This post is co-authored with Johanna Kimura, Product Marketing Manager at LinkedIn


In a recent survey by DemandWave, 56% of marketers identified delivering quality leads and proving ROI on those leads as their biggest marketing challenge. High-quality lead generation is clearly important, yet remains a challenge.

When we think about lead generation there are three core objectives: reach the right audience, generate engagement, and convert that audience to leads. In a recent webinar, LinkedIn and Salesforce joined forces to show marketers how to supercharge their lead generation efforts through digital advertising. Here are a few takeaways to get you started.  

Start with the right audience

The foundation of high-quality lead generation is a high-quality audience.  In a business-to-business context, a high-quality audience typically includes a professional audience, with high purchasing power, and a level of interest in your product or service. So how do you find that audience?

LinkedIn Marketing Solutions and Salesforce Ad Studio have partnered to help you target specific segments of your prospects and customers.. Using this product integration you can take your own first-party data and match it against the LinkedIn global member base to reach the right audience at the right stage of the buyer journey. Starting with this type of targeted approach will help you narrow your focus to those that will be best suited to deliver quality leads and ROI.


Watch the product integration in action:

Generate engagement

With the right audience in place, the next natural step is providing relevant content as a way to generate quality engagement. A continued trend is the rise in member engagement with content published and shared on the LinkedIn Feed.  LinkedIn data shows viral actions, likes, comments, and re-shares in the newsfeed are up 50% year-over-year. Whether on mobile or desktop, the feed is where members come to learn, to share, and be a part of the conversation. If you’re a marketer this is good news: With the right organic and paid strategy, your brand can be a part of that growth.

For example, a common place to start is with Sponsored Content. Sponsored Content runs within the feed and is interactive — meaning likes, comments, and shares can ultimately help your content go viral. Viral content spreads your marketing message to a larger audience.

Convert that audience to leads

With the right targeting and content strategy in place, we can shift our focus to lead generation. When your goal is lead generation consider using Lead Gen Forms. With these forms, you can capture leads directly on LinkedIn at an efficient cost per lead (CPL), and save your prospects the hassle of filling out forms. With just a couple of taps on your ads, prospects can opt-in and convert directly within LinkedIn, while instantly sending you a lead record that includes key professional profile information — from their name and email address, to their company name, industry, seniority, and more. In return, they’ll automatically get access to your content or offer.

To help synchronize this process, any lead submitted on LinkedIn can be automatically sent to Salesforce. When prospective customers fill out a form on your LinkedIn ad, those leads are converted directly to new leads in Salesforce Sales Cloud through the integration.

Those are just a few of the insights we share in our webinar, Using LinkedIn and Salesforce to Supercharge Your B2B Advertising and Lead Generation Efforts. If you want to rethink and reinvigorate your approach to generating leads on LinkedIn click here to Watch it now.