We all know that social media has slowly but surely taken over the world. Whether it’s posting destination photos on Instagram or writing elaborate, 260-character posts on Twitter to push your newest content, social media is a powerful tool to create awareness and target specific audiences. As for LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network, it too is a platform that can do wonders for your DMO’s meetings marketing campaigns.
With LinkedIn, you can customize targeting for specifics audiences by combining different targeting facets available on LinkedIn through layering techniques. LinkedIn also has targeting capabilities based on member profiles and with those, can help you target more specifically, ultimately saving your DMO time and money.
Whether you are new to LinkedIn or believe you are a LinkedIn connoisseur, we have compiled a list of do’s and don’ts that will up your targeting game and bring your meetings marketing campaigns to the next level.
DO’s
DO: Make sure your audience size is at least 50,000.
Depending on your campaign size, your audience will vary in size. However, the recommended audience size is 50,000 or more to have optimal scale, see results, and optimize based on those results. By estimating the size of your audience, you can understand your reach capabilities better and plan for a successful campaign.
DO: Start broad and then narrow down.
Going off of the above tip, when in doubt, start big! The worst thing you can do is start small and not reach who you are targeting. Look at the demographics that your campaign is reaching and add more titles to your target audience to better reach people in your target industry.
DO: Test your audiences and analyze data.
Don’t be scared to try things out and play with different targeting techniques. By testing different audiences through layering, you can analyze results and check the data to see what is working well for your campaign, and what is not.
DO: Combine different targeting facets to optimize your targeting reach.
Once you start segmenting your audience, you have the option of combining different targeting facets to reach people that are relevant to your specific campaign and its goals. For example, instead of just targeting by company industry or job title, you can combine the two and create an effective targeting combination.
DON’TS
DON’T: Hyper-target your campaigns.
With all the capabilities LinkedIn offers, it’s hard not to use every single feature available. However, make sure you don’t limit your potential audience. Experiment and find the perfect balance for your campaign!
DON’T: Lump all buyer personas into one campaign.
On the other hand, you don’t want to under-target and use just one campaign to reach multiple audiences that may not relate. For DMOs, lumping unrelated industries into your one campaign will cause you to spend more money on an audience that has no interest in your destination’s unique selling proposition. It will also create issues with personalization and will most likely result in an unsuccessful campaign.
DON’T: Perform a campaign centered around non-required fields on a users LinkedIn profile.
LinkedIn requires certain fields when a user is creating a profile. However, there are a handful of fields that users can choose to fill out, or not. Two examples would be field of study and education. Make sure you do not center your campaign around non-required fields. They can potentially narrow the scale of the target audience you are trying to reach, as not everyone will fill out those fields.
DON’T: Delete your audience template after using it once.
This may sound a bit obvious, however, it is a helpful reminder or tip! Choosing your targeting facets and defining your audience can be time-consuming. Save time by saving your audience as a template to use for another campaign in the future!
Feeling a bit more socially savvy? Nice! See how we increased LinkedIn engagement for Visit Park City by 64%, and get key takeaways to keep the momentum going.
