Once you play around with LinkedIn ads for a while, you realise there are many hidden landmines in audience targeting.

Job supertitles pulling in many irrelevant job titles. Competitors, recruiters and jobseekers visiting your website or company page. Too large or too small companies you can't serve.

LinkedIn targeting is precise, compared to other social platforms, but it is not that precise. So for a campaign to be efficient, you have to add a lot of exclusions. People you do not want to reach.

I generally exclude across these 5 categories. Customers, competitors, company sizes, job titles, industries.

Why?

Exclusions on LinkedIn are “hard” enforced compared to inclusions which are “soft” enforced. LinkedIn treats your inclusions like recommendations.

E.g. if you want to target companies only 51-200 in size, LinkedIn will still include companies outside these parameters. You have to add all other company sizes as exclusions.

There is inherent waste in all mass media platforms, it will never be perfect. But you can at least reduce it by going heavy on exclusions.

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