• by Colin Kirkland , June 12, 2023

LinkedIn is doubling down on its business-to-business (B2B) marketing efforts by launching a suite of tools -- including the “CMO Scorecard,” the “B2B Index,” and the “B2B Leaderboard” -- that aim to help companies better understand how brand investments are impacting their bottom line.

First, LinkedIn’s CMO Scorecard -- led by the company's think tank, The B2B Institute -- gauges creative, media, and outcome metrics by measuring group-specific variables.

For creative, the Institute looks at attention, branding, and linkage to key buying situations, while media measurement is based on effectiveness, evenness and efficiency. Outcomes, on the other hand, take into account marketing, sales and talent metrics.

“We created the CMO Scorecard to help marketers assess if the right people are seeing their creative, if it resonates, and if it ranks better than competitors. In order to help them make more data-based decisions that are more likely to lead to financial growth,” Jon Lombardo, the B2B Institute’s global head of research, told MediaPost.

The Microsoft-owned professional networking platform has also introduced the B2B Index, a composite score of three brand-building efforts -- brand investment, creative quality and effectiveness, and brand outcomes -- as well as the B2B Leaderboard, which is based off of results from the B2B Index.

To stoke competition and promote awareness, LinkedIn said the Leaderboard highlights brands that score the highest on creativity, buyer intent and “on the ways they show up and tell their story across organic and paid marketing.”

“Any successful campaign has a simple formula,” added Lombardo via email. “Great creative x great media = outcomes.” Still Lombardo believes there’s “a huge opportunity” to improve B2B measurement.

This suite of tools arrives on the heels of other B2B marketing updates LinkedIn is planning to launch, including new ad formats like in-stream video ads, inbox-placed “Conversation Ads” and “Thought Leader Ads,” as well as AI prompts for ad generation in “Campaign Manager.”

By joining marketing performance with sales and talent data via LinkedIn’s new tools, Lombardo said marketers will have hard evidence to show the C-Suite that their marketing strategy is working. “Good marketing makes it easier to get more meetings and hire more talent.”