Dive Brief:
- LinkedIn is rolling out native conversion metrics in its Campaign Manager tool for sponsored content and text ads, according to a blog post from the company.
- The metrics will include leads, sign-ups, downloads and even conversion-to-purchase.
- LinkedIn says it has been testing conversion tracking with 200 advertisers, according to Ad Week. The platform says advertisers' cost-per-conversion fell 21% on average during testing in July and August.
Dive Insight:
Conversion is often a misunderstood term, but in the B2B marketing world, every stage of the entire buying cycle is filled with micro-conversions — with conversion-to-sale being the main macro-conversion at the end of a long sales cycle. The conversion for any particular campaign could be as simple as a white paper download that results in a newly generated lead.
As the leading B2B social media platform, it makes sense for LinkedIn to offer native conversion tracking as conversion is a major key performance indicator for any B2B campaign, ranging from email open rates for email all the way to the final sale at the end of the buyer’s funnel. Before the announcement, LinkedIn advertisers relied on third parties to provide conversion tracking on the platform.
Although there are third party tools to help marketers track conversion rates for campaigns, LinkedIn has more direct access to and a better understanding of the data it collects on ad campaigns within its ad platform, potentially making its conversion metrics more accurate and detailed than what a third party may be able to calculate. The new metrics should give marketers greater insight into ROI and how well campaigns perform against key goals and benchmarks.
