LinkedIn Measurement Methodology

Measuring paid media performance isn’t as straightforward as most marketers would like. Despite the perception that we can track everyone’s unique actions across the web with tools like Google Tag Manager, this isn’t actually the case.

Measurement becomes even more difficult for B2B marketing programs where buyer journeys can be longer and more distributed. As a result, understanding the true impact of paid media platforms like LinkedIn can be tough. Expecting direct response leads from a cold B2B audience is usually unrealistic.

I’ve been working with clients to build out more robust measurement strategies for platforms like LinkedIn, so I’m sharing the approach I’ve put together below. First, I’ll start with my analysis of B2B buyer behavior which led to this change, then dive into the measurement methodology itself.

For those that prefer video over text, I’ve put together a Loom video here that outlines the below with an accompanying slide deck.

Modern B2B Buyer Behavior

There are countless marketing studies and reports that point to the fact that anywhere from 1% to 5% of a brand’s total addressable market is actually in-market for that brand’s solution at any given time. This means that it’s marketing’s job to keep a brand’s solution top of mind for the other 95% to 99% of the market. When these other buyers eventually find themselves in a position to explore a solution, they’ll think of the companies that they’ve been exposed to recently.

Additionally, HockeyStack released a report highlighting the robust nature of B2B buyer journeys. This report stated that it takes an average of 75 website touchpoints for an interested prospect to actually raise their hand, share contact information, and become a lead for a brand with a $60k+ ACV. This data suggests:

• B2B buyers take their time to research. Even when a buying committee is conducting the research, it can take multiple months to capture enough insight and feedback for these buyers to feel comfortable enough to start a conversation with the selling team.

• B2B buyers also want to conduct this research without talking directly to the brand(s) they’re considering purchasing from. Buyers have grown wise to many common marketing tactics, and I believe that they often source feedback from third parties to validate/invalidate the marketing claims from a company they’re evaluating.

When understanding that there are a limited number of in-market buyers at any given time, and that buyers frequently want to conduct a thorough investigation into a brand before sharing contact information, it makes sense to focus the majority of marketing’s efforts on education instead of lead generation.

While not in the B2B space, companies like Airbnb and Ally have shifted their marketing priorities to reflect this and have seen performance improve as a result.

Yes, leads are important, but spinning up an eBook or webinar to capture emails and hit them with sales messaging has proven to be ineffective. This approach works against buyers’ natural inclinations.

Focusing marketing efforts on education around a product’s features, benefits, testimonials, use cases, etc… can result in higher quality leads once prospects eventually raise their hand. The big gap in this approach is that there isn’t a readily apparent feedback signal that marketers can lean on to quickly indicate whether or not a campaign is working.

It can be a tough sell to leadership to launch a campaign then sit on it for 2+ months waiting for leads to come in.

That’s where the below account scoring model comes into play.

LinkedIn Account Scoring

One of the many benefits of LinkedIn as an advertising platform is the demographics report. This report shares exactly which companies have interacted with specific campaigns and ads. The measurement methodology that I put together for my clients relies heavily on this feature.

While this approach isn’t new or groundbreaking, it is a fairly straightforward method to understand how specific companies are interacting with LinkedIn campaigns and showing interest in a brand’s product/solution.

The basic concept is centered around breaking an audience down by levels of engagement.

• Cold Audience – LinkedIn users who have never had a previous interaction with a brand before (as far as you can tell).

• Warm Audience – LinkedIn users who have had an initial interaction with a brand and shown some level of superficial interest. This typically takes the form of an ad click, a video view, a website visit, or a LinkedIn company page visit.

• Hot Audience – This audience consists of users who have taken high intent actions. This can be interacting with an ad shown to the warm layer audience or taking a high intent website action like watching a demo recording.

Campaigns and ad creative can be structured around each of the above audience types. The specific details of an account structure will vary business to business, but I’ve found the above to be a helpful starting point across clients.

Once the campaign structure is in place and active, the measurement part is pretty easy. I’m using the LinkedIn demographics report to map which companies are currently in each audience bucket and track that progression over time.

There are some tools that can help accomplish this, but for now I’m using a Google sheet. It can be that simple.

In this Google sheet, I’ve got one column for month, another column for company, and a third column for account score. Companies in the cold audience get a score of 1, companies in the warm audience get a score of 2, and companies in the hot audience get a score of 3.

I know, incredibly scientific…

The benefit of this model is that it provides me with early feedback signals that I can use for optimization purposes, without having to rely on collecting lead data.

I can see if there’s a big drop off between audiences, and adjust creative, landing page, bidding strategy, etc… accordingly. The goal is to allow prospects to conduct their research at their own pace, and simply help them to accomplish this by presenting them with a wide variety of content through paid media.

When it does come time for a potential buyer to raise their hand, the goal is that they’ll be much more likely to convert compared to an eBook download lead. I can also report back to my clients on which companies are interested in our ads, how big our cold, warm, and hot audiences are, and when I expect certain companies and audiences will move to the lead/pipeline stage.

Wrapping Up

Measuring the performance of B2B marketing campaigns isn’t as direct as B2C campaigns, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. The measurement model I outlined above is easy to set up and implement, and my hope is that it’s helpful for anyone trying to evaluate LinkedIn performance from a different perspective!

Have questions, considerations, or critiques? I’d love to hear them! If you’re reading this via email, just hit respond. Otherwise, you can find me on LinkedIn.