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LinkedIn Organic Benchmarks & ROI 2024

Reports
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While LinkedIn advertising has become an established B2B lead generation strategy with significant data on its effectiveness, far less has been published on the ROI of LinkedIn’s organic experience. Yet the vast majority of users’ time on LinkedIn is spent organically, between looking up business connections’ backgrounds, scrolling through the feed, and reading updates and articles.

This report contains organic benchmarks and ROI statistics for LinkedIn, compiled from 8 years of campaigns on behalf of small to midsize B2B clients with annual revenues of $5M–$250M.

LinkedIn Organic Benchmarks

Businesses use LinkedIn organically to attract new sales leads, recruit staff, and generally build their brand. They do so by posting status updates; writing articles; and reacting, commenting, and resharing content on personal profiles, as well as populating LinkedIn Company Pages. 

Below are benchmarks that would put your organic Linkedin activity in the top 25% of success within our dataset. 

LinkedIn Organic Benchmarks
Activity Benchmark (Top 25%)
Personal Profile Connections 3,120
LinkedIn Company Page Followers 1,226
Average Article Views 47
Average Article Reactions 26
Average Article Reshares 2
Average Comments Per Status Update:  5
LinkedIn Organic ROI (3 year average): 229% 229%
Time Until First Lead Results: 6–8 months

LinkedIn Organic ROI by Industry

LinkedIn Organic ROI is calculated by subtracting your business’s total expenditure on LinkedIn organic marketing activities from the total revenue it has earned as a direct result of those activities.

Typically, the only resource needed to execute on organic LinkedIn activities – which include posting articles ~2x / month, replying to status updates, and reacting to others’ content – is a single employee or contractor dedicating 3-4 hours per week. However, the articles themselves must be procured, usually from an already existing content marketing or SEO campaign.  

Calculating the revenue your company has earned from LinkedIn requires careful lead tracking and often necessitates marketing attribution, meaning the organic LinkedIn campaign would receive a percentage of the lifetime value of the new customer, with the rest of the credit going to other marketing channels the customer touched before converting.

Below is the ROI of performing organic LinkedIn marketing activities for 19 industries. Each value is the average of 3 years of LinkedIn marketing in that industry. 

LinkedIn Organic ROI by Industry
Industry  LinkedIn Organic ROI Notes
IT & Managed Services 146% This is a crowded industry on LinkedIn, with many companies posting about digital transformation, cloud migration, and other managed services-related topics. You will need to have a unique content angle to stand out.
B2B Software / SaaS 388% LinkedIn organic is an excellent marketing strategy for B2B SaaS when coupled with thought leadership marketing — particularly so when it highlights interesting use cases and applications of its software.
Biotech 192% Potential investors, medical organizations, and physicians have stronger than average engagement in biotech news and analysis shared on LinkedIn. When content seems to offer a strategic advantage to members of the healthcare industry, it has a very high conversion rate.
Higher Education 106% Since LinkedIn has such high engagement from the recruiting and staffing industries, quantitatively-focused content performs exceptionally well. Where higher education organizations report on admissions rates, graduation rates, and where students end up after graduation, conversion and ROI are well above average for all industries.
Commercial Insurance 90% Many commercial insurance companies post on LinkedIn, yet few do a good job of differentiating themselves. Colorful content that includes case studies is the most effective way to use LinkedIn in this industry.
Solar Energy 281% Solar businesses tend to be salesy on LinkedIn; yet most of the engagement around solar content is in technological advancements, energy storage capacity, and new applications of the technology. Writing about these subjects as part of a thought leadership strategy is the most effective way to use LinkedIn in this industry. 
Financial Services 390% There is strong demand for analysis, as opposed to merely news, about developments in financial services and fintech. Thoughtful, editorial-style financial articles see the highest ROI on LinkedIn. 
Commercial Construction 124% Commercial construction is an industry that has traditionally relied on personal connections, and LinkedIn is excellent for nurturing potential leads long-term.
Pharmaceutical 32% Because of rules limiting the promotion of pharmaceutical products, LinkedIn’s usefulness is limited in this industry; however, companies succeed when they use it to emphasize their values, and it continues to be an excellent recruiting platform for pharma companies.
Oil & Gas 134% Oil & gas has been slower to adopt LinkedIn than others, but that means that the decision makers who do use LinkedIn seem to be more receptive to organic content related to exploration software, oil investment returns, and capital equipment used in detection and drilling. 
Industrial IoT 265% A common challenge that IoT companies face is customers who aren’t aware that a product exists that will alleviate their pain points. Case studies and problem/solution posts that address common issues lead to high engagement and conversion.
PCB Design & Manufacturing 301% The PCB industry is an excellent candidate for an organic marketing program on LinkedIn, as many manufacturers and engineers spend a portion of their time on LinkedIn and are open to content about circuit board design, manufacturing, and prototyping. 
eCommerce 201% eCommerce businesses tend to see higher returns from other marketing activities but B2B eCommerce in particular has fared well on the platform using a strategy of posting articles highlighting specific use cases and applications of products.
Commercial Real Estate 287% Commercial real estate companies tend to concentrate their marketing efforts on organic search and various forms of advertising rather than LinkedIn. A dedicated effort to interact with potential clients on LinkedIn, combined with posting 1-2x / month on the platform, is all that is required to see a significant return.
Heavy Equipment 105% While Heavy Equipment companies rely on nurturing long-term customer relationships for the majority of their business, the long sales cycles inherent in this industry make LinkedIn an excellent lead-nurturing tool. 
Medical Device  316% Medical Device companies see among the highest engagement on LinkedIn owing to the breakthrough nature of companies in the space. However, there is a noticeable lack of marketing support for organic activities inside biotech companies, with most resources going towards PR in industry periodicals. For that reason, simply publishing content regularly and maintaining conversations with other LinkedIn members can set your company apart.
HVAC Services 264% The HVAC industry struggles to produce high-engagement posts on LinkedIn. Setting yourself apart and seeing a high return on your investment simply involves taking a more creative approach, either through data-rich articles or including original illustrations in your articles. 
Staffing  & Recruiting 529% LinkedIn is incredibly useful for Staffing & Recruiting firms, both for attracting talent and connecting that talent with businesses. Hiring managers often search LinkedIn to fill openings, meaning they’re already in the market for staffing services.
Legal Services 136% Due to the crowdedness of the legal field, post engagement on LinkedIn is low. However, the bright spot is analyses of interesting cases and case law, which have a higher-than-average client conversion rate.

How to Use LinkedIn For Lead Generation 

If you already have a consistent content marketing campaign in place, your marketing team will be able to easily repackage content from your blog for LinkedIn posts. This allows them to focus on promoting engagement and tracking results. When combined with an existing SEO program that makes use of the same, this results in a highly cost efficient organic lead generation system.

If you don’t already invest in content marketing and are interested in using LinkedIn for lead generation, the most efficient use of your company’s resources is to invest in both thought leadership marketing, and organic LinkedIn marketing at the same time.  

If content is a high priority for your company this year — for LinkedIn, thought leadership marketing, and SEO alike — the agency side of our business offers a package that combines topical research with ghostwriting. We have over a decade of experience partnering with B2B companies for both LinkedIn and content marketing. You can reach out to us here

Further Reading

If you’d like to learn more about B2B lead generation statistics, we recommend the following:

Evan Bailyn

Evan Bailyn is a best-selling author and award-winning speaker on the subjects of SEO and thought leadership. Contact Evan here.

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