5 Essential LinkedIn Ads Metrics for B2B Marketers

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Digital marketers always have an eye on metrics—to improve campaign performance and ensure success.

And if you're like most B2B marketers, you're taking an especially close look at your LinkedIn Ads performance. After all, you know your target audience is active on the platform, but you still need to show results.

And therein lies the challenge.

Optimizing your campaigns is essential to improve your return on investment for any marketing channel. But to do so effectively, you must evaluate the right data.

Five Common LinkedIn Campaign Metrics

Let's look at some of the most common metrics B2B marketers track to measure LinkedIn campaign performance:

Conversion rate. The conversion rate is the percentage of users who took the desired action after clicking on your ad. If your goal is lead generation, this is the number of leads generated.
Clickthrough rate (CTR). This is the percentage of people who clicked on your ad. This metric indicates relevance: The higher the CTR, the more relevant and engaging it is to your target audience.
Impressions. Impressions are the number of times LinkedIn served your ad. This metric helps you understand how many people have seen your ad. Since the algorithm serves ads based on success metrics, this is an easy way to monitor ads you are A/B-testing. LinkedIn serves the ad with more engagement and leads more often: Let the algorithm do the work for you.
Engagement rate. The engagement rate measures the number of interactions plus clicks and followers acquired from the ad, divided by the impressions. Similar to CTR, a high engagement rate indicates that the content of your ad is resonating with those seeing it in their LinkedIn feed.
Cost per conversion. This metric is how much you pay to get a person to complete a specific action or goal. It's likely one of the most important metrics a marketer reports to leadership.

Those metrics are great as a surface-level overview of campaign and channel performance—and they can inform your budgeting.

When Those Common LinkedIn Ads Metrics Aren't Enough

Sometimes, those metrics you're measuring will fall short in the face of some difficult scenarios:

Low conversions from otherwise high-performing ads. The campaign conversion rate is decreasing even as click-through and engagement rates increase.
High conversion rate, low-quality leads. Leadership is unhappy with the quality of the leads generated from campaigns, even though the metrics are favorable and outperform the industry average.
Right company, wrong stakeholder. The campaigns exceed industry benchmarks, they have low conversion cost, and they generate leads from companies we want to do business with. However, the people completing the forms are purchase influencers, not buyers.

Five Other LinkedIn Ads Metrics You Should Be Tracking

To get to the heart of such demand gen challenges, you'll need more insights. The following five additional LinkedIn Ads metrics will provide insights for increasing your LinkedIn Ads ROI.

1. Matched audience engagement level

One of the easiest ways to ensure your ads get in front of your target audience is to use the platform's matched audience feature. It lets you upload a list of the companies you want to reach, allowing you to see the impressions and ad engagement directly in the campaign manager.

This data provides insight into whether your content is reaching your target companies and whether it is resonating with them.

LinkedIn goes the extra step to give you a range from very high to very low engagement. If engagement is low across your list of target accounts, it's time to switch up your content.

2. Clicks by job title

n the case of the right company, wrong stakeholder, taking a closer look at the job titles of those engaging with your ads can be extremely helpful. If the people clicking on your ad aren't your buyers, that clearly indicates the ad isn't resonating with them.

Consider changing your ad copy or the asset you are directing people to. You can also exclude undesired job titles to refine your audience further.

3. Impressions by job seniority

New jobs are emerging all the time, especially in the rapidly evolving area of B2B technology, and so you may not always know the job titles of those you want to reach.

However, you do know your product and service price point. Armed with that information, you can make a reasonable estimate of what level of individual has the buying and influence power and adjust your audience targeting and messaging accordingly.

4. Lead form completion rate

If your campaign aims to generate leads, you should be using LinkedIn lead gen forms (LGF). An LGF is prepopulated with the relevant persons' information from their LinkedIn profiles, so all they have to do is hit the submit button.

According to LinkedIn, the average LGF completion rate is 13%. If your form completion rate is less than 13%, but your CTR and engagement rates are high, there may be a disconnect between what's in the ad and the copy in the lead gen form.

Don't discount the impact form copy and the number of fields may have on your conversion rate. And just as with your ad copy and creative, you must also test and optimize forms.

5. Conversions on desktop vs. mobile

Every marketer knows the best ads are designed for how the user will encounter them. If most of your ad conversions are coming from mobile, yet your ads were designed for desktop first, redesign them for mobile to test if that improves your conversion rate.

Pro-tip: always kick off a campaign with at least two ad creatives, one for desktop and one for mobile.

Operationalize A/B-testing

If it's not already apparent, I'm a firm believer in A/B-testing as a means to achieve incremental improvements in ad performance and ROI.

Because so many variables are at play, marketers must map out and continually test elements to find the optimal ad engagement and conversions.

When I hear statements like "LinkedIn Ads do not work for our B2B brand," my first reaction is to ask what you tested to arrive at that conclusion. The first 3-6 months of a campaign should be focused on A/B testing to ensure your ad gets in front of your target audience and identify what resonates with that audience.

What LinkedIn Ads metrics are you measuring?

Author to Author: Ann Handley Talks to Geraldine DeRuiter