LinkedIn Custom Audience Lists can be leveraged differently for both acquisition and content marketing use cases.

Here's a breakdown of use cases for each:

Understanding the Goal:

• Acquisition: The primary goal is to find new customers, generate leads, and drive conversions. You're typically targeting individuals or companies who haven't yet engaged deeply with your brand.

• Content Marketing: The primary goal is to build relationships, nurture leads, establish thought leadership, and educate your audience. You're often targeting individuals or companies who have shown some initial interest in your brand or industry.

Use Cases for Acquisition Using LinkedIn Custom Audience Lists:

Custom audience lists allow you to target very specific groups for acquisition campaigns:

1. Account-Based Marketing (ABM):

   • Use Case: Upload a list of target companies (using company names or website domains) and reach key decision-makers within those organisations with tailored acquisition-focused ads (e.g., product demos, case studies relevant to their industry, special offers).

   • LinkedIn List Type: Company Targeting.

2. Contact Targeting (Prospect Lists):

   • Use Case: Upload lists of qualified leads or prospects (using email addresses) sourced from your CRM, marketing automation platform, or lead generation activities. Target them with introductory offers, invitations to webinars, or content that directly addresses their pain points.

   • LinkedIn List Type: Contact Targeting (Email Upload).

3. Lookalike Audiences (Expanding Reach):

   • Use Case: Use your existing customer lists or high-converting lead lists to create lookalike audiences. LinkedIn will find users with similar professional profiles and characteristics, allowing you to expand your reach to new, potentially interested prospects.

   • LinkedIn List Type: Lookalike Audiences (seeded from other custom audiences).

4. Event Attendees (Post-Event Follow-up for Leads):

   • Use Case: Upload a list of attendees from industry events or webinars. Target those who didn't convert during the event with follow-up information, special offers, or invitations to connect with your sales team.

   • LinkedIn List Type: Contact Targeting (if you have their email addresses from registration).

Use Cases for Content Marketing Using LinkedIn Custom Audience Lists:

Custom audience lists help you deliver the right content to the right audience to nurture them:

1. Contact Targeting (Existing Leads/Customers):

   • Use Case: Upload lists of existing leads or customers to share valuable content updates, industry insights, product news, or invitations to exclusive webinars or events. This helps build relationships and reinforces your expertise.

   • LinkedIn List Type: Contact Targeting (Email Upload).

2. Customer Upselling/Cross-selling (Educational Content):

   • Use Case: Target existing customers with content that educates them on advanced features, new product offerings that complement their current solutions, or best practices to maximise their success.

   • LinkedIn List Type: Contact Targeting (Customer lists).

3. Nurturing Leads Down the Funnel:

   • Use Case: Segment your lead lists based on their stage in the buyer's journey. Target early-stage leads with educational content, mid-stage leads with case studies and solution-focused content, and late-stage leads with testimonials and purchase-enabling content.

   • LinkedIn List Type: Contact Targeting (segmented lists from your CRM/marketing automation).

4. Building Thought Leadership with Specific Groups:

   • Use Case: Target industry influencers, analysts, or specific professional groups with thought-provoking articles, opinion pieces, or invitations to participate in discussions to enhance your brand's authority.

   • LinkedIn List Type: Can be a combination of Contact Targeting (if you have lists) or Interest/Demographic Targeting layered on top of other custom audiences.

Key Differences in Approach:

• Messaging: Acquisition campaigns typically have a stronger call to action focused on conversion, demos, or offers. Content marketing focuses on providing value, education, and building trust.

• Content Type: Acquisition often uses ads showcasing product features, benefits, and testimonials. Content marketing utilises blog posts, articles, videos, infographics, and webinars.

• Goal: Acquisition aims for immediate lead generation or sales. Content marketing aims for long-term relationship building and brand authority.

By strategically using LinkedIn Custom Audience Lists, you can ensure your acquisition efforts reach the most relevant prospects and your content marketing resonates with the audiences most likely to engage and become loyal customers. Remember to align your audience selection with your specific campaign goals and the type of content or offer you are promoting.

Audience Size requirements

LinkedIn requires a minimum audience size of 300 members for any custom audience list to be targetable in an ad campaign. If your list is smaller than this, you won't be able to use it directly for targeting.

However, the ideal audience size for effective campaign delivery and results is often much larger. LinkedIn itself and many experts recommend aiming for audience sizes in the thousands or even tens of thousands for broader campaigns, but this is heavily dependent on your use case/s.

Here's a breakdown of audience size considerations for the use cases you mentioned:

Acquisition Use Cases:

• Account-Based Marketing (ABM):

  • Minimum: 300 matched members within your target companies.

  • Considerations: ABM lists can often be smaller and highly targeted. Focus on quality over quantity. If your initial list of target companies is small, ensure you have enough key contacts within them to meet the minimum. You might need to combine lists or use other targeting layers.

• Contact Targeting (Prospect Lists):

  • Minimum: 300 matched email addresses.

  • Considerations: The size will depend on your lead generation volume. Larger lists give LinkedIn's algorithm more data to optimise delivery. If you have smaller, highly qualified lists, they can still be effective, but be mindful of reach and potential frequency limitations.

• Website Retargeting (Non-Converters):

  • Minimum: 300 matched website visitors.

  • Considerations: This list grows organically as people visit your site. It might take time to reach the minimum. The larger the volume of relevant website traffic, the faster this audience will build and the more effective your retargeting can be.

• Lookalike Audiences (Expanding Reach):

  • Minimum: Your seed audience (customer list, high-converting leads) needs to have at least 300 members to create a lookalike.

  • Considerations: Lookalike audiences can significantly expand your reach. The larger and higher quality your seed audience, the better the lookalike audience will be. The resulting lookalike audience size can vary greatly.

• Event Attendees (Post-Event Follow-up for Leads):

  • Minimum: 300 matched contacts (if using email lists).

  • Considerations: Similar to prospect lists, the size depends on event attendance. Smaller, targeted events might yield smaller lists.

Content Marketing Use Cases:

• Website Retargeting (Engaged Visitors):

  • Minimum: 300 matched website visitors who engaged with specific content.

  • Considerations: Segmenting website visitors based on content engagement will likely result in smaller, highly engaged audiences. Even smaller sizes (above the 300 minimum) can be effective for delivering relevant content.

• Contact Targeting (Existing Leads/Customers):

  • Minimum: 300 matched contacts.

  • Considerations: The size will depend on your CRM or marketing automation database. Segmenting these lists based on engagement or customer stage will create smaller, more targeted audiences for content nurturing.

• Customer Upselling/Cross-selling (Educational Content):

  • Minimum: 300 matched customers.

  • Considerations: This list might be smaller depending on your customer base. Focus on delivering highly relevant content to these existing customers.

• Nurturing Leads Down the Funnel:

  • Minimum: 300 matched leads within a specific funnel stage.

  • Considerations: Segmenting leads by funnel stage will result in smaller, more focused audiences for targeted content delivery.

• Building Thought Leadership with Specific Groups:

  • Minimum: If using contact lists, 300 matched contacts. If using interest/demographic targeting, aim for an audience larger than 300.

  • Considerations: These audiences might be niche. Focus on reaching the key individuals even if the overall size isn't massive.

General Recommendations:

• Aim Higher Than the Minimum: While 300 is the technical minimum, larger audiences generally allow for better campaign delivery, more data for optimisation, and broader reach.

• Quality Over Quantity: Especially for acquisition, a smaller list of highly qualified prospects is often more valuable than a large list with low relevance.

• Layer Targeting: If your custom list is small, you can often layer on additional demographic or interest-based targeting to expand your potential audience while still maintaining some level of relevance.

• Monitor Match Rates: When uploading lists, pay attention to the match rate. A low match rate means your audience size will be smaller than your uploaded list. See our helpful articles on addressability & customer match to understand more.

• Consider Campaign Goals: Brand awareness campaigns might benefit from larger audiences, while lead generation or conversion campaigns can be effective with smaller, highly targeted groups.

In summary, while you can target audiences as small as 300 on LinkedIn, strive for larger, more robust audiences whenever possible to maximize the effectiveness of your acquisition and content marketing efforts. Tailor your approach based on the specific goals of each campaign and the nature of your target audience.