Target LinkedIn Ads Using Sales Navigator Audiences [2025 Guide]

Are you wasting your budget on LinkedIn ads by targeting unqualified leads and the wrong audience?

You’re not alone. Many marketers face the same challenge of targeting prospects who don’t match their ideal customer profile, resulting in low engagement and poor ROI.

LinkedIn Ads are the most expensive ads in the digital marketing market.

So, before opening your wallet, you better know how to launch ad campaigns and target the right audience segments.

In this tutorial, you will learn:

1. What Are Targeted LinkedIn Ads?
2. How To Target Sales Navigator Leads with LinkedIn Ads
3. Use LinkedIn Ads for Account-Based Marketing

It’s time to get the most out of LinkedIn Sales Navigator and enhance your LinkedIn lead-generation strategies.

Let’s dive in.

What Are Targeted LinkedIn Ads?

Targeted LinkedIn ads are customized to reach specific audiences based on various criteria. These ads help businesses connect more effectively with their ideal customers on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn allows interest targeting and lets advertisers build audiences based on member traits or professional groups while respecting ad preferences and guidelines.

Setting up a marketing campaign with the ideal audience is critical to achieving results.

To get better LinkedIn Ads Targeting, let’s see:

1. LinkedIn Ads Targeting Criteria
2. Types of LinkedIn Ads
3. LinkedIn Ads Character Limits

1. LinkedIn Ads Targeting Criteria

Well-defined and custom audience targeting ensures the campaign focuses on LinkedIn members who will likely engage with your ads.

Campaign managers mostly opt for the following targeting options:

• Audience Optimization: Automatically create an optimized audience or contact list using product details, selected signals, and historical data to accelerate campaigns.
• Location Targeting: Select mandatory location(s) with optional facets to narrow or broaden your audience.

• Job Functions and Titles: Combine job seniority and functions to target decision-makers on LinkedIn, including current and former job titleholders.

• Skills Targeting: Use members’ skills to reach professionals with specific expertise as an alternative to job titles.
• Demographics: Including age and gender.

• Company Names and Industries: Directly target up to 200 companies or 300,000 using Matched Audiences.

• Educational Background: Target by member schools, degree, or field of study, although these options may limit audience size.
• Jobb expertise

• Member Interests: Reach members based on their interests for broader awareness and consideration campaigns.

• Member Groups: Connect with professionals through LinkedIn Groups based on shared interests or professional associations.

By leveraging these targeting facets, you can effectively reach the best audience for your B2B marketing strategy goals and increase the impact of your LinkedIn ad campaigns.

2. LinkedIn Ads Types

LinkedIn offers different ad types to meet different marketing goals:

1. Sponsored content: Native ads in the LinkedIn feed, including single image, video, carousel, and document ads.
2. Sponsored Messaging: Direct messages to engage prospects with conversation and message ads.
3. Dynamic Ads: Personalized ads that automatically adjust based on the viewer’s profile.
4. Text Ads: Simple, cost-effective ads that appear on LinkedIn’s right rail.
5. Lead Gen Forms: Pre-populated forms within ads to seamlessly capture high-quality leads.

3. LinkedIn Ads Character Limits

If you plan to advertise on LinkedIn, you must know about the LinkedIn advertising limits.

LinkedIn has character limits for each ad type to help you create effective, engaging ads that capture your audience’s attention.

• For LinkedIn text ads, the headline can be up to 25 characters, and the description can be up to 75.

This means you must be succinct and creative with your message in a limited space.

• Sponsored content ads, on the other hand, offer more room for your message.

The headline can be up to 150 characters, and the body can be 600 characters.

In addition, it’s recommended that you include a thumbnail image to make your ad more visually appealing.

• Message ads can have a subject line of up to 60 characters and a message body of up to 1,000 characters.

However, it’s important to note that longer messages may be shortened, so try to keep your message clear and to the point.

• Dynamic ads have a headline of up to 100 characters and a description of up to 150 characters.

These ads are personalized based on the viewer’s profile, making them highly effective for targeted advertising.

• Finally, if you’re considering video ads on LinkedIn, keeping them short and engaging is essential.

While the maximum duration for a video ad is 30 minutes, it’s recommended to keep it shorter for better engagement.

This will help you maximize the use of your ad budget and create ads that resonate with your target audience.

How To Target Sales Navigator Leads with LinkedIn Ads

To target Sales Navigator leads with LinkedIn ads:

1. Extract accounts from LinkedIn Sales Navigator
2. Upload your Sales Navigator export to LinkedIn Ads
3. Modify your file to match the LinkedIn Ads template
4. Add lead filters on LinkedIn Ads
5. Upload lead lists on LinkedIn Ads

1. Extract accounts from LinkedIn Sales Navigator

The first thing you will need to do is to extract targeted accounts from LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

Sales Navigator’s search filters allow you to build target lead lists.

However, Data Export is not a native LinkedIn Sales Navigator feature, so you will need a third-party tool to do this.

Evaboot is excellent at exporting leads from LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

Here is a video tutorial:

2. Upload your Sales Navigator export to LinkedIn Ads

The next step is to upload the data extracted from Sales Navigator into LinkedIn Ads.

To do so, you need to click on Word > Advertise.

Then, create an add account or select one if you have already created it.

Click on Create > Campaign.

Then select your campaign goal, scroll down and click Audience > List Upload.

Click on Company List.

Then click on Upload a List.

You will land on the upload interface of LinkedIn Ads.

Before you upload your file, you must modify it to match the templates LinkedIn expects.

That’s precisely what I am going to show in step number 3.

3. Modify your file to match the LinkedIn Ads template

LinkedIn is expected to create a file containing a LinkedIn Ads audience from your LinkedIn Sales Navigator export.

Evaboot does not provide the right header name (as they are not clear, and Evaboot is not only used for LinkedIn Ads)

You will need two things.

The first one is to delete the unnecessary columns.

If you export your data with Evaboot, you can keep the following:

• company name
• company website
• company page URL

These 3 fields are enough for LinkedIn to retrieve the companies in its database (especially the LinkedIn URLs).

Once your file matches the template, click Select List and upload your file.

Your list will now appear in the LinkedIn Ads interface, and you can select it by ticking the checkbox next to the name.

The next step?

Click on Narrow to add some lead filters to target decision-makers.

4. Add lead filters on LinkedIn Ads

You have told LinkedIn you want to target people on your account list.

Now, it’s time to give the algorithm more precision to help him identify the right decision-makers.

Click on Audience attributes > Job Experience.

Then click on Job Titles.

You can specify which job titles you want to target inside these accounts.

DISCLAIMER: you can only add job titles proposed by LinkedIn.

They are broad categories that regroup variations of the same job title. It works exactly like on LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

In this example, the category “Head of Sales” does not include people whose position is exactly “Head of Sales” but also slightly different titles like “Head of Digital Sales,” “Head of Marketing and Sales,” etc.

You may not find what you want with this filter if you target uncommonly specific job titles.

But no worries, there is a way to get around this if necessary.

5. Upload lead lists on LinkedIn Ads

If the job title you are targeting is too specific, and you can’t find it on the LinkedIn search engine, you can upload your lead list to narrow your audience.

DISCLAIMER

For this technique, you must upload at least 300 people in LinkedIn ads.

For that, LinkedIn asks for the following:

• Email of the LinkedIn account
• First name
• Last name
• Job title
• Country

As you did for accounts, you can create another sheet and modify the Evaboot file to fit the prospect upload template.

To sum this up, in case you can’t find your job titles:

1. Upload your account list
2. Click on “narrow” and upload your lead list

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This was the technical part.

Using LinkedIn Ads for Account-Based Marketing

These strategies are efficient if you want to start using LinkedIn Account-Based Marketing to generate leads.

There are 4 concepts to master:

1. The Mere Exposure Effect
2. Warm-up Ads
3. Cover Ads
4. Wake-up Ads

1. The Mere Exposure Effect

The mere-exposure effect is a psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them.

The more your prospect is exposed to your brand through ads or content, the more familiar they will feel with your sales.

The more they feel familiar with your sales, the more likely they will meet with you.

2. The Warm-Up Ads

This campaign aims to slowly introduce your brand to your prospect before you start your LinkedIn prospecting campaign.

Indeed, if you pique your prospect’s curiosity before your SDR starts contacting them, the reply rate might increase, as your prospects might have already considered your offers several times.

Getting contacted by a Sales is a great opportunity to ask them!

3. The Cover Ads

The goal of these campaigns is to stay top of mind while your SDRs talk with your prospects.

Imagine your SDR sends a follow-up, and your prospect doesn’t reply.

Two days later, he sees your ads on his LinkedIn feed and thinks: “Oh, I forgot to reply to the guy from this company. Let’s do it right now.”

Running Ads while talking to your prospect is a great way to follow up without sending LinkedIn messages.

4. The Wake-Up Ads

Many prospects won’t reply to your prospecting messages even after 4 follow-ups.

Is it a reason to give them up?

Not at all!

You don’t want to seem pushy.

So why don’t you retarget them with ads?

Maybe your prospects just needed time to consider your offer.

By running LinkedIn Ads after your prospecting campaigns, you will stay top of mind even if you stop your LinkedIn outreach for a month or two.

Conclusion

Targeted LinkedIn ads are a powerful way to reach your ideal audience and achieve your marketing goals.

By understanding and using LinkedIn ad types and knowing how to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator for targeting, you can improve the relevance of your ads, engage the right prospects, and maximize your ROI.

FAQ

How to Create LinkedIn Ads?

Step 1: Set Up Your Campaign

• Log in to Campaign Manager
• Select or create a campaign group
• Select your goal
• Choose your group budget and schedule
• Build your target audience
• Select your ad format
• Choose your budget and schedule
• (Optional) Set up conversion tracking

Step 2: Set Up Your Ads

Step 3: Review & Launch

Can I do targeted ads on LinkedIn?

Yes, you can target your ideal audience with LinkedIn ads.

LinkedIn offers a range of targeting options that allow you to reach specific audiences based on various criteria, such as job title, industry, company size, skills, and more.

What are LinkedIn Ads audience targeting options?

Choose from targeting options:

• Locations: Specify cities, regions, or countries.
• Company: Target by company name, industry, or company size.
• Job Experience: Focus on job titles, functions, seniority, or skills.
• Education: Target by schools, degrees, or areas of study.
• Demographics: Filter by age and gender.
• Interests: Reach users based on their professional interests.
• Characteristics: Target by member characteristics such as skills, groups, and interests.
• Matched audiences: Custom segments like third-party segments, lookalike audiences, uploaded lists, and retargeting website visitors.

How can I improve my LinkedIn ad targeting for better lead generation?

Here are tips on improving your LinkedIn ads for lead generation:

1. Make a compelling offer: Make sure your offer is compelling and relevant to your target audience.
2. Target your saved Lead/Account lists: Use Evaboot or third-party scraping tools to export your lead list in CSV from Sales Navigator.
3. Integrate with your CRM: Connect to streamline lead management and follow-up.
4. Provide Multiple Access Points to Information: Ensure your audience can easily find and access your information through multiple channels.
5. Monitor Ad Performance: Regularly review and optimize your ad performance for better results.

Can LinkedIn ads be targeted based on device?

Yes, LinkedIn ads can be targeted by device. You can select specific operating systems or browsers for your target devices.

LinkedIn also allows you to use device-specific creative formats, such as sponsored content, sponsored messaging, or text ads, to reach your B2B audience and generate leads and conversions.

How does LinkedIn advertising work?

LinkedIn Ads work in several steps through the LinkedIn Campaign Manager:

1. Choose a goal: Choose from awareness, consideration, or conversion.
2. Select targeting criteria: Define your target audience based on specific criteria.
3. Select an Ad Format: Choose from sponsored content, news ads, dynamic ads, or text ads.
4. Set an ad budget: Set your budget and bidding strategy.
5. Measure your ad’s success: Track and analyze the performance of your ad campaign.