Determining a good conversion rate for LinkedIn ads depends on several factors, including your goals, target audience, and industry. While there is no universal benchmark, examining common conversion rate ranges and best practices can help guide your LinkedIn advertising strategy.
What is a LinkedIn ad conversion rate?
A LinkedIn ad conversion rate is the percentage of people who take a desired action after clicking on your ad. This action, known as a conversion, can include signing up for a free trial, requesting a demo, downloading content, making a purchase, or any other target you define.
To calculate your conversion rate, divide the number of conversions by the number of total clicks your ad receives. For example, if your ad was clicked 100 times and 10 people signed up for your webinar, your conversion rate would be 10%.
Average LinkedIn ad conversion rates
Average conversion rates for LinkedIn ads vary significantly based on your goals and industry. Here are some benchmarks to consider:
- Lead generation: 1-3%
- Content downloads: 5-15%
- Free trial signups: 15-30%
- Webinar registrations: 15-35%
- Sales inquiries: 5-10%
- Ecommerce purchases: 1-5%
Keep in mind these ranges are broad generalizations. Factors like your target audience, offer, ad copy, and more will impact your specific conversion rates.
What is a good LinkedIn conversion rate?
While there are industry benchmarks, a “good” LinkedIn conversion rate ultimately depends on your goals, historical data, and testing. Here are some tips for assessing your conversion rate:
- Review historical conversion rates: Look at previous campaigns as a baseline for reasonable expectations.
- Set specific goals: Establish numeric conversion rate goals based on your business objectives.
- Test and optimize: Run A/B tests and experiment with different elements to improve your rate.
- Analyze by audience: Break down conversion rates by demographic and persona to identify high-converting segments.
- Monitor changes over time: Watch for meaningful increases or decreases as you refine your strategy.
While improving your conversion rate is often desirable, it’s also important to analyze the quality of conversions. Higher rates driven by unqualified leads may not benefit your business. Focus on driving conversions that support your target customer acquisition and ROI goals.
Best practices for improving LinkedIn ad conversion rates
If your current LinkedIn ad conversion rates are lower than your goals, here are some best practices to improve them:
Target your ads precisely
Leverage LinkedIn’s robust targeting options to show your ads to the audiences most likely to convert. Target by geography, company, job role, LinkedIn Groups, and more. The more relevant your ad, the higher conversion rates you can expect.
Highlight a compelling offer
Your ad copy should feature a strong call-to-action and make the offer very clear. Free trials, discounts, guides, and other lead magnets often convert better than generic messaging.
Send traffic to optimized landing pages
Send clicks to a dedicated landing page that makes taking the conversion action obvious. Include relevant copy, visuals, trust signals, and a prominent CTA button.
Retarget engaged visitors
You can create custom audiences in LinkedIn Campaign Manager based on who has engaged with your ads and pages. Retargeting these users as they continue exploring your brand increases conversions.
Integrate with CRM and analytics
Connecting LinkedIn Campaign Manager to your CRM and analytics tools lets you track conversions more accurately and optimize efforts. Integrations also enable lead scoring and nurturing.
A/B test ad elements
Try different versions of your ad copy, headlines, images, calls-to-action, target audiences, and more. A/B testing allows you to experiment and refine your ads to drive higher conversion rates.
Monitor and optimize for quality
Closely analyze your conversion metrics and junk open rates to identify opportunities to generate more qualified, sales-ready leads. Prioritize quality over quantity.
Example conversion rate calculations
To make conversion rate calculations more concrete, here are two examples:
Lead generation ad
- Ad clicks: 300
- Leads generated: 9
- Conversion rate = Leads/Clicks = 9/300 = 3%
Ebook download ad
- Ad clicks: 500
- Ebook downloads: 73
- Conversion rate = Downloads/Clicks = 73/500 = 14.6%
These examples illustrate how conversion rates can vary significantly based on your goal. Always focus on the quality of conversions rather than chasing high rates alone.
Factors that influence LinkedIn conversion rates
Many variables can impact your LinkedIn ad conversion rates. Being aware of these factors allows you to design campaigns to maximize results.
Target audience
Your ad conversion rate will vary significantly depending on your target audience. For example, conversion rates tend to be higher when targeting decision-makers rather than early-stage prospects.
Offer or content
Some offers like guides, trials, and discounts tend to convert better than generic branding campaigns. The perceived value of what you’re promoting affects results.
Ad copy and creative
Ad messaging that speaks directly to your audience’s needs or interests converts better than generic descriptions. Visuals also play a role in conversion rate.
Landing page experience
An optimized landing page removes friction from taking your desired conversion action. Page speed, copy, layouts, and CTAs impact conversions.
Industry and product type
Conversion rates benchmarks vary across industries. For example, SaaS and financial services see much higher rates for free trials than retail or ecommerce.
Stage in buyer’s journey
Ads targeted to cold audiences may convert at a lower rate than remarketing to accounts that have already engaged with your brand.
Should you focus on conversion rate or cost per conversion?
When assessing LinkedIn ad performance, you may wonder whether to prioritize conversion rate (CVR) or cost per conversion (CPC). Here are some guidelines on which metric to focus on:
- For demand generation goals, optimize for CVR to increase lead volume cost-efficiently.
- For sales goals, optimize for CPC to acquire high-quality customers.
- To lower CPC, increase relevancy and bidding strategy for quality traffic.
- To increase CVR, improve targeting, creatives, landing page, and offer.
- Always monitor both metrics to ensure a balance between volume and cost.
Conversion rate matters more for top-of-funnel goals like list building. For the bottom funnel, cost per conversion is critical to ensure profitability. Track both CVR and CPC over time to inform optimizations.
How to calculate LinkedIn CPC and CTR
Along with conversion rate, two other key performance indicators for LinkedIn ads are:
- CPC: Cost per click, calculated as Spend/Clicks.
- CTR: Click-through rate, calculated as Clicks/Impressions.
Monitoring CPC helps you control costs and calculate ROI. CTR indicates how compelling your ad copy and targeting is to get clicks. Here is an example calculation for a LinkedIn campaign:
| Metric | Value | Calculation |
|---|---|---|
| Impressions | 5,000 | |
| Clicks | 625 | |
| Spend | $750 | |
| CPC | $1.20 | $750/625 clicks |
| CTR | 12.5% | 625/5,000 impressions |
Analyze CPC and CTR in conjunction with conversion rates to optimize your LinkedIn ads holistically.
Conclusion
Determining your ideal LinkedIn ad conversion rate takes research, goal-setting, analysis, and ongoing optimizations. While industry benchmarks provide a helpful starting point, focus on the metrics that matter most for your business objectives. By continually refining your targeting, offers, creative, and landing pages, you can steadily increase the number of high-quality conversions driven by your LinkedIn advertising.
