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Written by
Giuseppe Gurrieri

How to Create LinkedIn Lead Gen Form Ads

Publisched on
16th April 2021

Do you want to get more LinkedIn leads? Are you generating leads with the correct ad format and conversion goal?

This article will show you how to create and use LinkedIn Lead Generation Form Ads in a Sponsored Content ad campaign. You'll also learn how to refine your lead gen form ads so that you can gather the most important input from customers, how to add personalized fields to your form, and how to export your leads.

Why Do You Use LinkedIn Lead Generation Form Ads?

Since LinkedIn advertisements are costly, you'll want to do whatever you can to keep results up while keeping costs down. When you submit someone to a landing page, you're adding many steps and friction to the process, which may reduce the total conversion rate. LinkedIn lead generation form ads will help you reduce pressure and increase conversion rates.

By pre-filling the fields on the lead gen form with their personal information, LinkedIn makes it simple for people to become leads. Everything they have to do now is pressing the Submit button.

Read the article below for an easy-to-follow walkthrough to learn how to set up LinkedIn lead gen form ads:

1. Create a Campaign for LinkedIn Lead Gen Form Ads

Supported InMail or supported advertising may also work for lead generation style marketing. We'll make it look like sponsored content for this case.

To access your LinkedIn Ads dashboard, go to the top-right corner of the screen and click Advertise. If you don't like that, go to Work and choose Marketing Solutions.

LinkedIn Campaign Manager Create Ads

Following that, you'll see a rundown of all of your accounts. Click on Create Account or select an Account you wish to r uni your Ads.

Create LinkedIn Ad Account

Then at the top-right corner of the page click on Create Campaign.

Create Ad Campaign on LinkedIn

Select Lead Generation as the LinkedIn campaign goal.

LinkedIn Lead Gen Form

2. Set Up Your Targeting

The next move is to decide who will be your target audience.

LinkedIn Audience Attributes

We want to target social media advertisers in this situation, so scroll down to Audience Attributes and choose Job Experience > Member Skills.

Type "social media" into the search box to see what member skills are available.

LinkedIn Campaign ManagerAudience Search Box

We'll focus on Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization, Social Media Advertising, and Social Media Measurement for this initiative because they're all valuable skills to have.

Once you've made your picks on the right side of this screen, you'll see the target audience scale.

Also, the Allow Audience Expansion checkbox that LinkedIn selects is by default unchecked. I don't want LinkedIn to add something to my audience's experience; I want them to use what I've addressed.

3. Decide on your ad format, budget, and timing.

You can select between a single image ad, a carousel ad (which has multiple images in one ad), video-supported content, or a message ad as an LinkedIn ad type. Let's start with a single picture advertisement.

Ad Formats on LinkedIn

After that, go to the budget and plan choices by scrolling down. I advocate switching from an automatic auction to a cost per click bid (CPC).

Untick the box for Lead Optimization as well. I don't want LinkedIn to make the call about who is more likely to convert. I'm looking for a level starting point.

Enter a bidding number now. Set a bid price that's way too low, like $2, if you're on a tight budget. LinkedIn would then respond in red, stating, "Your bid must be at least X." You know you got the lowest CPC and cost per lead on LinkedIn if you set your offer to that number ($4.50 in this case), and you can spend your entire budget. To begin with, I like that approach. You can still come back and boost the traffic if it isn't enough.

Set Ad Budget

Offer your campaign a meaningful name before you leave this screen so you can see what your account is doing at a glance. My preferred method of naming campaigns is to call them after the ad format I'm using, the goal, and the target audience.

Start with "SC," add a separator, and label the target by using supporting material. Then specify the target audience (for example, for social media marketing skills) as well as the venue (US). We now have a campaign name that explains who this group is and how and why we're reaching out to them.

Name Ad Campaign

When finished, press Next to get started on the ad itself.

4. Create your LinkedIn Lead Gen Form

Select Create New Ad on the next tab.

Create LinkedIn Ad

You're now going to pick your ad creative. The Name This Ad area is optional for supported ads, but I usually give it a name that includes the date of the ad's launch or something that will help me understand how this ad differs from others.

Then, in the Destination URL area, type the URL for the landing page. The headline and summary would then be auto-filled by LinkedIn from the landing page itself. The headline is taken from your SEO page title, and the summary is taken from the page's meta description. It's worth noting that this outline never appears, so you can write whatever you want or erase it. It doesn't make a difference.

The most critical text is the introduction, which must be compelling. For this case, we'll discuss why it's a good idea to attend Social Media Marketing World: "Listen up, social media marketers. This year's Social Media Marketing World is the only one you can attend. Now is the time to register."

Define the deal or what people will get in the headline (in this case, "Top Social Media Conference"). This is usually enclosed in square brackets and then given a name.

As I previously said, it makes no difference whether you put in the title, and no one will ever see it.

You have the choice to keep the picture that LinkedIn pulled directly from your website if you want it. Otherwise, press the X to delete the icon and replace it with a new one. 1200 x 627 pixels is the ideal image format. The ad will turn to the correct asset after you upload your image.

Note: Don't worry, Facebook ad experts: LinkedIn doesn't have anything similar to the 20% text clause. You can insert something in the picture as long as it isn't offensive.

You're now able to fill out the form's data. This is where you get to design the form that appears when someone clicks on the ad and fills it out right there. For your call to action, you can use either of LinkedIn's basic options (CTA). Since this is an advertisement for a meeting, I might choose to Learn More.

We're going to make a new type, so make sure to set the form to Create New. However, if you've already developed a form that you'd like to use, you can do so here and incorporate it into your ad.

After that, give the shape a name and choose a script. The customer has already seen the original ad text, so we want to tell them what they want to do with the headline. We will use the phrase "Meet thousands of social media marketers in April!" as an example.

Add something to the Details section that will improve the value proposition and make someone want to convert. "The best social media marketer and speakers in one place!" we'll say. Get practical advice from over 10 of the world's leading social media experts."

Then, apply the URL to your privacy policies. Check to see if your website has a privacy policy, and if it does, enter it here. Maybe your internal attorney or lawyer has something you want to add in the Privacy Policy Text area, so you don't have to.

The lead info and custom questions come next. This is where you get to decide which fields to use in the form. If the form requests information from the user's LinkedIn profile, LinkedIn can autofill the information, making it easier for them to complete the form. It will ask for your first name, last name, and email address by contrast.

The default email address is the user's login email address, which is frequently a personal email address. Click the X to delete the Email Address from the form if you don't want to force people to send you their job email address. Then go to Contact and pick Work Email from the drop-down menu. It's worth noting that requesting the work email adds a layer of complexity because users would have to fill in this area manually.

You can add custom questions and custom checkboxes that get passed through the form if you wish to ask for some extra details. We don't need any in this case; all we need is your first and last name, as well as your work email address.

After that, you'll get to the confirmation stage. You might write things like, "Hey, thanks, we'll get back to you," "We'll give you some stuff," or "Someone will call you" in the Message area.

I want to use the Landing Page URL area, so if someone filled out this form on LinkedIn but has never visited the website, your other platforms will be unable to retarget or cultivate them. I enjoy dumping them on a tracking and controllable landing page.

I might type in a thank-you page URL as a landing page URL. "Thank you for reaching out," we'll tell in this case. We'll get you information about Social Media Marketing World right away!" We'll use Learn More for the Thank You Message Call-to-Action.

If your CRM needs hidden fields, go to Hidden Fields and enter something like source, medium, campaign, material, or something similar. We won't care about this because we've already included UTM parameters in our confirmation URL.

After you've finished configuring your form, press Create.

Now you can see your created ad and the lead generation type to which it is linked. To continue, click the Next button.

When you click Launch Campaign, the campaign will go online. Return to your dashboard and change the campaign status from Active to Paused if you're not ready for it to run yet.

You now have a working campaign with a LinkedIn Lead Gen Form Ads.

5. Save The Prospects

You'll need to figure out how to harvest your leads after you've started producing them on LinkedIn.

In your advertising dashboard, go to Account Assets and pick Lead Gen Forms.

This type does not yet have any leads, but you might pick Download Leads from the three-dot icon if it did. This will send you a CSV file containing all of the data you requested. This, though, will necessitate you going in every day and downloading this sheet.

You are using one of LinkedIn's integrations if you'd instead send your leads to another device. Salesforce, HubSpot, Eloqua, Marketo, LiveRamp, and a few others are among LinkedIn's integration partners. You'll need to go into the partner portal and explicitly merge it with LinkedIn to get this set up.

You should use Zapier if you don't have one of these integration partners. Zapier's $20 a month package allows you to connect with LinkedIn lead generation forms and send those leads to almost every method you can think of.

Understanding the Differences Between Sending Users to a Landing Page and Using LinkedIn Lead Gen Form Ads

Despite all of the advantages of LinkedIn lead generation form ads, they might not be the right way to produce leads for you. Let's compare the advantages and disadvantages of running LinkedIn lead generation form ads over directing users to a landing page so you can decide which is better for your goals.

People react well to LinkedIn lead gen form advertisements. Lead generation style advertisements are by far the most effective way to bring as many names in your target audience into your database for nurturing.

However, lead consistency problems arise from time to time, such as when someone forgets to fill out the questionnaire. If you want to make an excellent first impression—perhaps this individual is a high-value candidate with whom you want to do business and sign major contracts—you should take them to your landing page instead.

I prefer to use lead generation forms to test the conversion rates of our landing page. Let's presume we're pitching a deal both on the landing page and in a lead gen form. If our conversion rates vary significantly from the two, we know the only distinction is how we delivered information on the landing page. This is an excellent test to see if your landing page is obstructing your progress.

When you send traffic to your landing page, you can then retarget the traffic through Facebook, Google, or some other retargeting channel you're using, which is highly efficient. You can also monitor the traffic using UTM parameters or other monitoring parameters in your URLs, something you wouldn't be able to do if all of your traffic came from the LinkedIn lead generation form. final thoughts

Using a lead generation form in a LinkedIn-funded content ad campaign is wise to gather the most valuable input from prospects. Test out LinkedIn lead generation form advertisements to see if they're the right way to produce leads for you or if directing people to a landing page is a better option.

What are your thoughts? Have you experimented with LinkedIn lead generation form ads? What has been your experience with them? 

Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

 

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