Targeting Strategies for Your Marketing Campaigns

my competitor and i launched identical linkedin campaigns. same budget, same audience, same product category. i crushed him 8:1 on deal conversion. he was confident going into the test. better product. stronger brand recognition. more funding. bigger team. we both targeted VPs of sales at 500+ person companies. same demographic criteria. same ad creative quality. $10K budget each. month one results: me: 47 deals closed. him: 6 deals closed. he was convinced i got lucky with better prospects. "let me see your targeting strategy," he asked. i pulled up my dashboard. "i don't target demographics at all." "what do you mean? you're running linkedin ads." "i target behaviors." i showed him my approach: instead of job titles, i track content consumption. instead of company size, i monitor website journeys. instead of industry filters, i watch engagement patterns. "i built an audience of people who've consumed competitor content in the last 30 days. downloaded sales automation guides. attended webinars about pipeline management. visited pricing pages of tools like ours." my "audience" wasn't demographic. it was behavioral. "linkedin lets you upload custom audiences," i explained. "i upload lists of people who've shown buying behavior. then i target those lists with ads." he was targeting people who might need our product. i was targeting people actively shopping for our product. "how do you identify buying behavior?" he asked. "third-party intent data. website pixel tracking. content engagement scoring. competitor analysis tools." i showed him my process: week 1: identify companies researching sales tools. week 2: find individuals at those companies consuming content. week 3: build custom audiences from behavioral data. week 4: launch ads to pre-qualified prospects. "demographics tell you who someone is," i said. "behavior tells you what they're doing." he was advertising to VPs of sales. i was advertising to VPs of sales currently shopping for solutions. same title, completely different mindset. my prospects were already in buying mode. his were just scrolling linkedin. the conversion difference made perfect sense. he rebuilt his entire approach: behavioral targeting instead of demographic filtering. intent data instead of job title assumptions. shopping behavior instead of profile characteristics. next month's results for him: 52 deals closed. 9x improvement over his original campaign. the lesson was clear: demographics describe who people are. behavior reveals what people need. target the behavior.

I often say: Focus on psychographics (values, interests) Over demographics (age, gender, income) The tough part? Gathering psychographics (without being creepy or invasive.) It's easier to rely on demographics. They're: - painless to gather - straightforward - easy to analyze - quantifiable But it's a mistake to depend on them. A costly one. They're a weak data point. The role they play in purchase decisions? Smaller than many marketers think. Psychographics are much more useful. And easier to collect than you think. Here's how I do it: 👉 Customer surveys Ask direct questions about values, interests, and the purchase process. 👉 Social listening Analyze what your audience is saying in comments, reviews, and posts. Look for patterns in their language, pain points, and values. 👉 Website behavior Track which pages customers visit, what content they engage with, and how they navigate your site. 👉 Customer interviews Understand the customer buying process — from the first moment a customer noticed a problem in their life through purchasing your product (and ideally your product solving their problem). 👉 Community engagement Host webinars, engage in online groups, read and respond to customer comments. Learn your target market's pain points and how they phrase those pain points. 👉 Analyze reviews and testimonials Look for recurring themes in what people say about your product — or your competitors'. Psychographics give you: - customer behavior insights - voice-of-customer data - value props - pain points It's priceless info. Use it to hone your messaging, offers, marketing, design, and product. #marketing #customerinsights #strategy

Your good intentions are sabotaging your campaigns. Here's what I see too often: -- Narrow criteria: 1. Job Title 2. Company size 3. Industry Exclude criteria: 1. Function 2. Seniority 3. Company size 4. Industry 5. Company followers of 6. Job Title 7. Careers page 8. Company names -- Why does this matter? Exclusion criteria are much more powerful than Narrow criteria. LinkedIn aggregates all information listed as "Present" in a profile. If you look at mine, you'll see I have (3) current positions. 1. Impactable 2. Modern Moses 3. Sprocketeer Because of my Owner title at Modern Moses and my employment at Impactable, people DM me thinking I'm the Owner of Impactable. They're targeting business owners of marketing companies with 51-200 employees in the US. I'm a false positive. -- Let's look at the flipside. If you were targeting Director-level people at marketing companies with 51-200 employees in the US, and you excluded "Owner" as a function - You'd exclude me from your campaigns even though I was a fit. -- So what do you do? First, let's ensure you're thinking about this correctly. No matter how good you target, there's always going to be some margin for error. Why? Because it's based on user-input data. (have you looked at the cleanliness in a CRM lately? 😅) -- Look at the image I have listed below. We're not targeting Arts & Design as a function, but the other functions we are targeting comprise people that sometimes have that other function. If we were to exclude them from our campaigns, we'd also exclude many of the people whose functions we want to target. It's a balance. I'm not telling you to forego using Exclusion criteria. I'm saying that we should exercise caution and consider the impression share relative to the entire audience. -- Here are my favorite exclusions to use: - Company name - Job Title Why? They're surgical. Excluding whole industries or functions (outside of obvious ones) increases the likelihood that you'll exclude many of the right people. -- Got tips for excluding the wrong audiences? Share them! #linkedinads

When was the last time you updated your paid targeting? It's the start of the new month - which feels like the perfect time for a lil’ cleanup work. Here’s the checklist I’m rolling through with a client for LinkedIn to ensure we’re reaching the right people effectively (+ how I'm using this for a new campaign group we’re launching!). Job Targeting: ‣ Pull a list of all associated contacts on closed won deals in the last 2 years to evaluate the full buying committee (an absolute must for any targeting!) ‣ Copy all of the job titles we’re currently targeting ‣ Contrast who we’re targeting and who the decision maker is, and either cut or add accordingly ‣ Refresh imported lists, including exclusions and any ABM-matched lists ‣ Ensure industries and company size still match the strategy ‣ Run a demographics report to look for further exclusion opportunities, especially on a company basis (a very underused tool in my experience) Launching a Pipeline Acceleration Campaign: ‣ To help reduce the sales cycle and improve the win rate, we’re targeting additional members of the buying committee with awareness ads, who typically wouldn't have been targeted before ‣ To start, we exported a list of open opportunity companies (you could also add in further exclusions here like last activity date, close date, stage, etc.) and imported into LI ‣ Based on the export in bullet 1 under job targeting for associated contacts, we evaluated all titles and contact roles to find trends. Here, we decided to break this into 3 campaigns/ad sets for CXO sponsors, X dept. (for them, it's IT), and then specialist/coordinator influencers that aren't normally targeted. I prefer these separated out for budget control and performance tracking. ‣ Exclude the job targeting audience above from these campaigns, and vice versa ‣ Future phases of this campaign may include hyper-targeted creative and messaging to speak exactly to these additional buying committee audiences, but for the sake of speed and testing, we’re launching with general messaging Targeting is easy to set and forget, but it's a critical lever in paid performance. The ultimate goal is to reach the *right* people with the right audience. By having refreshes baked into your process, whether monthly or quarterly, you ensure this doesn't get overlooked in the hustle and bustle of marketing. (And as a side note, who else is ecstatic that January is finally over?! 😆 This midwesterner is like a new person after a month of extreme cold and no sun.)