Context

LinkedIn is the platform of choice for professional networking comprising of ~740M professionals -decision-makers, influencers, and leaders – precisely the people B2B marketers want to target. It acts as a trusted environment that professionals already use to search and consume content and hence a place conducive for placing advertisement.

It offers unique targeting opportunities because users input more professional information than on other platforms. They can be targeted by job, title, industry, company name, level of seniority, and skills – apart from the usual geographic location, gender, age and interests.

Scenario

The integration of SAP Marketing Cloud with LinkedIn Marketing solutions enables B2B marketers to reach the right audience and engage them with relevant messages tailored to suit their context.

LinkedIn targeting is differentiated because members are incentivized to keep their profiles accurate and up-to-date for networking, personal branding, and job opportunities. The LinkedIn network has a reach of quality audience composed of influencers, decisions makers, and executives. When members complete their LinkedIn profile, they provide information on their job experiences, company, skills, etc. This means marketers can target members using profile-based demographic information.

Marketers can also bring in first party data from Marketing Cloud to build custom audience for LinkedIn Campaign. LinkedIn would then create custom audience segment by matching the contacts shared from Marketing Cloud to corresponding profiles in LinkedIn. This will help the marketer to guide the contacts along their buying journey, and drive sales and qualified leads. You can also further nurture these contacts by keeping awareness up with sponsored ads, highlight additional materials, and invite them to tailored events.

LinkedIn Matched Audiences are custom audience segments that can be used as targeting selections in LinkedIn advertising campaigns. Matched Audiences provides a mechanism to combine first party data from Marketing Cloud with LinkedIn’s professional data to achieve special purpose targeting. You can also extend the reach with lookalike contacts from Marketing Cloud. After defining an audience in SAP Marketing Cloud (e.g. your best customers), deliver them to LinkedIn and use this audience as a seed to find lookalike audiences and launch awareness campaigns by directing them to your landing pages.

How to Use It

The integration with LinkedIn allows the definition of a target group in marketing cloud to transfer it to LinkedIn so that you can leverage first party data of contacts in LinkedIn campaigns for effective targeting and personalization.

1. Use powerful segmentation capabilities of SAP Marketing Cloud to arrive at a focused target group. Engage with this audience on LinkedIn through advertisements relevant to this segment
   
   2. Use the dedicated campaign template to transfer the target group to LinkedIn to create a Matched Audience.
   

   3. Schedule the campaign to execute at the desired frequency to transfer any changes to the target group.

   

   4. Authenticate with LinkedIn and define the attributes of the Matched Audience to be created in LinkedIn Campaign Manager.

   

What’s the Result

You can find the created Matched Audiences as assets available in LinkedIn Campaign Manager

Use the Matched Audience segment as you create campaigns in LinkedIn Campaign Manager.

• The contacts transferred from Marketing Cloud will be matched against the LinkedIn professional database to arrive at a set of audience called Matched Audience.
• The set of contacts stemming from an SAP Marketing Cloud target group with correct Marketing Permissions shall have their email addresses hashed and used to match the audience in LinkedIn
• The segment arrived at LinkedIn can be used in conjunction with other filtering capabilities in LinkedIn before running a campaign
• While running a campaign in LinkedIn, the matched audience can be used not only for inclusion but also for exclusion. For example, customers who have already purchased a product / service can be excluded from campaigns dedicated to the specific product or service.
• The target group of contacts being transferred creates a new audience segment in LinkedIn, which can be kept up to date by refreshing the list via periodic sync. A 1:1 relationship between LinkedIn audience segment and target group is maintained for traceability and better maintenance.

Prerequisites

1. Have a LinkedIn account with access granted in LinkedIn Campaign Manager to a given ad account
2. Authenticate within SAP Marketing Cloud with this same LinkedIn account