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How to Retarget Engagement Audiences on LinkedIn
How to Retarget Engagement Audiences on LinkedIn
Beyond retargeting people who visited your website, LinkedIn lets you retarget engagement audiences — people who interacted with your content or ads on LinkedIn itself, like watching your videos, engaging with your ads, opening a Lead Gen Form, or following your page. These people showed interest by engaging, which makes them a warm audience much like website visitors, and LinkedIn builds these audiences automatically from your activity on the platform. The value is that you’re re-reaching people who’ve already shown interest through their engagement, moving them toward the next step rather than starting cold. This guide covers how to retarget engagement audiences on LinkedIn and why they convert well.
Key takeaways
- You can retarget engagement audiences — people who interacted with your content or ads on LinkedIn.
- These include video viewers, ad engagers, Lead Gen Form openers, and page followers.
- Engagement signals interest, so these are warm audiences like website visitors.
- LinkedIn builds these audiences automatically from your activity on the platform.
- Retarget them with next-step messaging to move them forward, rather than starting cold.
What are engagement audiences?
Audiences of people who engaged with your content or ads on LinkedIn, built from that on-platform interaction. Where website retargeting reaches people who visited your site, engagement retargeting reaches people who interacted with you on LinkedIn itself — and there are several types of engagement LinkedIn can build audiences from. People who watched your video ads (often segmentable by how much they watched), people who engaged with your ads (clicked or interacted), people who opened your Lead Gen Form, and people who follow your company page or engaged with your events are all engagement-based audiences.
These matter because engagement is a signal of interest. Someone who watched a meaningful portion of your video, interacted with your ad, or opened your form has shown they’re interested enough to engage, which makes them warmer than a cold audience who did nothing. So engagement audiences are a warm pool built from your LinkedIn activity — people who raised their hand through engagement — that you can retarget to move toward conversion. Understanding that on-platform engagement creates retargetable warm audiences, distinct from website visitors, opens up a valuable set of audiences many advertisers underuse.
Why do engagement audiences convert well?
Because engagement signals interest, making these audiences warm, and warm audiences convert better than cold ones. Just as a website visit indicates interest, engaging with your content or ads on LinkedIn indicates interest — someone who watched your video or interacted with your ad chose to engage, showing more interest than someone who scrolled past. So engagement audiences are warm, and retargeting them picks up from that warmer starting point rather than starting from scratch with people who’ve shown no interest.
This is the same logic that makes website retargeting effective, applied to on-platform engagement: you’re re-reaching people who’ve already demonstrated interest, so they’re more receptive and more likely to convert than cold audiences. Engagement audiences are particularly valuable because they’re generated automatically as a byproduct of your LinkedIn activity — every video view and ad interaction builds this warm pool — so running content and ads on LinkedIn continuously creates retargetable engagement audiences you can convert. Recognizing and using these warm audiences, rather than only retargeting website visitors or focusing on cold prospecting, captures interest you’ve already generated on the platform.
What engagement audiences can you build?
Several types, each capturing a form of interest:
| Engagement audience | Signal |
|---|---|
| Video viewers | Watched your video (often by watch depth) |
| Ad engagers | Clicked or interacted with your ads |
| Lead Gen Form openers | Opened your form (even if they didn’t submit) |
| Page followers / engagers | Follow or engaged with your page |
| Event attendees / engagers | Engaged with your LinkedIn events |
Each of these is a warm audience worth retargeting. Video viewers are often a large warm audience, since video generates many views, and can sometimes be segmented by watch depth (deeper watchers being warmer). Lead Gen Form openers who didn’t submit are a particularly valuable retargeting audience — they were interested enough to open the form but didn’t complete it, so re-reaching them can recover that near-conversion. Ad engagers and page followers similarly showed interest through their engagement. Building these audiences from your LinkedIn activity gives you multiple warm pools to retarget, each capturing people who engaged in a specific way.
The engagement-retargeting framework
Retarget engagement audiences deliberately:
- Build engagement audiences — from video views, ad engagement, form opens, and page follows.
- Recognize they’re warm — engagement signals interest, like a website visit.
- Retarget with next-step messaging — move them forward from the interest they showed.
- Prioritize high-signal audiences — deeper video watchers and form openers who didn’t submit are especially warm.
- Use them alongside website retargeting — engagement audiences complement website visitors as warm pools.
How do engagement audiences fit with website retargeting?
They complement it, giving you a fuller set of warm audiences to retarget. Website retargeting reaches people who visited your site; engagement retargeting reaches people who engaged with you on LinkedIn — and these are overlapping-but-distinct warm audiences, since someone might engage with your LinkedIn content without visiting your site, or visit your site without engaging on LinkedIn. Together, they give you a more complete picture of the warm audiences you’ve generated: your site visitors and your on-platform engagers, both showing interest through different actions. Using both means you’re capturing and retargeting the interest people showed wherever they showed it, rather than only one channel of warm audience. This connects to the broader value of retargeting warm audiences: warm audiences convert far better than cold, so building as complete a set of warm audiences as possible — website visitors plus the various engagement audiences — and retargeting them with appropriate next-step messaging captures more of the interest you’ve generated. Engagement audiences are especially worth using because they’re created automatically from your LinkedIn activity, so they’re a warm pool available at no extra effort beyond running the content and ads that generate them. Advertisers who use both website and engagement retargeting extract more value from their warm audiences than those who retarget only website visitors, since they’re re-reaching everyone who showed interest, on the site or on the platform, rather than leaving the on-platform engagers uncaptured.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. How do you retarget engagement audiences on LinkedIn?
Build audiences from people who engaged with your content or ads on LinkedIn — video viewers, ad engagers, Lead Gen Form openers, and page followers — and retarget them with next-step messaging to move them forward. These are warm audiences, since engagement signals interest, built automatically from your LinkedIn activity, so retargeting them captures interest you’ve already generated on the platform.
Q2. What are engagement audiences on LinkedIn?
Audiences of people who interacted with your content or ads on LinkedIn itself — distinct from website visitors. They include people who watched your videos, engaged with your ads, opened your Lead Gen Form, or follow your page. LinkedIn builds these from on-platform engagement, giving you warm audiences of people who showed interest by engaging, which you can retarget toward conversion.
Q3. Why do engagement audiences convert well?
Because engagement signals interest, making them warm, and warm audiences convert better than cold ones. Someone who watched your video or interacted with your ad chose to engage, showing more interest than someone who scrolled past. Retargeting them picks up from that warmer starting point rather than starting cold, the same logic that makes website retargeting effective, applied to on-platform engagement.
Q4. What engagement audiences can you build on LinkedIn?
Video viewers (often segmentable by watch depth), ad engagers who clicked or interacted, Lead Gen Form openers (even if they didn’t submit), page followers and engagers, and event engagers. Each captures a form of interest, giving you multiple warm pools to retarget. These are built from your LinkedIn activity, so running content and ads continuously generates these warm audiences automatically.
Q5. Are video viewers a good retargeting audience?
Yes — video viewers are often a large warm audience, since video generates many views, and can sometimes be segmented by watch depth, with deeper watchers being warmer. Someone who watched a meaningful portion of your video showed interest, making them worth retargeting toward the next step. Video both builds this warm audience and lets you re-reach the people it engaged.
Q6. Should you retarget people who opened a form but didn’t submit?
Yes — Lead Gen Form openers who didn’t submit are a particularly valuable retargeting audience. They were interested enough to open the form but didn’t complete it, so they were close to converting. Re-reaching them can recover that near-conversion, capturing people who showed strong interest but didn’t finish. It’s a high-signal warm audience worth a focused retargeting effort.
Q7. How do engagement audiences differ from website retargeting?
Website retargeting reaches people who visited your site; engagement retargeting reaches people who engaged with you on LinkedIn. They’re overlapping-but-distinct warm audiences — someone might engage on LinkedIn without visiting your site, or vice versa. Together they give a fuller picture of the interest you’ve generated, so using both captures warm audiences wherever they showed interest rather than only one channel.
Q8. Are engagement audiences built automatically?
Yes — LinkedIn builds engagement audiences from your activity on the platform, so every video view, ad interaction, and form open contributes to these warm pools automatically. This means running content and ads on LinkedIn continuously generates retargetable engagement audiences at no extra effort beyond the activity itself, making them a warm pool readily available to retarget toward conversion.
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