Lead Gen Forms are customizable, prefilled forms that allow members to share their LinkedIn profile data with advertisers in just a couple of clicks. They can be added to Sponsored Content or Sponsored Messaging ads to acquire high-quality leads at scale. Best practices covered: - Content and form creation - Bid, budget, and audience - Optimizing forms - Reporting

1. Lead Gen
Forms
Best Practices:

2. What’s
inside?
01
02
03
04
05
06
Lead Gen Form overview
Preparing for launch
Best practices: Content and form
creation
Best practices: Bid, budget and
audience
Best Practices: Optimizing forms
Best practices: Reporting

3. Lead Gen Form
overview

4. Lead Gen Forms are customizable,
prefilled forms that allow members
to share their LinkedIn profile data
with advertisers in just a couple of
clicks.
They can be added to Sponsored
Content or Sponsored Messaging
ads to acquire high-quality leads at
scale.
What is a
Lead Gen Form?

5. Why Lead Gen Forms for LinkedIn
ads?
Track the metrics that matter
most to your business: cost-
per-lead, lead conversion rate,
and the types of professionals
you’re converting into leads -
including company name,
seniority, job title, industry,
geo, and more
Drive a high volume of
qualified leads at a conversion
rate that outperforms standard
campaigns
Manage and access your leads
using your preferred tools
Generate high quality
leads at scale
Prove the ROI of your
lead gen campaigns
Access and manage
your leads with ease

6. higher conversion
than landing pages
LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms are designed to
provide maximum convenience for both
members and marketers. When forms are
presented to a LinkedIn member, the fields are
pre-populated with their profile data, drastically
cutting the effort needed to
fill them out, resulting in higher conversion rates.
The average conversion rate on a landing
page is 2.35%*. The average conversion rate
on a LinkedIn Lead Gen Form is 13%.​
*Based on a study conducted by WordStream
Lead Gen
Forms drive

7. Preparing
for launch

8. Assets needed to start
a Lead Gen Form campaign
1. Ad creative
Content for Sponsored
Content or Sponsored
Messaging.
Also select a CTA that
will open up the Lead Gen
Form.
2. Lead Gen Form
Data to collect from members.
When setting up a campaign,
you can leverage an existing
Lead Gen Form or create a new
one.
3. Thank you page
Provide the asset you've
offered in your ad or other
next steps.
You must choose the
‘Lead generation’ objective
to leverage a Lead Gen Form
in your campaign.

9. Single Image Ad
Image (JPG or PNG, 5MB or smaller)
Intro text (150 Characters)
Destination URL
CTA
Video Ad
Video (MP4, 75KB to 200MB)
Intro text (600 Characters)
Destination URL
CTA
Carousel Image Ad
At least two images (JPG or PNG, 5MB or smaller)​
Intro text for at least two cards (150 characters each)​
Destination URL
CTA
1. Ad creative assets for
Sponsored Content
Assets needed to start a Lead Gen Form campaign
Single Image Ad
Advertising within LinkedIn’s newsfeed:

10. Message Ad
Sender (Yourself or a LinkedIn connection)
Subject line (60 characters)
Message copy (1,500 characters)
Destination URL
Banner creative (JPG or PNG, 300x250, up to 2 MB)
Custom CTA
Conversation Ad
Sender (Yourself or a LinkedIn connection)
Banner creative (JPG or PNG, 300x250, up to 2 MB)
Message copy (500 characters per response)
CTA copy (25 characters)
Destination URL(s)
1. Ad creative assets for
Sponsored Messaging
Message Ad
Conversation Ad
Assets needed to start a Lead Gen Form campaign
Advertising within LinkedIn’s inbox:

11. 2. Lead Gen
Form assets
Assets needed to start a Lead Gen Form campaign
Offer Headline
(60 characters)
Offer details
(160 characters)
Privacy Policy URL
(required)

12. 3. Thank you
page assets
Assets needed to start a Lead Gen Form campaign
“Thank You” message
(300 characters)
URL for members to
visit after submission

13. Advertisers must have the
“Lead Gen Form Manager”
role or be a “Designated
Admin” in order to view or
download leads.
The “Lead Manager” role will be given by the LinkedIn
Page admin through their page.
The LinkedIn Page admin clicks “Edit Page” on their
Page.
Under the Designated Admin section on the edit page
the admin will see a module for giving members “Lead
Manager” permissions.
There will be a search box based on name. The
Designated Admin can enter the name of the person
they wish to grant permissions.
When the Designated Admin clicks on the required
member result that member will be added to the list of
members that have permissions to the “Lead Manager”
role.
To remove a member from this list, the
Designated Admin
can “x” out that member.
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3
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5
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Access needed
to manage leads in
Campaign Manager
Don't have the right permissions?
Here's how to get Lead Gen Forms manager
access:

14. Best practices:
Content and
form creation

15. Form Creation Tips and
Tricks
Keep the number of
questions to a minimum
Less is more. 5 fields or fewer is
a good best practice.
Put yourself in the member’s
shoes
- if you opened a form with an
intimidating number of
questions, would you fill out the
form?
Use predefined questions
wherever possible
There are times where you need to
use custom questions to collect
specific data to qualify the lead.
However, we recommend keeping
that to a minimum and leveraging
fields that will be prefilled wherever
possible. You'll see higher submission
rates and lower CPLs.
Make custom questions
easy to answer
If you need to use a custom
question for lead qualifying data,
use a multiple choice as
members are more likely to
choose from a dropdown than to
write in an answer.
Make sure images and
copy are relevant
throughout
As a member clicks from the ad
through the form, make sure the
messaging is consistent.
Test different forms and find what
works best with your audience.
Be direct: make sure
messaging matches the CTA
Keep in mind lead forms are typically
bottom funnel. Be upfront with the
value the member is getting by giving
their information.
Keep your Lead
Gen Forms fresh
Refresh your Lead Gen Form
creative at least once every two
months to avoid the content going
stale. This allows you to optimize
the data you’re collecting based on
lead quality feedback from your
team.

16. Keep in mind when
selecting fields: forms
are pre-populated
with member profile
data
Members may only edit the following fields:
• Email address
• Work email address
• Phone number
• Work phone number
• Gender (will not pre-populate)
• Any field not filled out from their profile
• Custom questions (up to 3 per form)
Advertisers may add a total of up to 12 fields to
each form (including up to 3 custom questions).
Members cannot submit a form with an empty
field.
If a form field is pre-populated from the LinkedIn
profile, it is not editable. Gender, email, work
email, work phone, or personal phone number
are an exception and will be editable.
LinkedIn will pre-populate forms
with members’ contact and
professional demographic
information (based on the
information they have shared on
their LinkedIn profile).

17. Collecting member
consent
Add up to 5 custom checkboxes
Checkboxes can be optional or required for
the member to submit the form
Input up to 500 characters for each
checkbox
Add custom checkboxes to your Lead Gen Form
to collect all the member consent you need to, in
a way that your legal team feels comfortable
with.
For their own compliance, we recommend that
you add one custom checkbox for each distinct
purpose.

18. Best practices:
Bid, budget
and audience

19. Bid, Budget and Audience Tips and Tricks
Make sure daily spend fits the size of
the audience you are trying to reach
$100 daily spend on a 1M audience size
won’t allow you to drive enough reach and
frequency to generate impactful results.
If a campaign is reaching daily budget
consistently, optimize the set up
Increase daily spend and/or lower bids for
more cost efficiency.
Start with a broad audience
The sweet spot for a new campaign is
between 100k - 400k members.
Bid based on your campaign priorities
Are you focused on optimizing for cost?
Leverage Target Cost Bidding. Bid value?
Max Cost Bidding. Budget delivery? Auto
bidding. Time management? Auto bidding.
Confused on what your bid strategy should
be? Auto bidding.
Save audiences as templates
LinkedIn offers the option to save audiences
from other campaigns and use them again
in future campaigns.
Duplicating a current Sponsored Content
campaign into a Lead Form campaign
is currently unavailable. As a proxy use saved
audiences.

20. Best Practices:
Reporting

21. Metrics can be viewed and
downloaded from two
places
To access campaign performance
Visit the Campaign Performance tab of
Campaign Manager by selecting ‘Leads
and Conversions’ in the Columns
dropdown.
1 To access form performance
Visit the Lead Gen Forms page in the
Account Assets dropdown.
2
If using our lead data CSV download, be sure
to download data at least every 90 days as
leads will not be stored for longer than that

22. About Reporting
Clicks & Click-through Rate (CTR)
Average Cost per Click (CPC)
Cost per Conversion
Lead totals
And more…
How to attribute leads to a
specific update or campaign
Click into the individual campaign in the
Campaign Manager tool and break down
the lead data by update.
Download a report by ad performance or
campaign performance per month.
Leverage our integration partners to
boost your reporting capabilities:
Lead metrics include:

23. Supercharge
your reporting with
Conversion Tracking
Conversion tracking can be used on Lead
Gen Form Campaigns to look at post-thank
you page engagement OR it can be used to
track landing page conversions separately. It
will NOT report on any Lead Gen Form
activity.
Quick Tip: For Lead Gen Form campaigns, conversion
actions can be added to a campaign via “edit
campaign details” or by adding the campaign name
when creating the conversion action. They cannot be
added within the Bid and budget tab at the moment.

24. Comparing
cost per
conversion
vs. cost per lead
If testing the success of the Lead Gen
Form campaign versus conversions
on your landing page, run
Conversion Tracking on a Sponsored
Content campaign without a form at
the same time. Compare costs and
quality.

25. Appendix

26. Optimizing
forms to
improve
performance
and maximize
ROI

27. Optimizing performance metrics at
different stages in the path to
conversion can help you reduce your
cost per lead (CPL).
1. Experiment with your creative
2. Modify your form
3. Evaluate demographic targeting
4. Monitor campaign frequency
Your campaign has
been running for a
while. How can you
improve performance?
Consider these four actions:
• Click-Through Rate (CTR)
• Open Rate
• Completion Rate

28. Helps Improve: CTR, Open Rate
1. Experiment
with your
creative
Rotating 4-5 creatives per campaign is ideal for a test &
learn strategy and taking full advantage of LinkedIn’s
frequency cap (members can see 5 unique pieces of
creative per campaign in 48 hours)
Rotate in new creatives to replace poor performers after
they reach statistical significance (typically 10K+
impressions)
Ensure your creative is engaging your audience
• Does your copy include a strong CTA?
• Is your creative optimized for mobile (visible
imagery/video, concise copy)?
• Are you clear about the value you’re offering
members in exchange for their information?

29. Helps Improve: Completion Rate
2. Modify your form Differences in messaging between your creative and form can
cause a drop-off in completion rate. If applicable, adjust your
offer copy to better align with creative messaging to reinforce
the reason your audience clicked on the ad in the first place.
Use the preview tool to see if your copy is being truncated on
desktop or mobile. If it is, consider shortening your copy so
members can understand the full value of your offer in one
glance.
How many questions are you asking? If opens are high but
leads are low, it could be that you have too many fields. If
you’re asking more than five, consider testing a new form with
less questions. All fields on a Lead Gen Form are required for
members to submit. Are all questions on your form necessary?
Your sales team can be a helpful resource to talk with based off
the quality of leads they've seen.
If asking an open-ended custom question, consider testing a
new form with a multiple-choice custom question
instead. Adding even one free response custom question, can
lead to a 3-4% drop in the lead submission rate.

30. Helps Improve: Open Rate, Completion Rate
3. Optimize your
target audience
using demographic
data
Navigate to the demographic reporting for your lead gen
campaign and select the 'Leads' column view. This reporting
gives insight into the number of impressions, lead form opens,
open rates, number of leads, and lead form completion
rates. Which segments are driving strong open and completion
rates? Which ones are negatively impacting overall
performance?
• Exclude weaker performing audience segments in your
campaign targeting to improve efficiency such as such as
unengaged industries, functions and seniorities.
Consider splitting out strong performing demographic
segments into separate campaigns. Tailor your creative and
messaging to these audiences for best results.

31. 4. Monitor
Campaign
Frequency
Members typically require multiple exposures from your content
before they engage or convert.
A campaign frequency of 3-7 (monthly) for Sponsored Content
is optimal for driving members down the path to conversion
and maximizing leads.
Are you pairing your lead gen efforts with a brand campaign,
or running multiple ad products simultaneously? Evaluate cross-
campaign frequency for these campaigns to determine the
amount of overlap. Members exposed to both brand and
acquisition messaging are over 6x more likely to convert.
Helps Improve: CTR, Open Rate, Completion
Rate