How LinkedIn-Matched Audiences Can Become Your Unique Selling Point Strategy

Start-ups and small businesses are continuously working to improve their ROI by trying to engage just the right audiences during the customer lifecycle.  

LinkedIn officially rolled out its Matched Audiences program in 2017. It is used to target its users based on their email addresses and web browsing preferences. 

This means that all advertisers, which also include those already using LinkedIn’s self-serve ad-buying platform, can finally access the new options for ad targeting.

 

Matched Audiences is a set of specific targeting capabilities that allow marketers to combine the vast amount of professional data offered by LinkedIn with their first-party data, in order to help engage audiences, prospects and key accounts that are most valuable for the business. It encompasses three capabilities:

• Account Targeting
• Contact Targeting
• Website Retargeting

These capabilities allow marketers to retarget website visitors and advertise to contacts based on data from marketing automation platforms and large customer databases. 

Additionally, Matched Audiences can lead to an increase in ROI, by allowing young start-ups to focus their efforts on accounts and audiences with the highest probability of driving revenue.

1. Account Targeting

Account targeting allows advertisers to run marketing campaigns based on company accounts. This is accomplished by running a CSV list containing company names against 12 million individual company pages currently available on LinkedIn.

Campaign-based advertising campaigns are made easier, as you’re only reaching the decision-makers in your target companies. Instead of using lead-centric strategies, start-ups can now use account-centric ones to better align their sales with PPC campaigns.

2. Contact Targeting

With Contact Targeting, you can upload a CSV list containing e-mail addresses easily, and more importantly, securely, or import contact lists directly from platforms such as Marketo, LiveRamp or Oracle Eloqua.

 

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LinkedIn has stated that these platforms are only the beginning of their integration efforts and that they’re currently exploring additional options in order to provide their clients with more flexibility. 

Start-ups can use Matched Audiences to fully customize their content based on the topics their customers find important and valuable.

3. Website Retargeting

fWebsite retargeting allows you to create your specific target audience using website visitor data and uses always-on campaigns to nurture them. 

These campaigns involve tracking visitors and serving them ads while they’re browsing their favorite platforms and websites. 

Acquiring leads becomes a lot more affordable, as you’re using sponsored content to capitalize on past visitors. The only issue left is to provide relevant ads in order to ensure better conversion rates and, in turn, better ROI.

Furthermore, the capabilities of Matched Audiences can be used in combination with LinkedIn’s default targeting options, which already include age, gender, job title, location and seniority level. 

During a testing phase, marketers using Matched Audiences without any additional targeting solution have actually achieved the best results. 

This means that a young start-up with a limited budget only has to invest in a single marketing strategy instead of using several and still experience an increase in ROI.

Comparing Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn

Facebook might be ideal for high-profile public brands and businesses that would benefit from their content being shared and people visiting their website, such as news sites, but it’s hardly a great platform to be used for B2B selling. 

Google AdWords, on the other hand, is excellent when it comes to marketing to users who are at different points in the buying cycle, using keywords such as “Buy This,” “Trial,” and “Reviews.”

LinkedIn can be a dream-come-true in situations where you know exactly who your buying audience is. 

Matched Audiences ads can hardly be surpassed when it comes to niche and high-margin B2B sales. The only disadvantage to LinkedIn is that’s its network is considerably smaller when compared to Google or Facebook. This may cause some difficulties such as the target audience is too small to be served with ads or have the ads served extremely slowly.

Considering these kinds of difficulties, it’s really not that strange to see an up-and-coming start-up burn through their budgets without even realizing the mistake they are making and resort to various credit loans. 

You can avoid these pitfalls if you consult with experts or even take small credit for example. In order not to get overwhelmed with all this, you can keep track of a free calculator on the bad credit loans website. That way, even if you have to burn through your budget in order to finance your advertising campaign, your start-up still has available options to continue operating and eventually, generating revenue.

LinkedIn Matched Audiences Can Help You Engage Users at the Right Time

Engaging customers just at the right point in the buyer’s cycle, as well as nurturing them for purchasing outside of it is becoming fairly manageable for small businesses, start-ups, and young entrepreneurs. 

Advertising options such as LinkedIn’s Matched Audiences are paving the way for a new era of customer targeting and retargeting capabilities.

This allows start-ups to get their branded content delivered to just the right person in order to ensure an optimal conversion into a loyal customer. 

Not to mention that LinkedIn also offers its own landing pages to be used to convert visitors, using various persuasive elements such as trust indicators and social proof, to compel prospects into downloading or purchasing a product or service your start-up is offering.