How LinkedIn’s Revenue Attribution Report Helps Legal Marketers Justify Ad Spend and Optimize Results

The past few years have been challenging for many businesses. Facing economic uncertainty, most firms are trying to do more with less – and justify what they do spend. That’s why LinkedIn leaders have recently developed a tool to help B2B marketers understand where they are making the correct investments and see the ROI of a longer sales cycle. LinkedIn’s Revenue Attribution Report helps legal marketers prove the value of their LinkedIn spend. Here’s what you need to know about the latest helpful tools for legal marketers on LinkedIn. 

Revenue Attribution Measures Marketing Success

Marketing accountability and justifying ad spend are not unique to the legal industry. Almost all business sectors care about these elements, especially in today’s climate. However, the way that those measurements are accomplished tends to vary, which can leave marketers vulnerable. This is particularly true with new privacy changes that can make it difficult or misleading to measure advertising success. 

Attribution methods go beyond clicks or conversions and can reflect the true value of overall business growth. According to LinkedIn’s announcement, “Revenue attribution enables marketers to quantify their efforts with lower funnel metrics like pipeline and revenue, focus on quality over quantity, and assess the actual return on investment (ROI) derived from their campaigns.” In addition to influencing marketing decisions, revenue attribution is key for enhancing sales and marketing alignment. That’s because it offers a way to understand the value of marketing-generated leads and their eventual impact on total revenue. In this way, marketing and sales can increase collaboration and achieve a more seamless handoff of leads. As both teams have a more transparent view of the data on revenue sources, they can establish cohesive goals and work together toward bigger objectives. 

Related: Law Firm Guide to LinkedIn Advertising

Reasons to Use LinkedIn’s Revenue Attribution Report

You can find the report in the Business Manager and use it to harness the power of your CRM data. The data in the report goes beyond engagement metrics and showcases the real value of LinkedIn marketing efforts on actual business outcomes. You can get a clearer look at the context around sales revenue, generated pipeline, and win rates. Having this data allows legal marketers to plan more effectively, optimize campaigns, and make better data-driven decisions to boost ROI. 

Digital marketers will use the reporting to: 

• Prove marketing’s impact on firm leadership – By syncing CRM data to LinkedIn Business Manager, marketers can show their true impact on things like ROAS and overall pipeline leads. 
• Connect LinkedIn marketing efforts to sales success – Teams can see how their leads are influenced by LinkedIn marketing tactics and how they move leads through the funnel. 
• Demonstrate the power of a full-funnel approach – Gain visibility into how leads eventually convert, including how LinkedIn-influenced MQLs become SQLs and closed won deals. 
• Have comprehensive visibility across ad accounts – Drill down to the campaign level to identify levers that impact the bottom line. 
• Justify future budgets – Go beyond internal attribution models and get a better understanding of activities across your entire funnel, which can be used to optimize budgets moving forward. 

Metrics for Ad Spend Effectiveness

What does the tool offer for proving ad spend impact? You can view particular KPIs including: 

• Top line metrics – Data such as revenue won, return on ad spend, and pipeline amount. 
• Funnel metrics – Specific indicators like leads and opportunities; designed to offer visibility into how prospects are advancing throughout the sales funnel to open and closed-won opportunities. 
• Conversion metrics – Used to assess the quality and conversion rate of LinkedIn-influenced leads (includes opportunity win rate, average days to close, etc).

Takeaway: 

LinkedIn users who employ the report are seeing powerful results already. For example, according to LinkedIn, one company found that LinkedIn-influenced opportunities were 39% more likely to close than non-LinkedIn-influenced deals. That is really helpful information for justifying certain campaigns and carving out next year’s budget. 

Ultimately, the Revenue Attribution Report tool will help you to prove the value of your marketing efforts. What marketer couldn’t use help in that area? If you need help getting the report set up or synced with your CRM – or with any aspect of LinkedIn marketing – let us know. Our experts use social media to help firms get their message to more people, better engage their audience, and generate new leads.