Measure Your ROI from Your LinkedIn Efforts

To many salespeople, sales managers, etc., measuring the return on investment (ROI) from LinkedIn is like measuring the actual number of snowflakes that hit the ground during a snowstorm: impossible to do, so why even try? Very, very few things are truly immeasurable, though… you just have to know what to look for and how to do it.

What’s more, the act of measuring, well, anything in life is important. As the creator of modern business management Peter Drucker put it, ” if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” That’s what I like to call a truth bomb. It especially applies to social selling via LinkedIn.

In the case of LinkedIn ROI, there are two separate areas that you can measure to gauge not only how you’re doing now, but the areas you can improve: ROI on your LinkedIn connections, and ROI on your LinkedIn activity.

LinkedIn ROI on Your Connections

Whether they be current or future, your LinkedIn connections will be the prime driver of your sales success. Keep in mind, though, that while you may secure some deals from your connections, it’s who they know that’s important. Who “they” know are your 2nd-degree connections. We call that your “warm market.”

The most efficient way to reach that group is to utilize the relationships that you’ve built with your 1st-degree connections, and we’ve written about that pretty extensively in this blog. We’re talking about measuring for ROI, though, so let’s focus on that. Here are the KPIs you should be measuring:

• New connections that meet your targeted Boolean search(es)
• Number of connection requests that convert to 1st-degree connections
• Number of connections to discovery calls
• Number of discovery calls to meetings (mainly Zoom/phone nowadays)
• Number of meetings to proposals
• Number of proposals to closed business

Your current connections come into play in the second bullet point. By using both introductions from them to 2nd-degree connections and a good connection strategy, you can greatly bolster your 1st-degree connections with well-qualified people with whom you can develop relationships.

You’ll note that the bottom three points—four, if you replace “cold calling” with “LinkedIn connections”—are similar any other sales funnel. It’s the top three that are LinkedIn-specific. Those involve seeking out new connection possibilities with targeted searches, converting those possibles to connections, and then getting them on the phone. All of these can be easily measured in a spreadsheet; from there, you can see what’s working and what’s not.

LinkedIn ROI on Your Activity

Your direct activity on LinkedIn is just as important as your efforts to make new connections. Whether it’s publishing your own articles, creating engaging posts, effectively commenting on other people’s content, etc., you can easily “spread the word” about yourself effectively and efficiently.

One of the easiest ways to measure your activity is LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index (SSI). It keeps track of your successes on LinkedIn in four categories:

1. Establish your professional brand
2. Find the right people
3. Engage with insights
4. Build relationships

To find your score, visit getmyssiscore.com. You first have to be active on LinkedIn! Pretty simple to say, but more difficult to do… right? Just budget out some time each day to create a post or two, comment on a couple of your connections’ activities, and so on. Then measure activity based on that and see how much of it converts to new connections. You can also see who has viewed your profile, and reach out to the people who look at you based on your activity within the platform. If you have time on Fridays, set yourself up the following week to be a success.

Many other metrics exist, and measuring any (all!) of them can help you gauge how you’re doing. If you want to track client referrals, for example:
• Number of client referrals requested
• Number of client referrals received
• Of the received, the number that converted to conversations 

Content:
• Number of views
• Number of reactions
• Number of comments
• Number of shares

LinkedIn Polls that you run:
• Number of votes
• Number of votes from your targeted audience(s)

… and (virtual) networking efforts:
• Number of networking introduction requested
• Number of networking introduction received
• Number of networking introduction that converted to conversations 

As you can see, there are more than enough ways to track your LinkedIn activity. Now that you know what and how to measure, start doing it with all of your LinkedIn activity. Once you start seeing some real data come in, you can see where you may need to improve. After a bit of time, you’ll see where you’re strong and you’re weak. Improve on those deficiencies, you’ll be well on your way to being a successful social selling professional.

Now that you know how to measure LinkedIn ROI, are you interested in discovering how to incorporate LinkedIn into all of your 2021 sales and business development planning? Join us on Thursday, Nov. 12th at 3:00 PM ET as we show you how to plan for 2021 with LinkedIn. Besides ROI, this high-level discussion will also include details on buyer personas, developing a content calendar, planning your day, and much more. Register for your seat… today!