skills – Target members with specific skills listed on their profile like Java, Social Media Marketing, Nursing etc.
Interest targeting helps you hone in on members with relevant professional interests to your product or service offering.
Engagement Targeting
You can target LinkedIn members who have engaged with certain types of content on the platform:
- Target Content Engagers – Reach members who have interacted with LinkedIn posts, articles, videos etc.
- Target Lead Gen Form Engagers – Target members who have submitted lead gen forms on LinkedIn.
- Target Sponsored Content Engagers – Target members who have engaged with other LinkedIn ads.
Engagement targeting allows you to further qualify your audience based on their demonstrated interests and lead potential.
Account Targeting
Target based on LinkedIn advertising account attributes:
- Target Existing Contacts – Upload a contact list like email addresses or customer IDs to target matching members on LinkedIn.
- Target Audience Templates – Reach saved audience templates from your account for quick targeting.
- Target Retargeting Pools – Retarget members who have interacted with your past campaigns and ads.
Account targeting provides options to easily reuse and scale existing audiences.
Custom Audience Targeting
LinkedIn allows you to create highly customized target audiences using Boolean search logic and combinations of the targeting options above. You can get very precise by stringing together demographic, job role, company, interest, and engagement targeting filters using AND/OR operators. This is powerful for zeroing in on your niche target members.
Audience Expansion
LinkedIn Audience Expansion looks beyond your core target audience to find additional members with similar attributes. It works by analyzing the members in your core target audience and then finding “lookalike” members that resemble them across key dimensions like location, industry, job role etc. Audience Expansion can help you extend the reach of your campaigns beyond just your defined targets.
Conclusion
In summary, LinkedIn offers an extensive set of targeting options to reach professional audiences by location, company, job role, interests, engagement, and more. Location, company, and job role targeting are likely the most commonly used. But the ability to layer on multiple targeting filters using Boolean logic gives advertisers powerful precision in defining and reaching their ideal B2B and recruiting prospects on LinkedIn.
Targeting Type | Main Options |
---|---|
Location Targeting | Country, State/Province, City, Zip Code |
Company Targeting | Company Name, Industry, Company Size |
Job Role Targeting | Job Title, Job Function |
Member Targeting | Profile URL, Connections, Company Followers |
Interest Targeting | Industry, Job Function, Skills |
Engagement Targeting | Content Engagement, Lead Gen, Sponsored Content |
Account Targeting | Contacts, Saved Audiences, Retargeting Pools |
Custom Audiences | Boolean logic combinations |
Audience Expansion | Lookalike modeling |
With a member base of over 850 million professionals worldwide, LinkedIn targeting gives advertisers the ability to segment and precisely define professional target audiences at scale. By combining targeting filters using Boolean logic, advertisers can reach very specific segments of members matching multiple attributes and interests.
Location targeting on LinkedIn allows advertisers to geo-target campaigns at the country, state/province, city or zip code level. This provides flexibility based on how broad or narrow the geographic focus needs to be. Country targeting enables broad national campaigns, while city and zip code targeting drive hyper-local exposure.
Company targeting provides the ability to reach LinkedIn members based on their employer name, industry or company size. Targeting by specific companies you want to do business with or recruit from can produce highly relevant audiences. Similarly, targeting by industry vertical or company size brackets can effectively filter audiences within professional fields and organizations relevant to your goals.
With job title and function targeting, ads can be precision targeted based on the roles and responsibilities of members. Targeting specific titles like Marketing Manager or Software Engineer, or broader functions like Marketing or IT, directly engages members with relevant job duties. This produces audiences primed for your messaging around B2B offerings or recruitment campaigns.
Member targeting options allow you to target the followers of your LinkedIn Company Page, your own direct connections, or even individual member profile URLs. This enables you to easily retarget and expand campaigns to existing brand followers, network connections, and known prospective leads.
Interest targeting gives the ability to reach audiences based on LinkedIn member’s own indicated professional expertise and interests. Targeting by industry, job function or specific skills provides another data layer to hone in on audiences actively involved in relevant professional areas.
Engagement targeting options leverage member behavior to identify audiences who have actively interacted with content across LinkedIn. You can target members who have engaged with LinkedIn posts, submitted lead gen forms, or interacted with other sponsored content. This targets members demonstrating tangible engagement with professional content reflective of their interests and intent.
LinkedIn account targeting features enable you to easily reuse existing audiences, contacts and retargeting pools from your ad account. This provides options to quickly activate and optimize target segments for new and sequential messaging.
LinkedIn’s Custom Audiences targeting represents the pinnacle of precision targeting on the platform. It enables complex Boolean logic combinations of all the targeting options to define highly customized audiences. This provides the capability to reach audience segments that uniquely match multiple attributes like location, job title, company, interests and engagement.
Finally, LinkedIn Audience Expansion extends the reach of campaigns beyond defined target parameters. By algorithmically finding “lookalike” audiences that resemble your core targets, Audience Expansion can help you discover new professional audiences with meaningful affinity to your goals.
In closing, LinkedIn offers perhaps the most robust suite of professional audience targeting options across major advertising platforms. Spanning multiple data dimensions on member demographics, employment, interests and engagement, LinkedIn targeting provides diverse filters and combinations to zero in on your most relevant audiences across the expansive LinkedIn member network.