LinkedIn Course Episode Six

Heey there,

Today is the 6th and final edition of our 6week, Linkedin Ads Junior Academy newsletter version. 

Time for graduation. 🎓

Today we'll be learning about Reporting & Analytics.

While this is the last episode, if you want to learn more about successful LinkedIn advertising, do let us know, so we may notify you when we release our LinkedIn Ads Academy.

We'll start today with a random fun fact.

Do you know what The Great British Kettle Surge is?
I'll let you know why at the end of today's course.

However, if you find these insights valuable, the best way to support our work is by inviting your friends to become Dot Connecters and learn more about Connecting The Dots between marketing activities and financial goals.

Topic Of Today

• 📈 Introduction to Reporting Tools

• 🔍 Analysing Campaign Data

• 📊 Making Data-Driven Decisions

• 🚀 Leveraging Success Stories

• 📌 Actionable Tips

• 📚 Homework

• 💡 Pro Tip

🚀 Week 6: Reporting, Analysis 🚀

1. 📈 Introduction to Reporting Tools

LinkedIn's Campaign Manager provides a bunch of reporting tools to help you understand how your campaigns are performing. These tools offer insights into various metrics such as impressions, clicks, social actions, and conversions. They also allow you to export reports for further analysis and share them with your team.

Here are some of the key reporting tools and how to use them:

Performance Chart: This tool provides a visual representation of your campaign's performance over time. You can customise the chart to display different metrics, such as impressions, clicks, social actions, and conversions. This can help you identify trends and patterns in your campaign's performance.

Demographic Reporting: This one provides insights into the demographics of the LinkedIn members who are seeing & engaging with your ads. You can view demographic data based on various categories, such as job function, seniority, industry, company size, and location. This can help you understand if your ads are reaching your target audience.

Conversion Tracking: This allows you to track the actions LinkedIn members take after clicking on your ads. You can track various types of conversions, such as downloads, sign-ups, purchases, and more. This can help you understand the effectiveness of your ads in driving your desired outcomes.

Website Demographics: This one provides insights into the LinkedIn members who are visiting your website. You can view demographic data based on various categories, such as job function, seniority, industry, company size, and location. This can help you understand who is interested in your content and how to better target your ads.

Exporting Reports: LinkedIn allows you to export your campaign performance data for further analysis. You can export data in CSV format, which can be opened in spreadsheet programs like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. This can be useful for sharing data with your team, creating custom reports, or analysing data in more detail.

In addition to these basic reporting tools, LinkedIn has introduced some new features as of 2023:

LinkedIn Lead Ads and Lead Gen Forms: These tools allow you to see the quality of the leads coming from your Lead Ads, target better leads with pipeline analytics, measure the ROAS of your Lead Ads and Lead Gen forms campaigns, and dynamically enrich lead data with tracked data from across the B2B customer journey.

LinkedIn Intent Data: This feature provides access to company clicks and impression data from all your LinkedIn Ads and helps you see if your ads are reaching your audience. It allows you to attribute towards engagement, not just conversions, and gain more accurate attribution to your LinkedIn Ads.

2. 🔍 Analysing Campaign Data

Understanding your campaign data is vital for assessing the performance of your ads and their impact on your objectives. This involves examining metrics such as impressions, clicks, social actions, and conversions, and interpreting what these figures reveal about your campaign's effectiveness.

For instance, a high number of impressions signifies that your ad is reaching a broad audience. However, impressions alone don’t reflect engagement or efficacy. It's crucial to consider impressions alongside other metrics to gain a comprehensive understanding of your ad's performance.

Similarly, a high number of clicks suggests that your ad is engaging and relevant to the audience. However, these clicks don't necessarily translate into a high number of conversions. If the clicks don't lead to conversions, it likely indicates a problem further down the funnel, where the ad directs

There are a bunch of different analytics tools on Linkedin that can help you track progress, measure success, & connect with your target audience.

1. Visitor Analytics: This includes metrics such as page views, unique visitors, and visitor demographics (location, job, seniority, industry, company size). These metrics help you understand who is visiting your page and their characteristics.

2. Update Analytics: This includes metrics such as impressions, clicks, social actions (likes, comments, shares), and engagement rate. These metrics help you understand how effective your LinkedIn updates are and whether your followers are engaging with your updates.

3. Follower Analytics: This includes metrics such as total followers, follower trends (increase or decrease over time), organic followers (gained without advertising), sponsored followers (gained through advertising), and follower demographics (location, seniority, industry, company size, job function). These metrics help you understand who your followers are and their characteristics.

4. Competitor Analytics: This feature allows you to compare your page followers and engagement with competitors. This comparison can help you improve your social media strategy.

5. Lead Analytics: If you have a lead generation form on your LinkedIn page, you can track leads and conversions. Metrics like conversion rate and cost per lead can give you an idea of how effective your campaigns are.

6. Employee Advocacy Analytics: These metrics help LinkedIn Page admins review how employees engage with recommended content. You can view metrics like the number of recommendations made for employees and the number of comments on employee posts.

7. Post Analytics: This allows you to drill down on the metrics for a specific post, showing you the number of impressions and engagement your post received, as well as the demographics of people reached.

8. Profile Analytics: If you offer professional services from your LinkedIn profile or act as a brand ambassador, tracking profile analytics is a good idea. These stats can be found on your profile, directly under Your Dashboard.

9. LinkedIn Hashtag Analytics: This tool lets you track how many likes, comments, and follows your hashtags bring in. You can view your entire history to see which past hashtags have brought in the most traffic.

Here are some examples of how your goals and objectives might influence the metrics you focus on:

• Brand Awareness: If your goal is to increase brand awareness, you might focus on metrics like impressions, reach, and follower count. These metrics can give you an idea of how many people are seeing your content and becoming aware of your brand.

• Engagement: If your goal is to increase engagement with your content, you might focus on metrics like clicks, likes, shares, comments, and engagement rate. These metrics can tell you how many people are interacting with your content, not just seeing it.

• Lead Generation: If your goal is to generate leads, you might focus on metrics like lead form submissions, conversion rate, and cost per lead. These metrics can tell you how many people are showing interest in your product or service and how cost-effective your lead generation efforts are.

• Thought Leadership: If your goal is to establish your brand as a thought leader in your industry, you might focus on metrics like shares and comments. These metrics can give you an idea of how many people are finding your content valuable enough to share with their own networks or engage in a discussion.

• Website Traffic: If your goal is to drive traffic to your website, you might focus on metrics like click-through rate (CTR) and website visits. These metrics can tell you how effective your LinkedIn content is at directing users to your website

• Sales: If your goal is to drive sales, you might focus on metrics like conversions, conversion rate, and return on ad spend (ROAS). These metrics can tell you how many people are making a purchase as a result of your LinkedIn campaigns and how profitable these campaigns are.

Remember, it's important to align your metrics with your goals to ensure you're measuring what truly matters for your business.

3. 📊 Making Data-Driven Decisions

While the offer & your messaging may be the keys to any successful LinkedIn ad campaign, you'll have a hard time crafting them without understanding who and what you should be creating for.

That’s why good data is a must-have. It provides insights into your campaign's performance and guides your decision-making process. However, merely collecting data is not enough; understanding and interpreting it to make informed decisions is crucial.

For instance, if your campaign data shows that your ad is generating a lot of impressions but not many clicks, it might be an indication that your ad is not compelling enough. In this case, you might need to revise your ad creative to make it more appealing. On the other hand, if your ad is generating a lot of clicks but not many conversions, it might suggest a disconnect between your ad and your landing page or offer. You might need to adjust these elements to better align with your audience's needs and interests.

Data-driven decision-making is not a one-time event but an ongoing process. It involves continuous learning, testing, and optimisation.

Here are some insights from Fullfunnel that can help you make more informed decisions:

Understanding the Buyer's Journey: The modern B2B buying process is complex. Buyers start their journey when the issues or opportunities become a strategic priority. They ask their trusted network for recommendations and buy from people they know, like, and trust. Understanding this journey can help you tailor your LinkedIn ad campaigns to meet your audience's needs at each stage of their buying journey.

Creating Value with Content: Content is a powerful tool for generating demand and nurturing relationships on LinkedIn. However, it's not just about creating content; it's about creating the right content. Your content should align with your best customer's buyer journey and capture the attention of your target audience. It should also be optimised for LinkedIn to maximise its reach and engagement. Relevant, catchy in the right format.

Building Relationships: As the old adage says: “People buy from people they know, like, and trust.” Or at least one of the above. Therefore, building relationships with your target audience is crucial. This involves conversations (& ads) that are built on education and not on instant sales, cutting through the noise, and getting responses from busy decision-makers.

Using Engagement-Based Triggers: Engagement-based triggers can help you identify when your audience is ready to buy. These triggers can be anything from engaging with your content, visiting your profile, or inviting you to connect. By observing these triggers, you can turn engagement into conversations and accelerate demand generation.

Remember, making data-driven decisions is an ongoing process.
It involves continuous learning, testing, and optimisation.

By understanding your audience, creating valuable content, building relationships, and using engagement-based triggers you can make more informed decisions and improve the performance of your LinkedIn ad campaigns.

4. 🚀 Leveraging Success Stories

Successful past campaigns can be a powerful tool for building brand authority and trust. By sharing your success stories, you can show your audience that your products or services deliver real results.

This could involve sharing case studies, testimonials, or data showing the results you've achieved for your clients.

You should also share stories about how your product or service has helped your clients overcome challenges or achieve their goals, but make sure that these stories focus primarily on the issue the client faced and how the outcome made quantifiable developments… and not on why your product or service is so great. Your audience should come to that conclusion by themselves.

People love stories. They're a powerful way to connect with your audience and inspire them to take action.

5. 📌 Actionable Tips

Leverage LinkedIn's Reporting Tools: Utilise the reporting tools available in LinkedIn's Campaign Manager to keep track of your campaign's performance. This includes monitoring metrics such as impressions, clicks, social actions, and conversions.

Analyse Your Campaign Data: Dive deep into your campaign data to understand its performance. Look beyond the surface-level metrics and try to understand what the data is telling you about your audience's behaviour and your campaign's effectiveness.

Make Data-Driven Decisions: Use the insights gained from your data analysis to make informed decisions. This could involve tweaking your ad creative, adjusting your targeting, or refining your offer based on what the data is telling you.

Leverage Success Stories: Share your success stories to build brand authority and trust. This could involve sharing case studies, testimonials, or data showing the results you've achieved for your clients. Remember to focus on the client's challenges and how your product or service helped them overcome these challenges.

6. 📚 Homework:

Review Your Campaign Data: Spend some time in LinkedIn's Campaign Manager reviewing your campaign data. Try to understand what these metrics are telling you about your campaign performance.

Optimise Your Campaign: Based on your review of the campaign data, make one adjustment to improve your campaign performance. This could be a change in targeting, ad creative, or offer.

Share a Success Story: Think of a success story from one of your previous campaigns. How could you share this story to build brand authority and trust? Consider the challenges your client faced, how your product or service helped them overcome these challenges, and the results they achieved.

7. 💡 Pro Tip:

Remember, the key to a successful LinkedIn ad campaign is continuous learning and optimisation. Don't be afraid to test different strategies and make adjustments as needed.

…and don't forget to leverage your success stories to build brand authority and trust.

Always keep in mind that your campaign's success is not just about the number of impressions or clicks but about the value you provide to your audience and the relationships you build with them.

That’s a wrap for “Week 5” (which is the 6th edition of the course…so really it’s week 6), and a wrap of the course.

If you want to learn more about successful LinkedIn campaigns, reach out so we may notify you of the release of Saasmic’s LinkedIn Ads Academy.

Fun fact answer:  The ‘The Great British Kettle Surge’ is the phenomenon of millions of kettles being switched on almost simultaneously. Due to the sudden nature of TV pickups, despite the National Grid’s best attempts at predictions, the electricity required may not be readily available. This is why the UK frequently has to export energy from other countries, often from some of our closest neighbours.

Isn't that just fun?

Keep learning and growing! 🚀 ❤️

New episodes of Connecting The Dots & Business Companion are coming out each week, so stay tuned.

Subscribe to our podcast and keep an eye on your inbox for the next edition of our newsletter as well.

LinkedIn posts worth reading this week:

1. What to do with a $10.000 marketing budget?
Three platforms, pack the most powerful punch in the B2B realm, according to Joshua Stout.

2. Stop Missing Out on Qualified Accounts
6 steps to automatically reach out to your qualified prospects without spending on ads.


3. Why departmental goals may be messing up your business's success...
How to set goals that drive meaningful, long-term business results.