LinkedIn is widely regarded as a professional networking site as opposed to more “social” media platforms like Facebook or Twitter. LinkedIn was initially created as a corporate recruitment platform, but now it boasts many features similar to traditional social media sites such as status updates, blogging capabilities, private messages and, of course, advertising opportunities.

Reasons to Advertise on LinkedIn

LinkedIn has users across the globe ranging from small business owners and employees to CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Many of these users hold high-ranking, influential positions within their company. According to LinkedIn, 80% of its users drive business decisions within the company, 39% of members are senior-level executives or higher, and 28% of members manage company budgets.

So, LinkedIn offers access to a coveted demographic, and although it may well be a less “social” platform, it has its unique advertising options which could be just what your business is looking for – we’re talking Lead Generation Campaigns. 

What are LinkedIn Lead Gen Campaigns?

Lead Gen Forms add a call-to-action to your sponsored content ads, asking users to sign-up, download your eBook, or whatever CTA you want them to complete. When users click your CTA they’ll be greeted by a form but instead of filling out fields LinkedIn will automatically pull in the details from their profile – so all users have to do is hit the submit button. With these forms, as the information is auto-populated with information directly from their LinkedIn profiles, this reduces friction for users and eliminates the extra work that comes with traditional opt-in forms entered by hand – it can also have a huge impact on form conversion rates!

The Many Benefits of LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms

1. It’s Friction-less

First and foremost, these forms simplify the process for users. Rather than entering in their data by hand, the lead forms auto-fill the requested information. Users simply have to click submit, and their info is compiled and stored for your future use. With less friction, the more likely users are to submit.

2. You Can Collect Unique Data

Because of the unique information available through LinkedIn profiles, you can include questions about location, job title, company and more, allowing you to gain valuable information about who’s interested in your product. This is information it’s virtually impossible to gather from Facebook or Twitter profiles.

You can also add up to 3 custom questions so you can essentially design your own form, these can include questions with a drop-down multiple choice answer or a free text box for users to write their own comments in.  Here’s an example of one we’ve used before:

3. They are Designed for Mobiles

The ads are also designed specifically for mobile use. With an increasing amount of people working and searching from their mobile devices, it pays to have ads that display well on mobile devices. 

4. You Can Still Get Traffic to Your Site

Lead Gen forms allow you to redirect leads to the site or content of your choosing once they have submitted the form. When designing your form you can add a thank-you message which appears after the form is submitted, in this thank-you message you can add a CTA and a link to your site or specific landing page. Don’t forget to use UTM tracked links to accurately gauge campaign traffic through!

5. Easy Lead Management

LinkedIn makes it easy to manage your leads and measure your ROI. All lead information and lists are downloadable from directly within LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager. Also, as with any other LinkedIn campaign, all your key metrics and KPIs (such as impressions, clicks, cost/lead etc) are tracked automatically. Although there is one downside; currently LinkedIn does not notify you when a lead gen form is submitted so it’s a matter of logging into your Campaign Manager to check and manually download any leads that have been submitted. Fingers crossed LinkedIn rectify this in the near future by sending automated notification emails when leads forms are completed.

Try Lead Gen Forms Yourself

At GlowMetrics, this is one of our favourite campaigns type and we have seen some amazing results for our clients using this campaign type. However, don’t let me or anyone else tell you how good LinkedIn Lead Gen forms will or won’t be for your business. If you’re advertising on LinkedIn, try them out for yourself and see what kind of difference they make to your lead generation results.