Almost everyone "screams" about SEO and SEA. SEA usually refers to Google Ads. Many also think of Facebook and Instagram. Native advertising is also still frequently used in the marketing mix. But even in the B2B sector LinkedIn is still not really on many people's radar. But this should be the case for B2B offers in particular. The common goal of most companies in the B2B sector is lead generation. Without a steady stream of potential customers, sales will stagnate in most cases. Lead generation on LinkedIn is the most common form of lead generation via "social media" for many companies. Based on this knowledge, advertising platforms have set themselves the goal of simplifying the way they generate leads. simplify - for both consumers and companies. One of these platforms that also wants to simplify advertising for B2B is LinkedIn. With its Lead Gen Forms, LinkedIn offers companies a quick way to generate leads. A no-brainer for many companies. Note: LinkedIn can also be used with landing pages that are actually intended for SEO!
What are LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms?
LinkedIn lead gen forms allow advertisers to create easy-to-fill forms for selected ad formats directly on LinkedIn and handle lead generation directly through LinkedIn. They make filling out a form extremely easy for customers and offer a different way for companies to generate leads. We will explain in detail below whether this method is better than using landing pages.
When a user clicks on the CTA of an ad that uses a lead gen form, the form appears pre-filled with the information they've already shared with LinkedIn. As long as the form only requests information they've already shared with LinkedIn, they don't have to enter it manually. The user can simply click "Send" and the lead data will be sent to you (tip: with a Zapier integratione.g. by us only adds convenience). With 80% of engagement with sponsored content taking place on mobile devices, this move by LinkedIn is a measure to improve the user experience and therefore improve conversion rates for advertisers.
Do LinkedIn Lead Gen forms work?
As with most complicated questions, the answer is, of course,"it depends". It depends on who you ask, what the goal of your campaign is, the data you want to collect and much more. According to LinkedIn advertising speak:
"With Lead Gen Forms, advertisers can collect leads with conversion rates that typically exceed the LinkedIn benchmark. Our internal data shows that LinkedIn's Lead Gen Form campaigns increase conversions by 2-3x compared to standard Sponsored Content campaigns."
What do advertisers say?
Bynder, a software company, says they used Lead Gen Forms to increase lead generation with their sponsored content by 400%, with the help of a 20% conversion rate. When Sage France harnessed the power of LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms, they generated 4x more leads than their target, while reducing the cost per lead to less than a fifth of their previous average. It's easy to see why these pre-filled forms can be so helpful. The most obvious reason is obviously that they save users from fumbling around filling out a form on their mobile device. Although our thumbs have become increasingly nimble in recent years, they still don't lend themselves as well to typing on a small screen when we're on the go. Secondly, as the social network for business , LinkedIn lends itself very well to B2B. Since this is the case, you're more likely to get valuable data from people in management who might otherwise be against sharing their information on a more personal social network. When users sign up for a LinkedIn account, they're generally more inclined to enter their actual information compared to other social platforms. This is due to the professionalism and trust of the social network. When a user's information is auto-filled, you most likely won't have to worry about the emails they provide being spammed. This pre-filled data is already more valuable (at least most of the time) than what you'll get on Facebook or Twitter, for example. The other big difference of using lead gen forms is that your leads never leave LinkedIn. You don't have to worry about page load speed, which, if it's slower than three seconds, can stop about half of your visitors from converting! You benefit from the brand equity of LinkedIn (owned by Microsoft). Because the platform has built up authority online over the years, people are likely to trust it more than a company they've heard little to nothing about. A little-known business or a poorly designed website or landing page is reason enough to put someone off entering their personal details. With LinkedIn, this is less likely to be a problem. When you consider these benefits, you realize that lead gen forms work for many businesses. At the same time, they also come with a number of weaknesses that may not be obvious to an advertiser looking to generate leads.
Lead Gen Form - Ads: 5 points you should know
The advantages of LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms are obvious. However, their weaknesses are less obvious. Here are 5 points to consider before using them in your campaigns:
1. form fields are limited in what they can do
Running forms on other platforms means you have to make compromises. While LinkedIn claims to offer flexibility in collecting information about your leads, most of the options you have to choose from come from a drop-down list. Only three of the maximum possible fields can be"custom" fields, which allow you to request information that is not known by LinkedIn. Another example is the maximum lengths of the fields that you must adhere to. You do not have to pay attention to this on your own landing page.
2. you can also unsettle your potential customers
It took several data breaches for users to learn how much information Facebook had on each of them. If you create a long form and your user clicks on it to see all the pre-populated fields, it can have the same effect."How does LinkedIn know all this about me?" or "I don't remember sharing this...". It could send them scurrying from your form straight to their privacy settings.
3. you're missing opportunities to build your own brand equity
While you can generate leads with LinkedIn in the short term, long-term brand equity is only built through ongoing engagement with your brand. Even though you're promoting your brand with LinkedIn Lead Gen Form ads, it's no match for traditional ads that lead to your site or landing page. This is the trade-off with LinkedIn Lead Gen Form Ads. The templates are customizable, but not to the point where you can add the details of your own branding to each form. Even routines like the one in the form after this paragraph don't work. Not to mention that when they are clicked, they usually don't result in a page visit to your site, which means that your "prospects" may not even see exactly what your website looks like and what exactly you offer before they request your quote!
4. conversions are not happening on your website!
The problems with leads not converting on your website go beyond a lack of branding. There's always a downside to in-app conversions: the risk that the traffic never reaches your website or landing page. Missing out on traffic can rob you of other conversions, useful analytics data, potential advertising revenue and other branding opportunities. Your website is the hub of your business. Think about what it would mean for your business if you couldn't see how your visitors were using your website, if you couldn't refer them to offers, entice them with pop-ups or even retarget them*. If you can't capture such data, personalization is out of reach. Every offer should be claimed on a post-click landing page (more on that below!) that is created specifically for each user. If you can't offer that, long-term personalization at the level today's consumer expects is unattainable. * However, you can partially address this "re-targeting" (re-marketing) via a complex tracking solution from Oplayo.
5. you may be collecting the wrong data
While the data on LinkedIn may be more accurate than other social networks, that doesn't mean it's flawless. How often do you update your LinkedIn profile? Is it always up to date? A user who is simply interested in an offer may quickly click "submit" regardless of whether the information they entered beforehand is still accurate. And even if it is accurate, there's a chance it's still "worthless." In a blog post for Greenhouse, Caleb Edwards explains:
Remember the first tip where we mentioned to only include fields that LinkedIn can autofill? That often means that the email address provided is a personal email, not a work email. Think about your own LinkedIn account. Did you register with a personal or company email? We've found that around 90 percent of captured leads have provided their personal email address (as this is auto-filled) instead of their company email.
Unfortunately, with pre-filled forms that are easy to submit and don't require any manual input, the potential for incorrect information is much higher. Why should your prospect confirm that their details are correct? They just want what you're offering them.
LinkedIn lead gen forms for sponsored content
Of course, if you don't follow Linkedin's rules, your ad won't appear. So keep these restrictions in mind when creating your LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms:
- The language of your lead gen form matches the language you have selected for your campaign AND your page. (e.g.: No German-language advertising on an English LinkedIn page)
- The offer headline may be a maximum of 40 characters long.
- The description has a character limit of 160 characters and is truncated after two lines (~70 characters).
- You must enter a web page describing your company's privacy policy in the Privacy Policy URL field.
Lead Gen Forms are also available for Facebook and mobile with Google Ads
As a very brief digression: Lead Gen Forms are also available with Google Ads (currently only mobile, as this is where they make the most sense):
LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms solve a short-term problem
LinkedIn advertising campaigns have a lot to offer with Lead Gen Forms, but: they don't solve the form design problem that most businesses suffer from. If your forms are designed and optimized the way they should be, then LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms won't make much of a difference because your forms already work on all devices, for all your ad campaigns, and on every network.
The reason LinkedIn developed this feature is not because promoted content ads don't work, but because companies fail to create an intuitive experience once users land on their website.
LinkedIn lead gen forms are a solution to a much bigger problem in most traditional thinking in marketing: the pre-click experience still takes precedence over the post-click experience. Targeting, platform, ad creative - marketers consider these things very valuable and spend a lot of time and budget perfecting them.
Post-click experience, on the other hand, considers forms, offers, user testing, page load speed as afterthoughts. If a post-click landing page is well designed, it can do exactly what LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms can do and then some, e.g. quite easy re-marketing & tracking.
Will autofill forms really boost my conversion rates?
Making your forms easier to fill out on your landing page can contribute to better campaign performance. There are quite a few companies that have found this to be the case after implementing them correctly, but using LinkedIn lead gen forms is no guarantee of campaign success. They make the forms easier to fill out, but they are not magic. Whatever can be achieved with LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms could similarly be achieved with a smart, quick landing page.
So what now: Lead Gen Forms or LandingPage Forms?
As we said above: it depends. Roughly speaking, we can say from our experience that you get leads faster with Lead Gen Forms, but the quality can often be criticized. In any case, you should A/B test the variants - LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms and LinkedIn Ads to your landing page. And only decide what actually leads to more sales and not just leads after valid data collection and sales tracking.
Is pre-click optimization of campaigns enough?
The customer journey is more complex than ever and the most successful digital marketers know that they cannot rely on traditional pre-click strategies to achieve a positive ROI. Things like PPC headlines and a compelling display ad image can get people to click your ad, but then what? These only address half of the conversion equation.
For digital marketers, ROI is not determined by the ad itself. Revenue is typically generated when someone clicks on the page following the ad to achieve the conversion goal. However, marketers continue to spend much of their time and optimization on the pre-click phase, primarily using the following techniques, for example:
- Email segmentation and subject line testing
- Ad copy customization
- Ad extensions
- Personalization with behavioral retargeting technology
Changing your email subject line from "Here's a great deal" to "Save 50% and get free delivery today only" would likely improve open rates. Adding extensions with location details, call to action, contact information and specific web pages can further increase ad click-through rates. However, testing a more vibrant Facebook or LinkedIn ad image would likely encourage more engagement on posts.
What is post-click optimization?
Post-click optimization (PCO) is everything that happens between the ad click and the conversions. It starts with an optimized post-click landing page and ends with a personalized thank you page and email. In its entirety, the process enables a lot of optimization, provided you know how.
The post-click landing page should be designed as a natural extension of the clicked ad. Every element on the page should indicate to the visitor that they have landed in the right place and that the desired offer is just a CTA click away. The following basic rules apply:
- The headline of the ad and the headline of the landing page after the click should be identical
- The ad image should be the same as the one on the post-click landing page
- The color scheme should be identical so that the visitor knows they have landed in the right place
- What was described in the ad should be addressed immediately after the click and be in focus
- The conversion should be followed by a thank you page with an identical design
The post-click conversion phase deserves more attention
The purpose of post-click optimization is to convert ad and email clicks into leads and sales. But while pre-click strategies and software abound, tools for post-click optimization are not as widely available. The other half of the conversion equation requires more attention!
Post-click marketing is just as important for optimizing campaigns
Post-click optimization ensures that the email or ad click leads to a conversion by directing visitors to a post-click landing page that matches the message and meets the prospect's needs. Since the conversion takes place on the post-click landing page, there must be a seamless transition from the ad to the post-click landing page in every campaign.
By optimizing both the pre-click and post-click phases, marketers have achieved more than a 6x conversion rate. In fact, the average post-click landing page conversion rate achieved by Oplayo customers with a post-click optimization strategy is up to 20%, while the industry average is only 3%.