B2B is the greatest B2B marketing platform to have ever existed. 

Yet, with a seemingly endless plethora of marketing options where to begin? Since time immemorial, marketers have been asking the same question and getting the same answer. Go where your audience is.

That means clearly identifying your target audience and understanding their demographics. The good news is that once you’ve done this, LinkedIn makes it very easy for you to reach these targets.

Reaching the right people with the right message at the right time is critical for B2B marketing. And LinkedIn’s new updates for reaching and engaging with targeted audiences through advertising make the process easier.

At Lexicon, we manage executive brands for many of Thailand’s leading CEOs and business leaders. As a result, we work daily with social media to help bring our clients’ strategies to life and ensure maximum success based on their desired outcome. However, the key to making everything work is to ensure a clear sense of the target audience and who you’re looking to connect with – and, ultimately, sell to.

LinkedIn is the undisputed number 1 marketing channel when it comes to B2B. Marketing guru Neil Patel adds that LinkedIn is the channel for B2B lead generation, dwarfing the results you can expect on other platforms.

Additionally, a survey on Executive Branding, which was done by Qnary,  found that 76.9% of marketing professionals believe that an executive’s social media presence can help their organization’s sales growth.  While in the same report, 65% of 18-44 year-old professionals surveyed said they were more likely to buy from brands or companies with executives that they followed online.

If you’re looking for an example of executive branding in Thailand done right, follow our Founder, David Norcross, on LinkedIn, where he provides daily tips on improving your LinkedIn presence as well as showcasing some of the behind the scenes work we do at Lexicon.

Better ways to reach important contacts

When targeting your advertising on LinkedIn, a common issue is knowing who you want to contact but not having enough specific information, such as their email address or phone number, to reach them directly.

To address this issue, LinkedIn has been testing new fields for advertising based on matched audiences such as first and last names, company names, and job titles, including mobile device IDs. Marketers who used these fields saw a +30% increase in the number of matches by enabling more precision in targeting.

Note that when used together, these fields can help you increase the number of professionals in your audience or improve the precision of your matches. That is to say, the update allows you to micro-target and create niche segments while broadening your reach.

New criteria combinations: ‘and’ and ‘or’

Businesses have a growing need for more diverse campaign criteria. These include job function, interests, seniority, and titles. As a result, LinkedIn now has a wide range of target options available, which you can see here. As a result, you can combine industry, company size, job title and years of experience to identify your perfect prospect.

The platform accordingly now provides marketers with greater flexibility and ease in locating the specific people they seek, based on these various criteria. To be specific, if you want to reach data analysts with a senior title or higher, you can create a single campaign that targets them by job title or skills, while also adding additional filtetrs, such as their years of experience and seniority level. You can further refine your target audience by excluding companies based on their title or size.

Customized Forecasting Panels

Advertisers all have the same concern about ensuring that their money is being spent wisely, in order to reach the right audience and shape their campaigns accordingly.

To further assist with this effort, LinkedIn revamped its forecasting panel within the LinkedIn Campaign Manager. Companies can now better track the data that is most important to know before launching a campaign, such as reach, type, and spending.

Knowing that the panel may not be a one-size-fits-all solution for every business, the platform has also added the ability to customize it for specific characteristics — ranging from top industries, to years of experience, to company size.

With so many tools now available, companies looking to effectively market themselves can sometimes be overwhelmed. From balancing creative demands, to budget constraints and emerging platforms, what works and what doesn’t is constantly shifting. Though the methods may change, and take time to learn at a high level, B2B marketers should always focus on the single most important factor in ensuring long-term success — their audience.

While advertising is a quick and easy way to reach audiences for specific campaigns, the organic approach to LinkedIn marketing is more cost effective in the long run. You should use advertising for specific campaigns, such as lead generation, event attendance or downloading of a white paper. The rest of the time, focus on telling a great story and engaging your audience organically with your content. Learn more about telling your story here.

About the Author

Piyanat Jantharot is a Senior Brand Strategist at Lexicon working working with leading brands to develop impactful stories on a daily basis. His team manages executive brands for busy CEOs, runs B2B marketing campaigns and develops social media marketing strategies.

Lexicon is an award-winning brand storytelling agency focusing on telling impactful stories for clients based in Thailand and South East Asia. Lexicon has been around for almost a decade and has told thousands of stories just like yours.