Target the Right Professionals on LinkedIn

Targeting on LinkedIn combines a required location with optional professional attributes. You can include or exclude each attribute and combine them with simple AND and OR rules.

Set the location (required)

Every LinkedIn campaign needs at least one location.

1. Open the campaign and search for a country, state, region or city.
2. Add each result as a chip.
3. Use the dropdown on a chip to switch between Include and Exclude.

Begin with a broad area, such as a country, and narrow only when needed.

Add professional attributes (optional)

Categories include:

• Company: industry, company size, growth lists.
• Demographics: age and gender, where LinkedIn supports them.
• Job experience: titles, seniority and job function.
• Education: fields of study, degrees, schools.
• Interests and traits.

How the logic works

You can create up to three attribute groups.

• Inside a group, attributes work as OR. Marketing Manager OR Director matches either.
• Between groups, rules work as AND. A person must match something in each group.

Example: Group 1 is job title Operations Manager or Project Manager, and Group 2 is industry Construction. The ad reaches only people matching both. Add Interns as an exclusion to filter them out.

Best practices

• Choose the location first, since the campaign cannot run without it.
• Start wide and refine later. If the audience gets too small, delivery suffers.
• Aim for an audience of roughly 50,000 people or more.
• Do not overuse exclusions, as they shrink the pool quickly.
• Combine similar roles with OR for flexibility, and layer role, industry and company size with AND for precision.

Good to know: If your estimated audience size is small, remove one AND group before loosening the location.