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LinkedIn Rolls Out Long Awaited Matched Audiences, Great News for B2B Marketers

By Tinuiti Team

B2C marketers can often find their audiences easily on Facebook, Twitter, and other consumer-oriented social media platforms. However, for the B2B crowd, LinkedIn has long served as the go-to social media resource, and your options for connecting with potential customers have just expanded considerably.

In April 2017, LinkedIn announced a new program that it plans to roll out in the coming months: Matched Audiences. This program will allow B2B marketers to target specific audience segments with all different types of ads on LinkedIn, from sponsored content to sponsored email. How can you use Matched Audiences to further your marketing agenda?

Website Retargeting

Other social media platforms — notably Facebook — have successfully used retargeting to engage interested consumers with relevant brands. When a potential customer engages with a brand once, he or she will see ads from that brand during future visits to the site.

LinkedIn hopes to leverage this successful marketing strategy with Matched Audiences. Users can nurture leads by reconnecting with them after they visit your website. When you launch an advertising campaign with LinkedIn and use the retargeting feature with Matched Audiences, you can reduce your ROI and lower your cost per lead by re-engaging with business owners who have previously expressed interest in your products or services.

Account Targeting

Matched Audiences will also permit account targeting, which means that B2B marketers can get in touch with decision makers at the businesses they most want to engage. All you need is a CSV file that contains a list of your target businesses. LinkedIn will then match the names on the CSV file with decision makers on the social media platform.

B2B marketers can use account targeting to better manage their time and PPC spend. Instead of assuming you've located a decision maker or influencer at a particular company, you can use LinkedIn's internal systems to find engaged prospects instead of cold leads.

Contact Targeting

Many businesses associate several email addresses with their LinkedIn accounts. Matched Audiences comes with a contact targeting feature, which lets LinkedIn users leverage their email contacts for marketing campaigns. Simply download a CSV of your contacts through each email address and upload them to your LinkedIn marketing account.

From there, you can let LinkedIn do the heavy lifting. The social media platform will mine your contacts and find matches on the network. That way, you seamlessly and effortlessly target people with whom you've had previous contact.

You might not know how many email addresses you've associated with LinkedIn. You can check your email address list through your LinkedIn account to find out, then log into those email addresses to download the CSVs.

Matched Audiences could serve as a launching point for B2B marketers on LinkedIn. If you haven't tried sponsored content or other advertising efforts on LinkedIn, watch for Matched Audiences to roll out in the coming months. In the meantime, learn how SEO can help B2B businesses by reading our revealing case study: SEO Helps financial Advisory Site Boost Organic Traffic 19% Amid Migration to New CMS.

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