Job title targeting is one of the coolest and most compelling targeting options offered by LinkedIn Ads. You want to reach the Purchasing Manager? Target people who list their job as Purchasing Manager. It’s so easy you almost doubt it’s reality. But what do you do when the job title you want to target isn’t recognized in LinkedIn?
No Tattoo Artists?
I was recently talking to a colleague who was trying to target tattoo artists on LinkedIn, but the job title wasn’t in the system. No “Tattoo Artist”. No “Body Art Specialist”. Nothing. I was quite surprised because a quick search for “tattoo artist” on LinkedIn showed 13,117 results:
Over 13K people seems like a decent audience to me and it far exceeds the minimum audience size of 1,000. Sure, you can reach out to LinkedIn and they’ll tell you to fill out this form with your problem, but what if you need to get some campaigns going right now? Well, here’s how you do it.
Targeting Without A Job Title
Our search for “tattoo artists” showed plenty of people on LinkedIn and you can page through them looking for common threads to target, but there is an easier way. Let’s take it one step at a time:
- Step 1: Limit your search to just “People” on the left sidebar. Like this:
- Step 2: Start opening up these dropdown options on the right side. I’ve highlighted Industry, Job Function, and Seniority Level.
- Step 3: Choose your targets. In this example, we see that tattoo artists are mostly categorized in the “Arts and Crafts” or “Fine Art” industries. Definitely not where I would have expected.
Under Job Function we see similar grouping, with the largest bucket being “Arts and Design” but the clear 2nd place group is “Entrepreneurship”.
Lastly we see an interesting dichotomy where most people are “Entry” seniority, with “Owner” as a distant 2nd. Depending on whether you’re trying to reach an individual artist for something like supplies or the owner for a business-wide purchase, this is a key insight. - Step 4: Build your campaigns. I recommend layering these targeting options, especially the seniority since that is likely something you know about your target audience and it could make or break your campaign.
Benefits of Roundabout Targeting
Some may criticize this type of approach because it may put ads in front of people who aren’t tattoo artists. Yes, it may, but if you write your ad copy and sponsored updates to clearly mention tattoo artists you should be able to minimize the number of clicks from people outside the target audience.
Really, this could be a huge advantage. Since “tattoo artist” isn’t in the system, most people wanting to advertise to tattoo artists (provided they even thought to try LinkedIn Ads) will abandon the platform making you one of the only people speaking directly to this audience of over 13K people. Those are odds I like!
