9 Surprising Benefits of LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms

Like email, digital forms are a living fossil in the current digital landscape: Old as the internet, but highly resilient and adaptable as well.

The proof of this statement is that you can find digital forms everywhere around the internet: When you sign up for a service, in customer satisfaction surveys, and of course, in the lead generation efforts of countless companies.

It goes without saying that forms are particularly relevant in B2B environments, where solutions can be complex, requirements are more extensive, and sales cycles longer than in the average B2C offering.

Taking this into account, it’s remarkable that it took LinkedIn 10+ years to launch a native advertising option centered around web forms.

Ultimately, LinkedIn’s take on digital forms materialized as Lead Gen Forms, which have been available on the platform since 2017. And yet, they remain in relative obscurity when compared to other digital forms products.

Piqued by curiosity, we zeroed in on Lead Gen Forms to understand what sets them apart from other solutions, and why they must be considered as a prime lead generation tool in the context of LinkedIn marketing.

Let’s take a look at the discoveries we made.

More than ads: 9 benefits of LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms

1. They don’t break the LinkedIn browsing experience

One of the biggest advantages of LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms is that they are displayed as normal LinkedIn sponsored content.

This is vital for two reasons. First, it doesn’t disrupt the experience of scrolling through the feed.

Second, and most importantly, they don’t redirect to a third-party site after a user decides to fill out the form.

As a result, the lead stays on the platform at all times, which helps build trust and accelerates the process of filling out a form.

2. They remove friction by leveraging existing data

When a person clicks on a Lead Gen Form ad, a form pops up on the screen.

In it, some of the fields are pre-populated with data from the person’s LinkedIn profile (in the image above, the pre-filled fields have been blurred for privacy reasons).

This saves the lead a great deal of time and further improves the quality of interactions from the get-go.

Nobody likes to fill out a form with the usual data over and again (such as email address, name, and whatnot), and Lead Gen Forms make sure that nobody has to with its auto-populate feature.

3. Integrated metrics

Calculating the effectiveness of campaigns is not the most exciting way to employ time for a marketing manager. Hence the importance of integrated metrics that come with Lead Gen Forms.

Key metrics like cost per lead, form fill rates, and conversion rates are all included in the reports for campaigns using Lead Gen Forms and can be accessed through LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager. You can check the full list of available metrics here.

The result: Readily available figures for easy measurement and reporting.

4. Versatility

Lead Gen Forms allow for the creation of campaigns with an array of different goals and actions.

You can use them to entice leads to sign up for newsletters, events, webinars, and demos. You can also employ them to grant access to gated content, or to offer discounts and promotions in exchange for data.

In short, Lead Gen Forms give room for creativity and are a well-rounded vehicle for your marketing efforts.

5. They can be targeted with almost surgical precision

Since Lead Gen Forms are deployed as a regular LinkedIn advertising campaign, you can make the most of the platform’s targeting features.

This means that you can target people by multiple demographic markers (including location, and the company they work for), but most importantly, by job title.

This is important because LinkedIn users share their actual job titles on the platform at much higher rates than they do on Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit.

Imagine that your product is a perfect fit for Chief Technology Officers (CTOs). In such case, the odds of accurately targeting these professionals on LinkedIn are likely much higher than trying to do the same on other social media platforms.

6. They are easy to set up and don’t involve “funny” requirements

As a native LinkedIn ad product, campaigns featuring Lead Gen Forms are easy to set up, requiring just a few clicks.

There’s no need to embed code in a website or to add tracking tags. All you need to do is define a few parameters, upload an image, add some copy, and you’ll be good to go.

This video by LinkedIn shows how fast and easy it is to launch a Lead Gen Forms campaign.

7. They can be tested beforehand

Mistakes happen, let’s face it. Sometimes, an ad campaign is launched and there’s a typo, or perhaps a key field is missing from the form.

However, there’s a way to prevent this when using Lead Gen Forms. LinkedIn allows you to test your forms to see if they work without releasing a campaign.

How? Simple: You just send a test lead by accessing the preview of the ad creative in the Campaign Manager (the ad that has the Lead Gen Form attached to it), and then submit your information through the preview.

This is an optional step, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry. If everything works as it’s supposed to, you can go ahead and launch the campaign.

8. They can be embedded in LinkedIn Message Ads

In addition to being displayed on the main feed, Lead Gen Forms can be used in Message Ads campaigns as well.

This is of vital importance, as LinkedIn message ads (formerly known as InMail ads) have amazing open rates.

If you ever followed up on a digital ad campaign, you’ll know that these figures are only matched by the best email marketing campaigns in history, setting you up for success from the beginning.

9. They can be easily integrated with your CRM (and with other apps as well)

Forms are a great way to collect data. However, with data collection comes data processing, a mind-numbing, resource-consuming task.

Sending form data to your CRM manually is more than a mood killer: It’s also a poor way to employ your time.

Fortunately, you can integrate LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms with hundreds of other apps using Make.

For example, if you wish to add new Lead Gen Form submissions, there is a template for that:

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://www.make.com/en/embed-builder/api/templates/list?lang=en&mode=list&templates=6273&partner=true"></script>

When you need to save time and get things done, Lead Gen Forms integrations will have your back.

The takeaway: Making the most of your options

Regardless of how you go about Lead Gen Forms campaigns, make sure that you don’t spend too much time on data collection and classification efforts. Doing so will negatively impact ROI, and integrations can take that weight off your shoulders.

Also, it’s important to acknowledge the importance of having a relatively new advertising option on one of the most relevant social media platforms there is.

At the end of the day, there aren’t that many native advertising products you can choose from when it comes to social media, and Lead Gen Forms are a welcome addition to the current landscape. 

Playing the native tools to their strengths will set you on course to achieving more conversions, and gather a trove of interesting data to use down the road as well.