Dean Seddon, CEO of Maverrik, is a B2B LinkedIn consultant and his company, Maverrik, has helped companies such as Coca-Cola, Bose and Ikea acquire customers through digital channels. These are his 7 steps to improve your LinkedIn advertising. Know your audience You need to know who you’re targeting before you create your ads and commit budget. You need to make sure that the people who see your ads see something they are likely to respond to. For example, the messaging you use for a salesperson will be different from the messaging for a marketer. Salespeople tend to prefer direct language and statistics to prove value, while marketers may be looking for more creative ideas. Marketing people are also often drawn in by controversy and innovation. When thinking about who your audience is, a good idea is to return to your Ideal Customer Profile. Or, if you haven’t done so already, developing your ICP is a very worthwhile exercise. Once you’ve defined it, you’ll know who you should be targeting with your ads. Segment your audience Once you’ve defined your main target grouping, you need to break this down into narrower segments that you can target with ads. Let’s say SMBs are your primary target. As a whole, this sector is too broad to target on its own. What you need to do is split the primary target into separate industries, such as events, recruitment and tech etc. Having narrower B2B lead lists based on industries is vitally important, for one main reason: they will give you a steer on the content of your LinkedIn ads. You can create variations of your ads for each industry, using relevant terminology and images. The Inbound Marketing Playbook / 23