Install the Insight Tag first
Website retargeting needs the LinkedIn Insight Tag on every page of your site. Without it, LinkedIn cannot build an audience of visitors. Install it through Google Tag Manager or directly in your site template, then check in Campaign Manager that it reports as active. The full setup is in Campaign Manager setup.
Do this at least a few weeks before you plan to run retargeting. The audience only grows from the day the tag is live.
Build the website audiences by intent
Not every visitor is a prospect. Create separate audiences by the page they visited, using rules on the page address.
- Pricing or booking pages: the closest to buying.
- Case studies and product pages: interested but not ready.
- Blog posts: early, and often not worth paying for.
Start with two audiences: visitors to high-intent pages, and visitors to the rest of the site excluding the blog. Choose a time window such as 30 or 90 days. Shorter windows are warmer. Longer windows are bigger.
Add video viewers and form openers
Two more audiences are useful to most B2B teams.
- Video viewers: people who watched half or more of one of your LinkedIn videos.
- Lead form openers: people who opened a lead gen form but did not submit it.
Form openers are often the warmest audience you have. They wanted the offer and stopped at the form. Remind them with a shorter form or a different angle on the same offer.
Check the audience size
LinkedIn will not deliver a campaign to a very small audience. Open the audience in Campaign Manager and look at the number. If it is too small, widen the window or combine audiences, for example all video viewers plus all high-intent visitors.
Do not add targeting filters on top of a small audience to make it more precise. You will end up with an audience that never delivers.
Exclude the wrong people
Without exclusions you pay to show ads to people who do not need them. Upload a list from your CRM and exclude three groups:
- Existing customers.
- People who already booked a meeting or converted.
- Your own team and competitors, if you can list them.
This is the same idea as Audience building and matched audiences, applied to retargeting.
Match the message to the stage
Retargeting ads should not repeat your cold ads. The person already knows you.
- Pricing visitors: a direct offer, such as a demo or a short call.
- Case study readers: proof from a similar company, then an invitation.
- Video viewers: the next step in the story, not the same video.
- Form openers: the same offer with less friction.
Common mistakes
- Retargeting every visitor, including people reading the blog or applying for a job.
- Forgetting exclusions, so customers keep seeing offers meant for prospects.
- Using the same ad as your cold campaign.
- Putting too much budget into a small audience, which burns through it and annoys the same people repeatedly.
- Having no Insight Tag history because it was installed late.
How you know it works
- Your retargeting audiences show a number large enough to deliver, and the number grows week by week.
- Cost per lead and cost per meeting are lower than in your cold campaigns. If they are not, check the message before the audience.
- Retargeted prospects book meetings faster. Check this in your CRM.
- You see customers and converted leads drop out of the audience because your exclusions work.
- You can read the results in your weekly report.
