LinkedIn upgrades events. Here’s how marketers can use them to grow audience and pipeline

LinkedIn has added new integrations and lead-generation features with the goal of turning live and virtual events into measurable growth engines. 

For B2B brands, LinkedIn is a popular platform for livestreaming events or simply promoting them. The audience is there, and it’s easy to spin up a new event listing. It could be a small event, like a webinar or podcast, or something bigger, like a full in-person event.

Salesforce’s Dreamforce is a perfect example of a B2B company that leverages LinkedIn events to live-stream part of its event. Abhishek Shrivastava, VP Product at LinkedIn,  explains that Salesforce has built a “repeatable, scalable event strategy they plan to use for future events.” But there are lots of other companies doing the same.

Impact.com is another example. Whitney Donaldson, Global Director of Demand Generation, said Impact was using LinkedIn as its primary channel to reach senior marketing and partnership leaders through sponsored content and Sales Navigator programs, and both drove strong pipeline and revenue. It was a natural extension to also use LinkedIn for Impact’s annual customer event, iPX. Donaldson says: 

For this year’s event, we helped to expand the experience to a broader global audience. LinkedIn Live let us meet our ICP (ideal customer profile), where they spend time during the workday, and extend the event beyond the room. The performance of our existing LinkedIn programs gave us confidence that a livestream would reach the right people and deliver measurable engagement.

According to Shrivastava, customers use LinkedIn Live to stream key moments from their in-person events, including keynotes, panel discussions, fireside chats, and even demo sessions. For Impact, it streamed iPX’s opening keynote from the CEO, and promoted that keynote using a single LinkedIn Live event using Event Ads, driving registrations to the livestream.

New integrations make event promotion more data-driven

LinkedIn also announced several new integrations for its events solutions, including a new event management integration with ON24. Shrivastava says: 

We’re always looking for ways to meet customer needs and bring relevant data sources into LinkedIn. […] Partnerships like these will continue to be a priority, and we’re excited to explore additional integrations in the future.

LinkedIn also announced integrations with Cvent and Integrate. Companies that use Cvent can sync registration data (e.g., contact and company lists) into the Campaign Manager using the Cvent LinkedIn Audience Connector.

Integrate now captures leads from the new lead generation objective for event ads. That’s right, you can now set an objective of lead generation for Event Ads. Shrivastava explained that leads captured through Event Ads appear as registrations on the Event Page and can be sent to your CRM or marketing automation system:

These engagements can also fuel retargeting audiences, so we recommend using the Lead Generation Campaign Objective within Event Ads to optimize for high-intent registrants during the live event.

Scaling event reach with LinkedIn Live

Lead generation was what Impact used for its Event Ads, with registrations flowing into Salesforce and Marketo. Whitney Donaldson, Global Director of Demand Generation,  explains that the livestream fit into the same scoring, routing, and nurture flows as Impact’s other LinkedIn programs, “allowing us to see how Livestream impacted customer journeys in the same way we view all our campaign impact. It’s apples to apples.”

The iPX customer conference is a smallish, in-person event with only 1,000 in-person attendees. But Impact wanted to extend event access to a global audience and boost engagement beyond the in-person. It also wanted to generate new audiences to retarget and build long-term demand.

LinkedIn Events made sense, as Donaldson said earlier, but what were the results of running this event on LinkedIn Live? There were 1100 concurrent livestream viewers and 132k additional views generated through paid media promotion, which included not only Event Ads, but sponsored content and retargeting.

The firm also ran paid social ads on Facebook to known audiences, used email for existing prospects and customers, and ran on-site promotions by the sales team

We built a segment of members who registered for or watched the livestream, and a separate comparison audience that matched our ICP but did not attend. We then ran sponsored content to both groups.

Another key result was that 57% of viewers were more likely to engage with sponsored content. According to Donaldson, the increase was attributed to LinkedIn engagement data following the event:

Viewers from the livestream group showed a 57% higher engagement rate, measured by clicks, reactions, comments, and shares. In practice, it means people who spent time with the event were more responsive to our paid campaigns in the weeks that followed.

The sponsored content included thought leadership and product stories. Attendees were also added to Marketo nurtures (by segment) and received event follow-up, including recordings, highlight clips, and next-step offers, such as demos and regional events. And, of course, sales used the engagement data (appropriately scored) to prioritize outreach.

It’s important to note that Impact did not use the new integrations mentioned here because it had a different tech stack.

Promoting events using Event Ads

So, why would you promote a live event through Event Ads that is already live. Shrivastava argues that when your event is live, ads can automatically stream the LinkedIn Live feed into members’ feeds, turning awareness into participation. He said it’s a window into what’s happening in real-time and can drive real results. It’s certainly an interesting way to get your target audience to see a piece of the event and entice them to register and watch more:

When companies use Event Ads to promote their events, the impact is huge — we’re seeing about 31 times more viewers and over four times more registrations compared to events that aren’t promoted.

Of course, events are available to watch on demand after the live event ends. And you can use Event Ads to retarget audiences to come watch more. LinkedIn says these new features are especially useful for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) looking to attract new customers and build an engaged community. Shrivanastra concludes: 

LinkedIn Events are all about bringing your professional community together in real time. It’s not just about showing up for a session, but it’s about creating space for people to engage, share ideas, and keep the conversation going long after the event ends. That’s where the real value comes in.

My take

The big takeaway here is that B2B marketers can now treat LinkedIn Events like high-performance demand campaigns. The ability to create event ads that have lead generation as the objective is key as before, the only thing you could do is get someone to register to your LinkedIn event page. From there you had to download the list to add to your CRM or marketing automation system and that was a pain. Now, registration information can flow directly and that data is quickly included in scoring, routing, and nurture workflows.

Marketers can also leverage all the great content they create and share during these events to attract new audiences through event ads, sponsored posts, and more. Plus, all the follow-up that typically happens after an event can be tracked and measured, like Impact was able to do.