LinkedIn Matched Audience

LinkedIn Matched Audience - Free or Paid?

If you are anything like me, the prompt in the documentation telling you that testing that out might result in extra charges, you would have been putting it off for a while. It was a Friday and I was feeling brave. So, let’s go on the journey together and see how far we can stretch the free testing.

*Spoiler alert*

You can do it all for free.

LinkedIn Matched Audience - what is it?

It is the OOTB functionality allowing you to build a high complex or targeted segment (group of contacts) in your D365 Marketing environment, and then sync it with LinkedIn. Then you can use that as the basis for targeted LinkedIn campaigns, or any way that suits your needs, really.

What do we need?

1. A static segment in D365
2. A LinkedIn profile with enabled LinkedIn Campaign Manager (free to create and enable)

Where do we start – segment?

In D365, click on Segments > New > Static > Build your criteria or manually add the contacts you want to target.

*Make sure you have at least 300 contacts, otherwise you won’t be able to sync it with LinkedIn at all.

Use case

A real-life example for making use of this feature could be leads created for people, who have used a specific # in the internet space. This way we know they might be interested and would love to know more. We could use Matched audiences and then target our advertising to suit. 

Where do we start – LinkedIn with Campaign Manager?

Our working assumption is that you already have a LinkedIn personal profile. Go to it > Click the Work Area top right > Advertise.

The welcome screen gets displayed > Fill in the details > I didn’t have a LinkedIn page to associate, so I clicked new and create a company page which I selected in the drop down.

Getting a company page was just the same as making a new personal profile, if not even easier. After providing your details, you get a URL and a company page.

linkedin.com/company/dilyana-radulova

And that’s you done with the setup. This brings you to the Campaign Manager home page.

Back in D365 Marketing

Open your static segment > Go Live > Click LinkedIn Matched Audience > Click Next > A few screens with permissions will pop up, accept them.

Accept the permissions :

Now the config of your matched audience gets displayed, fill it in.

I called my segment DD LinkedIn Matched Audience Test Segment. This doesn’t propagate to LinkedIn. On the screen below is the name of the Audience that is to be created in LinkedIn.

 Clicking Next displays a loading image, and a message saying this might take up to 48 hours.

Processing

And that's you done.

Keep in mind

If your segment changes in D365 Marketing, those changes won't be reflected in its LinkedIn Matched Audience. If you want to use an updated Dynamics 365 Marketing segment on LinkedIn, you must create a new Matched Audience using the previous procedure.

Back to LinkedIn land

When the sync has completed, if you go back to your Campaign Manager in LinkedIn, you can now see your new Matched Audience all ready and set for you to use. And so far we haven't even spent an extra penny.

Our take on it

Go for it and give it a try yourself. It feels really easy to use and really intuitive. The documentation is not doing this feature any service making it sound slightly more complex than it actually is. 

Good luck and don't forget to let me know how you get on.

Speak soon!