How to Measure LinkedIn Ad Performance

So you've set up your first LinkedIn ad campaign. Or maybe you've been running LinkedIn ads for a while, but with lackluster results. While other aspects of your digital marketing might be "set it and forget it" thanks to automation, LinkedIn ads require more ongoing attention. Following these steps will help you maximize the impact of LinkedIn advertising without using any third-party tools. 

Set up conversion tracking.

To measure the effectiveness of your LinkedIn ads, you will need to set up conversion tracking. Conversion tracking is the process of monitoring actions that users take after clicking on your ad, such as form submissions or purchases. This will allow you to see which ad campaigns lead to conversions.

Here are three steps to set up conversion tracking for LinkedIn ads:

• Choose the actions you want to track: Determine what actions you want to track as conversions, such as form submissions, phone calls, or purchases.
• Create a conversion pixel: LinkedIn provides a conversion pixel that you can place on your website to track conversions. This pixel is a code that fires when a user completes a tracked action on your website.
• Add the conversion pixel to your website: Add it to your website's HTML code to start tracking conversions. This can typically be done by adding the pixel to the header or footer of your website.

Once you have set up conversion tracking, you can see which ad campaigns lead to conversions in the LinkedIn Campaign Manager. This will help you identify the most effective ads and where to focus your efforts.

Identify Key Metrics

When choosing the metrics to measure your LinkedIn ads' performance, consider which are most relevant to your business goals. Some common metrics to track for LinkedIn ads include:

• Impressions: Impressions are the number of times your ad was displayed to users on LinkedIn. This metric can help you understand how much reach your ads are getting.
• Clicks: Clicks are the number of times users clicked on your ad. This metric can help you understand how engaging your ads are.
• Cost per click (CPC): Cost per click (CPC) is the amount paid for each click on your ad. This metric can help you understand how much your ads are costing you.
• Click-through rate (CTR): Click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of users who click on your ad after seeing it. This metric can help you understand how well your ad copy and visuals perform.
• Conversion rate: Conversion rate is the percentage of users who complete a tracked action (such as filling out a form or making a purchase) after clicking on your ad. This helps you understand how effectively your ads drive conversions.

You can also use LinkedIn's Campaign Manager to help align your key metrics with your goals. Campaign Manager helps you connect your metrics to your goals and does much of the analysis for you, making your job easier.

Set up Insight Tags

Measuring website conversions is crucial to see if your LinkedIn ads effectively drive valuable actions like downloads, purchases, or sign-ups. To track these conversions and automate optimization for your ad campaigns, you need to set up Insight Tags. LinkedIn Insight Tags are snippets of JavaScript code that you place on your website to track visitors' behavior after they click on your LinkedIn ad. This allows you to measure your ad's website conversions and gather data for campaign optimization.

Conversion tracking is a metric that provides in-depth insights into your ads’ performance. The good thing about conversion tracking is that it goes beyond LinkedIn. Tracking conversions on LinkedIn is also valuable for your ads outside of LinkedIn. 

When looking to generate leads without the ad spend, have a look at the following video from Semrush: 

Use Lead Generation Forms

If your ultimate goal is to convert, lead generation (often shortened to "lead gen") forms are critical tools. LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms are a feature that uses pre-filled forms with a member's LinkedIn profile data, making it easy for users to submit their professional information. These native forms, available for message ads and sponsored content, serve three primary purposes:

• Generating high-quality leads at scale by using accurate LinkedIn profile data.
• Proving the ROI of your lead generation campaigns by tracking costs per lead and total lead numbers.
• Accessing and managing leads easily by allowing you to download a list of your leads directly from Campaign Manager.

The good thing about LinkedIn lead gen forms is that they're useful for both marketers and their audiences. Because LinkedIn users can fill out these lead-gen forms directly on LinkedIn, it's a much more seamless experience. It's very convenient and feels less intrusive than other methods. 

If you're using a different ad format, all isn't lost! You can also build your lead gen forms on a website landing page (We highly recommend HubSpot for building these landing pages and the corresponding automated workflows 😉) 

Monitor weekly performance

Once your ads start running, you should get into the habit of making weekly reviews of your performance. Weekly performance monitoring is the regular process of reviewing your campaign metrics to determine what you're doing right and what's going wrong with your campaign. This regular check-in helps you figure out whether all the metrics you've chosen to track are useful and allows you to make incremental improvements.

Your weekly reviews should focus on making small, iterative changes. Each week, identify one area of potential improvement and make a corresponding change to the LinkedIn ad. Then, you can track whether that change improves performance and move forward accordingly. Over time, these regular weekly analyses will help you create a razor-sharp ad campaign that efficiently hits all your objectives. LinkedIn offers a weekly campaign optimization checklist to help guide you through your reviews.

Use campaign demographics

LinkedIn offers tools to track and analyze the demographics of your ad campaigns, and it’s a feature you want to take full advantage of. Campaign demographics are data points that reveal the professional traits of the members who are engaging with your ads. This tool, part of your Campaign Manager, is used to see which groups or audiences respond to your LinkedIn ads. It helps you sharpen your target audience and maximize your ad spend through more effective targeted advertising. 

Using demographics is key because it's better to show the right people fewer ads than to show a lot of people many ads. Deep impressions aren't always what you want with your ad campaign. It’s useful, but it’s not everything. Impressions without interactions, clicks, or conversions are not what you should aim for. 

LinkedIn's Campaign Demographics lets you sort audiences by location, job title, company size, industry, and more.

Utilize campaign insights

In your Campaign Manager, you can access the campaign insights page to determine how to improve your bids and budgets. Campaign insights provide key performance data to help you make informed decisions about your ad spend. The main information you'll have access to is:

• Your total budget: The total amount you've spent on your campaign to date.
• Your daily budget: The average amount you spend on your campaign per day.
• Your bid: The amount LinkedIn recommends you spend to keep your campaign competitive.

Campaign Insights can be particularly useful if you’re running ads with variable pricing, like cost-per-click ads. 

Looking for insight and guidance on your LinkedIn ad campaigns? We're happy to help!