LinkedIn’s Interest Targeting: What You Need to Know

LinkedIn is a professional network – where people go to you guessed it… network, catch up on industry trends and even job hunt. According to LinkedIn, more than ever before, users are actively engaging in professional conversations within the platform and find great value in the articles or posts they are seeing.

As an advertiser, if you have potential prospects on LinkedIn, you’ve been able to target them with ads based on a number of things including demographics and information related to their current job (job title, company size etc.). You’ve also been able to target users who have previously shown interest in your products using LinkedIn’s account-based marketing campaigns. (Read more about LinkedIn advertising for B2B here).

But the truth is that many people have professional interests outside of their jobs. Meaning, you could be missing out on a huge segment of your potential audience.

Until now. Hello Interest Targeting!

In late January, LinkedIn rolled out its newest targeting option within Campaign Manager, called Interest Targeting. The general purpose of this option is to help advertisers streamline their messages based on what people are already actively engaging with on the platform – their interests!

With this addition, advertisers now have more than 200 professional interest categories to choose from to narrow down their target audience. These interests range from Marketing Strategies to 3D Printing and so much more.

The way it works is whenever you’re interacting with any content on LinkedIn, whether it is by liking, sharing or commenting LinkedIn takes notice. For example, say a colleague of mine shares a video of a 3D printer at their manufacturing plant and I add a comment. LinkedIn will assume 3D printing is an interest of mine, which makes is easy for companies to target me using the new interest targeting. Fun fact: there are more than 340,000 LinkedIn members who are considered to have an interest in 3D Printing.

With Interest Targeting You Can:

• Serve relevant ads and content that matches a member’s professional interests.
• Deepen your influence with the buyer committee within your target accounts. Use account based marketing plus interest marketing to really make an impact with people who have already expressed interest in your product or services.

By leveraging this new interest targeting, you are can rest assured that you are reaching an audience that has a legitimate interest in what you’re promoting, resulting in hopefully, more clicks. If you’re interested in learning more about how Top Floor can help you get started with LinkedIn interest targeting, get in touch!