Identify Leads with LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms
Intro
LinkedIn has become the de facto standard for generating business leads (b2b). LinkedIn is also a closed platform. This means that it’s not easy to obtain additional details about your leads beyond what the leads themselves provide.
Also, most B2B leads that are clicking ads or reading white-papers are in the orientation phase of the buying process, so often it is not smart to reach out immediately and push for a sale. The trick is to wait for the right Buying Signals and use Intent Data. Fortunately that is exactly what LeadBoxer is all about.
Take-home message: LinkedIn presents opportunity. This opportunity must be planned carefully to avoid high costs and/or information which is not detailed enough for Sales, who require contact details. Meaning: non-qualifiable leads.
The end goal is to identify leads from LinkedIn campaigns as individuals on your site, and use their web and email behavior to qualify and find the best moment to contact them.
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What are LinkedIn Lead Gen Form
A Lead Gen form is a simple form that is offered when a lead clicks your ad on LinkedIn.
The lead stays within the LinkedIn platform and the form is pre-populated with their LinkedIn details
The ideal situation to use a Lead Gen Form is when you can offer a white-paper or valuable info or a trial / consult, etc.
When your lead submits the form, you can redirect them to a Thank You page, which will create the user in LeadBoxer where we will try to identify the company based on the IP address. (make sure to use UTM tags to identify the campaign later)
But we are not done yet:
The actual lead (the individual) is now stored inside the LinkedIn platform, and this data cannot be passed along to a landing page.
To work around that problem we suggest the following route:
Instead of sending them straight to a landing page where they can download the valuable info (eg whitepaper, etc), we use email to complete the transaction and get the actual lead identified on the site.
You start by using a tool to get the lead data from LinkedIn into your marketing automation or email platform (for example through Zapier to Mailchimp).
In your email platform, you add these leads to a new list and a new campaign where you automatically send them a (tracked) email with a (tracked) link to a download page on your site. There they can actually download the whitepaper/ PDF.
This may sound complicated or burdensome for the lead, but the benefit of this setup is that you are now in full control of the data, and also:
- You have their (real) contact details
- You have the lead identified on your site and inside LeadBoxer.
- When they return to the site later down the road, they will be automatically recognized by LeadBoxer and you can get notified when they become qualified.
- Last but not least, the lead will now be in your marketing automation platform and you can start nurturing them.
Example implementation:
Whitepaper download using LinkedIn -> Mailchimp -> LeadBoxer
Preparation:
- Create the White-paper
- On your website, create a new page where visitors can download the whitepaper.Make sure the page is not indexed by search engines and that no other pages are linking to this page.
- In LeadBoxer, connect your Mailchimp account
- In Mailchimp, create a new list / audience and create an automated email campaign with a link to your download page. Make sure you tag the link as described in step 2 of the LeadBoxer Mailchimp integration
Create campaign
- Create the ad content or /sponsored post.
- Use a Lead Gen Form. A super easy tutorial can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/SAAE4c5Efgg
Bringing it all together
- Use a connection tool like Zapier or Automate.io to get the Lead data from LinkedIn to automatically add them to the new Mailchimp audience list.
Thats it, Done.
So what will happen in a nutshell?
- Leads fill in the form on LinkedIn
- The automated Mailchimp campaign will send an email to the lead with a link to the download page.
- Once they click the link, LeadBoxer connects to Mailchimp and fetches the lead details.
- You can now use LeadBoxer to send notifications to your sales team when the lead becomes ready to buy.
If you need help or want our assistance in setting this up, please contact us.
