Get more out of your LinkedIn ads with Zapier

By Zapier • Published May 18, 2021

Posting and advertising regularly on LinkedIn takes time; automation helps you reduce repetitive work and make the most of the time you spend on social media marketing.

While LinkedIn is a professional site, the brands that are growing their presence on the platform represent a wide range of industries and company sizes—and they sell to both businesses and consumers. That's because LinkedIn allows them to meet a variety of growth goals, including marketing, selling, recruiting, and more in a safe and trusted environment.

Tip: For the reasons above, when marketing on LinkedIn, we recommend you start with broad targeting criteria. That way, you'll learn and refine as you go to identify the right audiences and messages for your brand.

Use Lead Gen Forms to capture more data about leads

LinkedIn Sponsored Content is an easy way to advertise to the people interested in your products and services within LinkedIn. Using LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms with Sponsored Content allows members to fill out a short form within the ad. But instead of linking leads out to an advertising landing page, Lead Gen Forms keep them inside LinkedIn thereby increasing the number of form fill-outs.

When leads are done filling out their information, they can go back to scrolling. (A much more pleasant advertising experience than inescapable pop-ups or getting stuck on a website they didn't know you'd be taking them to.)

"Partners like Zapier allow the leads your marketing team generates to smoothly flow into your marketing automation or CRM platform, which ensures the leads are actionable," says Erin Sumpmann, product marketing manager for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. "When this handoff happens seamlessly, it's easy to track the ROI of campaign spend."

Once you have your first Lead Gen Form up and running, you can set up Zaps through the Zapier LinkedIn Ads integration that send your leads' contact information and details to other apps you use, like Salesforce or Constant Contact, so you can connect with them faster and keep track of their contact details. Here are three ways to start automating Lead Gen Forms:

Add leads into your CRM or database automatically

Ever wish you could walk into a sales conversation armed with more intel on the person you're speaking to? LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms pull information about leads from member profiles when a lead submits a form, so you can know details like the size of their company and their career history before picking up the phone.

This information is traditionally sought out by a sales representative doing research (called "lead enrichment") and manually updating each lead one by one. With Lead Gen Forms and Zapier, you can automatically collect and send this rich lead data to your CRM for safekeeping and better, more productive sales calls.

Extra benefit: Unlike marketing tactics that purposefully conceal how much information prospects are sharing with companies, leads on LinkedIn understand they're sharing their whole profile with you.

Notify your sales team when new leads come in

All that rich lead data can't help your sales team if they don't know anything about it. Use Zaps to send notifications using your team's preferred channel of communication so they can respond faster. Harvard Business Review found there's an enormous drop-off in the success rate if you take longer than one hour to reach out after they contact your company:

"Firms that tried to contact potential customers within an hour of receiving a query were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead (which we defined as having a meaningful conversation with a key decision-maker) as those that tried to contact the customer even an hour later—and more than 60 times as likely as companies that waited 24 hours or longer."

Get on the phone with prospects faster and help your new leads know they're important to you.

Add leads to marketing campaigns automatically

It doesn't make sense to upload leads from your ad campaigns one by one into your email marketing platform. Zaps can send LinkedIn leads directly to your marketing campaigns software so you can send immediate thank-you emails and keep them in the loop.

Advertise to the right people with Matched Audiences

LinkedIn Matched Audiences is an advertising tool that lets you retarget people on LinkedIn who visit your website. It also lets you target people based on their account or email information. You're able to get your message in front of more people who are already interested in what you're selling instead of wasting money advertising to people who aren't ready to buy.

"Getting your target audience right is foundational to any social campaign," says Johanna Kimura, senior manager of product marketing for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. "What Zapier's integration with Matched Audiences does is make it easy to reach those who visited your website, work at a company that is a strong fit for your offering, or is a contact in your system."

You can maximize your LinkedIn ads investment by automatically updating your LinkedIn Matched Audience with groups of people from other email marketing, events, eCommerce, and CRM apps via the LinkedIn Ads Zapier integration.

Stay top-of-mind with prospects in your pipeline

After a new lead comes in, you've sent a welcome email and your sales team has reached out. Buying processes take time, and buyers often have to juggle multiple priorities—meaning they could forget about you over time. Instead of getting lost in the shuffle, stay present by using Matched Audiences to run ad campaigns targeting your current leads.

Tip: Choose ad content that will help a buyer in the consideration stage of the process. Instead of yelling, "Buy Now!" your lead will be more interested in understanding how you will provide better quality over your competitors or hearing success stories in case studies.

It also doesn't hurt to target recently won deals with educational blog content or other material that will help you retain your new customers longer.

Retarget customers from your eCommerce platform for an upsell

After someone makes a purchase on your eCommerce store, don't let that be the last time they hear from you. Encourage them to revisit your shop by using Matched Audiences to retarget them post-purchase. You'll be on their minds with minimal effort.

Use ads to increase event attendance

Most virtual events and webinars see about a 40% attendance rate, meaning that most people who sign up for a webinar never show. Increase attendance by using Matched Audiences to run ads reminding registrants about the event. Think of it like a digital billboard they'll "drive" past every day, helping them prioritize attending.

Powerful tools on their own—more powerful together

Using Zapier to automate your LinkedIn marketing and advertising saves you time and helps you focus on bringing in new business. With the addition of powerful advertising tools like Lead Gen Forms and Matched Audiences, you truly can build out an automated system for bringing in new leads and remarketing to prospects and customers. It's like a self-watering planter, but for big B2B deals!

To get started, all you need is a LinkedIn profile, a LinkedIn business page, and a free Zapier account. To level up and automate Matched Audiences and Lead Gen Forms, you'll need a LinkedIn Marketing Solutions account, an advertising budget set aside, and a paid Zapier account.

Automation that moves your work forward

Try Zapier free for 14 days or contact Sales.

Get more out of your LinkedIn ads with Zapier

Table of contents

Use Lead Gen Forms to capture more data about leads

Powerful tools on their own—more powerful together

Automation that moves your work forward