B2B SaaS
LinkedIn Targeting
Blueprint
How to drive qualified leads in under 7 days using LinkedIn’s targeting capabilities (including account-based marketing)
My Name is Alex Gluz
  • Digital marketing expert with 15 years of experience helping companies grow through effective paid advertising and proven growth strategies.
  • Founder of T.A. Monroe - a B2B agency where we turn marketing challenges into success stories.
  • We use tested paid media and demand generation strategies to get you more qualified leads, improve lead quality, grow your pipeline, and reduce customer acquisition cost (CAC).
  • Over the last seven years we've built and optimized over 3,500 paid campaigns across Google, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
  • Our LinkedIn Ads campaigns have helped companies reduce their cost per MQL by up to 95% and increase qualified leads by x17 in five months​.
This Guide Will Show You How To:
  • Identify Your Ideal Customers
    Learn how to define and find the people most likely to be interested in your product.
  • Implement Effective ABM Strategies
    Discover how to target high-value accounts that can drive significant growth.
  • Optimize Your Ad Spend
    Avoid wasting money on uninterested audiences by honing in on those who matter.
  • Launch Successful Campaigns Quickly
    Get your ads up and running, and start generating leads in under a week.
Why You should Care
  • If you don't target the right audience on LinkedIn, you'll waste money
  • Missing the right people means losing valuable leads
  • Proper ad setup ensures your ads reach potential customers
  • Reaching the right audience increases your chances of converting leads into customers
  • Focusing on high-value accounts maximizes ROI and drives significant business growth
Does This Stuff Actually Work?
Here are just some of the companies and B2B businesses T.A. Monroe has helped get sustainable results with LinkedIn ads.

TA Monroe Digital - Marketing Agency for B2B SaaS Companies

Our Clients

Our Clients

Why LinkedIn Targeting is Important for B2B SaaS Companies
  • Reach Decision-Makers Where They Engage
    With over 80% of business professionals active on LinkedIn, it's the ideal platform to connect with key decision-makers in your industry.
  • Precision Targeting
    LinkedIn allows you to target specific industries, company sizes, job roles, and seniority levels—something other platforms can't match.
  • Maximize ROI
    LinkedIn ads can be costly, so precise targeting ensures every dollar spent reaches someone who could become a customer.
  • Avoid Wasting Resources
    By focusing on the right audience from the start, you save time and money, and improve conversion rates.
Free LinkedIn Ads Opportunity Review
LinkedIn Ads Reaching Everyone Except the People Who Actually Buy?
Poor LinkedIn ROI usually comes down to a few critical mistakes that are easy to miss. Get a free Opportunity Review pinpointing exactly what's broken and your roadmap to profitable campaigns.
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Part I: What You Should Do
✓ Know Who You Want to Reach
To target the right audience on LinkedIn, you need to go beyond basic demographics and delve into comprehensive frameworks that define your ideal customer:
1. Firmographics
  • Company Size: Identify the number of employees (e.g., 50-200 for mid-sized companies).
  • Industry: Focus on specific sectors where your SaaS solution is most applicable (e.g., technology, finance, healthcare).
  • Revenue: Target companies within a certain revenue range to ensure they have the budget for your solution.
  • Location: Specify geographic regions where your target market is concentrated.
Application/Scenario: Construction software companies can benefit by targeting firms with 50-500 employees within the construction industry, ensuring they reach firms that have both the need and budget for project management tools. Focusing on active construction regions like urban centers or growth areas can further refine the audience.
2. Decision Makers
  • Job Titles: Identify key decision-makers such as CTOs, VPs of Marketing, or Heads of Product.
  • Seniority Levels: Focus on senior roles (e.g., Director, VP, C-Level) that have the authority to make purchasing decisions.
Application/Scenario: By targeting job roles like Construction Project Managers and Operations Manager, you’re ensuring the ads reach those directly responsible for software solutions. This specific approach helps align ad spend with individuals most likely to influence purchasing decisions in construction firms.
3. Users
  • Roles and Responsibilities: Understand the day-to-day tasks and challenges of the users who will interact with your product.
  • Skills and Expertise: Identify relevant skills (e.g., project management, software development) that indicate a propensity to engage with your solution.
  • Pain Points: Address specific problems your SaaS product solves for these users.
Application/Scenario: Construction project management software companies can focus on targeting Site Managers and Construction Supervisors who handle daily project execution. Addressing their specific pain points, such as timeline management and team coordination, will make ads more relevant to their needs.
4. Behavioral Attributes
  • Engagement Levels: Target individuals who have previously interacted with your content or visited your website.
  • Technographic Data: Focus on companies using specific technologies that complement your SaaS offering.
Application/Scenario: If targeting companies already using scheduling tools, you’re likely reaching those who understand and value tech solutions. Ads for construction project management software can resonate with firms that have shown interest in similar tech, increasing the likelihood of engagement.
✓ Utilize LinkedIn’s Advanced ABM Tools
By leveraging LinkedIn’s ABM capabilities you’re ensuring that your targeting is both precise and scalable. Here’s how:
1. Matched Audiences
  • Upload Lists: Upload a list of target companies or individuals directly into LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager. This can include up to 300,000 companies.
  • Tip: Allow up to 72 hours for processing, this is roughly how long it takes before the list becomes available to use for your campaign.
Application/Scenario: If targeting companies already using scheduling tools, you’re likely reaching those who understand and value tech solutions. Ads for construction project management software can resonate with firms that have shown interest in similar tech, increasing the likelihood of engagement.
2. Creating and Managing Lists
  • High-Value Accounts: Focus on key accounts that align with your ideal customer profile.
  • Segmented Campaigns: For large lists (e.g., Fortune 500), create multiple campaigns, each targeting up to 200 companies to maintain precision and manageability.
Application/Scenario: For a construction project management software campaign, segment key construction firms working on large-scale infrastructure projects, creating specific campaigns for residential and commercial construction segments to refine targeting further.
3. Exclusions
  • Exclude Competitors: Prevent your ads from being shown to competitor companies to avoid bidding wars and irrelevant engagement.
  • Exclude Current Customers: Ensure you’re not wasting ad spend on existing customers who are already using your product.
  • Exclude Irrelevant Audiences: Remove segments such as students or industries that don’t align with your target market.
Application/Scenario: Exclude direct competitors in the construction software market and exclude firms already using your project management software. This approach refines your audience, ensuring ad spend reaches potential new customers rather than irrelevant audiences.
4. Exclusion Techniques
  • Using LinkedIn’s Exclusion Tool: Apply exclusion rules within your campaign settings to refine your audience further.
  • Dynamic Exclusions: Regularly update your exclusion lists based on campaign performance and evolving business needs.
5. ABM Features on LinkedIn
  • Precise Targeting: Utilize attributes like company names, job functions, and seniority levels to zero in on the most relevant audiences.
  • Content Customization: Tailor your content based on the target’s stage in the funnel. Ungated content for awareness, gated content for engagement, and personalized offers for conversion.
Part II: The Benefits of Good LinkedIn Targeting
#1 Save Money
LinkedIn ads cost a lot, but by only showing ads to the right people, you can make sure you aren’t wasting your budget.
#2: Get Better Leads
By targeting the right job titles, skills, and companies and more, you’ll get more people who are really interested in what you offer.
#3: See More Sales
When you show your ads to the right people, you’ll see more people take action, like signing up or buying your product.
#4: Save Time
By targeting the right audience, you avoid spending time on people who will never buy your product.
#5: Build Your Brand
Consistently showing your ads to the right people helps them recognize and trust your company.
LinkedIn's ad auction system takes into account both your bid and the quality of your ad, which is influenced by:
  • Engagement Rate (how often users interact with your ad)
  • Click-Through Rate (how many people click on your ad)
  • Targeting the right audience improves your relevancy score, increasing your chances of winning in LinkedIn’s auction.
  • Showing your ads to the right audience ensures higher engagement rates and more meaningful interactions, leading to better brand recall.
  • Balancing targeting and a good relevancy score helps your ads perform better (even if you’re not the highest bidder).
  • Consistently providing relevant ads fosters brand trust and helps build long-term relationships with your target audience.
Free LinkedIn Ads Opportunity Review
Find Out Why Your LinkedIn Ads Are Underperforming
Poor LinkedIn ROI usually comes down to a few critical mistakes that are easy to miss. Get a free Opportunity Review pinpointing exactly what's broken and your roadmap to profitable campaigns.
Part Ill: The Tools You Need
1. LinkedIn Campaign Manager:
  • This is where you create and manage your ads.
Application/Scenario: Use LinkedIn Campaign Manager to build and refine ads specifically for construction management professionals who oversee projects worth millions, ensuring high relevance and visibility among your core audience.
2. Audience Insights
  • Use this tool to see how people are reacting to your ads and find out more about who is engaging with them.
  • There are two scenarios when it comes to leveraging this tool:
  • Understanding who the audience is that we have reached and who has engaged based on demographic segments.
  • Analyzing other audience lists [such as first or third party data] to understand an existing or potential audience which could inspire the targeting selections within LinkedIn targeting capabilities.
Application/Scenario: Audience Insights will help you identify which construction roles (e.g., Project Manager vs. Operations Head) are engaging most with your ads, providing data to adjust targeting toward the highest-engaging segments in future campaigns.
3. A/B Testing Tools:
  • This helps you test different versions of your ad and see which works better.
  • Test various variables from ad versions [like copy/creative etc/], placement and tactics.
Part lV: The Exact Action Plan for Setting Up Your LinkedIn Ads
Step 1: Define Your Audience
Action: List the job titles, roles, industries, company size, and location of the people you want to reach. Remember to include everyone who may influence the buying decision, as B2B decisions usually involve multiple team members.
Application/Scenario: List specific construction roles, like Senior Project Manager, Head of Construction Operations, and Site Manager, as well as top-tier firms with 100+ employees. This setup ensures your ads reach only the most relevant professionals managing large-scale projects.
Step 2: Set Up Your Audience in LinkedIn
Action: Use LinkedIn’s tools to add job titles, job functions, skills, and company size to your ad targeting.
  • Tip: Ensure you have exclusions in place, including existing customers, employees, and competitors. Additionally, before launching the campaign, perform a quality check of the audience insights/segments to confirm relevant breakdowns are in place.
Look for any overlaps in targeting elements and review the estimated audience size—too narrow may impact delivery, while too broad could reduce lead quality. This can be done by saving the audience in Audience -> Planning -> Insights or using the Audience build section on the right side when creating a campaign.
Application/Scenario: Use LinkedIn’s tools to include job titles, job functions, and specific skills such as project scheduling, resource management, and field supervision relevant to large construction projects. This helps ensure ads reach professionals who manage these critical tasks.
Step 3: Test Different Audiences
Action:
  • Set up two versions of your campaigns with slightly different audiences.
  • Test both across (e.g., industry A vs. industry B) and within targeting types (e.g., job title vs. function + seniority). Adjust gradually to find the best audience, changing only a few options at once to see what impacts performance.
  • Analyze performance metrics like click-through rate and engagement rate for each audience to see which resonates best with your ads.
  • Adjust targeting based on performance to improve results.

Application/Scenario: Run separate campaigns for commercial and residential construction audiences to test engagement differences. For example, focus on budgeting features for commercial construction audiences and on streamlined scheduling for residential construction audiences.
Step 4: Review Results and Adjust (Ongoing)
Action:
  • Review ad performance within the first few days using LinkedIn’s analytics.
  • Check engagement, bid strategy, and who’s seeing, clicking, and converting to leads.
  • Assess demographics: Exclude irrelevant groups to refine targeting and reduce budget waste.
  • If visibility is low despite good performance, adjust bids or reallocate budget.
  • After changes, compare time periods to confirm demographic improvements.
Tip: If your ads are not showing up often enough despite good engagement, consider increasing your bid or shifting the budget to target a higher-performing audience.
Application/Scenario: Regularly review which construction job titles, like Site Supervisor vs. Construction Project Director, show the most engagement and adjust targeting to prioritize these roles. This approach helps continuously refine the campaign for optimal performance.
Step 5: Save Your Best Audience
Action: Once you find an audience that works, save it in LinkedIn so you can use it again for future ads.
Application/Scenario: Save high-performing segments, such as Senior Project Managers at firms handling $10M+ projects, for easy reuse in future campaigns targeting construction project management needs.
FAQs
How big should my target audience be on LinkedIn?
Aim for an audience size of at least 50,000 for sponsored content campaigns, but focus on relevance over size.
What's the best way to use LinkedIn's Matched Audiences?
Upload a clean, up-to-date list of your target accounts or contacts to create highly personalized campaigns.
How do I target specific high-value accounts in my campaigns?
Upload a CSV file containing the company names and relevant decision-makers to set up highly targeted ABM campaigns.
What information should my CSV file contain?
Include company names and the names or roles of key decision-makers to increase the accuracy of your targeting.
How can I ensure a high match rate when uploading my list?
Make sure your list is clean, accurate, up-to-date, and free of errors to maximize match rates.
What is the recommended number of accounts to upload?
Upload a manageable list, such as 300 targeted companies, to effectively personalize content without overextending resources.
Can I use this targeting approach for any industry?
Yes, this approach works across industries but is particularly effective in B2B sectors like fintech where reaching decision-makers is crucial.
How often should I update my list of high-value accounts?
Regularly update your list to keep it accurate and relevant; a quarterly update is generally advisable.
PS:
We just helped a B2B company exceed their acquisition goals by 50% using these exact LinkedIn targeting strategies. Want to see how we did it?
Book a Free LinkedIn Ads Opportunity Review
Poor LinkedIn ROI usually comes down to a few critical mistakes that are easy to miss. Get a free Opportunity Review pinpointing exactly what's broken and your roadmap to profitable campaigns.
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