LinkedIn is already an amazingly useful platform for business owners and marketers who want to connect with other business owners and professionals. Lead generation is one of the most important benefits of using LinkedIn for B2B marketers. LinkedIn recently announced updates to their lead generation tools that will help expand the reach of the network beyond the pages of the platform.
LinkedIn has introduced a new LinkedIn Lead Accelerator to help marketers gain more information about prospects that are LinkedIn users. The system also includes AutoFill, a form-fill tool to further accelerate conversions, as well as an analytics tool that helps marketers design campaigns and then track, measure and improve impact across various metrics.
LinkedIn has extended their reach beyond the LinkedIn platform by updating their LinkedIn Network Display. Brands can use this opportunity to engage professional audiences with display advertising both on LinkedIn and off-platform across multiple publisher sites on the web.
“With the new, full-funnel approach, marketers can use all of our marketing solutions products together as a portfolio to create a customized experience that enhances the marketer-prospect relationship and delivers results,” wrote Russell Glass in a blog post on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn use recent data from Forrester Research to show the potential benefit of the LinkedIn Lead Accelerator system. According to Forrester Research, up to 90 percent of a buyer’s path to purchase is completed before a salesperson comes into the picture. The study also noted that 95 percent of website visitors never provide an email address to marketers. Of the 5 percent who do, only about one in five (20%) open the prospecting emails they get afterwards.
“I was confident that the marriage of LinkedIn’s content-based solutions with Bizo’s lead generation and analytics products could result in a powerful opportunity for marketers,” said Glass, who is now the head of products for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. Glass served as the former CEO of Bizo before the company was acquired by LinkedIn in August of last year.
Some of the first companies to use the new Lead Accelerator were eCornell, Lenovo, Localytics, Salesforce, Samsung and VMware, all of whom reported positive results from the pilot program. For example, according to the press release, eCornell use Lead Accelerator to double its landing page conversion rate. Similarly, Localytics’s marketing-qualified-lead conversion rate increased by 50 percent, and Lenovo’s cost per lead decreased by 60 percent.
These new LinkedIn features are now available on in most markets around the world. However, some of the features are currently only available in English. LinkedIn says that all features will be expanded to other languages over time.
For more information on how LinkedIn can help marketers, read this article on how LinkedIn is the best content distribution system from B2B marketers.