Challenge

BusinessOnline is a B2B digital marketing agency that uses a data-driven approach for optimizing B2B ad campaign ROI. To measure performance, they use a proprietary analytics platform, Dataweld, to connect data from different sources and create dashboards that indicate which marketing channels are performing best. Knowing that LinkedIn presented a massive growth opportunity for their business, BusinessOnline needed a way to easily validate LinkedIn’s performance and provide reports to customers at scale.

Solution

To address these challenges, BusinessOnline integrated with LinkedIn’s Marketing Analytics APIs and started to leverage LinkedIn ad campaign reporting data through their Dataweld platform in just a few weeks. The API integration provided three key solutions for their business.
 

First, the integration enabled the BusinessOnline to create a channel performance dashboard that measured the impact of LinkedIn campaigns on lead quality and revenue vs. other marketing channels. BusinessOnline also used the integration to build internal reports that helped them identify top performing audiences in order to optimize advertiser conversion rates.

Next, BusinessOnline leveraged the APIs to create a benchmarking dashboard to measure ad campaign performance against industry averages. By doing so, they were able to effectively prove the value of their agency services and, as a result, increase customer investment.

Finally, BusinessOnline used their integration with LinkedIn’s APIs to streamline their internal reporting processes. Prior to integration, the agency manually ran daily reports through LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager tool in addition to their own internal reporting tools. Leveraging their API integration, BusinessOnline was able to automate and centralize LinkedIn performance reporting within the Dataweld platform and simplify their overall reporting workflows across channels.

Results

By integrating LinkedIn’s Marketing Analytics APIs, BusinessOnline was able to improve business performance across multiple KPIs including:

Time saved on internal reporting costs - By automating LinkedIn performance reports  through Dataweld, BusinessOnline reduced time spent on  preparing individual reports by an estimated 4-8 hours which resulted in a savings of $75,000 per year. It also freed up significant time and resources for the agency: “The reporting dashboards that LinkedIn’s Marketing Analytics APIs allowed us to create really opened up our days,” said Eric Ramos, Director of Analytics at BusinessOnline. “Now, instead of creating reports, we can focus on developing more strategic solutions and delivering greater insights to our customers.”
 

Improved customer performance - Access to LinkedIn data through the APIs also allowed BusinessOnline to more easily validate CTR improvements they had delivered for advertisers. Using dashboards powered by LinkedIn’s APIs, they discovered that on average they had increased overall LinkedIn ad campaign CTR by as much as 53% year over year.

Increased revenue for their business - Finally, the integration with LinkedIn’s APIs enabled the BusinessOnline team to guide their customers toward smart, data-driven decisions with solid returns. And that meant good returns for their business as well. Using API-powered insights, they were able to increase their clients’ LinkedIn ad spend by ~300% year over year by demonstrating value to their customers through transparent reporting.