After you’ve launched your campaigns on LinkedIn, a few best practices can help you get better results and maximize your ROI (return on investment). When you focus on optimizing your conversions and conversion setup, you can help increase conversion rates at any stage of the marketing funnel.
Use this guide to review the following best practices:
- Use multiple data sources to get the most out of your conversion tracking
- Set dynamic conversion values
- Choose the conversion value optimization goal to focus on high-value actions
- Review your ad set to ensure that it's optimized for delivery
- Monitor performance with reporting to help refine your campaigns
- Use Conversion Lift Testing to measure and prove impact
Use multiple data sources to get the most of your conversion tracking
There are multiple ways to send data to LinkedIn that are continuous and automatic, which can help ensure that your data stays current and reliable. These include:
- Insight Tag
- Conversions API (CAPI)
- CRM Sync (shared from Business Manager)
You can use only one data source, but using more than one will help you get the most comprehensive view of how your ads are performing. Learn more about the different sources below.
| Data source | Optimal funnel stage | Explanation | Learn more |
|---|---|---|---|
| Insight Tag | Upper funnel | A good source for the upper-funnel (brand awareness) stage of the marketing funnel. It can help you understand who is interacting with your ads and help you build retargeting audiences. Keep in mind, the Insight Tag is only for use on websites. | LinkedIn Insight Tag |
| Conversions API (CAPI) | Upper, mid, and bottom funnel | Works across all levels of the marketing funnel. CAPI is a good source to help capture actions that show intent beyond general engagement, and attribute marketing to high-intent actions across the full customer journey. Use CAPI and the Insight Tag together to provide a complete signal set, allowing you to measure and optimize more accurately, as you’re less likely to lose early-stage activity due to browser limits or data loss. | LinkedIn Conversions API |
| CRM Sync | Bottom funnel | When you connect your CRM through your Business Manager account using CRM Sync, your CRM data will also be visible in Campaign Manager. You can then review pipeline and opportunity metrics across different Campaign Manager features, making this a good way to attribute your marketing to actual revenue-driving outcomes. | Use CRM Sync to share CRM data from Business Manager for use in Campaign Manager |
Here's a tip
Learn more about each of these data sources and how they can work for your campaign.
Optional: Set up Website Actions with your Insight Tag
When you use the Insight Tag, you can also set up Website Actions. Website Actions automatically collects and tags common actions potential buyers take on your website without extra setup or code. This can help you more easily create new conversions and build retargeting audiences.
Set dynamic conversion values
When you set up your ad set, you can also try choosing conversion value as your optimization goal. The conversion value optimization goal helps you increase your ROI and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) by delivering ads to member accounts that are more likely to return the greatest value per conversion.
Here's a tip
To use the conversion value optimization goal, you’ll need to choose website conversions as your ad set objective and Classic as your ad set type.
Learn more about the conversion value optimization goal and how to use it in your ad set.
Review your ad set to ensure that it’s optimized for delivery
Review the following tips to help optimize your results.
| Tip | Explanation | Learn more |
|---|---|---|
| Choose the right objective | We recommend that you choose either Website Conversions or Lead Generation as your objective so to deliver your ads towards your conversion goals. Keep in mind, if you need to change your objective, you’ll have to end your current ad set and create a new one. | |
| Set up your optimal audience | Avoid hypertargeting by keeping your audience reach broad enough to drive performance. Use our auto-generated audiences to help create a custom audience that is likely to convert. You can also choose to use audience expansion and the LinkedIn Audience Network to help expand your reach. We recommend reviewing your audience insights on your Audiences page to find out more. | Get started with auto-generated audiences in Campaign Manager |
| Set a budget that fits your goals | Review your budget options and strategies and find the one that makes the most sense for your marketing goals. | Campaign and ad set budgets |
| Create ads that capture your audience | We recommend reviewing your ads to help ensure that they’re visually interesting, communicating value, and have a clear call-to-action. | Learn best practices for creating your ads on the LinkedIn Ads marketing page. |
Monitor performance with reporting to help refine your campaigns
After you’ve reviewed and updated your ad set, use Campaign Manager’s reporting features to see how your campaign is performing.
Use your reporting dashboard to track key metrics
Select Advertise on the left menu of Campaign Manager to see your reporting dashboard. Then use the filters to choose key conversion metrics to review.
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To find your Conversions & Leads reporting view, go to the Campaigns, Ad sets, or Ads tab for your account, click the Columns dropdown menu and select Conversions & Leads.
Review the following key metrics to measure how effectively your marketing campaigns are producing outcomes.
| Metric | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Conversion rate | A direct measure of campaign effectiveness, conversion rate shows how well your marketing converts interest into actual results. The higher the conversion rate, the more you can attribute your ads to producing the intended action. |
| Cost per conversion | Cost per conversion shows you the average amount you spent on each conversion, so you can see the efficiency of your campaign’s spend and directly link the cost to outcomes. |
| Return on ad spend | The revenue generated for ad spend, this metric allows you to monitor not just that your campaign is driving conversions, but that it’s also justifying your investment. |
Learn more about the available conversion metrics on your reporting dashboard.
Review your Measurement Insights page to monitor performance
Your Measurement Insights page provides a full-funnel view of performance and business impact across all ad sets in your ad account, all in one place.
From this page, you can filter by conversion to review and compare key conversion metrics.
| Insights page section | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| Performance | Review metrics including Leads, Conversions, Work email leads, and Qualified leads, CPL (Cost per Lead), Cost per Conversion, and CPQL (Cost per Qualified Lead) over a specific time range. You can select Show spend to see a comparison line on your chart to help you determine if there is any correlation between trends for the different metrics and spend. You can also select Ad set attribution view to compare the attribute view with the Leads metric. |
| Top-performing ad sets | See your top performing ad sets based on Key result, Cost per Key Result, CPC (Cost per Conversion), CTR (Click-through Rate) and Daily Delivery. |
| Top-performing ads | See your top performing ads based on Key result, Cost per Key Result, CPC (Cost per Conversion), and CTR (Click-through Rate). |
| Optional: Pipeline insights | If you connected your CRM through Business Manager, you’ll also have access to key revenue metrics, including Opportunity Win Rate, Average Deal Size, and Average Days to Close. |
Learn more about the Measurement Insights page.
Check your Recommendations page for additional ways you can update your setup to drive conversions
Recommendations in Campaign Manager are actionable insights generated to help optimize your advertising campaigns. These suggestions are based on campaign performance data, designed to enhance your ROI and streamline campaign management.
Learn more about your Recommendations page.
Use Conversion Lift Testing to measure and prove impact
Conversion Lift Testing helps you understand the value of your campaigns by measuring how effectively they drive incremental conversions on both LinkedIn and the LinkedIn Audience Network.
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Conversion Lift Testing requires that you’ve set up Conversions API (CAPI), the Insight Tag, or both as your data source.
Conversion Lift Testing splits your target audience into control and test groups. The ad sets being tested are only shown to the test group, and then both groups are tracked for conversion events relevant to your campaign goals. This allows you to compare the conversions between the control and test groups to calculate the incremental lift.
Learn more about Conversion Lift Testing and how to set up a Conversion Lift test.