If you’re running a B2B company, your online marketing strategy probably relies heavily on LinkedIn. But do you use that “grown up” social media site for remarketing?
Many strategists don’t even know about LinkedIn’s retargeting capabilities. That’s too bad, because they’re missing out on a great way to generate revenue.
In this article, we’ll go over how you can use LinkedIn to retarget people who’ve already expressed an interest in your brand.
What You’ll Learn:
- Why LinkedIn retargeting is important
- Why businesses choose LinkedIn retargeting
- How retargeting works with Matched Audience
- How to target people who have visited your site
- How to reach employees of target accounts on LinkedIn
- How to target email contacts through LinkedIn retargeting
- Should you choose LinkedIn retargeting?
The Importance of LinkedIn Retargeting
Before we explore the “how to” aspect of LinkedIn retargeting (also often called remarketing), let’s look at the importance of remarketing in general.
If you’re unfamiliar with the word, “remarketing” is usually defined as a “second chance” attempt at marketing to somebody who’s visited your website.
Let’s say you’re running a site that sells SEO services. Somebody visits that site to read an awesome article on your blog. However, the visitor doesn’t send you a message to inquire more about your services. Instead, he just leaves the website.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could run an ad that appeals to that contact who got away? Of course it would.
LinkedIn remarketing is an effort at reaching people like that visitor. It uses web technology to track people who’ve visited your site so you can hit them with ads as they continue to browse around cyberspace.
Even better: LinkedIn remarketing is effective. According to one study, click-through rates (CTRs) for retargeted display ads can be as high as 10 times better than non-retargeted ads.
Another study showed that retargeted ads offer a whopping 1,046% increase in trademark search behavior.
Finally, retargeting can boost ad response by as much as 400%.
LinkedIn retargeting is a great platform for B2B companies that advertise to other professionals. Some businesses that may benefit from LinkedIn website retargeting include:
- Computer software
- Office supplies/furniture
- B2B services
- Commercial HVAC and construction jobs
- Financial services
- Job ads
- Resume/interview prep
- Development course
- And more
Bottom line: if you’re doing any kind of online advertising, you should invest in retargeting. It’s a great way to boost sales.
Why Choose LinkedIn Retargeting
On average, LinkedIn members spend about 2 hours per month on the platform.
As professionals, these users are more open to your products and services and are already considered warm leads.
LinkedIn’s members have 2X the buying power of the typical website audience, and 4 out of 5 LinkIn users drive business decisions. That means that your LinkedIn retargeting ads are more likely to produce sales on the platform than anywhere else on the web.
Recent studies have shown that retargeting ads on LinkedIn have the following:
- 37% higher click rate with Contact Targeting
- 32% higher post-click conversion rates
- 30% increase in CTR
- 14% decrease in post-click cost-per-conversion
- 4.7% decrease in post-click cost-per-conversion
Matched Audiences and Remarketing
It’s often the case that when you look into LinkedIn remarketing, you’ll come across the phrase “Matched Audiences.” That’s really just an expression that encompasses all LinkedIn retargeting options.
When you start marketing to Matched Audiences, you’re targeting people that you already know. That is, of course, the essence of remarketing.
You can target people who’ve visited your website, send promos to your contacts, and/or reach key players in target companies. All of those options exist thanks to the magic of LinkedIn advertising.
Let’s take a look at each of those targeting strategies in some detail.
How to Use LinkedIn Retargeting for People Who’ve Visited Your Website
The most common type of remarketing is to show an ad to people who’ve visited your website. LinkedIn makes that easy.
The first thing you need to do is add the LinkedIn Insight Tag to your website.
If you’ve never heard of it before, it’s a LinkedIn remarketing pixel functions very similarly to the Facebook pixel. To put it simply, it’s a piece of code that tracks people who’ve visited your site.
To get the Insight Tag, start by signing in to the Campaign Manager. Then, click on your account name.
Hover your cursor over Account Assets in the upper, right-hand side of the screen. Click on Insight Tag from the drop-down menu that appears.
How To Do LinkedIn Remarketing
Some JavaScript code will appear in a window. Copy that entire code snippet to your clipboard.
Next, paste the JavaScript code into a file that appears on every page of your website. It’s a good idea to add it right before the closing <body> tag.
Next, paste the JavaScript code into a file that appears on every page of your website. – How To Do LinkedIn Remarketing
If you’re using WordPress, the best place to add the code is probably in the footer.php file. However, you should check with your development team just to be sure.
At this point, all you’ve done is enabled your site for a LinkedIn retargeting campaign. You haven’t launched any campaign at all.
To do that, head back into Campaign Manager. Look at the Matched Audiences option in the Account Assets drop-down. Click Select next to “Use a matched audience.”
Next, click the Create an audience to retarget button.
How To Do LinkedIn Remarketing
On the screen that appears, you’ll see an option to name your audience. It’s a great idea to name the audience after the segment that you’re going after.
For example, if you run a digital marketing company and you’re specifically targeting people who want help with conversion rate optimization (CRO), then you should name your campaign something like “CRO From the Blog.”
It’s worth noting here, by the way, that one of the best features of LinkedIn Remarketing is that it lets you segment your market very easily. That way, you can run ads specific to any segment.
After you named your audience, you need to enter the URL of the page that appeals to your market segment. Usually, that will be a page from your blog.
For example, if you wrote a blog post entitled “15 Ways to Double Your Conversion Rate Right Now,” then obviously you would want to target people who read that post with and highlight your company’s CRO capabilities.
Keep in mind that you can add multiple URLs. So if there are several pages on your blog that appeal to a specific segment, be sure to add all of them.
You’re also allowed to use matching URL expressions. For example, you can choose any URL that begins with a certain string or that contains a specific substring.
When you’re done specifying the URLs, click the Save button.
Next, you’ll be prompted to set up your Insight Tag. Since you’ve already done that, you don’t need to worry about doing it again.
Now the waiting game begins. That’s because LinkedIn needs to verify your website.
That process can take about 48 hours. Feel free to move on to other priorities while you’re waiting for verification.
To check on the status of your audience, just go to Campaign Manager and click on Account Assets again. Select Matched Audiences from the drop-down that appears.
You’ll see a table on the next screen. You should see a green “Verified” status next to the name of your audience, under the “Tag Status” column.
If you don’t see it, you’ll have to keep waiting.
When you do finally see that your audience is verified, you’re free to include that audience in your campaigns.
To do that, open the campaign that you want to use for LinkedIn remarketing. Click the Audiences tab.
Under “See full list,” you should see the audience you already created. Select that audience.
Also, make sure Include is selected in the dropdown just to the left of your audience. If Exclude is selected, you’ll run a LinkedIn retargeting ad that excludes the very people you’re trying to reach.
Once you launch your campaign, your ads will start to appear only to people who are in your Matched Audience. In this case, those are people who’ve visited one or more pages on your website.
How to Reach Employees of Target Accounts In LinkedIn Retargeting
The next type of Matched Audiences targeting is called account targeting. That’s a great option if you’re trying to reach people who work for companies in your target market.
For example, let’s say you’re running a digital marketing company and you’re targeting small businesses that offer software-as-a-service (SaaS). You can use account targeting to specify the list of businesses you’d like to reach with your marketing message, and LinkedIn will show the ad to people who work for that company.
To set up account targeting, jump into the Campaign Manager. Then, go to the targeting page.
Note that with account targeting you’re required to specify a location. If you want your LinkedIn retargeting ad to go worldwide, just specify all continents.
You can further refine your retargeting ads on LinkedIn by specifying company employees. Alternatively, you can just use company name targeting.
Again, you have to give your audience a name. Then, upload a CSV file that contains the names of as many as 30,000 companies. Click Next.
You’ll have to go through a waiting process that could take 48 hours. You can check on the status of your audience the same way you checked it with the previous LinkedIn retargeting option: from the Matched Audiences option under the Tools menu.
Once your audience is verified, you can add it to your campaign just as you would add any other audience.
How to Target Email Contacts and How To Do LinkedIn Remarketing
The third way to reach people using a Matched Audience is with contact targeting.
To do that, you’ll have to upload a list of contacts. You can get the list from your own email marketing efforts outside of LinkedIn. Be sure to use professional emails as opposed to personal emails.
Keep in mind: your email list should be a single-column CSV file. It’s a good idea to include a header labeled “Email” that’s the first entry in the file.
Also, the list should include at least 300 contacts with a maximum of 300,000.
To upload the list, start by selecting the Matched Audiences option under the Account Assets menu. Then, click on the Uploaded List Audiences tab and the Upload a List button.
How to Target Email Contacts – How To Do LinkedIn Remarketing
Select Match Based on List of Contacts and Upload a CSV File.
As with the other two LinkedIn retargeting options, you can expect to wait about 48 hours for your audience to reach the much-coveted “Verified” status.
When it does, you can include it in future LinkedIn remarketing campaigns.
Should You Use LinkedIn Retargeting?
The most important question to ask yourself before you begin retargeting ads on LinkedIn is: Is your target audience on the platform?
Here are a few statistics to help you answer that question:
- 45% of adults making over $75,000 per year have LinkedIn accounts
- 49% of college graduates also use LinkedIn
Another question to consider is whether or not your company is offering a B2B service. For business-to-business remarketing, LinkedIn website retargeting is a solid option to increase sale and overall growth.
Wrapping It Up How To Do LinkedIn Retargeting
It’s likely that more than 90% of your website visitors will leave without ever filling out a form or responding to a call to action.
You should use Linkedin remarketing to make sure that you don’t let those potential customers get away without giving them a few more chances to respond.
