What are the Two Secret, High-Power Targeting Methods that LinkedIn Just Added?

Did you know that LinkedIn secretly released two new ad targeting options, to let you target, for the first time, Fortune 500, Global 500, High Growth, or Negative Growth companies?

And they didn’t even put out an announcement, but silently added in what may be the most effective new targeting abilities they’ve added since they added in “industry”.

We didn’t know either — until playing around with the campaigns and we saw these new options appear with the big, bright, LinkedIn-blue “NEW” after them!

Each of these two new categories is powerful and are worth looking into.

Under “Company Category,” the following options are listed to choose from:

• Forbes World’s Most Innovative Companies
• Fortune 100 Fast Growing Companies (Worldwide)
• Fortune 500 (US)
• Fortune Global 500 (Worldwide)
• Linkedin News Editors’ Top Companies (Australia)
• Linkedin News Editors’ Top Companies (Brazil)
• Linkedin News Editors’ Top Companies (Canada)
• Linkedin News Editors’ Top Companies (China)
• Linkedin News Editors’ Top Companies (France)
• Linkedin News Editors’ Top Companies (Germany)
• Linkedin News Editors’ Top Companies (India)
• Linkedin News Editors’ Top Companies (Japan)
• Linkedin News Editors’ Top Companies (Mexico)
• Linkedin News Editors’ Top Companies (United Kingdom)
• Linkedin News Editors’ Top Companies (United States)
• Linkedin News Editors’ Top Startups (Australia)
• Linkedin News Editors’ Top Startups (Brazil)
• Linkedin News Editors’ Top Startups (Canada)
• Linkedin News Editors’ Top Startups (China)
• Linkedin News Editors’ Top Startups (France)
• Linkedin News Editors’ Top Startups (Germany)
• Linkedin News Editors’ Top Startups (India)
• Linkedin News Editors’ Top Startups (Japan)
• Linkedin News Editors’ Top Startups (Mexico)
• Linkedin News Editors’ Top Startups (Netherlands)
• Linkedin News Editors’ Top Startups (United Kingdom)
• Linkedin News Editors’ Top Startups (United States)

In short, these let you target people who work at various subsets of the largest companies in the world, in the USA, or the hottest startups out there.

It’s been a long-time marketer’s trick to compile these lists manually; these are all mostly available lists. But the power here is to automate and smoothen out that process, letting you do faster and easier testing.

The 4am question I’m left wondering, however, is: does LinkedIn classify itself as a “Top Startup”? And if so, at what point does a startup stop being a startup? And how kosher is it to classify yourself as being top?

The other new option, however, is more interesting for me personally and possibly for you: company growth rate. Maybe you don’t want to target managers at a Fortune 500 company like Forbes, but maybe companies in your target market that are growing fast, because those are the ones who have money to spend. Or maybe the ones who are not growing at all, because they’re the ones that need your help the most, of course! Well, voila: now, for the first time, we can target them. Here are the options:

Negative growth companies

0% – 3% company growth
3% – 10% company growth
10% – 20% company growth
20%+ company growth

The two extremes seem the most powerful to test: high growth or negative growth, and both with very different marketing.

If you end up testing any of these options, let us know how it went, and we’ll share how our tests are going, to see if these options can work the magic that they (in theory) have the potential to.

PS: UV is one of the world’s leading Salesforce Commerce Cloud (Demandware) development & strategy teams. Contact us to see how we can work together.