Running ads on LinkedIn and sending leads to Microsoft Dynamics CRM is easy, yet determining the specific LinkedIn ad responsible for each lead isn’t feasible.
When a lead is converted into a paid customer, you’re unable to determine which specific LinkedIn ad drove that conversion.
This lack of tracking clarity makes LinkedIn ad management difficult, resulting in spending on various ads without knowing which ones bring in leads and revenue.
A simple tool, if available, should be able to map each lead back to the specific LinkedIn campaign group, campaign, ad, and audience responsible for generating it.
Let's get started!
How to capture LinkedIn ads in Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Step 1: Add Leadsources in the head tag of your website
Leadsources offers an efficient way to monitor lead origins. After being added to your website, it collects up to seven data points for each lead generated.
Create an account on Leadsources.io - it's free.
Insert the Leadsources tracking code into the head tag of your website by following this guide.
Step 2: Add the UTM parameters to your LinkedIn ads campaigns
Ensure to include the UTM parameters you wish to analyze in your LinkedIn ad campaigns.
For instance, these UTM parameters allow you to monitor the campaign, ad, and audience:
- UTM_source=linkedin
- UTM_campaign=campaign-name
- UTM_term=audience-name
- UTM_content=ad-name
Leadsources collects extensive lead source data, including the channel, landing page, and landing page subfolder, ensuring complete lead source tracking for every lead, even if UTM parameters are absent.
Step 3: Add the hidden fields in your form
Add hidden fields to your form so that Leadsources can store lead source data directly for each form submission.
When a lead completes your form, Leadsources automatically enters the LinkedIn ads information into the hidden fields.
For the steps on how to add hidden fields, please check our guide.
Step 4: Capture the LinkedIn ads data in Microsoft Dynamics CRM
When users interact with your ads and reach your website, Leadsources monitors the LinkedIn ads data, including campaign, audience, and ad specifics.
Leadsources automatically fills the hidden fields in your form with the data obtained from LinkedIn ads.
Upon form submission, you can send LinkedIn ads data and your leads to Microsoft Dynamics CRM by connecting your form to it.
How does Leadsources work?
Upon installation on your site, Leadsources gathers LinkedIn ads information every time a visitor comes to your site.
The hidden fields in your form hold the LinkedIn ads data, which is transmitted to Microsoft Dynamics CRM together with the leads details (name, email, etc.) when the form is submitted.
For every visitor, Leadsources keeps track of the following information:
- Channel
- Source
- Campaign
- Content
- Term
- Landing page
- Landing page subfolder
Without UTM parameters, Leadsources still captures lead source data by relying on the referrer.
In some scenarios, it may not be possible to apply UTM parameters, especially when the traffic derives from organic sources:
- Google Search
- Instagram bio link
- Social media posts
- Etc.
In these circumstances, many lead source tracking tools are unable to capture lead sources, as they depend entirely on UTM parameters to obtain the data. Nonetheless, Leadsources continues to collect specific lead source information when UTM parameters are not applicable:
- Channel
- Source
- Landing page
- Landing page subfolder
As a result, Leadsources offers comprehensive lead data tracking across all channels, setting it apart from many other tools:
- Organic Search
- Paid Search
- Organic Social
- Paid Social
- Referral
- Affiliate
- Display Advertising
- Direct Traffic
Leadsources automatically sorts your traffic by channel, producing a concise dataset.
Ultimately, Leadsources serves as a simple and strong tool that gathers detailed lead source data across all channels in a unique space.
Performance reports: Lead, sales, and revenue by source
When you track LinkedIn ads data in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you can create numerous performance reports, including:
- Leads, sales, and revenue by channel
- Leads, sales, and revenue by campaign
- Leads, sales, and revenue by ad
- Leads, sales, and revenue by audience
- Leads, sales, and revenue by landing page
- Leads, sales, and revenue by landing page subfolder
Thus, you can tailor your LinkedIn budget according to the channel, campaign, ad, and audience that drive your leads, sales, and overall revenue.
Let's take a look at the various reports you are able to produce.
1. Lead source reports
These reports present the number of leads created by:
- Channel
- Campaign
- Ad
- Audience
- Landing page
- Landing page subfolder
Example #1:
Start by analyzing the “Leads by Channel” report to find out which channel generates the highest number of leads.
Example #2:
Identifying the leading channel, for example, LinkedIn, allows you to focus your analysis on leads generated by each LinkedIn campaign.
Example #3:
After discovering the LinkedIn campaign that brings in the most leads, you can analyze which exact audience or ad contributes to this success.
2. Sales and revenue source reports
Understanding which LinkedIn ads yield the most leads is certainly valuable, but we must ask ourselves: do these ads influence our revenue?
Connect your leads to a CRM like Microsoft Dynamics CRM to sort out those that turned into paying customers, and then keep track of sales and revenue generated from various channels, sources, landing pages, and more.
You can then tailor your marketing strategy to prioritize the channels, sources, campaigns, audiences, and ads that yield revenue.
To clarify this point, consider the following situation:
| Channels | Search Paid | Social Paid |
| Leads | 50 | 75 |
| Sales | 5 | 6 |
| Average order value | $150 | $100 |
| Revenue | $750 | $600 |
Once the ads were launched on Google and LinkedIn, the initial “Leads by Channel” report indicated that Social Paid ads from LinkedIn attracted more leads than Search Paid ads.
Yet, upon exporting your sales and revenue data from your CRM, you noticed that the Search Paid channel brought in more revenue despite generating fewer leads than the Social Paid channel, resulting in a decision to boost the budget for Search Paid.
Moreover, you are able to generate different types of sales and revenue reports:
- Sales and revenue by source
- Sales and revenue by campaign
- Sales and revenue by content (aka. ad)
- Sales and revenue by term (aka. audience)
- Sales and revenue by landing page
- Sales and revenue by landing page subfolder
