October 8, 2021
The Ideal QA Process in Digital Advertising
As performance marketers, we’re always trying to find new ways to reach brand-aware, sales-ready users, whether it be through bidding on brand search terms, cross-channel retargeting, or third party review sites like Capterra and G2. After all, these users are ultimately most likely to convert, and most likely to generate high returns.
Once you have full coverage of these “low-hanging fruit” tactics, you may be wondering:
Where should I invest my dollars next if I’m looking to generate the highest return possible?
LinkedIn engagement retargeting is a relatively new form of matched audience that allows you to retarget users that have interacted with your lead gen forms, videos ads, live videos, events, and company page. Since these users have interacted with your brand or shown intent for your products in some way, shape, or form, these new targeting options make for a great way to expand your coverage of high quality audiences.
In this post, we’ll give you a rundown of each new audience type included in the engagement retargeting rollout, and explain when and how each audience can benefit your performance marketing mix.
Lead Ad Retargeting
The first new audience type allows you to retarget users that have interacted with your lead gen ad forms. This new targeting capability gives you a couple options for how to define your audience:
- Users that have opened a lead form
- Users that have completed a lead form/submitted their information
If you’re currently leveraging lead gen ads on LinkedIn, we highly suggest testing this new audience type!
When to use lead form retargeting
If you’re seeing strong results with site visitor retargeting, but are fully maxed out from a budget perspective, the “anyone who opened your lead gen form” audience type can be a great way to expand your retargeting audience. From what we’ve seen, these audiences typically perform similarly to site visitor retargeting audiences.
The “only people who submitted you lead gen form” audience type can be useful for lead nurturing. For example, if you’re driving a lot of leads with lead ads already, but are having trouble getting these leads to convert to MQLs or SALs, you can target users that have filled out lead forms and serve them additional content offers to warm them up.
Video Retargeting
If you’re running video ads as part of your LinkedIn efforts, you can now retarget users that have viewed your videos. LinkedIn also allows you to segment by percentage of video viewed (from 25% to 97%) and time window (last 30 days, last 90 days, etc.).
When to leverage video retargeting
Video retargeting is only scalable on LinkedIn if you’re getting a lot of impressions out of your video ads. Otherwise, you’ll likely run into issues with audience size and volume. That said, if you’re getting significant impression volume from your video ads each month, then this new audience type may be a solid option for you!
Before launching video retargeting, you can build out a few audiences in your account to get an idea of what you can expect from a volume perspective.
Live Video & Event Retargeting
The third new targeting option included in the engagement retargeting rollout allows you to retarget users that interacted with your events or live videos on LinkedIn. This audience specifically lets you target users that marked themselves as “attending” one of your events, or viewed one of your company’s live videos.
When to leverage event or live video retargeting
If live videos and events are a significant part of your organic strategy on LinkedIn, then this targeting option may be perfect for you. As with all engagement retargeting audiences, you may struggle getting any volume at all if you’re not getting a ton of engagement from live videos or events on LinkedIn.
Another thing to consider is how successful events are at generating opportunities and pipeline for your company. If your company gets a significant portion of its sales from events, we highly recommend leveraging LinkedIn’s event feature organically to build audiences, and retargeting users that have RSVP’d. If your events aren’t great for generating pipeline, consider what next-order actions might bring people closer to being in-market, and how you might advertise to those attendees to coax them along on the buyer journey.
Company Page Retargeting
The last new audience targeting roll-out is the ability to target users that have interacted with your company page. This targeting option includes the ability to target users that have visited your company page, as well as those that have clicked a CTA button in the header of your company page.
When to leverage company page retargeting
Similar to lead form retargeting, company page retargeting can be a great way to expand your existing retargeting efforts if you’re already seeing great results with site visitor retargeting, but are maxed out from a budgeting perspective. Similar to site visitors, users that are browsing your company page are aware of your brand, and may be considering your product.
Pro tip! Users viewing your company page may just be browsing your job listings, and may have no intent for your brand or product. In order to weed out these individuals, we suggest excluding LinkedIn’s “Job Seekers” segment, which can be found under “Member Traits.”
Overall, LinkedIn’s latest audience targeting release is a great way to re-engage users that have interacted with your ads and organic content on LinkedIn. If you’re someone who’s looking to further flesh out the bottom of your marketing funnel, then give LinkedIn’s engagement retargeting a try! Contact us if you’d like to learn more.
