How Manufacturers Can Target Their Audience on LinkedIn

When considering marketing efforts for your manufacturing business, LinkedIn likely doesn’t sit at the top of your priority list. But, now might be the time to consider it as a contender.

LinkedIn has evolved to much more than a job searching platform, and it can be very effective in targeting your ideal audience. The advertising features allow you to narrowly target your audience using various strategies that can lead to a strong ROI for your business.

Why Your Audience Is On LinkedIn

The benefits of using LinkedIn spread further than you might imagine. That’s why so many people are using the platform every day.

Some of the most common reasons one might hop on the LinkedIn platform include:

• Get industry news and expert advice from industry experts who use the platform and share their knowledge
• Take advantage of professional learning opportunities
• Gain peer insights and recommendations regarding various topics
• Partake in purposeful engagement with your industry, your ideal clients, and those you can have a mutually beneficial relationship with
• Gather information to make a business decision. A study by the Nielsen Ad Environment Relevancy Custom Study found that 71% of people use LinkedIn to inform business decisions.

Reach niche markets using LinkedIn advertising

With over 675 million professionals on LinkedIn, you can reach just about any audience you’re looking to target no matter how niche it is.

LinkedIn members include a lot of information in their profiles, which allows you to take advantage of the data collected to reach the audience you want.

You can target based on:

• Job title
• Years of experience in an industry
• Education
• Skills
• Professional groups
• Age
• Gender
• Location and more

Use your data for LinkedIn advertising

This is where the real beauty of the LinkedIn ad platform comes in. Along with targeting based on some of criteria above, you can use your data within LinkedIn advertising to send targeted ads to those who have interacted with your business or who you have identified as a target account.

Company targeting

You can upload a list of the companies you want to connect with, or that you currently do business with, and LinkedIn will generate a list of contacts who work for that company. Then, take it a step further by narrowing down the list to target specific job titles at those companies.

You will need to have at least 300 emails on your list to run ads to them. This can be an excellent way for manufacturers to reach their audience, particularly if you provide products and services to a very limited number of companies.

Let’s say you attend a trade show and have gathered a stack of business cards. Uploading a list of the companies that you met at the show to LinkedIn and running ads to them soon after can be a very effective way to keep your business top of mind and warm them up for your outreach.

Retarget visitors

When people visit your website, you can set up retargeting ads to encourage reengagement with your business.

This might look like a potential customer visiting your website and a few minutes later seeing an ad about your manufacturing company on LinkedIn. Doing so serves as a reminder to engage with you in a way that can feel natural but is actually very strategic.

Contact targeting

Finally, you can upload or integrate your email list to target ads to that group. As you collect emails for your email list from in-person and online efforts, you can target them with LinkedIn advertising.

This isn’t always going to yield the best results because many people don’t use their personal email address to sign up for LinkedIn. It’s more likely to be a professional email address. So while you can and should do this to see how many matches you find, it’s often a more fruitful option to use company targeting instead of contact targeting.

Targeting Those Outside of Your Database

While your list can provide extreme value when targeting your audience, there is value found outside of your email list.

Here are some additional ways to target your ideal client without using a list you already have.

• Group membership: Run ads to members of certain groups on LinkedIn, where members of the group tend to fit into your target audience
• Demographic segments: Create ads based on a preset demographic segment.
• Audience extension: After looking at your current audience, the system will reach similar people by showing your ads to audiences with look-alike demographics as your target audience.
• Intent signals: The use of intent signals allow you to target those who take specific actions that express they might be an ideal target audience member.

As important as it is to add to your list, it’s equally necessary for you to narrow down your audience. Removing those who aren’t a good fit in your audience allows you to only spend your advertising dollars on those who are more likely to convert.

You can narrow your audience based on job title, seniority, industry groups, and more.

Discover How To Find Your Target Audience On LinkedIn

As a manufacturing company, you want to implement marketing efforts that will be worth the investment. When executed correctly, LinkedIn advertising lets you maximize your advertising dollars by getting in front of your ideal audience.

Learn more about Advertising for Manufacturers