The realm of LinkedIn Ads is as glorious as it is confusing. But don’t worry: I’ve volunteered to guide you through this mythical landscape and help you harness the magic powers that tracking your LinkedIn ads can give your business.
There’s no need to don your hat and go digging for treasures, because I’m going to share the secrets of how you can turn data into gold, without you ever having to look away from your computer screen.
Side note: if you already find yourself getting distracted, feel free to click here to watch a video on the topic instead.
The quest for conversions
As Julie Andrews would say; let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. Why should you care about LinkedIn ad traffic?
Well, it’s quite simple, but I’ll break it down for you anyway. Basically, the entire point of LinkedIn Ads is for you to get conversions, right? But to really utilise your ads, you need to make sure that you track conversions. You need to know how many of your conversions are actually coming from LinkedIn Ads, and, more specifically, which LinkedIn Ads they’re coming from.
This way, you can use the data to figure out which ads to keep, which to kill, and which to adjust, which means you can run ads more effectively.
Who should be tracking LinkedIn Ads?
I should also probably give you a heads-up about who will find this post helpful so that you don’t waste your time.
In my opinion, anyone who uses LinkedIn Ads should use LinkedIn conversion tracking. If you’re just starting, it’s a great way to get data right off the bat, and if you’ve been running ads for a while, it’s a great way to get more insight into how you can improve your ads’ performance
Side note: since LinkedIn is a business-centred social media platform, it’s not great for people who specialise in e-commerce or other B2C opportunities. Google and Facebook might be more suited for those types of businesses. But for those in the B2B niche, LinkedIn will always be my go-to advertising platform.
The value of a lead
It’s important to remember that, while conversion tracking is important, there are different types of conversions. A conversion might be a sale in one instance, a lead in another, and a website visit in another.
These conversions may have different values, but in the end, they’re all conversions, since they are desired actions. As mentioned, LinkedIn is aimed at B2B, which means that leads will likely be your most valuable conversion.
An example of this would be someone filling in an enquiry form thanks to your LinkedIn Ad. The information you will gain from this lead will likely be invaluable, so it’s a decent conversion. You can use whatever conversion tracking method you prefer to keep track of the leads you get from LinkedIn.
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The time frame
You also need to keep in mind that you need to be strategic when selecting a time frame for tracking.
If you assign a short window of time, such as seven days, you may not be getting accurate data. This is because, if someone takes more than seven days between seeing your ad and converting, you won’t necessarily know that the reason they converted is because of the ad.
To stay on the safe side of things and ensure that you get as much data as you possibly can, I recommend a ninety-day click. At my agency, we always stick to a seven-day view, though, just to ensure that things don’t get too convoluted. Be sure to regularly check on your conversions in campaign manager so that you know what’s happening.
Choose your funnels wisely
You should also keep in mind which ads you’re showing to which audience. If you’re doing a top-of-funnel campaign, your ads are likely being shown to a cold audience, so you need to draw them in, intrigue them, and make them want to learn more.
Middle-of-funnel campaigns, on the other hand, are used to target people who have already interacted with your content, so you will naturally approach these ads differently. Not only that but the way you track them might differ.
If you have no clue what I’m talking about, you need to either hire an expert LinkedIn paid ads agency, or invest some time into learning more about ads.
Use your insight tag
To be fair, LinkedIn does set itself apart from other ad platforms like Facebook or Google by giving us commoners a glimpse of how it works. Every time someone visits your page, the information gets sent back to LinkedIn, so that you can effortlessly and accurately track where your traffic and conversions come from. This is thanks to a handy little think called the insight tag, which helps you obtain conversion tracking for your website and manage your campaigns.
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The URL secret to success
Here’s the thing about humans: we will always find a way to complicate things. And tracking your LinkedIn ads is no different. Though it may seem like an impossible feat to figure out which of your conversions come from LinkedIn, it’s actually not that hard.
My pro tip would be to always redirect people to a “thank you” page once they’ve filled in a form, and then track how many people visit this URL. The only way someone can get to this page is by filling it in, so if you track that URL, you will have a very clear picture of your LinkedIn conversions. This is one of the easiest ways to set up conversion tracking.
The Google Tag Manager
Every superhero needs a sidekick, and in your quest for world domination, the Robin to your Batman will be the trusty Google Tag Manager.
This is an alternative to LinkedIn’s own tracking. The reason I so highly recommend this is that it’s so versatile. If you set this up correctly, you can use it not only for LinkedIn ads, but also for Google Ads and other ad platforms. There are alternatives though, so be sure to explore those and decide what’s best for you.
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Track everything
When it comes to tracking ads, we often focus on conversions, because that’s where the big money lies. But the truth is that, if you want a well-rounded idea of your business’s ads, you need to track everything.
Track what someone does before they convert, as this can give you a lot of valuable information. For example, if you regularly have people spending ages on your website but not converting, that tells you that you have a great website, but that you need to work on getting people to the point where they become a lead.
Similarly, you may have people clicking “book a call” but then not going through with the booking, so you need to figure out why that is. Information is everything, so the more info you can get about your users’ actions, the better. Also don’t just track conversions that happen on your website; track your LinkedIn lead gen form conversions too!
Closing words
Hopefully, this post has given you some insight into how you can track your LinkedIn ads, which should provide you with a good starting point if you want to make sure that your ads kick ass.
Of course, having a solid tracking system in place isn’t enough – you also need to make sure that you have a good audience set up, that your ads themselves are good, and so much more. If that sounds like a lot to handle, get in touch with my agency via the form below and allow us to do the heavy lifting