LinkedIn retargeting strategies: B2B advertising for the win

We all know the importance of retargeting users who have visited your website but haven’t converted. If yours is a lead generation business that has a longer sales cycle, you know it is even more important to interact with prospects after you receive the initial lead. This can help you optimize to the bottom of the funnel and push users to convert.

Because of its professional, content-heavy focus, LinkedIn gives B2B advertisers some unique capabilities to interact with users who are still in the funnel but have not converted. In this post, I’ll walk you through how to push users closer to purchase with LinkedIn retargeting strategies.

Early-stage retargeting

LinkedIn’s lead generation forms, which capture a user’s information with pre-filled fields, are a great way to interact with past site visitors. This information can be automatically populated into Salesforce or other CRM platforms^[1]. We have also found that lead generation^[2] forms on LinkedIn lead to a stronger CPL and CVR than lead forms on the site or other on-site actions.

Lead generation forms can be used with “Sponsored InMail” and “Sponsored Content” ad formats.

1. Sponsored Content: This is the ad format with which we’ve had the most B2B retargeting success, shows up natively in a user’s feed and can feature a video, static image, or carousel format.
2. Sponsored InMail: This is a direct message to users and appears in messaging.

1. Sponsored InMail

2. Sponsored Content

Email^[3] addresses allow advertisers to constantly show the value of the product or service that you are trying to push, so give users a good reason to hand you that information. Showcasing free demos or providing genuinely helpful content in the form of briefs or whitepapers will get you deeper into the customer’s purchase process.

Mid-Funnel retargeting

Nurturing leads is extremely important for businesses with longer sales cycles, which is why mid-funnel retargeting is so valuable. It allows you to reappear before your users with relevant content that informs them about your value propositions and the benefits of working with your business. These are users you have already interacted with, so email capture is not important. It is more valuable to showcase testimonials from current clients, non-gated whitepapers, blogs, infographics, videos, and more.

Depending on the size of your CRM lists, you can break out your targeting into different lists and push different content at various stages of the funnel. For example, create different segments for high-value leads who are close to converting, leads who might have gone cold, and leads that have just started speaking with the sales team.

Good content strategies are essential when working with longer sales cycles. There will be a lot of value in testing a variety of content at different stages in the funnel, someone who just watched a product demo will consume different content than someone who downloaded a whitepaper. Whatever content you’re serving, I’d recommend testing “Sponsored Content” as your ad format because of its native appearance in a user’s feed.

Important note

LinkedIn is expensive, and isolating LinkedIn metrics won’t get you the whole performance picture. Make sure you’re pulling the data from your CRM to see how your LinkedIn-nurtured leads are progressing throughout the funnel.

Conclusion

LinkedIn lends itself well to content consumption, which is a valuable step in the B2B sales process. Make sure you’re offering something of value and aligning your content with the right stages in the buyer’s journey. Get a variety of creative and messaging options ready, and prepare to offset high CPCs by measuring user progress in your CRM. There’s no magic pill to successful retargeting on LinkedIn, but when used strategically, it can be an efficient lever in moving users through your funnel.

Lauren Crain is a Client Services Lead in 3Q Digital’s SMB division, 3Q Incubate.

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