Lead generation is the essence of every business. The richer the source of your leads, the healthier your business is.
For B2B businesses, there’s no source of business that’s better than LinkedIn.
According to Josh Gallant of foundation inc., LinkedIn now has over 500 million users with at least 260 million of them signing in every day.
LinkedIn is a professional network with senior executives, freelancers, agencies, companies, and almost everyone else who means business.
If you have a B2B domain, you’ll want to take a serious look at LinkedIn.
An infographic by LinkedIn Business Blog reveals that more than 61 million members of LinkedIn members are senior-level influencers.
There are over 40 million decision makers on LinkedIn alone. LinkedIn happens to be the most-used social media platform for Fortune 500 companies (not including several other millions of small businesses and self-employed professionals).
Over 59% of marketers use LinkedIn for lead generation. More than 80% of all B2B marketing leads sourced through social media come from Linkedin. At least 46% of all social media traffic to your website comes from LinkedIn.
If you are familiar with (or at least heard of the popular Facebook Lead Gen Ads), LinkedIn has a similar product called LinkedIn Lead Generation ads.
Did you know that 9 out of 10 customers reduced their cost per lead with LinkedIn Lead generation forms?
Using pre-filled Lead Gen Forms on LinkedIn, companies like IR Prognosis saw a 2X increase in conversion rates and about 44% reduction in cost per lead.
Setup your LinkedIn Lead Gen Ads
Source: Adweek
LinkedIn Lead Generation Ads work just like Facebook Lead Generation Ads. What may seem like a regular ad opens up a form which will be pre-filled with the LinkedIn members’ information such as name, phone number, and an email address.
LinkedIn Lead Gen campaigns can be standalone campaigns. But your lead gen forms are also available with LinkedIn Sponsored InMail and LinkedIn Sponsored Content.
Using LinkedIn’s campaign manager, you can easily set up your LinkedIn Lead Gen Ads. Julbert Abraham of Social Media Examiner explains how it’s done in detail.
Note: All the information that’s pre-filled into your Lead Gen form on LinkedIn is the information of a member (your leads or prospects) as it exists with LinkedIn.
Where will the leads go?
All the leads that you generate can be downloaded as a CSV file. If you run Facebook Lead Gen ads, Facebook now has an expansive list of third-party CRM software and email marketing service providers that you can use to send lead data to.
LinkedIn, however, provides limited options — in terms of third-party CRM software and email marketing systems — for you to choose from. LinkedIn only has options such as Driftrock, Marketo, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 365, and Zapier and a few others.
Now, thankfully, you can use Zapier to connect your lead data to any third-party tool you are using at the moment.
Create an offer and a workflow
Just as it always is with most ad campaigns (across platforms), the success of your LinkedIn Lead Generation campaigns depends on the offer you are making and how it all flows together from the moment someone clicks on your ad.
Source: LinkedIn Business
Make an offer that’s relevant to your audience. Think about your offer much ahead of the campaign. What will appeal to your audience? Would you be giving away a free consultation, a guide, a report, or a whitepaper?
After they click on the ad, what kind of information are you asking for? [Hint: ask exactly for what you need]
Next, how are you going to follow up with your leads? Send them an automated email? Call them up?
Think about your offer and how it’s going to flow even before you get anywhere near LinkedIn’s campaign manager.
Track your campaigns
Not everyone who sees your Lead Gen Ad on LinkedIn will actually sign up.
Interest levels on your ads could go from “Yeah, I saw it” to “I am In. I am so interested”.
Now, LinkedIn knows that your audience could have varying degrees of engagement with your lead generation forms, apart from the actual leads generated.
For instance, you get metrics such as lead form opens, lead form completion rate, cost per lead, total budget spent, and more.
Depending on whether your campaign is an exclusive lead gen campaign or if your lead gen forms are triggered from a LinkedIn sponsored post or sponsored Inmail, you also get access to metrics such as conversion rate, return on ad spend, Cost Per Conversion, total conversion value, etc.
If you have sales funnels, lead generation workflows or email marketing, autoresponders, and any sort of marketing automation set up, you can also use our patent-pending Advanced Analytics to get real-time data on the numbers that mean business.
Did you run LinkedIn lead generation campaigns? Would you like to run direct lead generation campaigns on LinkedIn and target high-value, professional audiences?
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