LinkedIn has announced that it’s adding three new options to its Lead Gen Forms ad option to help enhance both response and reach.
First off, LinkedIn’s expanding its bid optimization tools to include Lead Gen Forms.
“Next week, marketers will be able to use automatic optimization in Campaign Manager to get more leads for a better price. When you select “Lead Form Submissions” on the Bid and Budget page, Campaign Manager will auto-adjust your bid to serve your Sponsored Content with a Lead Gen Form to more members who are more likely to submit a form.”
Bid optimization, available for Sponsored Content campaigns, uses LinkedIn’s system to auto-adjust your campaign bids in order to serve to users who are more likely to convert, based on your chosen goal.
In beta, LinkedIn says advertisers have seen a 30% increase, on average, in lead form submissions, and a 23% decrease in cost per lead by using bid optimization on Lead Gen Forms.
LinkedIn’s also making Lead Gen Forms available on desktop, which will pop-up when the form option is clicked.
Of course, the main benefit of auto-filling Lead Gen Forms is generally seen on mobile, where typing in all the details can be time consuming (and frustrating), but extending the option to desktop users gives business more ways to reach people – which is particularly relevant for those organizations which see more traffic from desktop users.
And lastly, LinkedIn’s making it easier for users of SalesForce Sales Cloud and Microsoft Dynamics 365 to access their Lead Gen Forms data.
“You can easily manage your leads by either downloading lead lists from Campaign Manager, or setting up a direct integration with your preferred marketing automation or CRM provider. Marketers can now send their lead data directly to two new partners: Salesforce Sales Cloud and Microsoft Dynamics 365, making lead management even easier for you and your sales teams.”
Considering Microsoft owns LinkedIn, you’d kind of expect Dynamics to have an integration option, but the two entities still operate separately, with gradual integration coming into effect over time.
LinkedIn first rolled out Lead Gen Forms last April, and they’ve seen good response – LinkedIn reported back in November that businesses using the option have been able to reduce their cost per lead by more than 20%. Given this, and the increase in LinkedIn users accessing the site via mobile device, it makes sense for LinkedIn to give the option more focus, and these new tools will help expand usage and provide new ways for businesses to connect.
LinkedIn also notes that they’ll be adding more Lead Gen Form features over the next few months.