How to Create LinkedIn Audiences that Convert

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Soroush Karimian

Sometimes, LinkedIn Ads fail due to poor creatives, messaging, or offers. 

But many times — and in my experience, most of the time — the problem is actually the audience. 

If you aren’t reaching your ICP, it’s almost impossible to drive conversions. 

After running LinkedIn Ads for many hypergrowth startups, I’ve developed a methodology to ensure that I’m getting in front of the right people and minimizing wasted spend for my clients. 

I’ll be breaking down my entire process below 👇

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Step 1: Define your ICP

If you’re taking over a new account and don’t have any audiences yet, here’s where I recommend starting: 

1. Explore the website to get some initial ideas on the target job functions and industries of your personas. 

2. Talk to your clients. Are there certain industries, company sizes, job titles, or job functions that have historically driven more revenue? 

3. Listen to demo calls to gain a deeper understanding of a) what pain points their product solves and b) who resonates most with these pain points

Step 2: Brainstorm your targeting

Once you have a strong understanding of your ICP, it’s time to look at the targeting options available within LinkedIn Ads. 

To do this, you can make a copy of this LinkedIn persona database sheet, which contains all the job titles and industries available within LinkedIn Campaign Manager.  

If you want to target  IT professionals, for example, you can add the filter Text contains “Information Technology”, and you’ll find all 389 IT-related job titles that are available. 

Based on these results, you can determine exactly what job titles (or job function + seniority) you want to target. 

Also, by looking through the industries tab, you can define the industries you want to reach in your campaigns. 

Pro Tip: LinkedIn’s industry categorization can be a bit confusing. If you aren’t sure what industries you should be targeting, look up your best-fit customers on LinkedIn. What industries are they in? These are likely the ones you should be targeting. 

Meme of Liam Neeson holding a phone with caption "You don't know who I am but I'm going to find your title and give you the solution to your problems," referencing precise LinkedIn Ads job title targeting

Step 3: Draft your audiences in LinkedIn Campaign Manager

Once you have a solid understanding of your ICP and the job titles and industries you want to go after, you’re ready to go into LinkedIn Campaign Manager and create your audiences. 

Here’s how you do it: 

1. Navigate to the audiences tab, on the left hand side of LinkedIn Campaign Manager.

Screenshot of audiences tab in LinkedIn Campaign Manager

2. Go to “Saved”, and then click on “Create Audience”

Screenshot of create audience button under Saved Audiences in LinkedIn Campaign Manager

3. Click on “Edit” and input your targeting criteria. 

Screenshot of a sample audience in LinkedIn Campaign Manager

4. Apply your targeting criteria (in the bottom right corner of your screen)

Screenshot highlighting how to apply changes to an audience in LinkedIn Campaign Manager

5. Save your audience so you can come back to it later. You can do this in the top right corner of your screen. 

Screenshot explaining how to save an audience in LinkedIn Campaign Manager

Here are the top 3 audiences that I’ve seen the most success with for capturing demand (feel free to steal or adapt to your company’s needs)

1. Remarketing

90-day Website Visits + 90-day Video Views + 90-day Single Image Ad Interactions + 90-day Company Page Visitors + 90-day Content Lead Gen Form Submissions

AND

Target Locations

AND

Target Job Titles (Substitute for Job Function and Skills if audience is too small) 

***Typically I like to go with a 90-day window, but you could go with a longer 180-day window if you have a longer sales cycle. 

2. Tier 1 & Tier 2 Accounts

Tier 1 & Tier 2 Account Lists

AND

Target Job Titles

AND 

Target Company Size

AND 

Target Locations

3. Open opportunities

Companies in the open opportunity phase

AND

Target Job Titles

AND 

Target Locations

Step 4: Refine your audiences

Now that you’ve drafted your audience, you’re almost ready to launch, but not quite. 

Before going live, it’s important to refine your audiences by making exclusions. 

Otherwise, you’ll end up wasting money on irrelevant people. 

Here’s how you do it: 

1. Access the saved audience you already created

Screenshot explaining how to access your saved audiences in LinkedIn Campaign Manager

2. Refine the Audience

Look at  the “Member” and “Company” sections of your audience for exclusion ideas. 

In the member tab, you can see what job titles, job functions, and seniorities you’re targeting. 

For example, if you’re aiming to target the IT job function and 21% of your audience consists of Engineering or Military, you might exclude these irrelevant functions. 

Member Tab of Saved Audience in LinkedIn Campaign Manager

In the company tab, you can review what industries, company sizes, and companies you’re targeting. 

For example, if you’re aiming to target FinServ and realize that 13% of your audience is in Hospitals and Healthcare, you may want to exclude it from your targeting.

Company Tab of Saved Audience in LinkedIn Campaign Manager

Go through all available options in your saved audience and refine as much as possible. 

Once you’re happy with the exclusions you’ve made, you can add this audience to your campaigns. 

Here are the top exclusions that I typically make to avoid wasted spend (feel free to use as inspiration)

1. Irrelevant Industries

2. Irrelevant job functions

3. Irrelevant seniorities

4. Up-to-date list of customers and competitors

5. Current employees

6. People who have visited the login or support pages

7. Poor fit titles (ie students, teachers, retired, interns, analysts)

8. Company sizes outside of ICP

9. People who have recently filled out demo forms

Step 5: Adjust based on insights

After making exclusions and launching your campaigns, your work isn’t finished. In order to be successful with LinkedIn Ads, you need to continually check and adjust your targeting. 

To do this, make sure you look at your demographics report on a weekly basis. 

This can be found in the top right corner of LinkedIn Campaign Manager. To access it, simply select your campaign and click on “Demographics.”

How to access demographics report in LinkedIn Campaign Manager

Now, you’ll be able to see the job functions, job titles, companies, industries, seniorities, etc. that your campaigns are reaching. 

Insights available in LinkedIn Campaign Manager Demographics Report
Company Industry Tab in LinkedIn Demographics Report
Job title tab in LinkedIn Demographics report

Look through all of these insights – are the people you’re reaching closely aligned with your intended targeting? 

Are there certain job titles, functions, companies, industries, etc. that you want to exclude? 

Doing this exercise may seem tedious or insignificant, but these small details are often the difference between success and failure. 

Conclusion

To summarize, if you want to generate conversions on LinkedIn Ads: 

1. Make sure you get extremely clear on who you want to target. 

2. Consider testing proven targeting combinations, such as retargeting, tier 1 and tier 2 accounts, and open opportunities.

3. Audit your audiences in LinkedIn Campaign Manager and make all the necessary exclusions to avoid wasted spend. 

4. After launch, consistently check your demographics report and adjust your audiences as needed. 

P.S. If you have any questions and would like to get in touch, feel free to send me a message on LinkedIn 

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People Also Ask

How can I effectively measure the success of my LinkedIn ad campaigns in terms of audience engagement and conversion rates?

Utilize LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) such as click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, and cost per conversion. Implement LinkedIn’s conversion tracking to assess how many ad interactions lead to desired actions, providing insights into campaign effectiveness.

What are the best practices for refining audience targeting to minimize wasted ad spend on LinkedIn?

Leverage LinkedIn’s advanced targeting options, including job titles, industries, company sizes, and seniority levels, to align your ads with your ideal customer profile (ICP). Regularly analyze campaign data to identify underperforming segments and adjust targeting parameters accordingly to optimize ad spend.

How can I utilize LinkedIn’s audience insights to enhance my ad creatives and messaging?

Analyze demographic data and engagement metrics to understand which audience segments interact most with your ads. Tailor your ad creatives and messaging to resonate with these segments, addressing their specific pain points and interests to increase relevance and engagement.

What strategies can I employ to test and optimize different audience segments on LinkedIn?

Implement A/B testing by creating multiple ad variations targeting different audience segments. Compare performance metrics to determine which segments yield the highest engagement and conversions, and allocate more resources to the top-performing audiences.

How can I integrate LinkedIn audience targeting with other marketing channels for a cohesive strategy?

Align your LinkedIn audience targeting with other platforms by creating consistent buyer personas across channels. Use LinkedIn’s Matched Audiences feature to retarget website visitors or upload contact lists, ensuring a unified approach that reinforces your marketing messages across different touchpoints.

Soroush Karimian
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