LinkedIn Targeting: All You Need to Know About LinkedIn Audience Targeting for ABM

LinkedIn targeting is either the foundation of a successful ABM campaign or the reason it fails.

There is no middle ground here. 

I mean, you can have the best creative, the most compelling offers, and a generous budget, but if your targeting is wrong, none of it matters.

Everyone underestimates [targeting]. But you mess up targeting, and you mess up your whole campaign, and you waste the budget. – Maximillian Herczeg, former LinkedIn employee and Founder of Kamrat

This guide covers every LinkedIn targeting option available for ABM, including what each one does, when to use it, when to avoid it, and how to combine them into campaigns that reach the right people at the right companies.

LinkedIn Targeting for ABM: Quick Summary

Short on time?

Here’s a quick overview:

• LinkedIn targeting can make or break an ABM campaign, even if your creative and budget are strong.
• For ABM, list-based targeting (matched audiences) should be your primary approach, while attribute-based targeting should be used as a secondary layer.
• Company list targeting is the foundation of LinkedIn ABM because it lets you target employees at specific accounts from your TAL.
• Contact list targeting is useful for narrower use cases like champions, event attendees, and buying committee members at late-stage accounts, but usually has lower match rates than company lists.
• The most reliable member filters for ABM are job function + seniority. These are usually better than job title targeting, which can be too broad and messy.
• The strongest LinkedIn ABM targeting stack is usually: company list + location + job function + seniority.
• Different funnel stages need different targeting setups: broad company-list targeting for cold awareness, retargeting plus engaged-account filters for warm campaigns, and contact-list precision for hot pipeline accounts.
• Common LinkedIn targeting mistakes include leaving audience expansion on, leaving LAN on, using campaign group budget optimization, starting with only cold accounts, and over-segmenting audiences.
• Narrower ABM audiences usually cost more, but they often convert better, so targeting should optimize for pipeline, not just CPL.
• ZenABM helps make LinkedIn targeting more actionable by showing which companies engage, which job titles respond, how accounts move through ABM stages, and whether your targeting is actually reaching the right parts of your TAL.

The Two Approaches to LinkedIn Targeting for ABM

Before diving into individual targeting options, it helps to understand the two fundamental approaches to LinkedIn targeting for ABM:

1. Attribute-Based Targeting

You define your audience using LinkedIn’s built-in filters, like company size, industry, job function, seniority, etc.

LinkedIn finds people who match those criteria.

This is what most advertisers use by default.

2. List-Based Targeting (Matched Audiences)

You upload a list of specific companies or contacts to LinkedIn.

LinkedIn matches them against its member database and creates a targetable audience.

This is the foundation of ABM on LinkedIn.

And which approach should you use for ABM?

For account-based marketing, list-based targeting should always be your primary approach.

Attribute-based targeting is secondary.

You use it to layer filters on top of your account list (for example, targeting only directors and VPs at companies on your list).

Using attribute-based targeting alone for ABM is one of the most common mistakes.

But, again, having no list at all and relying purely on attributes is even worse for ABM.

List-Based Targeting: The ABM Foundation

Let’s discuss the types of list-based targeting in detail now:

Company List Targeting

Company list targeting (also called account targeting) is the single most important targeting capability for ABM on LinkedIn.

It lets you upload a CSV of company names and domains.

LinkedIn matches them against its database and creates an audience of employees at those companies.

Now, match rates typically range from 60-90% depending on list quality.

• Companies with active LinkedIn pages match at higher rates.
• Smaller companies, companies with common names, or companies without LinkedIn pages will have lower match rates.

So, the quality of your company list determines the quality of your entire ABM program.

And that’s not just because of the low match rates, but also due to the fact that LinkedIn’s delivery optimization will start favoring the wrong types of companies, serving more impressions to bad-fit accounts because the algorithm sees them engaging (or simply being cheaper to reach).

So, your list quality is not a “nice to have.”

It directly affects campaign performance.

For a detailed walkthrough of how to build your target account list, read our guide on running ABM on LinkedIn.

This is also where a platform like ZenABM becomes useful in practice, because company-level LinkedIn ad engagement and CRM sync make it easier to see whether the accounts on your list are actually behaving like good targets after launch, instead of treating the TAL like a static spreadsheet that never gets refined.

Contact List Targeting

Contact list targeting lets you upload a list of email addresses.

LinkedIn matches them to member profiles and creates a targetable audience of specific individuals.

Now, match rates for contact lists are typically 30-70%, depending on whether people use their work or personal email on LinkedIn.

And as you might have noticed, the typical match rate I mentioned for contact list targeting is less than what I just mentioned for company list targeting.

Well, that’s a reality. 

And that’s the very reason why the company list vs. contact list debate is one of the most common questions in ABM.

Solution?

Use company lists as the default for most ABM campaigns and reserve contact lists for specific use cases:

• Targeting known champions at key accounts
• Retargeting people who attended an event
• Reaching out to specific buying committee members at late-stage accounts.

That transition from broad company targeting to narrower contact targeting is much easier when your targeting logic is tied to actual account movement.

ZenABM’s ABM stages and account scoring help clarify when an account has earned that shift, so you are not prematurely narrowing campaigns just because a few people clicked an ad once.

Attribute-Based Targeting: The Filters

LinkedIn’s attribute-based targeting options fall into three categories: location, company attributes, and member attributes.

Location Targeting (Required)

Location is the only mandatory targeting field on LinkedIn.

You can target by continent, country, state, region, or metro area.

LinkedIn determines location from member profiles (permanent location) or IP address (recent or temporary location).

For ABM, be intentional about location.

If your sales team only covers North America, do not target globally just because some of your target accounts have offices worldwide.

Target the regions where you can actually close deals.

Company Attributes

For ABM, company attributes, and especially the company name, are useful for quick campaigns when you do not have time to build a full matched audience list.

But it has a significant limitation: you can only select about 100 companies per campaign through the dropdown.

For larger target account lists, you need to use the company list upload (matched audiences) approach.

Pro Tip: For checking company connections count at scale, Clay can help:

• Start with a LinkedIn URL, or another valid person identifier like email.
• Run Enrich Person from profile or a provider tied to the Contact LinkedIn Connection Count datapoint.
• Pull the Contact LinkedIn Connection Count field into your table.

Member Attributes (Job Experience)

Now this is where you narrow down who within your target companies sees your ads.

• Job function: Broad categories like Marketing, Sales, Engineering, Finance, IT. This is one of the most reliable targeting options because LinkedIn standardizes it, rather than relying on self-reported titles. I use job function as my primary persona filter in almost every ABM campaign.
• Job seniority: Entry, Senior, Manager, Director, VP, CXO, Owner, and Partner. LinkedIn infers seniority from titles. Combined with job function, this is the most reliable way to reach decision-makers within your target accounts.
• Job title: Target specific titles. This sounds precise, but is actually problematic. LinkedIn matches titles broadly – targeting “VP of Marketing” may include “VP of Product Marketing,” “VP of Brand Marketing,” “VP of Growth Marketing,” and many others. Use job function + seniority instead for more reliable results.
• Years of experience: Filter by career length. Occasionally useful as a proxy for seniority, but job seniority targeting is usually more direct.

Member Attributes (Interests and Traits)

There are other types of member attributes that factor in your audience’s interests and traits:

• Member skills: Based on skills listed on profiles. Varies wildly in accuracy since members self-report. Occasionally useful to add specificity, but not reliable enough to be a primary filter.
• Member groups: Target members of specific LinkedIn groups. Can reach niche audiences, but group membership data can be outdated.
• Member interests: LinkedIn’s inferred interests based on content engagement. Too broad and noisy for ABM, so do not rely on this.

Member Attributes (Education and Demographics)

Finally, LinkedIn also provides member attributes to help you narrow down the audience based on educational qualifications and other demographic factors: 

• Degrees, fields of study, schools: Niche use cases only. Targeting MBAs or specific university alumni can work for certain verticals, but it is rarely useful for standard ABM campaigns.
• Age and gender: Available in some regions. Rarely relevant for B2B ABM targeting.

How to Combine LinkedIn Targeting Options for ABM

Understanding the AND/OR logic is essential for building effective audiences.

Here is how LinkedIn applies it:

• Within a category (selecting multiple job functions, for example): LinkedIn uses OR logic. Selecting “Marketing” and “Sales” reaches people in either function.
• Across categories (job function + seniority + company list): LinkedIn uses AND logic. The person must match all criteria simultaneously.

For ABM, the recommended targeting stack is:

1. Company list (matched audience): Your target account list. This is the foundation.
2. Location: Required field. Set to regions where your sales team operates.
3. Job function: Select the functions relevant to your buying committee (e.g., Marketing OR Sales OR IT).
4. Seniority: Select the levels that match your personas (e.g., Director OR VP OR CXO).

This combination targets directors, VPs, and CXOs in marketing, sales, or IT at companies on your target list, in your target geography.

It is specific enough to reach decision-makers but broad enough for LinkedIn to deliver consistent impressions.

The critical mistake is over-segmenting.

Adding too many filters shrinks your audience below LinkedIn’s minimum of 300 or makes it so narrow that campaigns cannot deliver enough impressions.

Gabriel Ehrlich offers a useful principle:

I believe that you should be spending in direct relationship to your TAM. – Gabriel Ehrlich

If your total addressable market is small, your targeting should reflect that, but you still need enough audience to run effective campaigns.

If you want to validate whether that neat-looking targeting stack is actually reaching the right people inside the right accounts, ZenABM helps close that loop.

Company-level engagement data, job title analytics, and first-party qualitative intent can show whether your filters are surfacing the personas you wanted, or whether LinkedIn is finding the cheapest pockets of attention inside your TAL instead.

LinkedIn Targeting for Different ABM Campaign Stages

Different stages of your ABM funnel require different targeting approaches.

Here is how you can structure them:

Cold Campaigns (Awareness)

Targeting: Company list (cold accounts) + Job function + Seniority + Location.

Keep it relatively broad within your TAL.

The goal is awareness across the buying committee, so include multiple functions.

Try to achieve 30-50% penetration per month.

Warm Campaigns (Engagement)

Targeting: Company list (engaged accounts) + Website retargeting + Job function + Seniority.

You can narrow functions here to focus on decision-makers.

These accounts know you, so deepen engagement with the right people:

For warm audiences, here, monthly penetration must be 70 to 90% audience penetration per month.

Hot Campaigns (Conversion)

Targeting: Contact list (known contacts at pipeline accounts) + Company list.

At this stage, you target specific people at specific accounts. Use contact lists layered with company lists for maximum precision.

Pipeline Reactivation

Targeting: Closed-lost or churned company list + Job function + Seniority.

This is one of the highest-value targeting strategies in ABM, as it’s about trying to capture existing demand rather than generating new demand. 

5 LinkedIn Targeting Mistakes That Kill ABM Campaigns

The most common LinkedIn targeting mistakes you must avoid:

1. Leaving LinkedIn Audience Expansion

LinkedIn’s Audience Expansion shows your ads to a “lookalike” audience that LinkedIn’s algorithm predicts will be similar to your uploaded list.

Sounds useful, but LinkedIn’s classification of industries, job titles, and company sizes is consistently less accurate than your manually curated target account list.

When Audience Expansion is on, your campaign to “VP-level product managers at 500 enterprise software companies you specifically chose” becomes a campaign to that list plus however many additional companies LinkedIn decides are similar.

You lose control of who sees your ads and your spend distribution, and end paying full price for a diluted audience.

I mean, you didn’t spend hours in tools like Clay/Apollo, only to let LinkedIn tamper with the TAL, right?

So, turn it off every time.

2. Leaving LinkedIn Audience Network (LAN) On

LinkedIn’s Audience Network places your ads on third-party websites and connected TV platforms (Hulu, Netflix, and similar) that are part of LinkedIn’s advertising network.

Now, people watching these platforms may not be in a professional mindset.

I mean, will they click your ad to book a demo while watching a show?

The performance data for LAN placements is consistently below feed performance.

Most practitioners on Reddit strongly discourage turning it on, even for awareness-oriented campaigns. 

Also, this feature makes you pay LinkedIn CPMs for placements that deliver a fraction of the value of LinkedIn feed placements.

So, turn LAN off in the Placements section of every campaign.

“Your reps will be really pushing you to use it… they said to me last week, ‘how about using your ads on connected TV while people are watching Hulu or Netflix.’ I’m not entirely sure that people watching Hulu or Netflix will be particularly interested in checking out product analytics.” — Emilia Korczynska

3. Choosing Budget Optimization at Campaign Group Level

When Budget Optimization at the campaign group level is enabled, LinkedIn allocates your campaign group budget automatically across the campaigns within it, concentrating spend on whichever campaign starts performing best early on.

This, too, sounds efficient but creates a significant problem: your video ad or TLA may generate high engagement in the first week (engagement rate looks good, LinkedIn over-allocates to it), and your single-image ads might get almost no budget to generate the reach data you need.

So, turn off budget optimisation at the campaign group level and set individual budgets for each campaign within the group.

4. Starting with a Cold List Only

Include warm accounts in your targeting from day one (existing pipeline, closed-lost deals, churned customers, and companies that have visited your website).

These will produce results faster and prove the ROI of your ABM program while cold accounts warm up.

5. Over-Segmenting Audiences

Adding too many targeting layers creates audiences that are too small to deliver.

If your target account list has 500 companies and you filter for VP-level marketers in North America, you might end up with 400 people, which is barely above LinkedIn’s minimum.

Keep your targeting focused but broad enough to sustain campaign delivery.

For more detailed guidance on campaign structure, see my guide on estimating how much budget you need and the LinkedIn ABM Benchmarks Report 2026..

Budget Impact of LinkedIn Targeting Choices

Your targeting directly affects your costs.

Here is what our benchmarks show:

For ABM, the narrow audience cost premium is almost always worth it.

A $150 lead that converts at 3% is more valuable than a $60 lead that converts at 0.5%.

Your targeting choices should optimize for pipeline, not for cost per lead.

Also note that 80% of LinkedIn traffic is mobile.

This affects your creative strategy more than your targeting, but it is worth keeping in mind that your ads and landing pages need to work on mobile because that is where most of your target audience will see them.

LinkedIn Targeting for ABM: Final Thoughts

LinkedIn targeting is not just a campaign setup step.

In ABM, it is the mechanism that determines whether your budget reaches the right accounts and the right buying committee members, or gets diluted across people who were never a fit in the first place.

The winning approach is usually straightforward: start with a strong company list, layer in only the filters that genuinely improve relevance, and avoid the settings that quietly take control away from you.

Good ABM targeting is not about making the audience as narrow as possible. It is about making it precise enough to matter and broad enough to deliver.

That is also why feedback loops matter so much.

A platform like ZenABM helps you see which target accounts are actually engaging, which job titles are responding, and whether your targeting strategy is pushing the right companies toward pipeline, rather than just producing impressions and clicks.

Try ZenABM for free (37-day free trial) or book a demo now to know more!

FAQs About LinkedIn Targeting for ABM

Some common questions about LinkedIn targeting for ABM and their answers:

What is the minimum audience size for LinkedIn ABM campaigns?

LinkedIn requires a minimum of 300 matched members per campaign. For ABM, I recommend targeting at least 1,000 members to give LinkedIn enough data to optimize delivery. If your audience is below 300 after applying all targeting filters, broaden your job function or seniority criteria, or combine multiple account segments into one campaign.

Should I use company lists or contact lists for ABM?

Start with company lists as your default. Company lists give you a broader reach within target accounts and do not require you to identify specific individuals upfront. Use contact lists for late-stage campaigns where you know exactly who you need to reach – specific buying committee members at pipeline accounts. 

How do I know if my LinkedIn targeting is too narrow?

If your campaign is struggling to spend its daily budget, your audience is likely too narrow. Check the audience size forecast in Campaign Manager before launching. If it shows fewer than 1,000 members, consider broadening your targeting. Also, monitor audience penetration. If you are reaching 90%+ of your audience within the first week, the audience is too small for sustained campaigns.

Can I target the same accounts in multiple campaigns simultaneously?

Yes. Running multiple campaigns to the same account list with different messaging and creative is standard practice in ABM. You might run an awareness campaign with thought leader ads, an engagement campaign with case study content, and a conversion campaign with demo CTAs, all targeting the same accounts but with different creatives and objectives.

Why does LinkedIn recommend audience expansion, and should I use it for ABM?

LinkedIn recommends audience expansion because it increases reach and helps LinkedIn spend your budget more efficiently, but that’s LinkedIn’s perspective. For ABM, it is actually counterproductive because it adds people outside your target account list to your audience. Turn it off for every ABM campaign.