Knowing whether your LinkedIn insight tag is working properly is crucial for tracking the performance of your LinkedIn campaigns and content. The insight tag allows you to measure engagement, impressions, clicks, conversions, and more. However, implementing and troubleshooting the tag can be challenging. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll walk through how to set up the LinkedIn insight tag, best practices for implementation, how to test if it’s working, and troubleshoot common issues. Follow these steps and you’ll be able to accurately track your LinkedIn marketing efforts.
What is the LinkedIn Insight Tag?
The LinkedIn insight tag is a small snippet of JavaScript code that you embed on your website pages. It enables you to track conversions, retarget site visitors, and gain insights from your LinkedIn ad campaigns.
Here’s what the insight tag allows you to do:
- Track conversions from your LinkedIn Sponsored Content and Sponsored InMail campaigns
- Retarget website visitors who have viewed your LinkedIn ads
- Segment your website analytics by traffic source (LinkedIn vs. other sources)
- Gain visibility into your LinkedIn ad performance and optimize based on insights
The tag works by dropping a LinkedIn browser cookie on your site visitor’s browser when they view a page containing the insight tag code. This cookie ID enables LinkedIn to recognize that browser when they later convert on your website. It also allows you to retarget those browsers via LinkedIn ads.
So in summary, the LinkedIn insight tag is a small but powerful tool to unlock essential campaign insights and retargeting capabilities.
How to Implement the LinkedIn Insight Tag
Implementing the LinkedIn insight tag on your website involves just a few simple steps:
Step 1: Generate Your Insight Tag
First, you need to generate your unique insight tag ID. Here’s how:
- Go to the LinkedIn Campaign Manager
- Under measurement, click “Insights Tag”
- Click “Generate Tag” or “Get Tag”
- Copy the full tag code snippet that pops up
It should look something like this:
<script type="text/javascript">
_linkedin_data_partner_id = "1234567";
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
(function(){var s = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0];
var b = document.createElement("script");
b.type = "text/javascript";b.async = true;
b.src = "https://snap.licdn.com/li.lms-analytics/insight.min.js";
s.parentNode.insertBefore(b, s);})();
</script>
This contains your unique partner ID number which enables tracking.
Step 2: Paste the Code on your Pages
Next, you need to paste the full code snippet before the closing </head> tag on every page you want to track.
For example:
<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript">
_linkedin_data_partner_id = "1234567";
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
(function(){var s = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0];
var b = document.createElement("script");
b.type = "text/javascript";b.async = true;
b.src = "https://snap.licdn.com/li.lms-analytics/insight.min.js";
s.parentNode.insertBefore(b, s);})();
</script>
</head>
</html>
This will enable tracking on all pages. You can limit it to certain pages if preferred.
Step 3: Test Tag Implementation
It’s important to test that the tag is properly implemented before launching your LinkedIn campaigns. Here are two ways to confirm the tag is working:
1. Use the LinkedIn Tag Validator
LinkedIn provides a handy Tag Validator tool. Just enter your website URL, and it will crawl the pages and confirm whether the Insights Tag is detected.
2. Check your cookies
Navigate to a page with your insight tag implemented. Open your browser Developer Tools, go to the Application tab, and look for a cookie named “li_gc”. This means the LinkedIn insight tag fired correctly.
Correctly implementing the tag upfront will ensure you accurately capture all campaign analytics.
Best Practices for Implementing the LinkedIn Insight Tag
Here are some recommendations to ensure you implement the LinkedIn insight tag for optimal tracking:
- Place the tag near the top of the
<head>section – This ensures the tag loads early before the rest of the page. - Implement on all pages – For full analytics, install on as many pages as possible. At minimum, tag your homepage, landing pages, and thank you pages.
- Use tag management – Tools like Google Tag Manager allow easier management. Create a tag once and fire it on multiple pages.
- Avoid modifications – Don’t modify the tag code at all or it may break.
- Watch character limits – There are character limits on the partner ID parameter value.
- Check your tag weekly – Occasionally tags can go stale or get removed by other developers. Do spot checks to make sure it’s still firing.
Following these best practices will optimize your insight tag setup for accuracy and continuity.
How to Test if Your LinkedIn Insight Tag is Working
Once your insight tag is implemented, there are a few ways to test that it is working properly:
Check LinkedIn Campaign Manager
Within Campaign Manager, navigate to the Insights section. If your tag is implemented correctly, you will start to see data populate the different analytics reports. This includes:
- Impressions – Number of times your ads were shown.
- Clicks – Clicks on your ads.
- Engagements – Interactions with your ads.
- Conversions – Goal completions tracked by the insight tag.
- Retargeting – Size of your retargeting audience from visitors.
If you are seeing data flow into these reports, your insight tag is likely working.
Use Chrome Tag Assistant
The Google Chrome Tag Assistant is a browser extension that lets you visualize tags on a web page.
Install it, browse to a page with your insight tag, and look for the LinkedIn Insights tag to appear in the list. This confirms the tag is loading on your site.
Check Cookies
As mentioned previously, when the LinkedIn insight tag fires it drops a browser cookie called “li_gc”.
Pull up your browser Developer Tools, go to the Application tab, and check if this cookie exists after browsing pages with your tag installed. If the cookie is there, your tag is working.
Monitor Conversions in Analytics
One final way to check if your insight tag is tracking conversions is to look in your website analytics platform – whether Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, or another system.
Since the insight tag fires when someone completes a goal conversion, you should see a subset of traffic and conversions coming from LinkedIn in your analytics reports. Filter by the traffic source to isolate just the LinkedIn data.
How to Troubleshoot Common LinkedIn Insight Tag Issues
If your tests reveal the LinkedIn insight tag is NOT working properly, here are some common issues to troubleshoot:
Tag Not Installed Everywhere
Double check that your developer has implemented the tag site-wide, especially on key landing pages. Occasionally tags get missed on certain pages. Use the tools above to audit.
Tag Syntax Errors
Look closely for any typos or errors in the tag code itself. Things like misconfigured quotes or missing punctuation can break a tag. Validate the syntax.
Tag Not Loading Asynchronous
The LinkedIn tag must load asynchronously for accuracy. Make sure the tag is not blocked by other code on the page preventing this asynchronous behavior.
Cookie Blocking/Deletion
Some browsers block third-party cookies by default. And users can manually delete cookies. Ensure your website visitors do not have these cookie restrictions enabled.
Wrong Partner ID
Perhaps the tag was accidentally generated with an incorrect or outdated Partner ID parameter. Double check this matches the current ID in your Campaign Manager.
队 API/Script Errors
Look in your browser console for any errors related to the LinkedIn tag script. Things like CORS blocking, unavailable domains, or mixed content warnings could break the tag functionality.
Server-Side Rendering
If using server-side rendering or frameworks like Next.js, extra tag configuration is required to ensure tags work properly. Consult LinkedIn’s docs on this.
Caching Issues
Extensive caching either on the browser or network side can cause stale tag versions to be served. Configure your caching rules to allow more frequent tag updates.
By systematically troubleshooting each of these common issues, you should be able to pinpoint what is causing your LinkedIn insight tag to fail. Reaching out to LinkedIn’s customer support team is another option if you remain stuck.
Conclusion
Getting your LinkedIn insight tag properly implemented and tracking campaign analytics is a crucial step in maximizing the return from your LinkedIn ad investments.
With the steps in this guide, you now understand what the tag does, how to install it, best practices, how to confirm it’s working, and troubleshoot issues.
Consistently check that your tag is firing and campaign data is flowing. Having a solid tag foundation will enable optimization and retargeting capabilities to boost LinkedIn campaign performance over time.