LinkedIn FAQs

How does it work? 

As Buyer Discovery identifies companies that are in-market for your software, you can match those companies to their profiles on Linkedin by their root domain via the Linkedin Matched Audience Integration. Once matched, your audience will automatically refresh with new companies each day, so you can deliver personalized ad experiences that drive your desired business outcomes (e.g. identify new points of contact, fast-track opportunity creation, and reduce your reduce cost per acquisition). 

Who can use the LinkedIn Matched Audience Integration? 

Software providers with an active Buyer Discovery subscription. 

Does this integration add additional cost to a Buyer Discovery subscription?

No. We believe helping you produce better buying experiences across channels is the right thing to do for software buyers and providers, so we offer this and all of our integrations to you at no added cost. 

What use cases does it address?

• Audience Targeting: Buyer Discovery intent signals appear in the LinkedIn Audience Builder UI so clients can build stronger performing audiences. 
• Lead Generation: Increase conversions and improve marketing ROI by targeting businesses that are already researching software in the clients’ category. 
• Competitive Positioning:  Emphasize your competitive advantage to accounts showing interest in your competitors. 
• Personalization: Tailor display ads and conversation ads to your ideal customers with firmographic information. 
• Account-Based Marketing: Combine all the tactics above to convert accounts matching your Ideal Customer Profile or a defined target audience on Linkedin. 

Do you need a specific user role and permissions in Linkedin to set up the integration? 

Yes, you must have Campaign Manager permission levels or higher to initiate the integration and build audiences. Viewers or creative manager levels will not be able to proceed. 

How do I set up the integration? 

The full set up guide can be found here, but at a high level: 

1. Log into Buyer Discovery Webapp 
2. Navigate to the Export List in the mid-page navigation next to Intent 
3. Click Add 
4. Select Linkedin and continue
5. Log into Linkedin Ad Account(s) from our webapp and authenticate 
6. User selects the Linkedin Ad Account where they would like to sync the audience 
7. Apply filters from top to bottom in webapp to create the segment to send to the Linkedin Audiences tab and save. 
8. Name the audience and select the update frequency. 
   1. One-time is rarely used, mostly for short-term event promotions 
   2. Automatic - recommended daily sync to refresh audiences for ongoing campaign initiatives
   3. None - used primarily to save a draft audience. 
9. Publish the audience to begin building it in LinkedIn 
10. Client logs into LinkedIn Audience Builder 24-48 and finds Buyer Discovery segments available to launch campaigns
11. Data will sync at 5am EST 

Once I set up the integration, can I sync Buyer Discovery data to more than one ad account? 

Yes. 

Does LinkedIn Matched Audience Integration allow you to target companies on LinkedIn AND the LinkedIn Audience network? 

Yes.

Can the Linked Matched Audience Integration be used to target ads on Facebook, Google, or any other ad platform? 

LinkedIn Audience Network provides clients access to advertising space on thousands of relevant sites for software buyers, but Google and Facebook do not allow ads from LinkedIn to be served on their networks. 

Does the LinkedIn Match Audience Integration allow you to identify specific points of contact with LinkedIn Sales Navigator?

No, these services are not connected. While Buyer Discovery can help you target potential buyers at specific COMPANIES on LinkedIn, it does not automatically serve display or conversation ads to LinkedIn users sourced from LinkedIn Sales Navigator. We do, however, have a number of clients who are able to source new points of contact by serving ads on LinkedIn to companies with medium and high intent to purchase their solutions. Additionally, many clients allow their sales teams to source the appropriate contacts with the LinkedIn Sales Navigator for Salesforce and Hubspot Integrations. 

Once I set up the integration, how long does it take to launch a campaign? 

Setting up the integration and building audience segments can be done in just a few minutes, however, it typically takes LinkedIn up to 24hrs to sync the data for launch. This timeline is consistent across all audience building tools on Linkedin and may vary depending on the list size. We recommend setting up the integration and building your audience at least 48 hours prior to the launch date.  

How should I set my audience filters?

We recommend working with your dedicated Client Partner to define the filtering strategy that’s right for your needs. While the benefits of applying multiple filters may help you produce highly specific audiences, layering too many in a single segment may impact your ability to meet LinkedIn’s minimum of 300 users. 

Do I need to meet LinkedIn’s minimum audience size of 300 to launch a campaign?
Yes. If you have concerns about reaching your audience minimums, we recommend combining your Buyer Discovery audience with another campaign in your funnel to simply enhance it’s performance. 

When setting up my audience, should I use the firmographic filters offered by Linkedin or Buyer Discovery (eg. company size, revenue, geography, industry…) to get the strongest match rate? 

In user tests, Buyer Discovery offered strong match rates (>75%) across all audiences and targeting filters, and in most cases, provided match rates of >90%. However, each platform has its own methodology for curating their data which may affect your overall match rate and campaign audience size. We tend to see the most discrepancy in audience sizes when industry and company size filters are applied. We recommend approaching this with a testing mindset and trying both sets to achieve the best outcome.

My software serves a specific role within a company, can I target those roles with the Buyer Discovery filters?

The integration allows you to layer filters from both, Buyer Discovery and Linkedin, so you can use the role- and title-based filters in Linkedin to target your buyer personas. 

Can we suppress certain companies from our Buyer Discovery LinkedIn Audiences? If so, how?

Buyer Discovery allows you to exclude specific company from your audiences during the filtering process, such as your competitors. However, if you already have a well-groomed list of accounts to suppress from your campaigns loaded into Linkedin, you’re able to use it. 

Is there a limit to the number of audiences you can build?

No.

Can I see what audiences my other team members are building?

Within the exports list (a.k.a audiences list), you can toggle to view “all exports” or “just mine”. 

Can I draft an audience without syncing it to Linkedin?

In our first version of the integration we do not have a dedicated draft function, however, users who tested the integration leveraged the audience naming feature and sync frequency of “None” to build draft audiences. 

Can I sync a single audience to multiple Linkedin Ad accounts simultaneously?

Not in our current version, but we are scoping this functionality for a future release. 

If I need to update an audience, should I do that in Linkedin, Buyer Discovery, or both?

You can update an audience in either platform and the other will automatically be updated. Just remember to update your audience name to match the new filtering specs you applied! 

How do I delete an audience? 

You can delete it in Linkedin or Buyer Discovery. To delete an audience in Buyer Discovery: 

1. Visit your Exports  
2. click your Linkedin Audiences
3. select an audience to manage
4. Select delete

The audience will automatically disappear from Linkedin as well. 

How will I measure success? 

Most clients prefer to separate out campaigns enhanced with Buyer Discovery data from others as an A/B test. So they provide them differentiated UTM parameters and lead source codes to attribute performance and track outcomes once leads are flipped over to sales. Your dedicated client partners can provide guidance on the measurement strategy that works best in your workflow. 

What metrics of success should I be monitoring to gauge performance? 

Buyer Discovery has compounding benefits the more ways you apply it. For audience targeting on LinkedIn, we would expect to see short-term performance increases like improved click-through rates, faster funnel progression, or conversion rates on gated assets and web pages. 

These improvements can have downstream benefits such as increased lead generation, increased response rates, increased qualification rates, pipeline growth, and more. Speak with an intent data specialist or your dedicated Client Partner to match your strategies to the metrics you want to move. You can also watch our recent webinar, Measure ROI for ABM and Intent Data, to learn more metrics you can move with the broader application of intent data throughout your marketing and sales funnel. 

How quickly should I expect to see results with LinkedIn Matched Audience integration for Buyer Discovery? 

We recommend testing the integration for at least a quarter and comparing performance benchmarks with your campaigns that are not enhanced with intent data. Most clients see leading indicators of success in as few as 2wks, like increased engagement, click-thru rates, conversions, and reduced cost per lead. 

However, software providers with longer sales cycles, more robust nurture strategies, or highly specific audiences may take a little more time to build up audiences that impact other near-term outcomes like pipeline generation, revenue, and retention rates. Your dedicated client partner can help you devise a plan to achieve your desired results. 

How often do I need to re-authenticate the LinkedIn Matched audience integration with Campaign Manager?

LinkedIn requires all integration users to re-authenticate their integration (ie refresh the token) each year. We will remind you when your token is about to expire, or you can re-authenticate the integration using the same steps that you used to install the integration.

What happens if my token expires before I can re-authenticate the sync with Campaign Manager?

 In the event your token expires before you can re-authenticate the sync with Campaign Manager, Buyer Discovery will stop syncing new intent records to your LinkedIn campaigns and your audiences will become "static". However, our system will continue to store your saved audiences and the last 60 days of intent data until the integration is re-authenticated. Once re-authenticated, your audiences will begin to sync again normally.