Terms You Should Know: A Glossary of Key Reporting and Analytics Terms on LinkedIn

While marketing managers may want data and metrics to guide our decisions, it’s not always as easy as it sounds. Gathering accurate data you can trust is a crucial first step, and then you need to analyze it and figure out how to act upon it.

Clarity awaits in LinkedIn Marketing Labs. Among the free courses available to help you learn about the science of marketing and advertising on LinkedIn is “Reporting and Analytics for LinkedIn Ads.” This course explains the what, why, and how behind marketing measurement and optimization in Campaign Manager.

Through these sessions, you can learn about every major metric and reporting tool available to LinkedIn marketers. And while we recommend diving into the full course, below you can find a primer to build your basic knowledge of terms worth knowing.

Reporting and Analytics on LinkedIn: Key Metrics and Terms

LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager offers a suite of reporting tools that allows you to interpret your ad campaign performance. It’s important when you’re evaluating ad performance to understand the key metrics and terms. Here’s a quick overview:

Reporting Terms

These are some common terms you’ll come across frequently pertaining to reporting.

• Key Result: A measurable value that shows how effectively you’re achieving marketing objectives.
• Attribution: The tracking of user actions and assignment of values to these, as well as the channels in which the actions occurred. Three common models for marketing attribution: first touch, last touch, and multi-touch.
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Technology for managing relationships and interactions with customers or prospects
• Marketing Automation System: Technology used to automate marketing processes and activities
• Lead Score (LS): A methodology for evaluating lead quality
• Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL): A lead that meets marketing’s benchmark for qualification and prioritization
• Sales Qualified Lead (SQL): A lead that meets the sales team’s benchmark for qualification and prioritization
• Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): An equation that finds the revenue generated per dollar spend in advertising

Common LinkedIn Marketing Metrics and Measures

Brands and marketers typically use one or more of these metrics to track their campaigns, depending on the objective.

• Reach: Unique number of members reached by your content
• Frequency: Average number of impressions per unique user
• Cost Per Mille (CPM): Total ad spend divided by 1,000 impressions
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): Number of clicks divided by number of impression
• Cost Per Click (CPC): Total ad spend divided by number of clicks
• Cost Per View (CPV): Average cost per view 
• Open Rate: Number of Message or Conversation Ads opened divided by number sen
• Click to Open Rate: Number of people who clicked within a Message or Conversation Ad divided by number of opens.
• Cost Per Lead (CPL): Average cost per lead acquired on the platform

Drive ROI with Reporting and Analytics

You’ll learn more about all of these terminologies in the Reporting and Analytics for LinkedIn Ads course, as well as how you can put them to use and drive stellar results on the platform. It’s a self-guided interactive experience that shouldn’t take more than 45 minutes total. We’ll see you in (virtual) lab!