Play: Build Brand Awareness with Priority Accounts Before an Opportunity

Last updated: September 15, 2026

For priority accounts that don't yet have an active opportunity, use Vector to build a LinkedIn audience and serve educational, brand-awareness content.

The goal is simple: introduce your brand and point of view before buyers enter an active sales cycle.

Why This Play Works

Not every account is ready for a sales conversation.

Awareness campaigns give relevant buyers a chance to become familiar with your:

  • Brand

  • Point of view

  • Problem framing

  • Product category

Then, as additional engagement appears, Vector can help you understand how activity across the account is changing.

Prerequisites

Before getting started, you'll need:

  • Tracked accounts identified in Vector

  • LinkedIn connected to Vector

  • Contacts or personas you want to reach

  • Awareness-focused creative

  • A consistent UTM structure for campaign reporting

Good awareness assets include:

  • Educational articles

  • Industry research

  • Short videos

  • Guides and explainers

  • Thought-leadership content

For this stage, keep the content useful and relatively low-friction rather than immediately pushing for a demo.

1. Build Your Audience in Vector

Start by identifying the accounts you want to include. Use the Data source of "Integration contact & lead lists and reports" if the contact list is stemming from your CRM. Use "CSV contact list" if it's a CSV upload.

A common approach is to focus on:

  • Priority accounts you're actively tracking

  • Accounts without an open opportunity

  • Relevant contacts that match your ICP or buying personas

Then create a Segment containing the contacts you want to reach.

Where helpful, use Segment filters such as:

  • Tracked Account

  • Account Stage

  • ICP criteria

  • Job title or seniority

  • Industry

  • Geography

💡 Tip: Keep the audience broad enough to reach multiple relevant people within an account rather than targeting only one potential buyer.

2. Sync the Segment to LinkedIn

Within your Segment, add LinkedIn audience action.

Once the audience has synced, select it in LinkedIn Campaign Manager and use it for your awareness campaign.

Allow enough time for LinkedIn to process and populate the matched audience before launching.

3. Run Awareness-Focused Creative

At this stage, focus on helping buyers understand the problem and your perspective on it.

Examples include:

  • Problem framing: “3 hidden costs of manual workflows”

  • Industry insights: Research, benchmarks, or trends

  • Educational content: Guides or explainers

  • Thought leadership: A strong point of view on a problem your buyers care about

Avoid making every ad a direct demo request. The goal is familiarity and engagement first.

Use consistent UTMs so campaign traffic can be measured in Vector.

4. Measure Campaign Engagement

Use Campaign Reporting to understand how the campaign itself is performing.

You can review metrics such as:

  • Impressions

  • Clicks

  • Identified visitors

  • ICP visitors

  • Cost

  • Cost per ICP visit

Learn more about Campaign Reporting →

This helps answer:

Are the right people engaging with this campaign?

5. Watch for Account-Level Movement

Campaign engagement is only one piece of the picture.

For accounts you're tracking, use Account Journeys to understand the broader activity Vector is seeing across the account.

That may include website, advertising, marketing, research, CRM, and other enabled signals.

Use this alongside Account Stage to identify when an account begins showing stronger buying activity.

Learn more about Account Journeys →

What to Look For

You don't need a single arbitrary engagement score to determine when an account is ready.

Instead, look for combinations of meaningful activity, such as:

  • Multiple people from the account engaging

  • Repeat website visits

  • Visits to higher-intent pages

  • Research activity

  • Ad engagement

  • Movement in Account Stage

The stronger the combination of signals, the more context your team has for deciding whether to increase advertising, introduce sales outreach, or move the account into a different play.

Creative Checklist

For an awareness campaign:

  • Ads: Clear, visual, and focused on one idea

  • Content: Educational and useful

  • Landing pages: Closely aligned with the ad

  • CTA: Low-friction and appropriate for an early-stage audience

  • UTMs: Consistent so campaign traffic can be identified

Troubleshooting

The LinkedIn audience is too small

Consider expanding beyond a narrow set of job titles and reaching additional relevant people within your priority accounts.

Engagement is low

Test different messages, formats, and problem statements. Early-stage buyers may respond better to useful insights than product-heavy creative.

People are clicking but not continuing to engage

Make sure the landing-page experience matches the promise of the ad and gives the visitor a logical next step.

Campaign Reporting answers:

How did this campaign perform?

Quick Setup Summary

  1. Identify priority accounts without an active opportunity

  2. Build a Segment of relevant contacts

  3. Sync the audience to LinkedIn

  4. Run educational awareness ads

  5. Measure campaign performance in Campaign Reporting

  6. Watch Account Journeys and Account Stage for broader buying activity