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LINKEDIN ADS PLAYBOOK

Targeting B2B audiences not available in LinkedIn Ads.

Hot tip for B2B marketers: don't sleep on matched audiences. 

LinkedIn is powerful for broad targeting, but B2B audiences are complex.

If you're targeting a tight ICP or defined set of accounts, using LinkedIn's native filters can burn through your budget by casting a wide net to irrelevant contacts.

Here's how we use Cognism to cut that waste, reach our ICP and target audiences not available in LinkedIn 👇

Channels run
  • LinkedIn Ads
PLAYBOOK HOST
Untitled design (98)

Lee Gannon

Snr Paid Acquisition Manager @Cognism

RECOMMENDED FOR
Marketers who want to cut wasted dollars from their ad spend and reach best fit prospects
Marketers who are looking for creative ideas to target audiences that are not currently available in LinkedIn
Marketers looking for inspiration from a company spending millions of dollars each month on LinkedIn

Let's jump in 👇🏻

What's on this page:
Step 1 | Target by company HQ
Step 2 | Target by key purchase indicators
Step 3 | Target titles not available in LI
Step 4 | Reach only the right contacts in 1:1
Step 5 | Watch the results roll in...
Cognism - Book a demo

💡 Step 1 | Target contacts by where their companies are HQ'd

A key limitation of LinkedIn is not being able to target contacts by where their company is based. 

Example: You want to target Swedish companies.

  1. You set up your campaigns to target 'Sweden' in LinkedIn
  2. You check in a few days later to review the results and delivery
  3. You see a significant % of the budget was spent on Swedish contacts who work for US, UK and other EU-based companies.
This can cause real headaches when you're trying to penetrate net-new accounts in a region, or you're running an account-based play in a specific territory.

Here's how we use Cognism to build a list of contacts by where their company is based.

That we then upload to LinkedIn to target 👇

💡 Step 2 | Targeting by technographics and key purchase indicators

Cognism also allows you to whittle down your list by filtering to key purchase indicators such as:

  • Companies that use specific technologies
  • Companies that are hiring for specific roles
  • Companies that have recently been funded

None of these options are available in LinkedIn's native targeting.

For example, when targeting the logistics industry, we filtered our list to target companies using specific CRMs that we integrate with. 

This was a key signal for us that they are likely to be a better fit when they enter a sales conversation.

But technographics is just one option we've used, we also use other filters in Cognism to narrow down lists closer to our ICP.

  • Job changes (New hires, Leavers)
  • Location moves
  • Hiring data (Accounts hiring for specific roles)
  • Technographics (Tech stack for specific accounts & contacts)
  • Company funding events
  • Company IPO events
  • Company acquisition events 
  • 3rd party Bombora intent data (companies and contacts searching online for topics relevant to your business)
Context data-1

💡 Step 3 | Targeting job titles not available in LinkedIn

Ever struggle to find specific job titles in LinkedIn's targeting options?

They have a deep universe of job titles to target, but inevitably, they don't have everything. 

For Cognism, a key example would be 'Revenue Operations' and 'RevOps'.

You can't find this title in LinkedIn. So our solution is to run a search in Cognism, build a contact list and then upload that into LinkedIn.

This helps us bypass artificial targeting barriers and reach contacts with a RevOps job title.

Because Cognism is updated regularly, it is far more likely to be able to find newer job titles that LinkedIn doesn't pick up on. Or are just too granular for their filters.

Here's how we use Cognism to build a list for our RevOps persona 👇

💡 Step 4 | Reaching only the right contacts in 1:1 ad campaigns

As part of our ABM program we have a 1:1 layer where we target individual accounts with personalised campaigns.

A key part of our approach involves running 1:1 ad campaigns to those individual accounts. 

You could do this using LinkedIn's 'company' targeting filter, but we prefer to build a list in Cognism where we can see exactly which contacts are in that list. 

This means we can better align with sales and ensure all the key stakeholders in that account are included. So we're both certain that marketing and sales are working the same contacts.

With LinkedIn, you won't have this visibility to confidently align your outreach with sales.

Plus, the more data you have on the prospect, such as email, phone number, Linkedin URL, it means you will get a higher match rate on LinkedIn.

Because of the data we can pull we have a 90%+ match rate.

💡 Step 5 | Watch the results roll in... 🎉

If you're targeting a specific account list or a tight ICP,  matched audiences will instantly cut wasted dollars from your ad spend.

Focusing on these best-fit prospects also improves your performance metrics For example, when we targeted a tight ICP in the logistics vertical:

  • Our average CTR was 0.54% using LinkedIn native filters - and we were hitting a lot of irrelevant companies as we were trying to reach a very specific audience.
  • After uploading the new account list from Cognism, our CTR increased to 1.04% and we eliminated the irrelevant companies for our targeting, safeguarding our budget for the right accounts.

If you want more efficient LinkedIn campaigns (that target your exact ICP) try uploading a list from Cognism as a matched audience.

We don’t use LinkedIn’s native targeting because the reach is too broad and we want to be targeted. Cognism does exactly this and is the best data provider for our LinkedIn ads
Metrikus
Derayo Adetosoye, Marketing Manager
Read Full Case Study

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