by Are you up to date on changes from LinkedIn? Wondering which recent LinkedIn updates are important to marketers and business owners?
In this article, we explore LinkedIn changes that affect your marketing.
#1: LinkedIn Networking Tabs
LinkedIn separated the My Network tab into two tabs: Grow and Catch Up.
Our Take: LinkedIn expert Judi Fox likes that these two tabs will streamline networking tasks. The Catch Up tab highlights life events like new jobs and work anniversaries, enabling one-tap congratulations, while the Grow tab is where you’ll handle invitations and connection requests.
This new setup declutters notifications and focuses on helping users maintain meaningful connections, making networking more central to the LinkedIn experience. The quick interactions in the Catch Up tab facilitate users maintaining touchpoints with ideal clients and connections. While the feature only appears on mobile currently, it will likely improve the desktop experience when launched.
With notifications centered on content and people you actively follow, LinkedIn continues innovating to keep relationships active on its platform. This evolution caters to networking users' needs for simplicity around life's big moments.
#2: LinkedIn Profile Features
LinkedIn's removal of the creator mode toggle democratizes access to creator tools, giving all users increased customization. However, other imminent profile changes seem to deprioritize creators' needs. Removing profile hashtags and the featured section while shifting the About section higher caters more to recruiters over creators cultivating their brands.
LinkedIn is also changing “people also viewed” to “other similar profiles.” This upcoming change also benefits sales, recruiting, and job-seeking use cases over individual creators and marketers. While discovering new professional connections has merit, forcibly exposing competitors feels antithetical to creators trying to stand out. Individuals lose control over curating their profile's environment.
Our Take: LinkedIn must serve multiple constituencies. Its data likely shows higher engagement and conversion metrics when “people also viewed” is enabled. Annoying as unwanted recommendations may feel to some users, LinkedIn ultimately optimizes for the majority's experience. Still, additional customization options to hide or sort “other similar profiles” could grant more user agency. LinkedIn can mitigate the downsides of this change by balancing the needs of various use cases.
#3: LinkedIn Ads
Lookalike Audiences
On February 29, 2024, LinkedIn will discontinue lookalike audiences functionality. Users can no longer create new lookalike audiences or edit existing ones, and current audiences will become static without ongoing data refreshes.
Despite these audiences turning static, active ad campaigns can continue serving them unchanged. LinkedIn recommends predictive audiences based on contact lists, conversions, or lead gen forms as alternatives to scale similar users likely to convert. Audience expansion built off existing matched audiences or LinkedIn targeting attributes helps identify and expand campaigns to relevant new buyers.
While static lookalike audiences still work, for now, marketers should plan to utilize LinkedIn's predictive audiences and audience expansion to reach wider relevant audiences dynamically in the future.
Our Take:
LinkedIn sunsetting lookalike audiences closes a formerly useful targeting option. However, the introduced alternatives of predictive audiences and audience expansion show promise to avoid disruption. Predictive audiences seem more advanced, likely utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) models to analyze conversion data deeply and serve the most qualified new users.
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I'M READY TO BECOME AN AI-POWERED MARKETERWhile it’s concerning that existing lookalike audiences turn static without continuous updating, marketers can still leverage these non-updating segments. Campaigns should continue reaching valuable audiences when paired with more advanced targeting replacements.
For a platform focused on accuracy, such as LinkedIn, the end of loosely similar lookalike audiences for tighter, conversion-focused targeting makes sense. As long as AI-powered predictive audiences and expanded matched audiences scale as hoped, marketers ultimately gain better segmentation functionality to connect with their best-fitting new customers. This change challenges advertisers to reassess tactics, improving LinkedIn's targeting sophistication.
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LinkedIn Website Actions
LinkedIn is introducing Website Actions to simplify website event tracking and conversion measurement for business-to-business (B2B) marketers. Website Actions leverages the LinkedIn Insight Tag without additional tags or engineering work to automatically capture critical on-site actions like button clicks or page views. Based on these tracked actions, marketers gain sharper visibility into buyer behavior and interests.
These insights then empower more targeted ad retargeting campaigns and accurate gauging of marketing performance. Applications range from monitoring product launch engagement, optimizing webinar promotion campaigns, and nurturing buyers along lengthy six-month sales cycles.
Our Take:
LinkedIn's new Website Actions capability tackles a central challenge in B2B marketing—gaining insight into website actions to inform campaigns. Marketers can now easily track buyer behavior without a complex setup by automatically capturing events like button clicks or page views via the LinkedIn Insight Tag. These insights, in turn, facilitate more targeted ad retargeting and accurate measurement of what content and messaging drive conversions.
From gauging product launch engagement to optimizing webinar promotion and perfecting the months-long lead nurturing process, Website Actions delivers the visibility needed to allocate budgets wisely. Removing previous barriers to implementation like requiring developers, Website Actions democratizes conversion tracking across B2B marketers. It exemplifies how marketing technology continues progressing to show data and enable tangible branding, engagement, and sales outcomes based on that data.
For marketers struggling to capitalize on buyer actions, Website Actions provides the missing link to drive website optimization and campaign performance.
LinkedIn Media Planning API
LinkedIn has introduced a new Media Planning API to help marketers and agencies optimize platform advertising strategies. This API enables advertisers to forecast a LinkedIn campaign's reach and frequency before spending ad budget. By integrating LinkedIn's audience data into internal tools, agencies can now conduct informed scenario planning to determine the ideal media mix and timing for maximum return on investment.
For B2B advertisers, the ability to precisely target industry leaders and strategically allocate budget is invaluable. Media planning on LinkedIn also demonstrates tangible impacts, which assists agencies in making the case for increased platform investment. With advanced audience insights, efficient budget allocation, and strategic planning capabilities, the Media Planning API empowers nuanced campaign optimization.
Synchronizing this predictive LinkedIn data with targeting and analytics unlocks superior audience relevance, goal-setting, and performance forecasting. LinkedIn's Media Planning API delivers the precision needed for brands seeking the most significant marketing ROI amid economic uncertainty.
Judi Fox is a LinkedIn strategist, and her course is called the LinkedIn Business Accelerator Program.
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