How Impactable increased conversions by 10% with LinkedIn retargeting

To improve the efficiency of their marketing efforts (paid search, paid listings, SEO, and more), Impactable used LinkedIn’s audience and targeting features to capture, qualify, retarget, and convert relevant segments of their website traffic.

Here’s exactly how they did it.

The goal: Boost the efficiency of marketing channels

Impactable is a B2B LinkedIn ads agency. Like most B2B companies, they use paid search, paid listings, and SEO to drive traffic to the website.

The main issue with these traffic sources is that it’s difficult to monitor and control the quality of traffic coming into the website. Remarketing to this unqualified traffic therefore leads to unfocused efforts and wasted spend.

The team wanted to find a way to improve overall marketing efficiency and bid more confidently on high-intent competitive keywords.

The Marketing tactic: Qualifying and retargeting website traffic using LinkedIn ads

Impactable used LinkedIn’s native audience targeting to qualify, segment, and convert their existing traffic, which came to the website via a number of different sources (Google search, paid listings, organic, etc.).

They first created LinkedIn audiences of users who visited their site, using LinkedIn’s Insight Tag.

Then, they built a qualifying layer on top of this audience, by using LinkedIn’s ad targeting capability to filter this audience and only deliver ads to relevant segments of their website traffic.

The result: 10% increase in conversions

The team implemented this change in January 2023. After 6 months, they saw the following results while spending the same overall budget:

• 10% increase in conversion rate.
• 25% increase in call bookings via Google and an increase in call show-up rates.
• 10% boost to booked calls self-attributed as “organic or social.”
• 10% increase in deals closed from calls booked.
• 40% reduction in cost per conversion (to booked call or purchase made) from Google ads.

Note that Impactable had also rolled out another light retargeting campaign on programmatic, which may have inflated the data. However, the LinkedIn strategy was the biggest variable they leaned on during this time period.

Why does it work?

• LinkedIn’s Insight Tag picks up on all website traffic, not just traffic sent by LinkedIn ads. 
• LinkedIn offers a range of filters to narrow down B2B audiences, allowing you to focus on the segments relevant to you. This includes company size (so you know they have budget), seniority level (so you know they have decision power), industry (so you know you can serve them), and many more.
• Retargeting allows you to nurture web visitors, build trust, and overcome objections. For example, prospects who click on your Google ads are likely visiting 3–4 other competitor sites as well. Retargeting these visitors can help you win them over in the long run.

What are the challenges? Attribution is difficult, as multiple channels will try to take credit. To overcome this, try setting channel attribution and self-attribution (such as asking prospects how they heard about you in the booking form).

How to implement this tactic yourself

1. Install LinkedIn’s Insight Tag on the website.
2. Set up LinkedIn retargeting audiences to start collecting user data. Check out our LinkedIn Ads course if you need help.
3. Create your retargeting ad campaign(s) on LinkedIn. You first need to have built up a big enough audience (at least 300).
4. Add the retargeting audience you’ve created. Then, use LinkedIn’s native filters (geography, seniority, company size, job function, etc.) to filter and qualify your website traffic.
5. You may want to set up multiple campaigns targeting different segments of your audience with content relevant to them.
6. Set the right campaign settings. To focus only on this warm, qualified audience, turn both LinkedIn Audience Network and Audience Expansion off.
7. Get your frequency right. If the frequency is too low, you aren’t saturating the audience enough to make a difference. If the frequency is too high, you waste ad spend and see diminishing returns quickly. You can control frequency by controlling your audience size and/or budget. Justin’s recommended frequencies are:
   • 3+ per 7–day window
   • 7–10 per 30–day window
   • 15–20 per 90–day window.

Meet the specialist behind this tactic

Justin Rowe is a restaurant owner turned marketer. He founded a LinkedIn lead gen agency which was later acquired, and now runs the investor-backed B2B LinkedIn ads agency Impactable. 

Follow Justin on LinkedIn or check out Impactable’s YouTube channel for more insights.