Matched Audiences is a powerful addition to the LinkedIn offer to B2B marketers. It enables advertisers to track the existing lists and data stored in their own databases and match them to LinkedIn records. Often LinkedIn can do this much more effectively than competitor platforms such as Facebook, because the information it holds tends to be more reliable and work-relevant (for example, work emails are often used in setting up LinkedIn accounts).
Bizmut has a wealth of experience helping clients set up and optimise targeted campaigns on LinkedIn, both with finding the right audiences using and with getting the most from Matched Audiences. In this post I will explain what Matched Audiences are and how you can use the function to boost and refine your presence on LinkedIn.
What are Matched Audiences on LinkedIn?
Matched Audiences are all those profiles that you can find on LinkedIn that match your existing customers, website visitors and target accounts. Once you have found them you can:
- Retarget them with fresh and/or more targeted content
- Target people in the same organisations (Account Based Marketing)
- Use Lookalike Audiences to find people who share similar characteristics and/or interests
In general, identifying your existing contacts in LinkedIn is helpful for managing your communication on the platform. Even if you don’t target them specifically with bespoke campaigns, you may well want to exclude them. For example, taking existing customers out of audiences for your latest promotional campaigns.
What you can do with Matched Audiences on LinkedIn
Retargeting on LinkedIn
Retargeting users at specific points in their customer journey is a powerful way to re-engage, reinforce messaging, and keep up the momentum for action. You can utilise LinkedIn as an effective tool to communicate with your existing audiences in a moment when they are especially ‘tuned in’ to work-related themes. Whether they are on the site for market research, general interest or recruitment purposes, they are likely to be in the mood and in the right place (work) to re-engage with your B2B offer.
Account Based Marketing on LinkedIn
Matched audiences has brought the power of Account Based Marketing to reality in LinkedIn. Now you can action your profiling and research work, directly targeting the profiles you think are a best fit from a specific list of companies you wish to target. Then deliver bespoke messaging and creatives tailored to them.
Once you have done your research and generated a list of target companies you want to reach, it is easy to load that list into LinkedIn and then run a campaign only to specific roles in those target companies. From there you can build your strategy and get really nuanced in your approach to important potential clients.
Lookalike Audiences on LinkedIn
You can also use your matched audience to find similar profiles on LinkedIn. Profiles that share relevant characteristics with the profiles of people that have already shown an interest in your product or service, or look like existing customers etc. It’s a similar function to Audience Expansion, but is based around your own lists and data. This can be a powerful way to discover new audiences in LinkedIn that you may not have identified with targeting based around your own filtering (and assumptions) on LinkedIn profiles.
If you still have questions about how to best utilise all the targeting functions available in LinkedIn, get in touch with our team of experts at Bizmut. We can talk you through the whole process from choosing your tactics to the details on best set up.
