LinkedIn recently announced they were launching a new ad type, Lead Gen Forms, allowing advertisers to directly collect lead information for Sponsored Content campaigns. Similar to Facebook lead ads, LinkedIn’s lead gen forms will automatically populate a user’s profile information when they decide to download a piece of content. This is perfect for users who are in a rush and don’t want to fill out a form.
LinkedIn has stated that 80% of member engagement with Sponsored Content campaigns actually happens on smartphones, so generating leads with a form that is automatically populated, is ideal for advertisers to improve conversion rates!
I run digital lead gen campaigns targeted at B2B audiences and have recently been testing LinkedIn’s lead gen forms in my Sponsored Content campaigns. I wanted to share what I think is working so far and what isn’t working – at least not yet.
What’s Working
We have all heard that “content is king.” And for LinkedIn ads it truly is. I have been testing LinkedIn lead gen forms for a few weeks now and have received very efficient leads within our ideal customer profile downloading our content. The audience I am bidding on is very specific to the piece of content I am sponsoring, and I am not being cheap with my bids. My main tip for making LinkedIn lead gen forms is to build A LOT of different campaigns where you are sponsoring very specific content to a very specific audience.
With a cost-per-click (CPC) pricing model, costs can reach upwards of $10 per click. I highly recommend not adding what I consider “fluff” to your audience target just to reach LinkedIn’s recommended audience size of 300,000+ members.
My recommendation is to limit your audience size, based on personal experience. I increased the size of one of my audience profiles to ensure I hit the 300,000 member mark and I blew through my budget before 9am. Remember that LinkedIn doesn’t have budget pacing or time of day bid adjustments, so make sure the audience you’re willing to spend money on is, in fact, your target audience.
Another tip is to make sure you add URL parameters to the “Thank You” part of the lead gen form, where the user has the option to visit your website. Keep in mind the user does not have to take that option (which I address in the “Not Working – Yet” section below), but if they do this will ensure you capture attribution as well as any incremental conversions, such as phone calls, in your analytics tool.
What’s Not Working – Yet
The integrations. Specifically in relation to uploading lead management and contacts directly into my marketing automation system. Granted we use Marketo, and LinkedIn has not yet built an integration with Marketo. But every single morning I am manually entering individual leads into Marketo so it syncs within my CRM tool, where I can then manage sales activity and campaign membership. This solution is not sustainable long term, especially as I receive a decent volume of leads (that’s the silver lining to this manual process). But Marketo is on LinkedIn’s short list of integrations slated to become available, so I am holding out for now and will continue to scale and run lead gen ads while manually uploading leads.
The retargeting. Users never need to hit your site to receive the content download, especially if you send the user a .pdf download, so standard site retargeting may not be available. However, depending on the field data you decide to collect, you can do some first party audience targeting and retargeting with phone numbers and email addresses. This will give marketers a chance to push additional content and ads toward these users through your display vendor or other platforms, such as Facebook and Google Display Network, where you can build unique audiences from your first party data.
Regardless of the downfalls, I highly recommend testing out LinkedIn lead gen forms, especially if you have great content available to promote. You not only get to be specific with your audiences, but it’s also a great way to capture leads on mobile devices.
Source: B2C
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