INTRODUCTION
With Facebook’s recent update to their newsfeed, the Linkedin marketing strategy is the smartest way to generate sales leads via social media. You must be thinking, “Now what?”. Linkedin has been tested and tried as a lead generation tool. In fact, it’s one of the best ways to generate leads. I started using Linkedin few months ago and believe me; I got a lot of return on my ad spend. For additional resource, you can check this post where I have shared my Linkedin lead generation tips.
We all know that Linkedin is a great place to find prospects and generate leads, but it can be challenging if you’re new to LinkedIn, or if you are struggling with generating quality leads. Today I’m going to highlight some techniques I use on Linkedin to ensure my lead generation efforts are successful.
You’re trying to increase sales, but running out of ideas on how to do it. Can’t think outside the box, no creativity… Say no more. Let me help you by telling you the best way to advertise on Linkedin: by generating leads! How to get leads from Linkedin? The first step is to not just focus on your product or service. Wouldn’t it be better to offer yourself as an expert in your niche?
What Are Lead Gen Forms on LinkedIn?
Like any other lead generation form, the LinkedIn version captures pertinent lead data from an individual, in exchange for a valued asset or experience. The key differentiator is that fields in Lead Gen Forms automatically based on a member’s profile data. This nuance is important in general, saving time and effort for the user, but especially on mobile where typing text into several tiny fields can be tedious and frustrating.
Lead Gen Forms can be used in combination with several LinkedIn ad products, including single image ads, carousel ads, video ads, and messaging ads. Incentives to compel form fills should be distinctly appealing to your target audience, and can range from eBooks to product demos, webinar registrations, program info, and more.
10 Ways to Get More Out of LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms
Drawn from our new LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms Playbook, here are 10 tips for getting the most out of this feature, based on proven techniques used from top performers on the platform.
1. Develop a Strong Offer
This of the essence. You want your ad copy to quickly convey the value of what a member stands to receive, and why they don’t want to miss out. We recommend hooking your audience with a clear yet concise question (120 characters or fewer), and taking advantage of real estate; first a user sees your ad, then clicks into the Lead Gen Form where additional context is provided, so you want to create a cohesive experience.
2. Use Bold Images, Videos, and Messages
In general, this is a best practice for LinkedIn ads, but it’s especially key for compelling Lead Gen Form completions. The specifics vary based on which ad format you’re using, but in general we advise:
- Showing an image of the product, service, or asset someone is signing up for
- Including sharp, poppy colors that stand out on a member’s feed
- Tailoring the message and creative to your specific audience
- Making your video, image, or messaging ads distinctive and unique
3. Keep the Number of Questions Short
What is the absolute most critical information for your organization to collect for leads? Zero in on these fields and cut out any that aren’t necessary. We find that forms with five or fewer questions see the highest completion rates.
4. Make Your Custom Question Easy to Answer
Sometimes custom fields are necessary, because your organization requires lead-qualifying information beyond what is listed in a member’s profile. You have this ability through Lead Gen Forms, but be cautious: the addition of even one free-response custom question can yield a 3-4% drop in submission rate. Whenever possible, consider using dropdown options for custom fields rather than write-ins.
5. Follow Up with Leads in a Timely Manner
If someone signs up to receive a piece of content, make sure to include a direct link on the confirmation page. If they signed up for an event or newsletter, use that confirmation page to build excitement. You want to provide an immediate payoff when someone fills out a form, and keep the momentum rolling.
6. Keep Your Lead Gen Forms Fresh
Advertisers see only 10% of forms receive leads after the first ~10 weeks. Rotating in fresh creative and copy (and even offers) will help keep your Lead Gen Forms producing steadily without going stale.
7. Optimize Your Target Audience Using Demographic Data
Using campaign demographics, you can gain insight into which specific segments of your audience are engaging with and completing Lead Gen Forms. Using this data, you can learn which cohorts align best with which content, then optimize accordingly.
8. Optimize Your Page So Members Can Learn More About Your Brand
When engaging with a Lead Gen Form, a member can easily click on your organization’s name to learn more on your LinkedIn Page. Make sure you’re providing a clear, consistent, and comprehensive overview of your brand in this space. For starters, you’ll want to complete your Page and post content regularly. It’s also worthwhile to focus on growing your following and network, because our research finds that Pages with at least 150 followers and 30 mapped employees are perceived as more credible.
9. Pair Lead Gen Forms with Brand Campaigns for Higher Conversion Rates
Strong brand awareness campaigns can prime members for conversions, creating familiarity in the mind of your audience. We find that members who are exposed to both brand and acquisition messaging are 6X more likely to convert. Consider using the Matched Audiences feature to expand your targeted reach.
10. Test, Test, Test!
At the end of the day, this is the most helpful activity for the ongoing health of your campaigns. Any assumption or hypothesis about what will resonate and drive results in a Lead Gen Forms campaign is only that until you actually test it in the wild. Experiment with alterations of single variables — copy, visuals, CTA — and measure it against your KPIs. Over time, you’ll come to recognize what works best in each facet.
LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms Case Studies
Want to learn from others who’ve excelled with Lead Gen Forms? Read about these four companies that achieved stellar results:
- Bynder generates high-quality leads faster with Lead Gen Forms
- IR drives results from a focused target audience with Sponsored Content and Lead Gen Forms
- Paycor powers up bottom-line impact with strategic Lead Gen Forms on LinkedIn
- Talkdesk dials up tremendous ROI gains with targeted Lead Gen Forms
Here, I want to talk about LinkedIn Lead Generation Ads and some best practices for you to leverage in your account. Let’s dive in!
1. Have something valuable to offer
This is the biggest issue I see with advertisers on LinkedIn. Every business thinks what they have to offer is amazing—and I’m sure your product or service absolutely is. But that doesn’t mean it’s appealing for someone to start hard selling you on their offerings without generating any type of connection with you.
I’m sorry, but a demo for your software to a cold prospecting audience likely isn’t going to do well with LinkedIn advertising.
If the content or offer you have isn’t important, no one is going to want it no matter what type of campaign you’re using. So you need to make sure you can offer something of value to your prospects.
This could be anything from an industry report to a rundown of common issues your customer base faces and how to solve them, sometimes without your product involved. Do some research and know what your market wants, and then deliver something fantastic to them for the low, low price of one lead gen form fill.
Related: 10 Must-Use LinkedIn Company Page Features
2. Integrate your CRM to follow up with leads right away
Depending on what platform you’re using, LinkedIn might allow you to directly integrate with your CRM for lead gen ads submissions.
Although you can manually export your leads, I highly recommend you integrate your CRM. It will make life so much easier for a couple reasons.
First, it saves you time of logging in and manually exporting leads on a regular basis.
Second, these B2B leads are able to start working their way into your nurture flows immediately. There’s nearly no lag time on when they user fills out the form to when they’re now part of whatever follow-up sequence any other user would be after filling out the form directly on your site.
Here is more information on how you can link your CRM and LinkedIn depending on the platform you use.
3. Give your form a useful, systematic name
I’m a stickler for naming convention, as it always makes Future You’s life much easier.
Imagine troubleshooting a form issue or wanting to set up a test with new form settings and logging in and seeing a list of the following form names staring back at you:
- Lead gen form #1
- Form 2
- New form 2
- Test form
What in the world does any of that mean? Literally nothing.
Now you’re stuck clicking into each one of them and trying to figure out what’s happening and forgetting what you just read between “Form 2” and “New form 2″ if there even was a difference.
Give your forms a meaningful name so you can figure out what is going on from the outset to help with future ad testing.
For example, here’s a real account of mine:
For this account, I know exactly what each of these forms has going on because we have a proper naming convention that might seem silly to an outsider but makes sense to me—way more sense than a “Form 2.”
4. Treat the LinkedIn lead gen form text fields like a landing page
Since the user doesn’t usually end up going to your website until the confirmation page (if at all), it’s important to treat the form text itself as if it’s the landing page.
In the same way you craft your landing pages, put some time and effort into your form content.
The user is deciding if they’re willing to give their information in exchange for what you’re offering and if you undersell it, they’re not going to, costing you the expensive LinkedIn CPC while not netting any benefit.
If you’ve followed Tip #1, this should be pretty easy.
Just like you would on any landing page, use the “Offer Headline” and “Offer Details” sections of the lead gen form to tell the user what benefit they’ll get from filling out the form. There are text limits, so be concise but appealing. Easy, right?
5. Balance volume and quantity
Just like any other form, you have to strike a balance between the questions you ask and the number of responses you want to get.
In most instances, this chart is going to hold true: The more questions you ask, the fewer form fills you’re going to get.
And that’s OK! Too many people are focused on getting as many form fills as possible without thinking of the lead quality.
If you’re out for a volume play, use the minimum number of questions you can get away with to still call that person a “lead.” In my experience, that could be as little as just an email address and a first name.
But if you’re like most of the companies I work with and you want to have better quality leads rather than just anyone, it’s now time to start curating your form questions to weed out the lower quality users.
If you’re trying to get higher quality leads, here are my main suggestions:
- Ask more questions.
- Leverage the custom questions .
- Force the user to type something in, don’t use all “autofill” questions.
Speaking of custom questions…this feature is particularly useful for collecting first-party data, which is becoming increasingly important as privacy measures are growing.
6. Leverage hidden fields if you need to
Just because you have your lead forms integrated with your CRM doesn’t necessarily mean that all tracking is going to work perfectly. Depending on how you’re tracking performance and have leads mapping in your CRM, it might make sense for you to leverage the hidden fields in the form.
Essentially, these allow you to pass additional information into your CRM that isn’t directly found within the form. These are GREAT for tracking sources, targeting, creative, and more in your CRM like we do for landing
CONCLUSION
Following these best practices will help you leverage the powerhouse marketing tool of Linkedin. Some will keep you from making rookie mistakes, others will let you tap into its full potential.
It is really hard to grow your business with nothing or limited resources. Linkedin provides you a vast platform to reach out to the whole world within a matter of minutes. To get the most out of LinkedIn, always remember to set clear objectives, there’s a right way and wrong way to send messages to leads, always know when to give up and better yet why you should tap on multiple marketing channels like telemarketing or social media.