Earlier this year, LinkedIn announced the launch of a new, full suite of tools to improve social media marketing efforts on its platform. Highlighting a particular tool within this portfolio called “Lead Accelerator,” LinkedIn claims it had found a way to turn its platform into a whole-funnel solution for marketers looking to promote their companies, start new conversations, and land new business.
To demonstrate the efficacy of Lead Accelerator, the company launched a pilot program with around 100 brands—including heavy hitters such as Lenovo, Samsung, and Salesforce—to see how they could benefit from using their new tools. The results were wildly successful, with brands such as eCornell reporting two times as many landing page conversions and a cost per lead three times lower than normal. 
So how does it work, and what does it mean for other marketers now being given access to these tools? The simple answer: data.
Prior to this launch, the primary means of promoting a brand on LinkedIn was through sponsored updates and sponsored content. These tools work much like Facebook’s content marketing promotion model, where marketers can pay to have their pages and articles appear in the news feeds of targeted audiences. In fact, Facebook also launched its own tools to provide new data for content marketers. While useful, this method isn’t without its limitations: Promotions were limited to LinkedIn, data on interactions and efficacy was sparse, and targeting was largely left up to individual marketers to determine (usually based on data gathered from other platforms).
Lead Accelerator fixes most of these issues. Now, marketers who opt into the service receive detailed analytics about audiences who interact with their content and similar content, both on and off the LinkedIn platform. Promotions are no longer confined to news feeds, but can also appear over large networks of “display” sites that return data regarding audience interactions. But perhaps the most attractive social media marketing tool comes into play after running promotions, when Lead Accelerator will make suggestions about how to turn your new, promoted reach into actionable conversions.
Currently, the service is available for quarterly and annual subscriptions purchased through a conversation with a LinkedIn sales rep. This means the cost may be scaled nicely to fit your business, but for some marketers this may only mean that the price tag for these tools is subject to change. Only time will tell how LinkedIn manages this, but in the meantime, this is a huge step for empowering marketers to reach professional audiences.
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