Validating & Scaling Primer-Powered Campaigns (Inclusion Audiences)
For validating Primer-Powered inclusion campaigns
Step 1 — Validate Reach & Audience Integrity
Goal: Prove the audience is matching your ICP and can actually deliver reach across channels.
Check match rates & usable sizes (per destination). In each platform (Meta, LinkedIn, Google Demand Gen/YouTube, Reddit), confirm that the audience is eligible and large enough to serve. In Primer, use View Runs on each audience to confirm synced/matched counts.
Preview the audience in Primer. Sanity-check that company, seniority, department, and geo line up with your ICP (and that obvious non-fit companies are minimal).
Validate against LinkedIn (neutral composition check). Sync the same audience to LinkedIn and open Campaign Manager → View Insights to review composition.
Important: LinkedIn often buckets general C-suite titles (e.g., Vice President, Board Member, Founder, Executive without a function) into Business Development. If your audience includes these titles, expect to see an inflated “Business Development” function in Insights—this is a categorization artifact, not a flaw in your list.
Confirm ICP engagement via reverse-IP. Use 6sense/Demandbase/Warmly filtered by relevant UTMs to see which accounts are engaging with ads/content driven by your Primer audiences. You’re looking for the right companies showing up—early green light.
Pass/Fail heuristic:
Pass = healthy match/eligibility across 2+ channels, LI insights align with ICP (allowing for the BD bucket caveat), and reverse-IP shows the right logos.
If fail, refine your audience (negative filters, industry/tech filters, title normalization) and re-sync.
Pass/Fail heuristic:
Pass = healthy match/eligibility across 2+ channels, LI insights align with ICP (allowing for the BD bucket caveat), and reverse-IP shows the right logos.
If fail, refine your audience (negative filters, industry/tech filters, title normalization) and re-sync.
Step 2 — Build Awareness & Retargeting Pools (Cross-Channel)
Goal: Create efficient, scalable retargeting layers before pushing for conversion.
Run education/awareness to the inclusion audience:
YouTube/Demand Gen: View-through friendly formats to warm up accounts; add % video viewed segments to retargeting.
Meta: Video views, ThruPlays, and Landing Page Views as signals (don’t rely solely on website visits).
LinkedIn: Thought-leadership units and Document Ads to your ICP; add “engaged with ad” segments.
Reddit: Interest + custom list inclusion to reach technical personas where relevant; build site/video engagement pools.
KPI for this phase: growth of qualified retargeting segments. Build retargeting segments from video viewers, ad engagers, LP viewers as well as from website visitors.
Step 3 — Drive Qualified Leads (Parallel Paths)
Goal: Convert warmed audiences while respecting channel realities.
Instant/Native Lead Forms (Meta/LI/YouTube Lead Form extensions): Expect more personal emails by default on Meta and Youtube. Counter with a follow-up workflow that requests work email (or enriches and routes intelligently).
On-site forms (preferred for work email capture): Run in parallel. Ensure mobile-first page speed and UX (most social ad traffic is mobile; many B2B buyers submit on desktop later).
Mind the mobile→desktop gap: Touch-based attribution will under-credit channels like Meta/YouTube when the impression → research → later desktop form path is common. Watch for correlated lifts in direct/organic desktop traffic and brand search when last-click looks light.
Step 4 — Evolve Measurement to True Incrementality
Goal: Isolate the causal impact of advertising from everything else (SEO, email, outbound, events, SDR).
Install the Primer Pixel everywhere it should be. This is non-negotiable. Proper pixel coverage lets you unify event streams, dedupe, and create consistent retargeting/holdout logic across channels.
Use Primer's built-in Holdout Groups to measure lift. Primer’s holdouts let you keep a statistically similar slice of your audience unexposed to ads. Compare exposed vs. holdout on downstream outcomes (site visits, high-intent pages, demo starts, MQLs, pipeline).
Why it matters: Holdouts isolate advertising’s impact independent of brand, content, outbound, PR, or seasonal effects. This is how you prove the ads moved the needle—not just touched it.
Cadence & decisions: Review weekly for QA and pacing; run formal lift reads at day 30 and day 60. Double down on audiences/channels with positive, material lift; pause neutral/negative arms; expand winners with adjacent lookalikes/segments.
Practical Channel Notes
Meta: Mobile-heavy exposure; prioritize video+LP view retargeting; expect personal emails on Instant Forms; ensure use of mobile optimized website forms to get last click conversions.
LinkedIn: Best for composition validation and high-fit reach; CPMs higher—use for thought leadership and CRM retargeting or if see bad titles slipping in via LinkedIn's native audiences.
YouTube/Demand Gen: Cost-efficient reach and powerful video engagement pools; stitch to site via UTMs and pixel; strong for air-cover + assisted conversions.
Reddit: Great for technical sub-communities; test against relevant subreddits/interest clusters; when ready use Primer audiences to expand reach and target your ICP across any subreddit.
QA & Experiment Hygiene (Do This Every Time)
Consistent UTMs per arm for reverse-IP and analytics.
Creative consistency: Keep creative consistent across any A/B testing to avoid confounds.
In Meta Experiments set up A/B tests on ad sets (avoids resetting learning; steer clear of Advantage+ audience expansion)
In Google Experiments use cookie/user-level splits always (avoid search-query splits for incrementality reads).
What “Good” Looks Like by Phase
Validation: Eligible audience across platforms; LI insights match ICP (with BD caveat); reverse-IP shows right logos.
Awareness: Growing retargeting pools; lift in branded/direct traffic from ICP geos/verticals.
Conversion: Lead/MQL CPL competitive with (or beating) LinkedIn benchmarks on warmed cohorts; rising work-email capture rate.
Incrementality: Stat-sig positive lift on site visits, high-intent actions, and pipeline from exposed vs. holdout.
Troubleshooting Fast
Low match / small eligible size: Normalize titles; add firmographic anchors (industry/size/tech); remove edge geos; re-sync.
Right reach, wrong composition in LI Insights: Audit titles—strip generic C-suite where irrelevant; add department/seniority filters; re-sync.
Thin retargeting pools: Shift spend to video/view-through formats; increase frequency caps; broaden within ICP (adjacent industries/seniority).
Leads but low quality: Tighten inclusion (company filters, tech filters); add Anti-ICP exclusions; gate assets with qualifying fields.
No measurable lift: Verify pixel coverage, UTMs, and holdout integrity; extend duration; increase spend to hit MDE (minimum detectable effect).
TL;DR
Prove audience integrity everywhere (Primer previews → LI Insights → reverse-IP).
Warm them up cross-channel and build retargeting pools (not just website visits).
Convert with native + onsite in parallel, respecting mobile→desktop behavior.
Install the pixel and run holdouts to isolate causal impact from the rest of your GTM.
Reallocate to winners based on incremental lift, not touch-based vanity.
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