How to Reach Potential Customers by Using LinkedIn Ads Audience Targeting Attributes

If you’re a small or midsize business that sells to other businesses, LinkedIn Ads deserves a place in your marketing strategy. Unlike many advertising platforms, LinkedIn lets you target audiences based on where they work, what they do, the industries they serve, and even the skills listed on their profiles. That level of precision is a tremendous advantage for small businesses with limited advertising budgets.

The challenge is knowing how to build the right audience on LinkedIn. If your audience is too broad, you’ll waste money on irrelevant clicks. If it’s too narrow, your ads might struggle to be seen or generate enough leads.

This article describes some the more useful LinkedIn audience targeting options and shows you how to build audiences that put your ads in front of the right buyers.

 

If you’re still deciding whether LinkedIn Ads is right for your business, read our article on the pros and cons of LinkedIn Ads for small and midsize businesses before building your first campaign.

Start with your ideal customer in mind

Before you open LinkedIn Campaign Manager, take a few minutes to define your ideal customer. Ask yourself:

The clearer your answers, the easier it will be for you to build an effective audience.

A quick note about audience sizes on LinkedIn

At the time of writing this article, LinkedIn requires a minimum audience size of 300 members before you can launch a campaign. While that minimum audience size seems small, bigger isn’t always better when it comes to audience targeting.

Most successful campaigns strike a balance between precision and reach. If your audience is too narrow, try expanding one targeting attribute instead of removing several. For example, rather than targeting one specific job title, target several closely related titles or use Job Function instead.

Before you start creating audiences of your own, you’ll need a campaign, objective, and campaign group. If you’re new to the platform, our quick start guide to LinkedIn Ads walks through the basics.

Building your audiences in Campaign Manager

LinkedIn gives advertisers two common ways to create an audience.

Option 1: Start with a company list

If you already know which companies you want to reach, upload an account list and build from there.

After uploading your list, narrow your audience with attributes like:

Option 2: Build an audience from scratch

If you’re trying to reach companies that fit a certain profile rather than a predefined list, use LinkedIn’s audience attributes. For many small businesses, this is where LinkedIn becomes especially valuable.

Company targeting

Company targeting focuses on where your audience works.

Some of the most useful options include:

Company Name

Target employees at specific businesses.

Example: A cybersecurity consultant wants meetings with decision-makers at regional banks. They upload a list of target banks, then target:

Company Industry

Target businesses within specific industries. A few examples include:

This is ideal when your solution serves an entire industry rather than specific companies.

Note: Company Industry cannot be combined with Company Name. You’ll need to choose one approach.

Company Size

Company size helps match your audience to your ideal customer. For example:

Company Revenue

If your product is designed for larger organizations, Company Revenue helps narrow your audience by estimated annual revenue.

Job experience targeting

Job experience attributes help you reach the people most likely to influence purchasing decisions.

Job Title

Job Title is usually the first place advertisers start. Bear in mind that companies use different titles for similar roles. For example, someone responsible for website development might list themselves as:

You can improve your audience coverage by adding several related titles to your criteria.

Job Function

Job Function groups people by department rather than title.

Examples include:

Job Function works well when job titles vary widely between companies.

Job Seniority

Job Seniority identifies someone’s level within an organization.

Examples include:

This is one of the best ways to focus on decision makers without listing dozens of individual job titles.

Years of Experience

If your product appeals to experienced professionals, Years of Experience helps narrow your audience accordingly.

Member Skills

LinkedIn also lets you target members based on skills listed or inferred from their profiles. This works well for reaching technical users. For example, a software company selling DevOps tools might target people with skills like:

Interests and groups

LinkedIn also offers targeting based on professional interests and group membership.

These audiences are generally broader than company or job targeting, making them useful for awareness campaigns at the top of the sales funnel.

Examples of LinkedIn Campaign Manager audiences

Here are a few practical examples that many small businesses could adapt to fit their needs.

Example 1: Decision makers at target companies

A managed IT provider wants meetings with leadership at 100 local businesses.

Targeting criteria:

Example 2: Buying groups in manufacturing

A software company sells inventory management software to manufacturers.

Targeting criteria:

Example 3: Healthcare end users

A medical software company wants to reach clinicians who will use its platform.

Targeting criteria:

Avoid over-targeting

Audience targeting tends to be one the biggest factors separating campaigns that generate qualified leads from campaigns that burn through budget with less than stellar results. If you’re unsure how to balance reach and precision, working with an experienced LinkedIn Ads consultant can shorten the learning curve and help you avoid expensive trial and error.

One of the most common mistakes is adding too many filters. For example:

Individually, each filter makes sense, but when they’re combined they often reduce your audience so much that LinkedIn struggles to deliver your ads. Start with the attributes that matter most, then refine based on campaign performance.

Should you use Audience Expansion?

As you’re building out your audience, you may notice LinkedIn offers two optional features to expand your ads’ reach:

For most small businesses, we recommend leaving both features turned off during the initial stages of a campaign. Doing so gives you greater control over who sees your ads and makes it easier to evaluate whether your targeting is working. Once you’ve identified a successful audience, you can experiment with these features to assess the impact on reach while monitoring ad engagement and lead quality.

Final thoughts on creating better LinkedIn audiences

LinkedIn’s audience targeting is one of its biggest advantages for B2B advertisers. The platform gives small businesses the ability to reach the right people instead of simply reaching more people.

The most successful campaigns begin with a clear understanding of the customer you’re trying to reach. From there, use LinkedIn’s targeting options to match that audience as closely as possible, while avoiding the temptation to layer on every available filter.

When your audience is well defined, your ads become more relevant, your leads improve in quality, and your advertising budget goes much further.