If you’ve ever used paid ads, especially in the B2B industry, the chances are that you already know all about LinkedIn lead gen forms. But knowing about something isn’t enough to make it work to your advantage: you need to be able to master it.
I run a paid ads agency called Snowball Creations, so I’ve seen firsthand what a game-changer LinkedIn lead gen forms are. I’ve even made a whole YouTube video about it, which you can watch here. Otherwise, keep reading!
What are LinkedIn lead gen forms?
As the name suggests, LinkedIn lead gen forms are forms that appear on your LinkedIn ads and allow users to input their personal information, thus helping you collect leads. It’s such a small and simple little thing, but it’s truly a powerhouse that can make a world of difference.
A success story
I get that everyone’s probably trying to tell you about the “next big thing” in paid ads, so you may be a bit sceptical. So I’m going to share a real-life success story of how I’ve seen LinkedIn lead gen forms perform way above expectations.
One of my clients was on the hunt for investment opportunities, so we decided to use LinkedIn lead gen forms for this. What happened? We got 159 leads within a few months of this lead-generation process. And to give you an even better perspective of how effective our LinkedIn lead gen ads were: those 159 high-quality leads generated over $4 million in sales.
And guess what? My own agency also swears by LinkedIn as well as LinkedIn lead gen forms, and we use this type of lead generation campaign as one of our main sources of getting new business.
Setting up your lead gen forms
By now, I hope that I’ve convinced you that setting up LinkedIn lead gen forms will be in your best interest, but you might be wondering how to do it. So, let’s talk shop. How do you set these bad boys up for success? Of course, the easy answer is to get a LinkedIn campaign manager or LinkedIn ads agency to do it for you, but you can also do it yourself.
Luckily, it’s pretty simple. As easy as pie, some would say. And who doesn’t love a good pie?
Simply head to LinkedIn’s campaign manager, select “assets”, navigate to “lead gen forms”, and BOOM! You’re well on your way to setting up a solid lead gen form on LinkedIn. Add the name, headline, and copy for your form, and the basics are all in place. You should also consider your actual ad creative. In my experience, single-image ads perform very well when it comes to LinkedIn lead gen forms, especially if you are using these in a remarketing campaign.
The autofill magic
You may be thinking: okay, so it’s a form. What’s the big deal? I’ll happily answer that for you. The autofill capabilities of LinkedIn lead gen forms are what truly make them such a great invention. I know, it sounds like I’m kissing LinkedIn’s arse here. But it’s something that I believe can help a lot of businesses, so I have to share it! Having a pre-filled form makes it that much easier for you to get the leads you need.
LinkedIn will autofill fields like the user’s first name, last name, and email. This is gold for lead generation! But the real pièce de résistance is the fact that LinkedIn also includes users’ LinkedIn profile URLs in these pre-filled forms. This allows you to stalk – I mean research – potential leads and get all the juicy info. You can connect with them to see their experience and learn more about them, and use all of this information to craft the perfect personalised sales pitch.
You can even pop them a message over LinkedIn so that you always have multiple avenues to connect with them.
Customisation
One of the best things about LinkedIn lead gen forms in my opinion is the fact that you can add custom questions in the form details section. You can add other categories such as phone number or job title to your form, depending on what makes a quality lead for you. Send them to your website landing page. Change the logo on the form. The possibilities are endless. You can customise each form for your ideal audience. ANd if you need some help with LinkedIn audience building, this post should help you out!
You can even include them in your A/B testing. Do people tend to convert at a higher rate when using the LinkedIn lead gen form, or the enquiry form on your website?
Quality versus quantity
Listen, nothing is perfect, so there are some downsides to LinkedIn’s lead gen forms. In this case, the con is actually the same as the pro: it’s the autofill.
Sure, it’s great that LinkedIn does all this work for you and its users. After all, we’re a generation of busy people, so let’s be real: most of us are going to click off as soon as we see an enquiry form. Ain’t nobody got time for that!
LinkedIn removes this friction, meaning you get a much higher quantity of leads. Sounds great, right?
The thing is that, while you may be getting a big number of leads, many of them may be poor quality due to how easy it is to fill in the form. In fact, people may even accidentally fill it in! They could click on it without realising and LinkedIn will fill in all their info. If that’s the case, you think you have a lead, but they never had the intention of filling in the form.
What's the workaround?
Luckily, this isn’t the end of the word. You need to balance your quality and quantity. Of course, this starts with your audience targeting – the more developed your audience is, the higher your chances of getting solid leads.
But you can take things a step further by adding a custom question to the form. This way, people will need to actively fill in at least one area before submitting the form, which means you get to eliminate a lot of spam and low-quality leads.
The harder the form is to fill in, the better quality your leads will be, because no one wants to spend ages filling in a form for something that they aren’t interested in.
Final words
If that doesn’t convince you to give LinkedIn lead gen forms a try, I don’t know what will! Of course, these forms won’t work for every business. LinkedIn is, after all, a business-focused social media network, so it’s best for businesses that specialise in the B2B niche.
If you happen to be one of those businesses, then you should give LinkedIn’s lead gen forms a try. Alternatively, get in touch with my LinkedIn Ads agency through the form below, and we’ll do the work for you!