Are you considering LinkedIn as an advertising platform for your business? Or you’ve just started your first ads on the professional social network? In both cases, the most important initial configuration that you will have to do is to set up your LinkedIn conversion tracking.
Conversion tracking on LinkedIn serves practically the same purpose for the seller as it does on any other platform. It allows you to measure key actions performed by users coming from your LinkedIn ads on your website.
This can be a purchase, a content download, a key page view, signing up through a form, or any other action that is relevant to your business.
Step 1: Installing the LinkedIn Insight Tag
If you aren’t new to digital Marketing, you already know that measuring conversions is the best way to evaluate your campaign performance. It allows you to understand how users engage with the content on your website.
And of course, to see how many of them actually have an intention to purchase.
Every platform requires you to insert a specific code within your website to track conversions. This will allow you to measure the exact number of actions that users performed on your pages.
For LinkedIn, it won’t be possible to measure conversions without installing the LinkedIn conversion tracking pixel, also called the Insight Tag. This code enables platforms to communicate and exchange information with each other.
The Insight Tag is a lightweight JavaScript tag that helps you track your leads and build matched audiences, among other actions. Additionally, it gathers information for analytics and website demographics reports based on your ad campaigns.
To install it, all you need is to follow a couple of simple steps:
- Go to your Campaign Manager;
- Select the corresponding account in which you want to implement the tag. Of course, in case you have more than one.
- Click on Account Assets;
- Choose the first option that appears in the drop-down menu, Insight Tag:
4. Click on Install my Insight Tag and select one of the following methods:
I will install the tag myself
If you’ve selected “I will install the tag myself“, all you need to do is grab the code that appears upon clicking on the first option (as shown below). Then, paste it in your website’s global footer, right above the closing HTML <body> tag:
I will send the tag to a developer
If you chose this option, all you need to do is to click on the email that appears below:
Obviously, I have censored my email address in this example, but you will see the email associated with your LinkedIn account. Once the platform sends you the LinkedIn conversion tracking code, you can easily forward it to your developer so that he can take care of it.
I will use a tag manager
You can also add the tag without changing the code of your website via tag manager.
All you need to do is to copy the LinkedIn partner ID that the platform shows, and paste it into your tag manager.
There will be specific instructions depending on the exact tag manager that you are using:
Once LinkedIn’s system has confirmed the correct placement of your code, you are ready to start creating your first conversions!
Tip: You can find additional information about the tag Installation both here as well as in LinkedIn’s FAQ section.
Step 2: Creating Your Conversions
Once your Insight Tag is up and running, you are ready to start your creating your first conversion.
To do that, go to your Campaign Manager, click on Account Assets, and select the option Conversions from the drop-down menu:
Now, click on Create a Conversion in the upper right corner:
Step 3: Giving your Conversion a Name
When the next window opens, the first step will be to give a name to your conversion.
Keep in mind that if you are planning to run more than one campaign, it is important to include its distinctive features in the name. I will give specific examples in the next section because I need to explain a few more things before that. 🙂
You can create as many conversions as you want. However, the general recommendation is to create a separate conversion for each specific landing that you are taking your clients to.
Otherwise, conversions from different campaigns might get mixed and you won’t get the correct result.
Let’s say that you going to make 3 campaigns: one for shoes, one for dresses, and one for jeans. In this case, because the landing for shoes is different from the landing for dresses, you will need to create a separate conversion for each landing.
Keep in mind that if you are planning to run multiple campaigns for shoes, for example, you don’t need a specific conversion for each campaign if they take to the same landing.
However, if you have a landing for high heel shoes and a separate one for sneakers, you might need to create a different conversion for each one of them. This way, you will ensure that they won’t mix up during your LinkedIn conversion tracking.
Step 4: Conversion Tracking Settings
In the next section, you will have to choose the type of action that your web visitors will need to complete so they can count as a conversion. You will notice that there are various options:
- Add to a Cart;
- Download;
- Install;
- Key Page View;
- Lead;
- Purchase;
- Sign Up;
- Other;
Most of them are rather self-explanatory, and they will depend on the goals of your business. However, in this article I will focus on the 2 most recommended conversions.
The first one is called Lead, and it measures the number of people who filled out a form on your website. Or performed another specific action that you define as a conversion.
The second one is a new type of conversion that has been recently highly recommended by LinkedIn: Key Page View.
Conversions
Let’s go back to the shoe example. Let’s say that you have a landing page that looks like this: shoes.com/sneakers/nike. And a thank-you page that looks like this: shoes.com/sneakers/nike-thank-you.
For this landing page, you will need to create two separate conversions:
Lead – this one uses your Thank you page in order to count the number of people who have filled our your form to make a specific request about your sneakers. It means that they have successfully completed the action that you required from them, and now count as Conversions. To set up this one, your conversion might look like this:
Key Page View – this type of conversion uses your Landing page in order to count the number of people who clicked on your ad, ended up on your landing page, but didn’t fill out your form. Nor converted in any other way.
Of course, it is not obligatory for you to track this information, but it is highly recommended by LinkedIn. The reason why is because it provides you with essential insights to improve the performance of your landing pages (and your ads!). In this case, your conversion might look like this:
You will notice that the names of the conversions include important information such as the season of your collection, the product, and the brand.
The details that you will want to include are up to you, but make sure to make the conversion easily distinguishable. This way, you will be able to apply it easily to the correct campaigns later on.
You will also notice that both your conversion names differ slightly:
- LEAD_WINTER2019_SHOES_NIKE
- KPV_WINTER2019_SHOES_NIKE
As you can see, we included the type of conversion in its name so we can distinguish them later when evaluating your campaigns performance.
Step 5: LinkedIn Conversion Tracking – Selecting the Campaigns
You might have noticed that we skipped the second step – connecting your conversions with your campaigns. The reason why is because this one is the easiest. You have two ways to do it:
Way 1: If you have created your campaigns before creating your conversions (which I don’t recommend, unless they are in draft), you can directly select the ones you want to apply the conversion to upon its creation:
Way 2: If you’ve created your conversions before your campaigns, just select the conversion you want to implement upon setting up your campaign:
Now that you have already set up your LinkedIn conversion tracking, you are ready to begin your first campaign. For more information about advertising on LinkedIn, you can check my article LinkedIn Sponsored Content: The Beginner’s Guide (2019).
You can also find additional information about LinkedIn in general here: 50 common LinkedIn questions you’ve probably asked yourself at least once.
Featured photo credit: pymnts.com
