LinkedIn is pushing B2B marketers to rethink how they measure marketing success, arguing that generating leads should not be considered the final goal. Instead, marketers need to focus on what happens after a lead enters the funnel, including engagement, pipeline progression and revenue impact.
New LinkedIn research highlights that B2B buyers often begin researching solutions long before they become visible in a company’s CRM. According to research from Factors.ai covering more than 850 B2B companies and 50,000+ closed deals, buyers can begin their journey around 124 days before an opportunity is created in the CRM.
This means relying only on form fills, demo requests and lead counts can give marketers an incomplete picture of demand. LinkedIn says companies should engage buyers earlier and reach a wider group of stakeholders involved in the purchasing decision.
The research also found that engaging a broader buying committee can significantly improve outcomes. Companies that engage a mix of users, influencers and technical evaluators saw stronger win rates, while combining LinkedIn Ads with organic activity was associated with 2.4x higher win rates compared with paid campaigns alone.
LinkedIn is also encouraging marketers to look beyond individual leads and understand account-level engagement. Its recent guidance notes that B2B buying decisions involve multiple stakeholders, making company-level engagement signals more useful than simply counting individual leads.
