With This Smart Strategy, LinkedIn Ads Can Be a Goldmine for Entrepreneurs

If you're like a lot of entrepreneurs, LinkedIn ads might be something you hadn't really given a second thought.

Isn't that place a ghost town?

Does anyone actually use LinkedIn — other than, you know, when they're actively job hunting.

The truth is, it's a more active place than you might think.

If your company targets a B2B audience, it can be an indispensable marketing tool.

Not only can you take advantage of LinkedIn's recent efforts to amp up their publishing platform, Pulse, but they've also got a paid ad service you can consider.

Are LinkedIn ads worth it?

They certainly can be, especially if you've got a solid strategy behind them.

In a recent blog post, Social Media Examiner offers a great approach to making the most of LinkedIn's ad platform.

This strategy involves using LinkedIn to drive traffic to your website, while tracking information about the visitors.

Once you've got a relevant sample size, you get some useful demographic data and a list of people with an interest in your company.

Then, you use that information to retarget those people.

Retarget Website Visitors With LinkedIn Ads

Want to target LinkedIn ads to reach your website visitors? If so, be sure to select matched audiences when you’re ready to define your ad campaign audience.

[image source: Social Media Examiner]

Select matched audiences to retarget website visitors with LinkedIn ads.

From there, either include or exclude your website visitors and other audiences you’ve created using the LinkedIn insight tag.

Just start typing the name of your audience or click See Full List to choose from your available audiences.

You can include and exclude multiple audiences for each ad campaign.

This is useful if you created an audience for all of your website visitors, as well as an audience for people who submitted a lead form or made a purchase.

Simply include website visitors and exclude those who submitted your lead form or made a purchase.

That way, your ad is only shown to people who haven’t completed a conversion goal on your website.

Once you’ve selected your website audiences, continue to refine your audience using the general targeting options below for location and other work demographics.

[image source: Social Media Examiner]

Refine the target audience for your LinkedIn campaign.

This allows you to make sure your audience is as similar as possible to your ideal customer base for a better return on investment from your LinkedIn ads.