LinkedIn is Revolutionizing B2B Targeting With Predictive Audiences

Audience targeting in B2B marketing has become increasingly complex over the past several years. Buying groups are growing larger and more diverse, customer demand for personalization is on the rise, and marketing budgets are getting tighter. Throw into that mix a slew of data privacy regulations and, understandably, B2B marketers are struggling to hone in on the right audience.

That’s all about to change with a solution that amplifies your first-party data and lowers the barriers to reach a high-intent audience at scale: predictive audiences.

Powered by LinkedIn’s predictive AI, LinkedIn Campaign Manager has added predictive audiences to the suite of targeting tools you can use to easily identify and reach the right audience at the right moment along their buying journey. Let’s take a closer look at how it works.

How will predictive audiences improve LinkedIn campaign performance?

With over 950 million users globally, LinkedIn offers an unparalleled B2B platform for reaching decision makers, influencers and industry professionals. On top of that, LinkedIn has seen 27% year-on-year growth in user engagement, meaning you are reliably reaching an audience actively seeking and engaging with B2B-related content. 

This combination of audience size and engagement creates the perfect environment for a tool like predictive audiences to supercharge your first party data. Through scaled targeting, fueled by predictive AI modeling, your campaigns are more likely to reach individuals who are ready to take action. 

As a result, your campaigns become more efficient, dynamically optimizing your audiences based on your campaign objective and improving your Cost Per Action (CPA). Early tests saw a 21% CPL reduction in campaigns using predictive audiences and lead gen objectives. This optimization of targeting leads to improved engagement, higher conversion rates, and ultimately, better ROI for your LinkedIn campaigns.

“We're getting 2x the amount of leads at half the cost versus half the amount of leads at double the cost…so that’s really huge.” – Enterprise Professional Services client

Benefits of Using Predictive Audiences

Predictive audiences can effectively alleviate a range of pain points and roadblocks that B2B marketers commonly encounter.

• Identify your audience at scale: In a world where B2B buying is becoming increasingly complex, predictive audiences tackles the challenge of identifying the right customers for your business by leveraging LinkedIn's AI and your data to create tailored, high-intent audience segments.
• Optimize campaign efficiency: The process of finding the optimal audience often demands substantial time and resources. Predictive audiences streamlines this process, ensuring that even during budget and time constraints, your resources are utilized efficiently.
• Maximize ROI: The 95-5 Rule suggests that only a small percentage of your prospective audience is actively in the market at any given time. Predictive audiences empowers you to plug into your full-funnel strategy by focusing on bottom-funnel efforts to drive higher-intent leads, resulting in better ROI and reduced wastage.

How does predictive audiences work?

Predictive audiences uses what’s known as probabilistic audience targeting. This AI feature analyzes vast amounts of data, combining the engagements observed on the LinkedIn platform with your first-party data. The AI then constructs and optimizes a high-intent audience that is more likely to achieve your campaign objective. 

What sets predictive audiences apart is its powerful combination of proprietary signals such as active ad clicks and conversions and predictive AI modeling that can only be found on LinkedIn. This goes beyond the traditional "lookalike" approach, identifying individuals who not only exhibit similar characteristics to your existing customers, but also identifies their propensity to convert. In doing so, you can invest your resources where they are most likely to yield favorable outcomes and connect with a scaled audience tailored for your business.

Tips and Best Practices for LinkedIn Predictive Audiences

These tips and best practices will help you get the most out of LinkedIn predictive audiences.

Audience selection and qualification

• Identify customer models: Begin with audiences resembling your existing customers, utilizing CRM data or engagement with customer-specific content.
• Harness audience insights: Utilize the insights provided to refine your targeting strategy based on data.
• Optimize audience size: Test different audience sizes to find the right balance between reach and precision.

Objective and Metrics

• Consider lead gen objective: Utilize the lead generation objective to align well with predictive audiences and enhance campaign performance.
• Monitor performance metrics: Regularly assess key performance indicators (KPIs) and adjust strategies based on data-driven insights.

By following these practices across these broader categories, you can effectively leverage LinkedIn predictive audiences to refine your B2B marketing strategies and achieve more impactful results.

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