The last few years have brought many changes to LinkedIn. In my opinion, the addition of conversion tracking and Matched Audiences have been some of the most valuable for advertisers. Aside from these large updates, there have also been smaller updates that I think are worth noting because of their potential impact.

Let’s jump in.

Location Targeting

In my opinion, when it comes to geographical targeting, LinkedIn is a bit behind the times. If targeting specific cities, you often aren’t able to drill-down as far as other channels allow. According to LinkedIn, “Geographic location is based on the location specified by the member in their profile and/or their IP address location.”

Below is an example of targeting in the state of Virginia:

In addition to questioning what the “area” is exactly, I have also found myself wondering if I am reaching folks who are longer-term business travelers.

Recently, LinkedIn now offers the ability to “target members who live in this location and not to temporary visitors”.

I have found this feature to be something I am frequently using with clients who have very specific location goals. This is definitely a step in right direction for LinkedIn’s geographic targeting and I hope in the future we are able to get even more granular.

Video Ads

Back in late March, LinkedIn announced that native video sponsored content was available to all advertisers. Advertisers are also able to insert a lead gen card at the end of the video, which I find to make this ad type even more valuable.

As with any channel, the introduction of more features brings more advertisers to the auction and often increases the costs. This has definitely been true with LinkedIn.

However, I think the way to combat these higher costs is to make sure that your video campaigns are highly targeted. By utilizing LinkedIn Sales Navigator, which I have written about before, and the Matched Audiences tool, and I think you can have a really powerful B2B campaign.

I know that my clients have been really excited about the video ad type and I can’t wait to see how it will continue to perform in 2018.

Campaign Groups

This is an interface feature that is likely most important to account managers. This feature allows you to organize campaigns into different groups, or folders, and keep track of performance at a higher level.

For my larger lead gen clients, I often have very specific goals based on location targeting, job targeting or specific calls-to-action, so the ability to have more organization has been very useful. I keep things very granular and broken out in LinkedIn, so this often resulted in many campaigns to scroll through when reviewing performance and working on reports.

The ability to see total spent, conversions, start dates and end dates is great.

Learn more about campaign group management as well as the reporting and analytics available on the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Help Center.

Note that LinkedIn says that this feature has not been rolled out to all advertisers quite yet, but it should be coming soon if you don’t already have it.

Conclusion

These recent additions to LinkedIn have the potential to make this growing platform even more useful for its everyday advertisers. We’re only in the start of Q2, so I’m excited to see what’s coming down the pike. I’m crossing my fingers for a lookalike feature soon!

What are your favorite LinkedIn features? We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences with this platform in the comments!