Lead411 vs. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions

It is well suited for reaching prospects across a vast array of industries; lead generation, planning for meetings (let's me know who might be attending from the client side and allows me to view their LinkedIn account ahead of time. I wouldn't use it for B2C sales or inexperienced sales support people. One still needs to determine which contacts to download.

Incentivized

Although it offered great features, we didn't really see a lot of traffic or results from the ads we placed. Working in hospitality, we had to strategically time and place our ads around holiday seasons and it can be difficult to predict a marketing campaign. Depending on your market, LinkedIn may not be the best avenue to advertise with.

Incentivized

• Most importantly --- The DATA is accurate and the platform is straight-forward and simple to use. The native connection to our CRM environment "completes the requirement" from our standpoint. A "10 out of 10"...
• From my experiences and interactions, the culture of the organization is exceptionally focused on customer satisfaction! We've been more than pleased with EVERY SINGLE interaction with Lead411....they go out of their way to be of assistance. A "10 out of 10"...

• Targeting - they have done a great job of allowing you speak to ideal audiences
• Support - dedicated customer service and account advising is always accessible and very responsive
• Curation of professional audiences - one of the biggest advantages to the platform is that its users are for the most part are professional

Incentivized

• Ability to search contacts and companies by actual street and physical address is not there yet. This is extremely helpful when trying to strategically work a particular neighborhood where you're trying to build up your own individual name and brand recognition. It's also a way of keeping others in the sales force from stepping on the toes or duplicating efforts of another sales rep.

• The Campaign Manager is not good. It seems like the Campaign Manager (where you create and manage your self-serve ad campaigns) is buggy and doesn't have a good flow. Contrast with FB Ad Manager of the Google Adwords/Ads interface, which has a much more simple process to create and edits campaigns, ad groups, ads, keywords, audiences, budgets, etc. LinkedIn Campaign Manager seems to actively work against you trying to make changes to your campaigns.
• LinkedIn Campaign Manager offers three options: sponsored content, InMail, and text ads. LinkedIn used to offer other ad services that you couldn't access unless you had a "managed ad account" run by LinkedIn Staff with a dedicated monthly ad spend. It seems most of those "hidden" features have disappeared, though you still have to contract with LinkedIn to offer dynamic ads. It would be better if LinkedIn empowered marketers to create the ads they want. (Perhaps with a dedicated acct. manager like how Google Ads works.)
• This is silly, but it isn't easy to navigate to Campaign Manager. I have a bookmark for Campaign Manager because if you want to click there through LinkedIn, it takes 2 or 3 different screens to get to Campaign Manager. In my opinion, when you click the "Work" dropdown from the LinkedIn header (by your profile picture) you should have a link to Campaign Manager.
• LinkedIn, in recent months, has made substantial changes to the Ads platform and Campaign Manager. Though these changes work to address some of the above issues, LinkedIn still has quite a ways to go before their platform is on par with their competition.

Incentivized

Lead411 is utilized by our team and as they improve their functionality for company look ups in batches, we are interested in testing it

I would rate Lead411’s overall usability a 9 out of 10. The platform is intuitive, easy to navigate, and provides quick access to accurate data. Features like advanced search filters and integrations make it seamless for sales teams. Minor improvements could be made in global data coverage, but overall, it’s highly efficient and user-friendly.

in terms of promoted content reporting and usability, the platform is not as flexible or easy to use compared to more established social platforms like Facebook. However, it does offer plug-ins to Google Data Studio which makes pulling and manipulating data easier. My main usability gripe comes when looking at organic performance of a company page. There isn't an easy way to export organic performance data.

Incentivized

They are very good at responding to my questions.

Incentivized

So, everything what I just said previously adds up to the value of LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. Definitely recommending it to a friend. It has its things to improve but its nothing major or nothing to worry about. So I give a 9 because it still has that, some user interface glitches that can be improved but do not damage the experience that you have with it.

Incentivized

ZoomInfo certainly is class when it comes to its capabilities. That said, if you're in a heavy outbound role and you just want to get down to the nitty gritty Lead411 is a cost effective measure to get you the information you need to be as successful as you can possibly be.

Incentivized

If you want more precision in B2B targeting, then LinkedIn is without question the better alternative. However, as I established before, I've rarely seen LinkedIn campaigns be successful for anything other than brand awareness/thought leadership. And that's almost 100% what Twitter is for. Twitter campaigns almost always have a cheaper CPC AND CPM than LinkedIn and accomplish the same thing, so I would say go with Twitter. At times LinkedIn campaigns are just so you can tell someone at a higher level that you did precise targeting to the exact audience they wanted and check that box, because it's easier for them to understand how you'd do well on LinkedIn, and more difficult to tell that story on Twitter. But I honestly prefer Twitter and its platform for B2B awareness campaigns. Heretic, I know, but it's how I feel after several years of experience with both. Facebook is bottom of the barrel for B2B in my mind, so I'm not really going to discuss it. I would take LinkedIn over Facebook for many reasons, but Facebook is an option too, but more for SMB and just covering all bases, not as a primary choice for B2B marketing.

Incentivized

• I've been able to receive some great contact info that has led to me booking new speakers.
• I've wasted a lot of time and credits on data that says it was verified and is not correct.
• It is very labor intensive to keep cost down.

Incentivized

• We have seen a marked increase in inbound agent calls since we began LinkedIn marketing.
• LinkedIn marketing is an excellent way to put your content in front of people that are actually going to read it, this has led to a major increase in our content being consumed and acted on.

Incentivized