A few weeks ago we shared a social media strategy guide, giving you some direction not only on why you need a social media strategy, but where to start.
One of the points written was around social media audiences, so today we will go more in depth.
At ResourceiT, we have a methodology that starts with who your ideal customer is. We work with you and key stakeholders within your business to define your ideal customer, their pain points and priorities. Once you have this information, you build your entire marketing plan around attracting more of those high value customers.
LOCATION
Location is pretty self-explanatory, if you work solely in the UK – you need to target the UK. It is worth noting that there is a tick box underneath to target only people that permanently reside in that location – something worth ticking if you are very specific in the locations you work with.
COMPANY NAME
This is to target companies that people work at. For example, if you were to enter ‘ResourceiT Consulting Ltd’ your ad would only reach our employees. You can manually type in up to 100 of these, or you can upload a CSV with a list of thousands if you want to.
COMPANY INDUSTRY
This option gives you a list of possible industries to work with. Great if you don’t have a company list but are trying to reach a niche audience. For example, Medical and Healthcare > Veterinary.
JOB TITLE
Job title is something we always ask people to avoid – instead we suggest using Job Function & Seniority as LinkedIn will only show your campaign with that specific job title. So, if you typed in ‘Head of IT’, you would be missing out on:
Head of Information Technology, Head of Info Tech, Director of IT, IT Director, Information Technology Director, etc., and that’s not even including the languages they could possibly be in.
JOB FUNCTION
Job function, we believe is one of two of LinkedIn’s top targeting features. There is a list of potential job functions you can select, and they are comprehensive. As mentioned above, just by ticking the ‘Information Technology’ box here, you can encompass all possible job titles and paired with job seniority you are hot to trot.
JOB SENIORITY
Job seniority is the 2nd of two top LinkedIn targeting features, paired with job function. You can choose anything from ‘Unpaid’ to ‘C-Level’ and anything in-between.
MEMBER SKILLS
This is something someone has been endorsed for. We have seen great success with this function when looking for a really specific technology and targeting them with upgrade messaging. People are likely to be endorsed for what they specialize in and using a technology here is a great idea. We did this for Microsoft BizTalk
MEMBER GROUPS
Targeting group members is also a great option if you’re looking for something specific. For example, if you are looking to recruit existing Microsoft partners to build a P2P relationship the ‘Microsoft Partner Network’ as a group is a fantastic place to start.
MEMBER AGE
Someone at LinkedIn once shared some information with me about ‘Member Age’ on LinkedIn. Years ago, I was using for all campaigns – the same as I would Facebook, Google and Twitter. But i was advised that this was based on how long ago someone graduated or left school. Now, I don’t know about you but most people I know have taken some additional qualifications since leaving school. If you put this in LinkedIn’s terms, and you did an online degree at age 50, LinkedIn would assume you were 18 again. Great if that worked in real life but I’d avoid this, if I were you.
If you can get the right blend of options from LinkedIn your campaign targeting is on to a winner. If you would like any advice on this, please get in touch today and we will share with you some more top tips based on our 10+ years combined experience in LinkedIn Targeting If you can get the right blend of options from LinkedIn your campaign targeting is on to a winner.
