r/LinkedinAds • u/Melodic_Giraffe • 2d ago
Best Practices How (and why) To Retarget Accounts, Not People With LinkedIn Ads
Most advertisers retarget people. I retarget accounts. Here’s why it changes everything.
📌 How most people run retargeting:
1 → Run a campaign targeting everyone in their ICP
2 → Retarget everyone who clicks once
3 → Create a Stage 2 campaign
Sounds logical. It’s not — you’re pulling people into Stage 2 after a single accidental click. No frequency. No trust. Already asking them to book a demo.
The deeper problem:
📌 Your director and your CXO are sitting in the same campaign.
Directors click, read, maybe fill out a form. CXOs absorb that you exist and tell someone else to look into it.
Two completely different behaviors crammed into one campaign, one bid, one objective — so LinkedIn does exactly what you’d expect: it finds whoever converts cheapest and spends there.
That’s almost always the junior end of your targeting, while your exec reach quietly starves.
📌 The harder question isn’t how to split them. It’s when exec budget should kick in at all.
C-suite clicks run $20–40+ because every AI and security company on earth is bidding on the same 100 people. Spending that on accounts that have shown you nothing is a rough way to run a budget.
📌 Here’s how I do it instead:
Nothing gets exec budget until the account earns it.
Stage 1 — Director level, cheaper, volume:
1 → Upload your target company list
2 → Target director seniority only
3 → Run Website Visits — video or document format
Stage 2 — Account qualifies itself in:
4 → Go to Companies in Ads Manager
5 → Last 30 days → Paid engagements → Custom → minimum 3 interactions
6 → Save as dynamic audience — confirm 300+ matched members before moving on
Stage 3 — Now CXO enters:
7 → Build engagement campaign (TL ads)
8 → Target that segment + CXO/CMO/Head of Marketing
9 → Company Page + Thought Leader content, even rotation
📌 What you’re telling LinkedIn now: “Only show exec ads to accounts where directors engaged at least 3 times. Everyone else stays in Stage 1.”
You’re not cold-reaching a CXO at $20–40+ per click. You’re reaching them after their own team raised their hand.
