For years LinkedIn has been one of the strongest platforms available for B2B social advertising, but a crucial component has been missing in action for just as long - the ability to know whether ads are driving business results. LinkedIn has recently set out to fix this grave injustice by introducing LinkedIn Conversion Tracking.
So, what is this new feature? How does it work, and how can you set up LinkedIn conversion tracking?
What Does LinkedIn Conversion Tracking Do?
LinkedIn conversion tracking is powered by the Linkedin Insight Tag, a JavaScript code snippet that you add to your website. It helps you learn more about click-through and view-through conversions that happen on your website related to your LinkedIn ads. Click-through conversions happen when people perform an action after clicking one of your ads. View-through conversions happen when people see your ad, but don't click on it. Later on, they visit your website on their own and perform an action.
The LinkedIn tracking pixel is available for both Sponsored Updates and Text Ad campaigns.
What Types of LinkedIn Conversions Can I Track?
Currently LinkedIn supports the following labels for conversion types:
- Lead - Someone who signs up for an offer
- Signup - Someone who signs up for a specific event or appointment
- Purchase - Someone who buys a product
- Add-to-cart - Someone who placed an item in the cart but didn't complete a purchase
- Download - Someone who downloaded software
- Install - Someone who installed an app
- Key page view - Someone who views a page you care about
- Other - Any other type of conversion that doesn't fit into the other conversion types
You can assign these labels to your own campaigns to help you understand whether the conversion for a particular campaign was getting someone to fill out a form and become a lead.
How Does LinkedIn Conversion Tracking Help Me Understand the ROI of My LinkedIn Ads?
LinkedIn allows you to assign a dollar value to each conversion, which you can determine based on what it is worth to you for the action your leads and new customers will take when they convert on your LinkedIn ad. To get the most value out of this feature, you should base the dollar value that you assign to the conversion on the projected revenue that you would expect it to lead to.
If the conversion is a one-time purchase of a $50 widget, then it makes sense to assign that conversion a value of $50. If the conversion is getting a lead to sign up for an initial consultation then you might base the value of that conversion on some fraction of the lifetime income your clients generate on average. You wouldn't want to set the value at the full average income a new client would bring because not every consultation is guaranteed to lead to new business, nor is every new client guaranteed to lead to a long working relationship.
When combined with the total ad spend you can figure out the ROI on your ads, but LinkedIn's metrics will already calculate this for you automatically.
What Metrics are Available for LINKEDIN CONVERSION TRACKING?
LinkedIn will give you the following metrics to help you measure the success of your LinkedIn conversion ads:
- The total number of conversions from your campaign
- A post-click conversion rate
- A view-through conversion rate
- Conversion cost
- Conversion value (as determined by you)
- ROI (based on conversion cost vs conversion value)
- The total amount of money you spent on your ad campaign
When Should I Use the LinkedIn Conversion Tracking Pixel?
Anytime you want the user to perform an action as a result of clicking on your ad, such as signing up for a content offer like a white paper or ebook, buying a physical or digital product that your customers can buy, or installing an app, it would benefit you to track conversions on your ads through the LinkedIn tracking pixel.
The KPI's that digital marketers and business owners have relied on in the past, like ad spend, impressions, social interactions, and clicks to a landing page have only given us half of the picture. When we don't have data about conversions then we're missing out on the most important part of the story, whether or not our campaigns are actually driving the business results that we want to see.
LinkedIn is finally catching up with other major social advertising platforms and giving us insight into how our ads are converting.
CAN I USE MY LINKEDIN CONVERSION TRACKING FOR RETARGETING ADS ON LINKEDIN?
No, not right now. You'll need to set up LinkedIn Lead Accelerator in order to retargeting on any type of LinkedIn ad.
How Do I Setup LinkedIn Conversion Tracking for My Website?
Now that you have an overview of what LinkedIn Conversion Tracking is, how it works, and how it can help your business, read our next post where we go more in-depth on how to setup LinkedIn conversion tracking. It features a detailed walkthrough of the setup process from end to end.
