Content or Targeting? To Succeed on LinkedIn, It Helps to Have Both.

Since the advent of advertising, executives have debated which is more integral to a campaign’s success: the content or the targeting.

The truth, at least as it pertains to success on LinkedIn, is that neither is more important than the other. A truly transcendent campaign—the kind that simultaneously hits all of its immediate performance goals, while also leaving a lasting, indelible impression on the perception of your brand—can only come from combining compelling creative with precise audience targeting. When those two aspects of a campaign work in tandem, they help a brand both hit its immediate campaign goals and build a lasting community on LinkedIn.

A recent Women’s History Month campaign by investment management firm Invesco serves as a prime example.

The Content Strategy

Many brands treat Women’s History Month as a box they need to check on their list of diversity efforts, but Invesco wanted its initiative this year to have a more lasting effect. Invesco wanted to cultivate a vibrant community of women in finance on LinkedIn and provide the resources and networking to help them succeed beyond just the month of March. (Although women have made tremendous strides in the finance industry, they’re still grossly underrepresented. Women make up more than half of the entry-level employees in banking, but account for less than a third of the executives in senior vice president and C-suite roles, according to a recent McKinsey report.)

To help close the gender gap, women need a community that lasts beyond a single event. Invesco made this idea central to both its content and targeting strategies.

Invesco kickstarted its community building with a live, virtual event—the aptly titled “Cultivating Community for Women in Finance”—about the unique challenges facing women in male-dominated fields and how the panelists managed to overcome them. The event was moderated by Shelley Zalis, CEO of The Female Quotient, an equality services company aimed at promoting gender equality, and included as panelists Karin Kimbrough, Chief Economist at LinkedIn; Margaret Anadu, Global Head of Sustainability and Impact for Asset Management at Goldman Sachs; and Kristina Hooper, Chief Global Market Strategist at Invesco.

After the event, attendees were encouraged to share their own experiences and network on Invesco-hosted community pages on LinkedIn.

Targeting the Appropriate Audience

On most platforms, it would be incredibly difficult—if not impossible—to accurately target a niche audience such as women in finance.

But LinkedIn’s audience-targeting tools make precise targeting easy. LinkedIn users readily share information about their gender, employers, and industries, so targeting women in finance was a cinch. But Edelman, Invesco’s PR firm, went a step further and targeted members of LinkedIn groups focused on women in finance. By identifying women in such groups, Invesco was able to focus on women who already participate in these conversations and are thus predisposed to attend the live event. Invesco served targeted ads for the event to members of these groups.

Success in Numbers

More than 2,000 people registered for the event, far more registrations than a brand could ever accommodate for a comparable in-person event. About half the registrations were a direct result of the paid media campaign Invesco conducted, proof that the targeting strategy was sound.

The event did more than just drive women to an online event, though—it also induced a lively discussion among attendees. More than 400 women tuned in for the entire event, and the event produced a flurry of activity on Invesco’s community pages after the event ended.

“The activity on the message board, between job-seekers and hiring managers, was such a great outcome from the event,” says Jodi Philips, Director of Editorial and Social Media Content at Invesco. “Seeing those connections being built really highlighted what LinkedIn is all about.”

Invesco both hit its campaign goal and created a long-lasting impression as a leader when it comes to understanding and supporting women in the financial services industry. And that kind of success can only be achieved when the content is as compelling as the targeting is accurate.

LinkedIn Is the Ideal Platform for Financial Services Brands

• Precision targeting: LinkedIn’s audience-building tools let you create finely tuned audience segments and serve them content relative to their interests. Brands can build audiences based on a number of demographics that are unavailable on other platforms, including industry, current and previous employer, job title, and where a person sits on their company’s organization chart. Brands can even build audiences based on LinkedIn groups, allowing them to target based on users’ expressed interests.
• Compelling ad formats: Video and carousel ads provide eye-catching visuals. Follower ads help brands and individual members within an organization grow their presence on the platform and establish long-lasting relationships with users. And our new Event Ads help brands market their live, virtual events on the platform, where they can provide users with a unique experience and specialized insights.
• Content to keep your audience engaged: The brand-building capabilities of LinkedIn extend beyond a single campaign. LinkedIn boasts the most vibrant, engaged professional communities on the internet, and brands can access and engage with these users on a daily basis through posts, events, groups, and other LinkedIn Marketing Solutions tools.

Learn more about LinkedIn Marketing Solutions and Invesco’s strategy & success in the complete case study.