LinkedIn B2B targeting
📖 3 min readUpdated 2026-04-19
LinkedIn's targeting is its moat. Job title, company size, industry, seniority, skills, past employers, schools, all self-reported by professionals. No other platform has targeting this precise for B2B.
Targeting attributes
- Job Title: exact titles (fewer matches) or title categories (wider)
- Job Function: broader, "Sales", "Marketing", "Engineering"
- Seniority: Entry, Senior, Manager, Director, VP, C-suite, Owner
- Company Size: by employee count
- Industry: from LinkedIn's taxonomy
- Years of Experience
- Company Name: named account lists (ABM)
- Skills: what people list on their profile
- Groups: LinkedIn groups members
Targeting recipes
Typical SaaS ICP
- Job Function: Marketing OR Sales
- Seniority: Director+
- Company Size: 201-1000
- Industry: Software + Internet + SaaS
Account-Based (ABM)
- Upload named account list
- Layer on role/seniority filters
Broad awareness
- Job Function only
- Larger geography
Audience size targets
- Under 20K: too narrow, high CPM, won't scale
- 20K-300K: sweet spot for most B2B
- 300K+: broader, lower CPM but less targeted
Audience Expansion
LinkedIn's lookalike-like feature. Tells the algorithm to find similar people. Works, but sometimes drifts outside your ICP. Test both on and off.
Matched Audiences
- Upload contact list (emails)
- Upload company list
- Website retargeting (via Insight Tag)
Exclusions
- Exclude current customers
- Exclude unqualified roles (interns, not buyers)
- Exclude own employees
Common LinkedIn targeting mistakes
- Targeting "decision makers" without role specifics (too vague)
- Only targeting job title (misses people with variant titles)
- Over-stacking filters (audience too small to deliver)
- Ignoring Company Size (tiny companies have different buyers)