Case Study about Vistage on LinkedIn: Increasing membership with targeted ad campaigns while reducing cost per lead

1. Marketing Solutions
Vistage
Case Study
Increasing membership with
targeted ad campaigns,
while reducing cost per lead
“ LinkedIn has proven time and time again that
there is no better place to effectively reach
Challenge
business owners and executives.” • Reach highly targeted audiences at scale
Andy Ramirez, Director of Interactive Marketing, • Reduce cost per lead
Vistage International • Increase membership to drive revenue
Solution
Generating quality leads while reducing cost • Place display and text ads on LinkedIn
Vistage International provides unparalleled access to new • Target ads to CEOs and business owners
business perspectives, innovative strategies and actionable • Continuously test and optimize from LinkedIn’s wide
ideas to more than 15,000 chief executives and business portfolio of marketing solutions
leaders. Vistage’s success is built on growing a network of
CEOs and owners of small- to mid-sized businesses, who
meet monthly to seek out advice and counsel from each Why LinkedIn?
other. Finding these top-level executives, and raising • Engaged, high-quality audience
awareness of Vistage’s peer advisory groups, prompted • Current job/experience in member profile makes
Vistage’s interactive marketing team and its marketing targeting easy and accurate
agency, Red Door Interactive, to narrow down marketing
• Support from marketing solutions team boosts success
options that would present a critical mass of solid leads.
“In order to find a qualified Vistage member, we needed to Results
bring in five leads,” explains Andy Ramirez, director of
• More leads at a lower cost compared to ad networks
interactive marketing for Vistage. “We tried various websites
and ad networks in order to source potential members.” • Higher-quality leads that are more likely to convert
• Continued success over time without diminishing
The problem was that these marketing options yielded some returns
leads – but not enough to justify the cost of the spend.
“There had to be enough potential members for the expense
to make sense – otherwise the cost per lead was too high,”
says Alexandra Chrisman, vice president of acquisition and
retention at Vistage.

2. For instance, websites like Forbes.com might have a high- Since it began marketing on LinkedIn, Vistage has found that
level executive readership, but not a broad enough reach to online lead generation has improved dramatically, particularly
generate Vistage memberships. On the other hand, ad compared to results from other marketing venues such as ad
networks reach a wide audience, but not necessarily Vistage- networks. In addition, Vistage found that lead generation efforts
appropriate leads. “We need quality as well as quantity,” says did not diminish over time – in fact, Vistage continues to reach
Chrisman. “With most of the other websites and ad networks, and exceed its lead generation targets while also lowering cost
we’d see a steeply diminishing rate of return.” per lead (CPL).
During one recent quarter, the volume of leads delivered from
Finding a critical mass of CEOs and business ads on LinkedIn increased by 114% month over month, while the
owners on LinkedIn cost per lead decreased by 26% over the same time period. At
In late 2009, Vistage’s interactive marketing team decided to the same time, the LinkedIn campaign generated 89% more
investigate LinkedIn as a marketing resource. “It was an obvious leads than the same campaign on a leading ad network, at less
than a third of the cost per lead.
choice, since LinkedIn caters to our target market,” Ramirez
says. “Our business is about connecting CEOs and business
owners to each other so that they can achieve better business
results. LinkedIn is about connecting professionals and Number of Leads Vs. Cost Per Lead
facilitating their business discussions.”
+114%
In addition, LinkedIn’s trusted targeting data meant that Vistage
could feel more confident about how their targeting was done.
“LinkedIn encourages its members to continually update
information about their positions and experience,” Chrisman
said. “We knew we’d be able to find and connect with the most
appropriate leads.”
+44%
-26%
April May June
Leads Cost Per Lead
“Our expectation with LinkedIn was that we’d achieve results,
then watch them diminish over time,” Ramirez says. “To our
surprise, our results continue to improve. The quality and
quantity of the conversions we generate from LinkedIn is higher
than any ad network or business site.”
Sample of Vistage display ad
The net result of Vistage’s success is that the company has shifted
the majority of its display advertising dollars to LinkedIn, Ramirez
Leads increase as cost per lead decreases says: “The consistency of results is what’s driven us to rely on
LinkedIn to help build our membership. LinkedIn has proven time
Vistage began testing display ads on the LinkedIn site, using and time again that there is no better place to effectively reach
various sizes and types of creative, as well as targeting business owners and executives.”
different audience segments. Because LinkedIn can allow for
highly specific targeting based on information in member
profiles, Vistage was able to direct ads to CXOs within the Visit marketing.linkedin.com to learn how other marketers have
top 50 DMAs. successfully met their marketing objectives.
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