In today’s digital landscape, data is king, and leveraging it effectively can make or break your advertising efforts. If your LinkedIn Ads account is already well-optimised, the next step to significantly boost performance is integrating your CRM system. In the age of AI, the more data you provide, the better your ads can be optimised, ensuring your advertising spend drives real results.
With data sources becoming the cornerstone of modern advertising platforms, integrating your CRM allows for a more comprehensive understanding of your customer journey, helping you enhance lead tracking and measurement, improve lead quality, and ultimately increase sales. This blog will explore the various methods to connect your CRM to LinkedIn Ads, from cost-effective solutions to premium offerings, and provide a detailed guide to making this connection work for your business. Whether you are looking to use tools like Zapier or rely on native integrations like HubSpot or Salesforce, we’ll cover the steps and strategies needed to get the most from your CRM and advertising integration.
We will explore both low-cost solutions and premium options to suit larger budgets. For instance, the most affordable solution can be implemented for as little as £20 ($30) per month in software fees. We’ll also explain how to use Zapier to integrate your CRM with LinkedIn Ads, using HubSpot as an example. If your CRM cannot integrate with LinkedIn Ads via Zapier, we will also cover how HubSpot can be utilised without the need for Zapier.
Choosing the Right LinkedIn Ads Integration for Your CRM
Before exploring LinkedIn Ads CRM integration in detail, it is essential to understand the various scenarios in which businesses might choose between different integration options. These include using tools like Zapier to connect an existing CRM system, selecting a CRM with built-in LinkedIn Ads integration (such as HubSpot or Salesforce), a combination of Zapier and native CRM integration, or directly utilising LinkedIn’s API. Another option is to use a system with built-in LinkedIn Ads integration solely as a marketing automation platform that connects to your existing CRM. You might want to do this if your CRM is built in-house, with stakeholders across other departments.
1.) Using Zapier to Connect your Current CRM To LinkedIn Ads
If your CRM does not have its integration with LinkedIn Ads, and you want a low-cost solution then check out Zapier a cost-effective marketing automation and integration cloud-based tool.
Zapier makes it easy to integrate online the most popular online apps, including most leading CRMs.
With Zapier, you can send offline conversions from your current CRM’s sales cycle stages to LinkedIn Ads and sync your updated customer and prospect lists from your current CRM as audiences for LinkedIn Ads.
Numerous other options are available, depending on the number of Zap templates supported by your CRM. For example, you can capture leads directly from LinkedIn using Lead Ads on LinkedIn, and automate follow-up processes, among other features.
Zapier starts at around 25/30 dollars per month. We shall cover Zapier in-depth in this blog post, but if you are still not comfortable setting up the integration, One PPC is here to be of service.
The below illustration shows a “Zap”- a workflow integration between HubSpot and LinkedIn Ads to send offline conversions. The list is a stage of the HubSpot contact (lead) lifecycle.
2) Native CRM Integration with LinkedIn Ads (e.g. - HubSpot Pro Marketing, Salesforce Pardot):
Some CRMs such as HubSpot and Salesforce offer prebuilt out-of-the-box integration with LinkedIn Ads, making the setup straightforward and quick.
These platforms often provide robust analytics and marketing automation tools that are deeply integrated with LinkedIn Ads, enhancing the capabilities beyond just data syncing (e.g. Zapier or basic API integration). This option is the most expensive, but is the most comprehensive – and easier to justify as your ad spend increases. We shall cover some lower cost approaches next.
3) Using a Combination of Zapier & Native CRM:
It should be noted that the Starter edition of both HubSpot and SalesForce will lack some LinkedIn Ads integration features, so if you dont have the budget to upgrade – you can use Zapier to complement these available starter functions. HubSpot Starter begins at $30 dollars/£25 pounds per month, and Zapier is around the same price.
Even with more expensive editions of CRMs like HubSpot Pro/Enterprise or Salesforce Pardot, there may be instances where native integrations do not cover specific functionalities. Here, Zapier can fill the gap, extending the capabilities of your CRM system. As stated above, Starter editions of many CRMs have fewer integration options and can instead use Zapier if they do not have the budget to upgrade to a higher edition license.
4.) Direct Integration Using LinkedIn's API:
Larger enterprises with dedicated development teams might opt for LinkedIn’s API to create a highly customised integration. For example, if you have developed your own CRM in-house for your unique requirements. This approach requires significant technical resources and time.
Larger enterprises with dedicated development teams might opt for LinkedIn‘s API to create a highly customised integration. For example, if you have developed your own CRM in-house for your unique requirements. This approach requires significant technical resources and time.
5) Using a Marketing Automation System and Integrating it with your current CRM
If you have an in-house developed CRM, Zapier won’t have premade templates for integrating with LinkedIn Ads. This leaves you with the option of using LinkedIn‘s API. However, there is another option to consider: you can retain your existing CRM while using a system like HubSpot purely as a marketing automation tool that connects to it. For example, many companies that use Salesforce integrate HubSpot Marketing Hub as part of their overall solution
Considerations in the Choice of a CRM:
If you don’t have a CRM or are dissatisfied with your current one, it may be worthwhile to consider a system like HubSpot or Salesforce, which offer out-of-the-box integration with LinkedIn Ads. This can be especially beneficial if LinkedIn Ads is your primary source of leads and sales. These platforms not only provide advanced features, but also eliminate the need for additional tools due to their built-in LinkedIn Ads integration.
Take-aways
Choosing the right integration method depends largely on your business size, technical capacity, specific needs, advertising budget and the strategic importance of LinkedIn Ads in your marketing efforts. Each option offers distinct advantages and potential limitations, making it essential to assess which integration aligns best with your organizational goals and resources.
In this blog post, we are going to focus on using Zapier to integrate your CRM with LinkedIn Ads, and we shall use the HubSpot starter edition as an example CRM.
What is LinkedIn Ads Integration with CRM?
Integrating LinkedIn Ads with a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is a strategy that aligns your digital advertising campaigns with detailed customer insights stored within the CRM. This integration allows UK businesses to enhance their marketing efforts in several key ways:
Data Sharing: This integration facilitates the seamless exchange of information between LinkedIn Ads and the CRM system. For example, when a potential customer interacts with an ad and completes a form, their details are automatically stored in the CRM, where they can be managed and nurtured effectively.
Offline Conversion Tracking (OCT): By connecting LinkedIn Ads with the CRM, it’s possible to accurately track conversions that are initiated from ads. This involves importing conversion data from the CRM back to LinkedIn Ads, offering a more detailed analysis of campaign effectiveness.
Audience Targeting and Personalisation: Access to detailed CRM data enables businesses to create highly personalised and targeted ad campaigns. This data allows for segmentation of audiences based on previous interactions, purchases, or behaviours, which can then be utilised to customise the advertising experience on LinkedIn Ads.
Enhanced ROI Measurement: Integrating LinkedIn Ads with your CRM system enables you to attribute revenue and other conversion metrics directly to specific campaigns, providing a clearer picture of the return on investment (ROI) from your advertising expenditures.
Optimisation and Automation: This integration can lead to better optimisation and automation of marketing efforts. For instance, certain customer actions recorded in the CRM, like a recent purchase or expressed interest in a product, can automatically trigger specific, tailored advertising campaigns on LinkedIn Ads.
Overall, integrating LinkedIn Ads with CRM systems closes the gap between marketing and sales, ensuring that advertising efforts are supported by the most current and comprehensive customer data. This leads to more efficient marketing spend and an enhanced customer experience, driving better business outcomes.
Benefits of Using CRM Ads with LinkedIn Ads
Integrating HubSpot Ads with LinkedIn Ads can significantly enhance your advertising strategy by leveraging own data alongside the targeting abilities provided by LinkedIn Ads. Here are the key benefits of using HubSpot Ads with LinkedIn Ads:
Improve Lead Quality:
By using offline conversion tracking, you can sync lead stage changes (contact lifecycle) back to the ad platform to score lead quality.
This lets LinkedIn Ads know which leads are more likely to progress into customers and are therefore of the highest quality.
For example, if you group your leads into good, average, and poor categories, you can train LinkedIn’s AI to acquire more high-quality leads and fewer poor leads by using offline event tracking (Changes in lead stage). Optimise your ads with automatic bidding (machine learning) to focus on acquiring high-quality leads, ensuring the AI prioritises the best quality leads, thereby reducing lower-quality leads.
This approach ensures that your advertising efforts yield more valuable leads, ultimately improving your campaign’s overall effectiveness and ROI.
Improved Measurement, Tracking and Reporting
Most companies are eager to increase their advertising spend; however, they also seek to ensure they are achieving the highest possible return on investment (ROI). With many interactions and sales comprising both online and offline activities, it becomes challenging to discern what is effective and what is not.
By leveraging the combined reporting capabilities of LinkedIn and your CRM first-party data, you can refine your advertising efforts, attain superior outcomes, and drive business growth. This integration furnishes valuable insights and tools to amplify the impact of your LinkedIn Ads campaigns using your proprietary data.
A CRM like HubSpot amalgamates LinkedIn’s data with your contact database, providing a cohesive view of your campaign performance. This integration enables you to make informed decisions and hone your strategy by monitoring both standard online metrics, such as click-through rates and conversions, and offline metrics related to your sales funnel progression. These metrics encompass cost per Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL), Sales Qualified Lead (SQL), deal, customer, and overall advertising ROI.
This comprehensive approach to reporting ensures you have a lucid understanding of your campaign’s efficacy across all stages of the sales funnel.
Audience Targeting Improvements
LinkedIn offers a range of retargeting options, including email, website cookies and companies lists to reach people who have already interacted with your brand, such as through a website visit or a marketing event.
To go beyond the standard targeting options within LinkedIn Ads, CRM list refine your messaging to reach the right person at the right time. Share lists from your CRM to LinkedIn, including contact emails and website cookies. This approach expands your reach to cold traffic and strengthens your retargeting efforts. Build a funnel on LinkedIn to nurture leads before capturing their details with a lead form on LinkedIn or your website.
Using HubSpot as a CRM example, it integrates with LinkedIn to share targeting lists created in HubSpot, including contact lists, company lists (Target Accounts) and website cookie list users. You can combine these audiences with LinkedIn’s audience targeting to retarget warm traffic that already knows your brand. Utilise HubSpot’s segmentation tools to create highly targeted audience lists based on detailed criteria such as:
- When filter criteria are met: Objects will enrol when the criteria are true. For example, when a contact’s city is “Berlin,” they can be included on a list with a geographic targeting filter.
- When an event occurs: Objects will enrol when an event has happened, such as when a form is submitted or a contact revisits your website.
- HubSpot also allows you to automatically email a contact if they return to your website, enhancing retargeting effectiveness.
Nurturing Down the Funnel
CRM integration allows advertisers to nurture leads further down the funnel using retargeting strategies. Using HubSpot CRM as an example,
Website Retargeting: HubSpot enables you to set up retargeting campaigns for users who have visited your website. This helps re-engage users who have shown interest in your brand but have not yet converted.
Contact Retargeting: Use HubSpot to build customer lists for retargeting on LinkedIn, including uploading lists of prospect contacts or specific customers you want to target. Once you have captured their contact details, you can use workflows to deliver targeted content and follow-up messages based on user behaviour and engagement history.
Company Retargeting : LinkedIn Ads offer a unique opportunity to retarget professionals based on their job titles, industries, or company sizes, enhancing B2B marketing efforts. By combining CRM data with LinkedIn’s professional audience, you can refine your targeting to reach decision-makers more effectively.
By leveraging these retargeting strategies, you can effectively guide prospects through the buyer’s journey, increasing the likelihood of conversion and enhancing overall campaign performance.
CRM Integration Capabilities
CRM integration provides a comprehensive set of functionalities that are not available when advertising campaigns are run without CRM integration. By offering features that align with LinkedIn Ads best practices, CRM integration can greatly enhance your advertising efforts.
Here’s how CRM integration can help advertisers implement these best practices effectively
Leverage Both Online & Offline Conversion Tracking to Enhance Lead Quantity and Quality
Conversion tracking is a vital tool in LinkedIn Ads for measuring success and improving campaign performance to enhance profitability and increase customer sales. LinkedIn Ads offers both online and offline conversion tracking.
LinkedIn Ads Online conversion tracking helps increase lead quantity,
while LinkedIn Ads offline conversion tracking helps improve lead quality.
Most advertisers use online conversion tracking to measure the number of leads generated and the cost per lead. However, more companies are now extending this approach by incorporating offline conversion tracking, as recommended by LinkedIn, to gain deeper insights into lead quality and optimise deeper into the funnel than just the initial lead event (conversion).
Online Tracking (LinkedIn Ads Conversion Tracking):
LinkedIn Ads records the number of people who fill out a form on your website as an online conversion, using the LinkedIn Ads online conversion tracking script (LinkedIn Insights Tag) placed on your site.
Success is measured by the quantity of leads and the cost per lead, which only considers the first step in your sales process (the lead enquiry).
Lead Ads come with a built-in online tracking system since the forms are hosted directly on LinkedIn. Leads can be synced with your CRM using Zapier if your CRM doesn’t have native integration. Both HubSpot and Salesforce offer out-of-the-box lead-syncing capabilities
Offline Tracking
Not all leads hold the same value—some are far more likely to convert into paying customers. Tracking the customer journey beyond the initial enquiry is crucial for focusing on high-quality leads and optimising your advertising budget more effectively.
Offline Conversion Tracking (OCT) goes beyond capturing initial lead form submissions by tracking the progression of leads after their first contact. With OCT, you can monitor which leads advance to become qualified, move into a deal stage, and ultimately convert into paying customers. Without OCT, your insights are limited to knowing who filled out a form. However, with OCT, you gain valuable information about which businesses scheduled meetings, received quotes, and completed purchases.
By syncing lead lifecycle stage changes with LinkedIn, you can score leads using offline conversions. This process tracks leads throughout the sales funnel and adjusts ad spending based on lead quality and revenue, ensuring your advertising budget is utilised efficiently, driving higher ROI, and attracting customers with long-term value.
Optimised Ad Spend:
Allocate more budget towards ads that attract leads similar to those who have previously made purchases. Avoid wasting money on ads that only generate form submissions without further engagement. Knowing which leads convert into high-value customers allows for more strategic budgeting and spending.
Improved Lead Quality Measurement:
OCT enables LinkedIn Ads to identify the most valuable leads. Whether you are setting bids manually or using automatic bidding, this integration ensures that your budget is used wisely. LinkedIn Ads will prioritise leads that are more likely to convert into paying customers, improving your overall advertising strategy.
Revenue-Based Customer Scoring:
OCT can transmit sales revenue data back to ad platforms, allowing customer scoring based on revenue generated and purchase frequency. This information helps optimise your advertising efforts, leading to better performance and outcomes.
Tracking Lead Stages as Offline Conversions using HubSpot Ad Events (Lifecycle Stages)
Both HubSpot and Salesforce offer out-of-the-box integration with LinkedIn Ads for offline conversion tracking, but these features are not available in the starter plans of either CRM. To access this functionality, you’ll need to upgrade to higher-tier editions such as HubSpot Marketing Hub Pro/Enterprise or Salesforce Pardot. For users on CRM starter plans, LinkedIn recommends using Zapier to facilitate offline conversion tracking integration.
Using HubSpot as an example, the Marketing Pro Edition includes a feature called HubSpot Ad Events, which offers robust capabilities to track and optimise LinkedIn Ads performance. By syncing lead lifecycle changes back to LinkedIn Ads, you unlock enhanced optimisation and reporting through AI-powered machine learning, ensuring that your marketing investments yield measurable results.
HubSpot defines several lifecycle stages to help businesses track and manage the journey of a contact (lead) through the sales funnel. These stages include:
- Subscriber: A contact who has shown interest in your content and opted in to receive updates, typically by subscribing to a blog or newsletter.
- Lead: A contact who has demonstrated potential interest in your products or services, often by filling out a form or contacting your business.
- Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL): A contact identified by the marketing team as ready for sales outreach.
- Sales Qualified Lead (SQL): A contact vetted by the sales team and deemed ready for direct follow-up.
- Opportunity: A contact who has entered the sales pipeline and is considered a potential deal.
- Customer: A contact who has completed a purchase and become a paying customer.
These lifecycle stages allow businesses to better track and optimise their sales funnel, improving the effectiveness of LinkedIn Ads and other marketing efforts. If you are using HubSpot Starter, you need to map the lifecycle stages to Google Ads using Zapier as the bridge for offline conversion tracking.
First Party Audience Targeting for LinkedIn Ads
First-party audience targeting in LinkedIn Ads involves using data collected directly from your interactions with customers or visitors to create highly customised and relevant advertising campaigns. This approach leverages the first-hand information gathered by your business—whether from CRM systems, website analytics, mobile app usage, or other direct customer engagements—allowing you to craft more effective and personalised strategies.
Also known as CRM retargeting, first-party audience targeting enhances your LinkedIn Ads campaigns by utilising your CRM data to develop highly targeted ads based on detailed customer profiles. By taking advantage of your CRM’s segmentation features, you can build customer lists and target specific groups with personalised messaging. Additionally, you can exclude certain lists to avoid audience overlap and improve the overall efficiency of your campaigns.
With first-party targeting, you can upload your CRM data to LinkedIn Ads, which allows you to:
- Improve targeting by reaching known audiences directly or separately targeting cold traffic that has not yet engaged with your brand.
- Engage warm audiences who are already familiar with your brand by delivering tailored messages for more impactful campaigns.
Using this data to create more precise ad campaigns leads to better performance and results. Moreover, excluding specific audiences helps further refine your targeting, ensuring your ads are shown to the right people at the right time.
Types of LinkedIn Ads Audiences
LinkedIn Ads Matched Audiences: LinkedIn Ads Matched Audiences allow you to target specific groups by leveraging your own data, such as email addresses, company names, or job titles from your CRM. By uploading your customer or prospect lists to LinkedIn, the platform matches these contacts with LinkedIn users, enabling you to create highly targeted campaigns across Sponsored Content, Message Ads, and Text Ads. This feature allows you to reconnect with your existing customers, target potential leads, and retarget individuals who have already interacted with your brand—using LinkedIn’s professional audience to drive better business results.
Website and App Retargeting for LinkedIn Ads: LinkedIn’s website and app retargeting uses data from users who visit your website or interact with your mobile app. By placing the LinkedIn Insights Tag on your website, you can track which pages your visitors view and their actions, allowing you to build tailored remarketing lists. This enables you to deliver targeted ads to users who have previously engaged with your digital assets but have not yet converted, encouraging them to move further down the funnel.
Offline Data Import for LinkedIn Ads: Offline data import allows you to digitise information from offline interactions such as in-store purchases, event attendance, or direct mail responses. You can then upload this data into LinkedIn Ads to create more personalised campaigns targeting users based on their offline behaviour. This approach bridges the gap between online and offline engagements, providing a more comprehensive and cohesive marketing strategy that maximises your outreach potential across LinkedIn’s network.
CRM 1st-party Audiences - Using HubSpot as an example
Modern CRMs offer a wide range of capabilities to segment your contact database into targeted audiences that can be synced with Google Ads for advertising purposes. Let’s explore a few examples of audiences you can build using a CRM. For this demonstration, we’ve used HubSpot CRM as an example.
Website Users: Remarket to individuals who have visited your website, ensuring your ads reach those already familiar with your brand. These users are matched with their website cookie list, which is collected by the LinkedIn conversion tracking Insights tag or the HubSpot pixel.
Email Contact Lists: Retarget your contact/email lists by segmenting them into audiences based on specific behaviours, preferences, or demographics. For example, you can upload your customer list to upsell or exclude them from cold traffic campaigns.
Lookalike Segment Audiences: Build a cold audience of people who are most similar to your website visitors, email subscribers, and customer lists by matching them with LinkedIn’s user database through hashed encryption.
Lifecycle Stage Audiences: Tailor your ads to different stages of the buyer’s journey. For instance, show introductory offers to new leads and premium service features to marketing-qualified leads (MQLs). Display top-of-the-funnel ads to new prospects who are not yet leads or past website visitors, and create specific adverts for each lifecycle stage of a new contact lead. Upsell to existing customers with targeted ads, encouraging repeat purchases or promoting complementary products and services. This approach ensures your advertising efforts are relevant and effective at every sales cycle stage.
Ads Interaction Audiences: You can segment contacts in lists based on their ads interactions in ad networks including Google Ads, Facebook Ads and LinkedIn Ads.
Ad interactions include when users click on your ads or submit a form after they engage with your ad. Each ads interaction filter represents a trackable ad interaction, such as identifying which contacts clicked through to your website from a specific LinkedIn Ads campaign
Event-Based Audiences: HubSpot’s event-based audiences allow you to target users based on their specific interactions with your website content, providing highly personalised and relevant marketing experiences.
Target users based on their interactions with your website content, such as viewers of a certain page, webinar sign-up attendees, or those who downloaded a particular resource. For example, send an email automatically using a workflow to contacts when they return to your website.
Geographic Audiences: Customise your ads based on the location of your audience to deliver region-specific offers or announcements using HubSpot properties such as city name or postal code to segment targeted lists.
Demographic Audiences: To effectively use LinkedIn Ads with HubSpot demographic targeting, start by collecting detailed demographic information from your audience, such as age, gender, location, and job title, through lead forms and CRM data integration. Next, create segmented lists in HubSpot based on these demographics, allowing for precise targeting. Sync these segmented lists with LinkedIn Ads to ensure your campaigns reach the desired demographic groups. Tailor your ad content to resonate with each segment by adjusting visuals, copy, and offers to match their specific preferences and needs.
Buyer Persona Audiences: You can segment your retargeting lists based on personas that you have created inside HubSpot to create more tailored ad content.
Hyper-Targeting Audiences:
Depending on the sizes of your audiences, you can overlay multiple audiences to create hyper-targeted audiences. Just remember that LinkedIn ad audiences do have minimum sizes due to privacy restrictions.
Conclusion
Integrating your CRM with LinkedIn Ads is a powerful way to unlock the full potential of your advertising campaigns. By connecting the two platforms, you can improve targeting, track offline conversions, and optimise ad spend based on lead quality and customer lifecycle data. Whether you’re a start-up using Zapier for a cost-effective solution or a more established company seeking to leverage premium CRM tools beyond starter editions of HubSpot or Salesforce, this integration can dramatically improve your advertising results and ROI.
The right integration method will depend on your business size, advertising budget, and technical capabilities. However, by understanding the options available—whether it’s using a marketing automation system, combining Zapier with native CRM tools, or even using LinkedIn‘s API—you can ensure your advertising is supported by data-driven decisions, providing a more personalised and effective customer experience.
Next Steps
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