LinkedIn has been adding quite a few new features lately. While there are still some changes and additions we’d like to see, LinkedIn is still my favorite channel for B2B and for robust audience targeting.
I have been spending more and more time in LinkedIn recently and have found some useful features that I think more people should utilize. Here are some tips for getting more out of your existing LinkedIn efforts:
Duplicate Campaign Feature
When you’re launching a new campaign that is targeting the same folks as previous campaigns, don’t rebuild that campaign from scratch! Simply use the duplicate campaign button in the top right corner.
Once you duplicate your existing campaign, you’ll have the opportunity to change the campaign name, start date, and to duplicate/remove ads. One important thing to note is that you cannot edit sponsored posts at this time, so if you have specific ad copy or URL tracking, you’ll need to re-add those separately. However, if you’re duplicating a text ads campaign, you can keep those ads and adjust the pieces as needed.
Save Your Audiences As a Template For Future Use
Back in May 2016, LinkedIn added a handful of new features including the ability to save audience targets for future use. Anyone who has built campaigns knows that the ability to save an audience is a welcomed feature. My tip is to make sure you use a useful, descriptive naming convention for any audiences that you build so that it’s easy to reference and reuse them later. Simply build your audience one time in the LinkedIn interface, click “save audience as template” at the bottom of the campaign settings page, and name away.
Archive Old Campaigns
When an account has changed hands a couple of times, there’s often a good amount of old campaigns that get in the way. If this applies to your LinkedIn accounts, make sure to utilize the “archive” feature. Sure, this isn’t a huge game changer, but it helps to not see 50 old campaigns on your home screen.
Target LinkedIn Groups
In addition to targeting users with specific job titles, job functions, company sizes, etc., you can also advertise within specific LinkedIn groups that are of interest to your audience. These range from general industry themes to geographically specific chapters of professional organizations. While this is a great targeting feature, I would recommend using this as an add-on to other targeting methods and not as a standalone targeting feature since the audience can be a bit more restricted.
Test Text Ad Campaigns
When I first got started in LinkedIn, a couple of my text ad campaigns didn’t have the best performance, which lead me to write them off for a little bit. Since they aren’t as prevalent on the page, they can gather a good amount of impressions (similar to that of GDN ads) and lead you to believe that they may not pull their weight. I have been testing text ads for each of my audience targets with a limited budget and I have to say they have been surprising me. I’m also a fan of text ads because they can be duplicated from one campaign to the next and edited, unlike the Sponsored Posts. My advice is don’t write off the text ads just because they’re not as fancy as the Sponsored Posts.
What are you favorite tips for making the most of LinkedIn? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
