LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 722 million members worldwide. With its huge user base, LinkedIn offers many opportunities for businesses to generate leads and new customers through its sophisticated targeting and advertising capabilities. One of the key ways businesses can generate leads on LinkedIn is through LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms. But do these lead gen forms actually work? Let’s take a deep dive into understanding how LinkedIn lead gen forms work and their effectiveness for lead generation.
What are LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms?
LinkedIn lead gen forms allow you to add a contact form to your LinkedIn ads and Pages. When someone clicks on your ad or visits your Page, they’ll see a lead gen form that they can fill out to share their contact information with you.
Here are some key things to know about LinkedIn lead gen forms:
- The forms are customizable – you can ask for name, email, phone, company, job title, etc.
- Submissions come directly to your email inbox or CRM
- You only pay when leads fill out the form, not just for clicks
- Lead gen forms can be added to Sponsored Content, Message Ads, Text Ads, and on LinkedIn Pages
So in a nutshell, lead gen forms allow you to collect lead information directly within the LinkedIn platform.
How do LinkedIn lead gen forms work?
Here are the key steps for how LinkedIn lead gen forms work:
- Advertiser creates a LinkedIn lead gen form campaign with their target audience and desired form fields
- LinkedIn displays ads with lead gen form to targeted audience
- Interested users click on ad and are taken to ad page with lead gen form
- User fills out and submits lead gen form, sharing their information
- LinkedIn instantly sends lead gen form submission to advertiser’s email or CRM
- Advertiser only pays when user submits the form, not just for clicks
So in summary, the advertiser sets up the campaign, LinkedIn displays to targeted users, interested users fill out the form, and the advertiser receives the leads directly.
Effectiveness of LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms
Now that we’ve looked at what LinkedIn lead gen forms are and how they work, let’s explore just how effective they really are for generating quality leads and new business.
Lead Quality
One of the biggest advantages of LinkedIn lead gen forms is that they generate highly targeted, high quality leads. This is because LinkedIn allows advertisers to target the forms based on detailed criteria like job title, company, industry, skills, groups, and interests.
According to LinkedIn, leads from LinkedIn lead gen forms convert at 2-3x higher rates compared to more generic leads. The leads are already pre-qualified based on the detailed targeting so they are much more sales-ready.
Cost Per Lead
LinkedIn lead gen forms work on a cost per lead model – you only pay when users submit the form, not just for clicks or impressions. The average cost per lead is around $50-$100 depending on industry and targeting.
This pay for performance model means you can generate leads at scale while still maintaining cost efficiency, paying only for the leads that submit the form.
Lead Volume
With 722+ million members, LinkedIn provides access to a huge audience to promote your lead gen forms to. This allows you to generate a high volume of leads.
Having the lead gen forms directly on the LinkedIn platform also means higher visibility and completion rates, leading to more lead volume.
| Industry | Average Monthly Leads |
|---|---|
| Software | 150-200 |
| Business Services | 100-150 |
| Financial Services | 200-250 |
As you can see from the table above, LinkedIn lead gen forms can generate 100-250+ leads per month on average depending on your industry.
High Conversion Rates
The leads from LinkedIn’s lead gen forms convert at very high rates because they are pre-qualified and already interested. Various studies have found conversion rates around 25-35% for LinkedIn lead gen leads.
This is much higher than more generic inbound leads. High conversion rates mean you ultimately get more customers from your LinkedIn leads.
Tips for Success with LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms
Here are some top tips to maximize your success and results with LinkedIn lead gen campaigns:
Target carefully
Take the time to really nail down your ideal customer profile and configure your campaign targeting precisely based on job title, company, industry, groups, etc. The more precise your targeting, the better the lead quality.
Offer something of value
Don’t make your forms too “salesy.” Offer something of value like a special guide, whitepaper, or discount to incentivize users to fill out the form.
Keep forms short
Long forms have much lower conversion rates. Keep your forms short and only ask for the most essential information.
Test different placements
Test lead gen forms on both Sponsored Content ads as well as on your LinkedIn Page to see which placement converts better.
Follow up quickly
Follow up within minutes or hours, not days. LinkedIn lead gen leads are hot so you want to act fast.
Monitor and optimize
Continuously monitor your lead gen campaign results and optimize your targeting, messaging, and offers over time.
Conclusion
So in summary, LinkedIn lead gen forms can be an extremely effective way to generate quality B2B leads at scale due to LinkedIn’s targeting capabilities, huge audience, and pay for performance model. Conversion rates and lead quality from LinkedIn lead gen forms consistently outperform other lead sources. By carefully targeting your audience, creating compelling offers, and testing different placements, you can generate hundreds of sales-ready leads per month via LinkedIn lead gen forms.
