Eighty-nine percent of B2B marketers look to LinkedIn for their lead generation efforts, many of whom report that the platform helps them generate two times (2x) the number of leads compared to the next highest social channel.
Specifically helping drive these responses are LinkedIn’s Lead Gen Forms, which boast a conversion rate of 13 percent compared to the average conversion rate of a landing page of 2.35 percent.
Whether you’ve already familiar with Lead Gen Forms or you’re eager to enhance your skillset, here are five simple tips to incorporate into your campaigns:
Start with a clear and compelling hook
Introductions to your forms should be concise and compelling. Consider this an elevator pitch for your product or service. You want to be very explicit about the value members are going to get when they sign up for what you’re offering and why this should incentivize them to share their information with you.
LinkedIn suggests keeping the intro to your ad copy to 120 characters or less. This may seem nearly impossible, but not burying the lead will pay dividends in your efforts. You can always use the form itself to flesh out the information you used in the hook, however, be mindful of consistency. You want to ensure the ad and the form reference the same content.
Enhance your form with visuals & bold messaging
Lead Gen Forms can be paired with Single Image ads, Carousel ads, Video ads, or Message ads. Single image ads are a great way to set expectations amongst your target audience and keep them engaged as they scroll through their feed and the sea of other content. Carousel ads can achieve the same goal, but give you some more room to play and add diversity to the visuals.
In terms of video, your best chance according to LinkedIn, to boost your click-through rate (CTR), strive to keep your videos to 1 minute or less. Their goal should be to explain or communicate new ideas, in other words, lead with the most creative and innovative bits of information. Lastly, when considering what audio to bring to the mix, your main goals should be memorability and distinctiveness.
When crafting a messaging ad, feel free to get conversational and casual. After all, you are speaking to humans on the other side of the screen. If the sender is an individual, have them customize the greeting to introduce themselves and briefly give context as to why they’re receiving the message.
Keep your questions simple and to a minimum
A core component to lead generation is a collection of qualifying data. As a best practice for incorporating these into your forms, focus this to the most integral information that you need and seek to obtain the data from easy-to-answer multiple choice. LinkedIn has found dropdown options substantially more successful compared to fill in answers. Research from the platform has found even one free-response question can result in a three to four percent decrease in submission rate.
Optimize your campaign with demographics
Spanning number of impressions, lead form opens, open rates, number of leads, and lead form completion rates, there’s no shortage of ways you can track your progress and identify areas of improvement.
Don’t passively overlook these as a ‘nice to have.’ Instead, use these to actively test and optimize what your target audience is responding best to and what content they may not be as jazzed about and make refinements as you go. In short — you’ll do yourself a disservice by setting and forgetting. What will work for one audience won’t necessarily work for another and interests are constantly in flux.
Don’t overlook the power of refreshing and testing
There is no right or wrong answer around how often and what marketers should test when it comes to content, however, there are basic tips to keep the process streamlined and minimize headaches.
First, select one question or item to serve as your hypothesis. Another best practice is to clearly map out the variables you’ll use to conduct the tests but plan on focusing on only one at a time. Finally, to simplify your measuring process by identifying your primary and secondary KPIs. Once you have your results, ask yourself the important question, ‘so what?’ To achieve a certain result, what would be the next steps needed to take based on what was learned.