Guide to Audience Building on LinkedIn

One of the most common questions we get asked about LinkedIn advertising concerns budget. Specifically, how to not waste said budget. It’s usually voiced along the lines of, “how do we make sure we’re getting the most of the money we spend on LinkedIn?”  

We want to answer this question by talking about the easiest way to waste money on LinkedIn advertisements — poor audience-building.  

If you’re a T-shaped marketer who has worked on a variety of advertising campaigns like Google, Meta, and Reddit, building an audience on LinkedIn is actually pretty counterintuitive. 

Unlike other platforms that are leisure-first, LinkedIn is a business-first platform. With LinkedIn, you’re not casting a wide net and hoping that your message lands with the right people. You’re buying access to real people in real companies who actually want to buy from you.

This mindset shift is essential. If you don't make it and treat LinkedIn like any other campaign, you’ll waste your budget talking to people who will never become customers, no matter how good your copy is or stunning your designs are.

With LinkedIn, you're not casting a wide net and hoping that your message lands with the right people. You're buying access to real people in real companies who actually want to buy from you.

What is an audience in LinkedIn advertising?

An audience is simply the group of people you choose to show your ads to. It’s defined by criteria you set like job titles, industries, company names, seniority, skills, or lists you upload yourself. The idea is to narrow down who actually sees your message so you’re not paying to reach random users. A well-built audience focuses on the real decision-makers and companies you want to do business with, instead of hoping the algorithm will figure it out for you.

How audience impacts spend

One of the most common pitfalls that we see LinkedIn advertisers fall into is spending to “build awareness” without verifying that the audience that they’re advertising to would actually buy from them. 

• Pull your CRM data.
• Identify the companies who’ve bought before.
• Define who you want to buy.

If you can’t define exactly which companies should buy from you, this could mean you’re not quite ready to run paid campaigns. It could make sense to invest more in your other efforts until you’re in a spot to understand your customers better and apply those learnings to the “high ROI” marketing efforts like paid advertising. 

If you can’t define exactly which companies should buy from you, this could mean you’re not quite ready to run paid campaigns.

LinkedIn audience building "do's"

Do use a custom-built list

One of the core principles of our LinkedIn approach at Abe is the TAM (Total Addressable Market) list. A TAM is just a clear, practical list of companies you actually want as customers. It’s not a rough idea or a guess. It’s the real set of businesses that are a good fit for what you sell—based on things like size, industry, budget, and what your past customers look like. If they’re not on that list, they’re not worth paying to advertise to. The whole point is to avoid wasting money talking to companies that will never buy from you.

Do use filters 

Company size is useful as a filter, but it doesn’t tell you who can buy. A 5,000-person company has hundreds of functions. A large company still has entry-level employees. If you target only by company size, you may be paying to show ads to people with no buying authority.

Depending on the client, Abe may apply filters like:

• Job title (Director, VP, CMO)
• Seniority level (Manager+, Director+)

…but it really depends on the individual client. It’s all about what best differentiates somebody as a likely buyer (which we figure out during project phase).

Do use exclusion lists wisely

You don’t want to waste budget showing ads to people who will never buy from you. That includes your own employees, your competitors, and companies outside your target market. Excluding them is straightforward and costs nothing to implement, but it keeps your spend focused on reaching real prospects. Adding these exclusions is a basic step that prevents throwing money away on impressions that can’t deliver any value.

Do measure the right metrics 

Clicks and impressions don’t mean much if they don’t lead to sales. It’s not enough to generate awareness with people who can’t or won’t buy. The metrics that matter are qualified leads, pipeline value, and closed-won deals. If you can’t tie your LinkedIn ad spend to those results, you’re not investing in marketing—you’re just burning budget. Use UTM parameters, integrate with your CRM, and track outcomes that actually move the business forward.

LinkedIn audience building "don'ts"

Don’t target based on skills, interests, or research groups 

Filtering by interests, skills, or groups on LinkedIn usually isn’t recommended because those signals just aren’t reliable. Skills are self-added and often exaggerated. Interests are vague and based on limited activity. Groups can be filled with people who don’t match your target at all. If you’re trying to generate real pipeline, you need to know exactly who you’re reaching—their role, company, and buying authority. That level of clarity just isn’t possible with interests or skills.

Don’t rely on vague “awareness” goals without defining next steps

Running campaigns just to “get your name out there” is one of the fastest ways to waste money on LinkedIn. Awareness isn’t bad—but it has to be intentional and sequenced. If you’re paying for impressions without a clear plan to convert that attention into qualified pipeline, you’re funding LinkedIn’s revenue, not yours. Always know exactly who you want to be aware of you and why, and make sure you have the follow-up strategy in place to turn that awareness into real opportunities.

LinkedIn audience building "maybes"

Maybe use LinkedIn matched audiences

LinkedIn’s Matched Audiences is usually the way to go because it cuts out the guesswork. Instead of letting LinkedIn decide who might be a good fit based on vague interests or broad categories, you give it a concrete list of companies or contacts you actually want to reach. That might be your closed-won deals, high-value prospects, or your TAM. It’s more effort up front, but it means your budget goes toward showing ads to people who are genuinely worth your time. If you want control over who sees your ads, matched audiences is the best way to get it. 

Maybe use LinkedIn predictive audience 

Predictive Audiences can make sense in rare cases where you don’t have enough data to build a strong Matched Audience or you’re trying to break into a completely new market. It's not as precise as uploading your own list, but in these situations, letting the algorithm find lookalikes can be better than guessing blindly or sitting on your hands

If you take the time to define your TAM, use precise targeting, leverage matched audiences, and avoid lazy interest-based filters, you’re not just spending money—you’re investing it. And when you exclude the wrong people, measure what matters, and hold your campaigns accountable to real pipeline results, LinkedIn transforms from an expensive awareness channel into one of your highest-ROI growth levers.

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LinkedIn might not be the first platform that comes to mind when you think, “creative B2B marketing,” but the reality is this: more than a billion professionals use it to connect, share ideas, and yes — even engage with — brands. That’s why B2B companies are doubling down on LinkedIn. It’s no longer just a digital resume hub. It’s a powerhouse for brand building, thought leadership, and community.

To truly stand out, B2B brands need a blend of strategy, creativity, and authenticity. And a surprising amount of patience and grit, considering it's "just" posting on the internet.

In this article, we're going to focus on two distinct ideas that we believe are essential to mastering if you want to grow your brand on LinkedIn. The first concept is what we call scrollable notoriety. The second is your zone of excellence. You don't necessarily have to learn them in this order, but you do need to learn both of them to have success on LinkedIn. In our humble opinion as a LinkedIn advertising agency.

Tactic 1: Scrollable notoriety

Your visual identity should make your brand instantly recognizable on the feed on a subconscious, a concept we call "scrollable notoriety". In an ideal world, your audience would read all of the words you put out into the world. But it is not an ideal world that we're living in.

The easiest way to make yourself instantly distinct is with a strong visual brand identity, but most people will have to go beyond that. Here are three ways that we see our clients have success with building a cohesive LinkedIn presence:

Uniform brand colors

The best way to make yourself superficially recognizable on LinkedIn is by using a unique color palette. Cybersecurity company Wiz is a really good example of a brand that does this effectively. There is nobody else on the market who is really using the same color palette, so it doesn't take a long pause to recognize a post as one of theirs.

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Designated film spots

If you use video on LinkedIn (which we're always going to suggest you do, for engagement's sake), we recommend using a designated filming spot. This will help viewers register that a video is coming from your brand, even if they aren't listening to the script.

ClickUp does this well (although we'd be remiss to not also mention how funny and well-written their scripts are!) 

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Characteristic vocabulary

Every company should have a tone and voice guide (something similar to this one from Mailchimp), but we believe there is room to take it even further. We've seen the most success from brands that don't just adopt a certain tone, but deliberately choose specific words and topics that help them stand out in a sea of bland, AI-generated content.

Duolingo is a great example of this. Having a sassy mascot who says unhinged unpredictable things is one thing, but killing him off for the bit? That's a stunt that Duolingo can only pull off because they've built such a strong brand identity. And guess what — it got people talking, so this means it worked for them.

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Tactic 2: Zone of Excellence

Just like a person has to engage in self-discovery to find what they uniquely are good at, brands have to do some soul-searching too. It's only when you've figured out your reason for existencethat people will listen. The best brands on LinkedIn know exactly what they bring to the table and they stick to it.

We call this "reason for existence" your Zone of Excellence. It’s that sweet spot where your expertise, audience needs, and unique perspective intersect. It’s the thing you’re known for, the thing your team can talk about in their sleep, and the thing your audience starts to expect from you.

Maybe you’re the go-to brand for sales insights. Or UX design trends. Or mental health in the workplace. Whatever your zone is—own it. Don’t try to be everything to everyone. Be the best at your thing. And share graciously. Take your industry knowledge and give it away. You might be surprised at how magnetic of a strategy this is.

The most memorable brands post within their lane and explore it from every angle. Sometimes serious, sometimes playful, sometimes unexpected. But always consistent.

It's only when you've figured out your reason for existence that people will listen.

To also keep in mind while brand-building

Organic vs. paid

If you want to get the most out of LinkedIn — use both.

Organic content helps build trust, shape brand voice, and grow a loyal following. It’s where people start recognizing your tone, engaging with your stories, and forming a connection.

Paid content, on the other hand, is a great option for brands who are just starting out and just don't get a ton of natural reach. You can use your paid strategy to complement your organic one by promoting top-performing posts to dream personas.

People want to hear from people

People don’t want to hear from brands. They want to hear from humans.

That’s why LinkedIn content from companies works best when it feels like it’s written by an actual person, not a committee.And while not every B2B brand needs to be cracking jokes, every brand does need to bring value. That could mean:

• Educational insights (what do you know that your audience doesn’t yet?)
  
• Behind-the-scenes peeks (show, don’t tell)
  
• Opinionated takes (yes, please have a point of view!)
  
  

Lean into your zone of excellence here! Just because it's right for another company, doesn't mean it's right for you and your audience. This is true even if it's a competitor.

LinkedIn ≠ Instagram ≠ TikTok

This one’s important: LinkedIn is not Instagram (and it’s definitely not TikTok).

It’s still social media, but the audience is here to learn, grow, and network. That doesn’t mean boring—it just means your content should meet them where they are.

Instead of posting overly polished lifestyle content, focus on:

• Thoughtful threads or carousels
  
• First-person storytelling
  
• Data-driven insights
  
• Real talk about industry challenges
  
  

You can be funny, bold, visual—but stay rooted in your professional “why.” If someone learns something, feels seen, or walks away with a new perspective, you’re doing it right.

Playing the long game

Let’s talk rhythm. You can’t show up once a month and expect to build momentum.

Most of the top B2B brands on LinkedIn post multiple times per week, sometimes even daily. That doesn’t mean you need to spam the feed—but it does mean you need a steady cadence. And more importantly, you need to show up with the same voice each time.

Whether your tone is educational, witty, heartfelt, or all of the above—keep it consistent. Over time, your voice becomes part of your brand identity. It’s what turns casual scrollers into followers, and followers into fans.

Also: give it time. LinkedIn success is a long game. If your first few posts flop, great—you’ve learned something. Keep showing up, keep refining, and keep adding value.

LinkedIn isn’t just where your audience exists. It’s where they’re paying attention. In today's hyper-saturated world where everything is competing for our attention, that's huge potential! If you meet them your audience with creativity, clarity, and a little personality, chances are they’ll meet you back.

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Years ago —  when they were a much smaller company — digital marketing agency Directive found themselves with a dilemma. They were nearing the end of contract with their gifting platform, but hadn’t used all of their account credits. They had thousands of dollars worth of gift cards to use within a week with no possibility of rolling over.

As enticing as the idea of a giant order of office candy and new laptops for the whole team was, a team member proposed a solution that would serve clients instead. She said, “What if we offered a gift card to prospects as a motivation to take an intro call with us?”

Fast forward 18 months, and Directive had held intro calls to 68% of 10,000 targeted accounts and generated 15 million dollars of revenue. The play? They simply offered prospects the promise of a $100 gift card in exchange for thirty minutes of their time.

Within 18 months, the gift card incentive had generated 15 million dollars of revenue.

The tactic was such a phenomenal success that Directive began to use it in their client's strategies. Clients loved it so much that Directive launched a specialized LinkedIn-only agency, Abe (hey that’s us!) Now we’re here to tell you how you can use gift cards as a way to unlock LinkedIn as a revenue channel.

What are incentives in marketing?

In marketing, an incentive is used to encourage a behavior that wouldn’t have been done otherwise. They’re not a new phenomenon, though their application in LinkedIn advertising is. By 1995, the Harvard Business Review was reporting that customer rewards in marketing had already been around for “at least a decade” and cited airline frequent flyer programs as an example.

Most marketers are familiar with incentives as a way of building customer loyalty in a traditional business model (think hotel room reward collection programs or collecting points on a fast food chain app), but are less familiar with how they apply to the B2B world. And that makes sense.

When you’re selling to representatives at companies instead of to individuals, getting ROI on traditional marketing tactics like incentives gets complicated to the point where it almost seems not worth it. But unlocking digital is imperative for B2B marketers who want to grow in their careers. And gift card campaigns are your fastest way to unlock LinkedIn as a channel specifically. B2B customers are not making a personal purchase, but if you play your cards (get it?) right, you can use a personal incentive to get yourself in front of somebody with buying power within your target companies.

Unlocking digital is imperative for B2B marketers who want to grow in their careers. Gift card incentives are the fastest way to do that.

The psychology behind incentives

Humans are governed by incentives, where they are found to be especially effective in western, individualistic cultures. In general incentives come in two flavors:

• Intrinsic incentives, where somebody is motivated to act a certain way for their own personal satisfaction without any kind of external reward. An example of this could be a singer who is practicing for hours to sound better for their own enjoyment (and possibly unintentionally for their neighbor’s).
• Extrinsic incentives, where somebody is motivated to act a certain way because of external rewards or pressures. This could look like ruminative (financial) rewards, verbal praise, or moral recognition.|
  

Arguments against marketing incentives

The first is that, when somebody is offered too many extrinsic rewards, their intrinsic motivation decreases. In order to maintain momentum, constant incentives have to be provided. This can lead to overjustification or a transactional mindset with prospects who will expect a direct reward.

We’d counterpoint this by saying gift card incentives uniquely well-positioned for B2B marketing, as you have an opportunity to build off of extrinsic incentives (gift card) and intrinsic incentives (if your prospects brings on a great software or service, they will get a better performance review).

The second is that gift card incentives cheapen a company’s brand image and can come off as bribery.

Your gift card is not your value prop. Your value prop is what you do, who you do it for, and the outcomes you accomplish.The gift card is simply a way of manufacturing intent. In order to win, you still need to have a stellar product and/or service.

Your gift card is not your value prop. Your value prop is what you do, who you do it for, and the outcomes you accomplish.

Also, when you promptly deliver the gift card after the meeting, it’s a great way of building trust with your customers. You said you were going to do something and you did it.

How to use incentives in LinkedIn advertising

1. Build your TAM

Before launching your campaign, especially if you want to move upmarket, you need to understand your ideal customers. And we don’t mean in an abstract, marketing persona kind of way. We mean you need to understand the literal names, job titles, and company names of your ideal customers. 

To build your Total Addressable Market (TAM), you can use a tool like ChatGPT to run a regression analysis to identify the firmographic criteria of your most successful customers. A list as small as 100 customers can show statistical significance. You can build your Total Addressable Market by pulling a list of companies that match this profile from ZoomInfo.  

2. Set up lead routing

To set yourself up for a successful, no-hassle campaign, you will need to make sure your inbound flow is well-organized and that lead routing is properly set up. Make sure LinkedIn is connected to both a calendar booking technology (like Calendly or Chilipiper) and to your CRM.

At this point, you should also decide who on your sales team will handle these leads. Larger orgs might have a choice between SDRs and AEs, in which case we highly recommend the leads get routed to AEs. Incentivized leads usually perform better when handled by experienced sales pros (more on that in a bit).

3. Choose a gifting platform

Though you can buy gift cards yourself and have your sales team send them out manually, many clients will prefer to set up an automated gift card flow with an incentives platform that will also integrate with your CRM and other marketing tools. Whatever you do, sort this out before launching your campaign.

4. Train your sales team

There is a learning curve when selling to incentivized prospects. We recommend that sales team treat incentivized leads like outbound prospects. Even if they filled out the form it doesn’t necessarily mean they were looking for a solution.

This means the first call should focus on discovery, not pitch. Reps should aim to qualify the lead using frameworks like BANT and understand the problem before presenting a solution. The job of the sales rep is to make the interaction valuable beyond just the gift card.

Equip your AEs with a shared call deck, and train them to ask impactful questions like, “What made you feel like this was important enough to take time out of your day?” Review calls across reps to find what works and replicate those approaches. Always end by scheduling the next step.

5. Choose your ad type

We mostly run gift card incentives through conversation ads, which function like automated outbound SDR messages. But sponsored content is also a great investment, especially if your brand awareness is low or you want to warm up an audience. Using both in tandem will get you the most bang for your buck.

6. Choose (and test!) your offer

Different incentives will work on different audiences. You know your audience best. Scroll down to the common offer type section of this article to see which offers we've tested.

7. Adjust ad spend

When adjusting your ad spend, it’s important to understand how Convo Ads differ across platforms. On Google Ads, you're competing with other advertisers targeting the same keywords. However, on LinkedIn, competition is based on audience targeting (i.e., anyone advertising to the same audience is in the auction).

Although recommended bids for Convo Ads on LinkedIn are often just cents, investing more can help you secure a top spot in the auction. To maximize results, aim to balance your spend between Convo Ads and Sponsored Content, ensuring broad reach while maintaining competitive placement.

8. Monitor performance

We do this for our clients on a daily basis, but if you're running this solo you'll want to make sure you have some kind of communication channel with your teammates. Looker Studio works well for many teams.

9. Set up sequences

Not everyone will book a call immediately after receiving an incentive. You can give them more chances to convert by sending follow-up emails. On CRMs like Hubspot these can be automated as "sequences". You can include promotional materials — like hype videos of case studies — in your follow-ups to add legitimacy to your brand.

Examples of LinkedIn incentives

We talk a lot about our LinkedIn “gift card incentive”, but gift cards aren’t the only incentive that you can use. Gift cards just make good incentives because of their versatility and universal appeal. You know your audience best. Different ICPs might be drawn to different incentives. We’ve also experimented with: 

Airpods

Airpods out-perform gift cards for some ICPs. Prospects haven’t outwardly verbalized it, but we would guess that this is because airpods are fundamentally useful even if the prospect already owns a pair, as they’re commonly lost or getting worn out. 

Airtags

Airtags are useful, but they’re not exactly fun to shop for. They aren’t cheap, either. Some ICPs will be drawn towards a practical, nice-to-have incentive like Airtags, since that will be one less thing on their list to buy. 

Bespoke services

Depending on your business, you might have luck offering a free template, report, or audit. Just make sure you include an honest assessment of the value of the service.

Charitable donations

Charitable donations tend to appeal to more mission-aligned or impact-driven ICPs. These work best when the donation is meaningful in amount and aligned with a cause that resonates with your audience. Be specific about the charity and the contribution amount to make the gesture feel real and personal.

Free trials

SaaS companies might have some luck offering a free trial as an incentive, but it has to be an abnormal offer (i.e., customers can’t always have the option to have a free trial on your website at any time). A limited-time extended trial or a “VIP” version of the trial can help it feel more like a real gift and less like a default.

Product discounts

Nothing wrong with trying out a classic discount or percentage-off code. The key is to frame it as a limited-time or exclusive offer, rather than a perpetual sale. Discounts tend to work better when they’re paired with a clear CTA or bundled into a broader incentive strategy.

LinkedIn gift card incentive: frequently asked questions

Is there an industry that the gift cards won't work in?

In short….no.

When we do marketing, everything we ask for from our prospects is an exchange of value. When you give someone the option to use their email in a form, they are assuming that you are going to offer them something of value in exchange for them giving you this.

Gift cards lower the psychological friction that a prospect feels when booking a call with you.

Different ICPs may respond better to different types of incentives, so do some testing. Some industries, like healthcare and cybersecurity, might have regulations around accepting rewards and gifts from vendors, so look into that before you run an ad. But that’s the only industry-related limitation that we’ve come across.

How much should my gift card value be?

In our real-world application, we haven’t seen much luck with gift cards under $100, and we see the sweet spot to especially be between $105 and $130. Anecdotally, we’ve heard some founders have luck with smaller quantities around $50.  Your prospects might need a larger amount to feel incentivized.

What job titles should I target for the gift card incentive? 

In our tests, we've seen the most luck with director, VP, and C-Suite titles. We find manager titles underperform.

What makes LinkedIn a good platform for running gift card incentives?

LinkedIn is a strong platform for running gift card incentives because it offers precise firmographic targeting—something that search-based digital ads lack. While search ads allow you to capture intent, they don’t give you control over critical attributes like job title, industry, or company size. LinkedIn does.

How do I write good copy for my incentive campaign?

We recommend copy that's conversational. We've seen better success with an empty subject line than any subject line. Mention the incentive in your hook, and again in the call to action. We generally use charm timing and charm pricing (like 29 min vs 30 and $105 vs $100).

Can I run a LinkedIn incentive campaign towards a cold audience?

You can and you should! Ideally, your audience will be aware of your brand in passing, but they don't have to be deeply familiar. We recommend running Sponsored Ads in conjunction with your incentive ads to build that brand familiarity.

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