Metadata.io, the autonomous demand generation platform, unveiled a comprehensive analysis of all paid social campaigns their customers ran using the platform in 2020. The report, What We Learned from $15M in Spend on Facebook and LinkedIn, identifies key trends that shaped the most successful B2B marketing programs last year. The analysis and raw data are available for B2B marketers to download and analyze today.

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The report is derived from anonymized analysis of B2B paid social campaigns from Metadata’s customer base, from more than $15 million in ad spend, 30,000 campaign experiments launched, 1.9 million clicks, 102,000 leads created, and triggered over $66 million in qualified pipeline.

The analysis exposes common challenges, best practices, tips, and opportunities for B2B marketers looking to maximize the effectiveness of their Facebook and LinkedIn campaigns, including:

  • Marketers who experiment more reap the benefits. Of Metadata customers, those who had a higher number of experiments, regardless of how much they spent, ultimately yielded better campaign performance than those who didn’t experiment as much.
  • Popular call-to-actions can be pricey on LinkedIn. The “Learn More” CTA has the highest CTR on LinkedIn, but also the highest CPL. If a campaign goal is lead generation, but the marketer optimizes only for engagement, the price will be more. On the other hand, “Register” is one of the least used CTAs on LinkedIn and carries the lower CPL.
  • Cost-Per-Leads (CPLs) are generally 10-50% lower on Facebook—but quality edges higher on LinkedIn. Some marketers actually get lower CPLs on LinkedIn. For example, for certain personas and in some countries, Facebook is used much less, meaning there is a larger audience on LinkedIn. More inventory means lower price. That said, from a fit perspective, LinkedIn tends to drive more qualified leads based on conversion to opportunity and won deals.
  • Facebook is very effective for top of funnel campaigns. On Facebook, the most popular CTAs also happen to have the lowest price tag. And “Learn More” is most efficient, with the highest CTR and a CPL on-par with other CTAs.
  • Less is more on LinkedIn, and more is more on Facebook. For both brand awareness and lead gen campaigns on LinkedIn, the most-common text length is more than 100 characters. On Facebook, longer ads garnered more clicks with some of the lowest CPLs, yet the vast majority of brands are still using less than 100 characters.

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“B2B Marketers are always curious how they stack up against their peers and how to improve when it comes to campaign performance,” said Jason Widup, VP of Marketing, Metadata. “We want to be a resource for B2B Marketers and help them navigate what works and what doesn’t. Both Facebook and LinkedIn play an integral role in campaigns, generating leads, and growing the business, and our analysis and anonymized platform data help B2B marketers run smarter, better campaigns.”

To create What We Learned from $15M in Spend on Facebook and LinkedIn, Metadata.io analyzed anonymized campaigns from its entire customer base from January 1, 2020 through December 31, 2020. The benchmarks and insights within the report are based on averages from those campaigns. Metadata is sharing its raw data from real customers so marketers can see what’s working and compare its own campaigns.

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