So, you’ve decided to enter the show-stopping world of LinkedIn Ads, but you feel as clueless as a cat in a dog show. I’ve got good news and better news.
The good news is that you’re not alone. Loads of people are intimidated by the idea of running LinkedIn ads. The better news is that I’m going to be sharing all the tips I know about cold audiences for LinkedIn ad campaigns so that you know how to make marketing magic work for you.
I’ve run my own ad agency, Snowball Creations, for many years at this point, which means I have a pretty good idea of what I’m talking about. I even have a whole video about this, so you can give that a watch here! Now, without further ado, let’s put on our snow coats and dive into cold audiences!
The quest for cold audiences
As your fearless (and honest to a fault) leader through this journey, I have to warn you that if you haven’t explored the world of LinkedIn ads yet, you’re losing out. Of course, this is only applicable to B2B businesses since that is LinkedIn’s niche. If you’re a B2C business, Facebook or Google might be better options for you.
But back to B2B businesses not using LinkedIn Ads. if you fall into this group, you’re pretty much useless. Ouch. That’s okay! Even marketing dinosaurs can evolve, and the best way of doing this is to harness the power of your cold audience.
While there are many things that you can use to bring in money via LinkedIn Ads, cold audiences are the secret to extracting sales gold. It’s like building your own army, but with fewer swords and more data.
Why are cold audiences important?
Cold audiences are great because you get to build brand awareness and market to people who are probably at least a bit interested in what you have to offer. But even more than that, a cold audience will help you to build the foundation that you can then use for remarketing campaigns.
Retargeting campaigns refer to ad campaigns that focus on a warmer target audience – in other words, people who have already interacted with your business in some way. Naturally, these people are much more likely to convert into customers when compared to someone who has no idea what your business is.
Unfortunately, unless you have massive amounts of website visitors, you’re not going to have enough target accounts to set up remarketing campaigns. Enter LinkedIn cold audiences.
Method one: the simple path (because who needs complexity?!)
I get it. We’re humans. We overthink, overanalyse, and overstress. It’s in our nature. Sometimes, this is needed. Other times, it’s a total waste of time. Chances are, your LinkedIn campaign falls into the latter category.
Sure, you need to put a decent amount of time and effort into your cold audiences, but there’s no need to overcomplicate running ads.
Picture this: you’re staring at your LinkedIn dashboard, trying to summon your ideal audience like a wizard. You want all the big shots. Business owners, CEOs, the cream of the crop.
You input your target audience, ready for the magic to begin . . . and then you realise you have 220 million potential targets. Panic sets in. You need to narrow it down.
This isn’t as hard as it seems! Don’t worry – you won’t offend anyone by cutting them out of your audience. But you will offend your business if you have too large of an audience, because the chances are that many of them won’t even be interested, so spending money on advertising to them is a waste.
Instead, you need to focus your audience on making sure you are only advertising to people who have a good chance of being interested in your business.
Location
The first step is to narrow down your target audience by looking at the location. This is pretty self-explanatory – if you only offer your product or services to people in the UK, you can eliminate anyone in other territories.
Industry
You can also narrow things down by selecting the industry of your target customer. If you only offer something that will help someone in the tech industry, it doesn’t make sense to advertise to people in the fashion industry, no matter how high up in the company they may be. And just like that, you’ve drastically lessened your audience.
Method two: the plot twist
Every story needs a plot twist, and in this case, the surprise reveal is that I have another trick up my sleeve. The above-mentioned approach is simply one way of creating your cold audience for LinkedIn ads.
The other way that you can do this is to use external software. Something like Apollo can be incredibly useful for gathering all the data you need. This handy little bit of software will help you come up with a list of companies with surgical precision. Forget about broad targeting; this is where you get down to the nitty-gritty.
Do you specifically want to target WordPress users? Are you looking to attract Shopify experts? Think of Apollo as Tinder – you get to meet the perfect B2B match but without all the awkward, small-talk-filled coffee dates. The campaign objective of a cold LinkedIn ad is to introduce new people to your brand, so this is ideal.
Conclusion
Whether you opt to go the traditional route or the more data-driven route is up to you. The important thing is that you have a solid LinkedIn cold audience that you can market your ads to.
That being said, when you create ads, you can’t rely solely on cold audiences to make them work – you also need to make sure that your ad creatives and copy are great as well.
LinkedIn doesn’t have to be a labyrinth of confusion, so go forth, build your audiences, and may the sales be ever in your favour!
And if you’ve read this and you want LinkedIn Ads to work their magic on your brand but can’t stand the thought of setting them up yourself, fill in the form below to get in touch with our LinkedIn paid ads agency!