Why LinkedIn Matched Audiences is Great for B2B Lead Generation

Around two years ago, LinkedIn Marketing introduced a powerful tool for improving campaign ROI: Matched Audiences.

Essentially a set of targeting tools that allow us to better define and reach our intended audiences with ads, the feature has fast become important in building targeted campaigns and nailing lead generation.

Today we’ll be running through the ins and outs of LinkedIn Matched Audiences.

Using LinkedIn Matched Audiences for B2B marketing

This type of targeting involves using a list of customer data to define the exact audience for each ad campaign. It’s powerful compared to Facebook, partly for the simple reason that people don’t often register Facebook accounts with their work email addresses!

LinkedIn’s initial pilot of Matched Audiences targeting showed its power quite clearly; 370 advertisers completed 2,000 campaigns, with an average improvement in ad click-through rate (CTR) of 37%.

By using Matched Audiences to target individuals, ads are delivered to your chosen audience in the LinkedIn news feed. This type of advanced targeting means you can deliver highly relevant and personalised messages, driving more conversions often at a lower cost.

Here are some of the ways we’ve used Matched Audiences to build successful campaigns:

1. Renewal offers for existing customers
2. Information about a new product or service for existing customers
3. A time-limited special offer for warm leads who haven’t yet purchased
4. Brand awareness ads aimed at cold/less aware prospects
5. Ads that align with a telesales campaign to improve telesales success rates

Using LinkedIn Matched Audiences to target B2B companies

Also called account targeting, company targeting involves creating your own bespoke ‘hit list’ of companies, enabling you to target all or some of the people working in them with ads. It’s easy to see the draw here; Matched Audiences lets you more easily reach key decision-makers at the companies you’re going for.

Through this form of targeting, you can focus on and find exactly the type of business you’re looking for and more easily align your campaign efforts with other activities such as LinkedIn outreach, telesales and email marketing.

For instance, you can have your sales team give you a list of companies from their own hit lists, meaning that your ads will reach the same people your sales team are speaking to. Your messaging will be relevant and your sales team will achieve more.

This approach can be combined with other targeting options too, such as geographic location, job title and seniority.

Using LinkedIn Matched Audiences to target your website visitors

This feature of LinkedIn Marketing lets you build your own custom audiences from past visitors to your website. We’ve covered retargeting extensively at QliQ and we’re big believers in the power of this kind of engagement. It’s easy to see why; retargeting is all about re-engaging with an already interested audience. By its very nature, it boasts great conversion rates and is a sure-fire way to achieve an excellent return on investment – if it’s handled correctly, of course!

And we’re not alone. A 2017 study by AdRoll showed 42% of marketers to spend most of their budget on retargeting, and research done this year by Wishpond found the CTR of a retargeted ad to be as much as 10x higher than that of a typical display ad.

Food for thought

It’s never been a better time to get stuck in with a few campaigns on LinkedIn. Features like these are all in our favour, helping B2B professionals to shape campaigns that maximise results for every pound (or dollar) spent.

If you fancy a chat about this with us directly, don’t be a stranger! Here’s our contact page – do get in touch.