Lead generation campaigns are an increasingly popular advertising strategy on social media. Standard website forms often prove to be significantly more costly than lead generation campaigns. The primary reason for choosing social media platforms for lead generation is their ease of completion. Automatically downloaded data shared on these platforms shortens the time it takes to complete forms, making them more user-friendly and user-friendly.
Campaigns with this goal are not without their drawbacks, however. Limiting clicks to a minimum often significantly reduces the quality of leads generated.
Are you a B2B business looking for new customers on Facebook? Anyone who's "their own boss" and the nobility who doesn't work can become one too, and you'll pay for it in Ads Manager. That's where LinkedIn comes in – the undisputed leader among lead generators.
How much does an average LinkedIn campaign cost?
If you're using other advertising channels and just starting your journey with paid advertising on LinkedIn, you may find that your budget is too small to effectively run your first campaign. The minimum daily budget you can set for a single campaign is €10. Therefore, the suggested minimum daily budget for running a campaign will cost you approximately 1300 PLN net per month.
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Sure, your initial choice of objective, audience, and placement might be a hit, but testing other options and configurations will require increasing your budget. While LinkedIn advertising requires a larger initial investment, you'll quickly discover that it's likely the best lead generation platform for you.*
LinkedIn Ads Forms
If it's relatively difficult to find a contact form on your website, or if your easy-to-use website doesn't allow you to add additional features that would allow interested parties to download materials, for example, or if you simply want to shorten the customer journey and, without having to navigate the website after clicking on an ad, you want them to download a given material or contact you, then paid advertising on LinkedIn in the form of a lead generation form is for you.
What does the Linkedin Ads form look like?
LinkedIn forms allow you to gather key contact information from people potentially interested in your product or service. They can also be used in campaigns with a more educational purpose, offering something in return for each contact, such as a guide, newsletter, report, catalog, etc.
What data can we collect through the LinkedIn lead generation form?
There are so many possibilities. 🤩 From personal data to company contact details, and custom questions aimed at collecting specific information about subscribers and classifying them in the lead collection system.
The form also gives us the opportunity to select the necessary conditions to accept in order to submit the form (e.g. acceptance of the regulations or privacy policy).
However, when creating a form, it's always worth considering best practices that take UX into account, such as limiting mandatory fields to a maximum of three. A huge advantage of LinkedIn forms is their auto-completion, allowing users interested in a given material to quickly and easily access interesting content without having to fill in the fields themselves. Of course, certain fields can be marked as required, requiring the user to enter or deselect them, thus pre-verifying the quality of leads and their level of interest in the material.
The process of creating an ad and a Linkedin campaign
As with any LinkedIn Ads campaign, you begin by selecting an objective that best captures your needs. Your goal is to acquire new leads, meaning in the conversion-focused group, you select the "Lead Generation" objective. To run a lead generation campaign, you must link your ad account to your LinkedIn company page.
The process of creating a campaign is no different from any other objective. We begin, of course, with defining an audience. While there are far fewer targeting options than in Facebook Ads Manager, you're much more likely to reach a specific target audience, which is actually largely composed of the audience the advertiser is looking for.
Paid ad formats for LinkedIn Ads lead campaigns
Ad formats available for creating a customer acquisition campaign include a standard single image, a carousel, a video ad, and two types of campaigns that place ads in recipients' inboxes. The format you choose is entirely up to you; there are no recommended formats that will work best for your industry. This is why it's crucial to test different ad placements. Some LinkedIn ad campaigns , thanks to an attention-grabbing banner, perform significantly better than text-based Sponsored Messaging campaigns, and vice versa.
Advertising creations available in the lead campaign on Linkedin
The next step is to prepare the ad creative and set the detailed content for your paid LinkedIn ad . Depending on the format you choose, there are various options to complete and select. However, the common thread for all goals is creating a lead form.
Privacy Policy for Lead Campaigns on Linkedin
The form has standard settings and content to complete. It's crucial to have the validation policy content on the same domain as your website. You can choose from a variety of data options to collect from potential customers. Creating the form concludes with a confirmation window for submitting contact information, along with a thank you message.
LinkedIn Ads campaign – case study
Due to the pandemic, many companies were forced to make radical changes to their operations at the turn of February and March, opening up a new avenue for reaching their audiences. One of our clients capitalized on the current situation and predicted that partnering with them on LinkedIn advertising could yield tangible benefits. Our client's primary goal was to reach HR specialists and leaders to promote a webinar on best practices for the upcoming period. Our primary focus was a lead generation campaign using sponsored messages that land directly in LinkedIn inboxes.
In the first week, the campaign launched with great intensity and quickly achieved the target number of potential customers. By the end of the first month, the initial customer acquisition cost had already dropped by 18%. Ultimately, after three months of advertising, the campaign concluded with a cost per result 22% lower than in the initial period.
We were also pleasantly surprised by the CTR (sponsored message open rate) of over 70% throughout the campaign. The key here was the recipient's first encounter with the ad in their inbox, which is influenced by the ad's appropriate headline.
First of all, we tried not to attack potential customers with another advertisement, but in a friendly way to encourage them to read the entire message.
Some of the first tests we conducted on the campaign involved bid changes. LinkedIn provides a suggested bid value as early as the campaign group creation stage. This value is influenced by your chosen objectives, placements, and audience selection. The initial bid of €0,15 proved to be significantly less effective than the €0,30 bid we selected during optimization, which we ultimately maintained for most of the campaign.
Customer support for an advertising campaign on Linkedin
The client also received support from us in terms of advertising copy. The goal was to encourage LinkedIn users to share their personal data in exchange for invaluable knowledge and guidance. The client shared their industry experience with us; after all, they know their potential audience best. Drawing on knowledge gained from numerous other campaigns, we added the best strategies learned through testing in ongoing campaigns. This resulted in several versions of messages reaching audiences, which we analyzed and ultimately selected the ones with the best results.
In the meantime, we conducted several more advertising campaigns for this client, which, thanks to correlation, had a positive impact not only on building brand awareness, but also on a noticeable, gradual reduction in cost-per-performance.
Linkedin Lead Campaign – Summary
We know from our own experience that the costs of running advertising campaigns on LinkedIn can be initially daunting. However, if you operate in the B2B industry, you should know that it's currently the best platform for acquiring valuable customers. A lead generation campaign is the final stage of the sales funnel, and it's worth supporting these activities with brand awareness-building ads and other advertising channels.
*Of course, we must point out that not every type of business is suitable for advertising on LinkedIn . It's worth conducting a preliminary analysis to determine whether our customers are on LinkedIn and whether they spend time there searching for content, services, or products offered by our company. Often, our customers are actually there, so we launch a campaign, but after a certain period of time, we notice that the campaign isn't achieving the intended results. This is often due to a lack of preliminary analysis of the purpose for which our target audience uses LinkedIn. It may turn out that they are looking for more business-oriented solutions, leaving lifestyle options for Facebook, Instagram, or simply using Google search.
Frequently asked questions about LinkedIn advertising
Campaigns on this platform are an absolute foundation for companies in the B2B (Business-to-Business) sector and the HR industry (recruitment and employer branding). Due to its business-focused nature, this platform is an ideal place to build relationships with executives, CEOs, and specialists who make purchasing decisions for their companies.
LinkedIn's biggest advantage is its highly precise professional targeting. The system allows ads to be targeted based on data users don't provide on other sites, such as:
- Specific position (e.g. Finance Director),
- Company size or industry,
- Years of professional experience,
- University degree or specialist skills.
LinkedIn is considered one of the more expensive marketing channels. The cost per click (CPC) or per 1000 impressions (CPM) is usually significantly higher than with Google Ads or Facebook Ads. However, the higher price is fully offset by the quality and value of the leads acquired, which are much more likely to result in valuable business contracts.
The most popular and effective solutions include:
- Lead Gen Forms (Contact Forms): the user does not have to leave the platform – the form automatically downloads their profile data (e.g. work email, job title), which drastically increases the conversion rate.
- Sponsored InMail (Message Ads): personalized advertising messages delivered directly to users' private inboxes.
- Sponsored Content: classic, promoted posts with a photo, carousel or video, displayed in the main news feed.
To start advertising activities, it is necessary to meet several technical conditions:
- Having a private profile on LinkedIn.
- Creating and completing a Company Page.
- Create an account in Campaign Manager, which is your command center for your ads and budget.
Summary
The above article covers the following topics:
- The minimum daily budget for a LinkedIn campaign is 10 euros, which means a suggested minimum monthly budget of around 1300 PLN net, although the higher startup costs are quickly recouped thanks to the high quality of B2B leads.
- Ad formats available for lead campaigns include a single image, a carousel, a video ad, and two types of inbox placement campaigns, where the choice depends on testing different variants depending on the industry.
- LinkedIn Ads is currently the best platform for acquiring valuable B2B customers, although it is worth supporting the lead campaign with ads that build brand awareness and conducting a preliminary analysis of whether the target group uses LinkedIn for business purposes.
