LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms vs Landing Pages: When to Use Each & How to Sync Every Lead to HubSpot

TL;DR (2-Minute Summary)

LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms convert at roughly 13% compared to 4% for traditional landing pages, making them ideal for top-of-funnel volume plays and particularly effective for collecting leads in the early stages of the B2B funnel. Landing pages deliver fewer but higher-intent leads, perfect for bottom-funnel offers requiring deeper qualification.

Here’s the strategic breakdown: Use Lead Gen Forms for content downloads, webinar registrations, and newsletter signups where you need maximum conversions at minimum cost. Deploy landing pages for demos, consultations, and pricing discussions where lead quality trumps quantity.

The real game-changer? Syncing LinkedIn leads directly to HubSpot in real-time. No more CSV exports or manual data entry. Your leads flow automatically within 5-15 minutes, triggering instant sales alerts and nurture sequences.

Our 14-day split-test methodology reveals which format drives more sales-qualified leads (SQLs) for your specific offer. We’ll show you exactly how to set up this test, sync your leads, and automate follow-up workflows that prevent lead leakage.

Bottom line: LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms aren’t always better, they’re different. Your choice depends on funnel stage, offer complexity, and whether you prioritize volume or quality, so deciding between the two options is crucial and is different from the overall LinkedIn Ads Benchmarks. This guide provides the framework to help you decide which method to use with confidence.

What Are LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms?

LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms are native, pre-filled forms that appear directly within the LinkedIn platform when users click your ads. Unlike traditional forms that redirect to external landing pages, these forms auto-populate with the user’s LinkedIn profile information—name, email, job title, company, and more.

How Lead Gen Forms Work

When someone clicks your LinkedIn ad, instead of leaving the platform, they see a streamlined form overlay. The magic happens instantly: LinkedIn automatically fills in most fields using the user’s profile data, so users can fill out the form quickly with pre-filled fields. Users simply review the information and click submit. No typing required.

This native experience eliminates friction at every step. Users stay within their trusted LinkedIn environment, avoiding slow-loading external pages or concerns about unfamiliar websites. The form submission happens in seconds, not minutes.

You can customize these forms with up to 12 questions, including custom fields for specific qualifying information. However, you’re limited to LinkedIn’s form templates and field types, no fancy conditional logic or multi-step experiences.

Lead collection is streamlined through this process, making it easy to gather and manage leads efficiently.

Pros & Cons at a Glance

Pros:

• Auto-filled fields boost completion rates dramatically (3-4x higher than landing pages)
• Users never leave LinkedIn, maintaining trust and reducing drop-off
• Mobile-optimized by default with lightning-fast load times
• Lower cost per lead due to higher conversion rates
• Built-in retargeting options for form openers who didn’t submit

Cons:

• Limited customization options (no custom layouts, colors, or advanced logic)
• LinkedIn imposes character limits on form fields, restricting customization and creativity
• Can’t present detailed product information or social proof before form submission
• No website traffic or on-site behavior tracking
• Some leads may be lower quality due to the ease of submission
• Can’t build remarketing pixels from your own domain

Landing Pages for LinkedIn Ads: Definition & Advantages

Landing pages represent the classic approach: clicking a LinkedIn ad takes users to a dedicated landing webpage on your website, specifically designed for a particular campaign. This dedicated landing allows you to have full control over the layout, ensuring every element—from copy to imagery, is optimized for conversions. With this method, you can carefully control the message presented to users, tailoring it to the campaign’s goals. The classic approach to lead generation involves creating a dedicated landing page for each campaign, giving you complete control over the user experience, from design to messaging to conversion flow.

Why Some Advertisers Still Prefer Landing Pages

Smart B2B marketers choose landing pages when they need to educate, qualify, or build trust before asking for contact information. A well-crafted landing page can present case studies, testimonials, detailed product benefits, and video demonstrations—all crucial for complex or high-ticket offers.

Landing pages also enable sophisticated tracking and optimization. You can implement heat maps, session recordings, and conversion rate optimization (CRO) tests. Plus, you’re building first-party data and remarketing audiences on your own domain.

The qualification aspect is critical. By requiring users to actively navigate to your site and engage with your content, you’re naturally filtering for higher-intent prospects. Someone who spends three minutes reading your case study before filling out a form is typically more sales-ready than someone who clicked submit on a pre-filled LinkedIn form in five seconds.

Drawbacks: Extra Friction & Cost

The landing page approach introduces multiple friction points. First, visitors must leave LinkedIn’s familiar environment. Then they wait for your page to load—if it’s too slow, visitors may abandon the process (every second counts—a 1-second delay can reduce conversions by 7%). Finally, visitors must manually type their information into form fields, and if the form is too long, they may drop off before completing it.

This friction translates directly to higher costs. With conversion rates averaging 4% compared to Lead Gen Forms’ 13%, you’re paying roughly 3x more per lead when using landing pages. For campaigns focused on volume or top-funnel awareness, this cost differential can quickly drain budgets.

There’s also the resource investment. Creating, testing, and optimizing landing pages requires design skills, development resources, and ongoing maintenance. A broken form or slow server can torpedo an entire campaign.

Lead Gen Forms vs Landing Pages: Conversion Benchmarks & Real-World Data

Let’s move beyond theory and examine the hard data. Multiple industry studies reveal consistent patterns in how these two formats perform across different metrics and use cases.

Industry Studies (Sopro, Unbounce, Agency Reports)

Sopro’s analysis of LinkedIn lead generation campaigns shows Lead Gen Forms converting at approximately 13% of ad clicks, while traditional landing pages hover around 4%. That’s not a marginal difference—it’s a 3.25x improvement in conversion rate.

Unbounce’s broader landing page benchmarks align with these findings, showing B2B landing pages averaging 4-6% conversion rates across industries. The highest-performing landing pages might hit 10-12%, but that still falls short of typical Lead Gen Form performance.

Agency reports from PPC Live and Tuff Growth echo these patterns, with most documenting 2-4x higher conversion rates for Lead Gen Forms. However, they also note an important caveat: SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) rates often favor landing pages, sometimes by 20-40%. Some studies compare results by running one campaign with Lead Gen Forms and another with landing pages to directly measure which approach delivers better outcomes.

Data Table: Average Click-to-Lead % & CPL by Format

Lead Gen Forms Performance:

• Average Conversion Rate: 10-15%
• Cost Per Lead: $50-150 (varies by industry)
• Mobile Conversion Rate: 12-18%
• Time to Complete: 10-30 seconds
• SQL Conversion Rate: 15-25%

Landing Page Performance:

• Average Conversion Rate: 3-6%
• Cost Per Lead: $150-500
• Mobile Conversion Rate: 2-5%
• Time to Complete: 2-5 minutes
• SQL Conversion Rate: 25-40%

What the Numbers Mean for Budget Allocation

These benchmarks reveal a fundamental trade-off. If you have $10,000 to spend and need maximum lead volume for a top-funnel content piece, Lead Gen Forms will deliver roughly 3x more leads for the same budget. That’s 300 leads versus 100 leads—a massive difference for nurture campaign effectiveness.

However, if those 100 landing page leads convert to customers at twice the rate of Lead Gen Form leads, your ROI calculation shifts dramatically. This is why SQL rate, not just lead volume, must drive your decision.

For most B2B companies, the optimal approach involves portfolio allocation: 60-70% of top-funnel budget toward Lead Gen Forms for volume, 30-40% toward landing pages for qualification. Bottom-funnel campaigns flip this ratio, prioritizing landing pages for their superior qualification capabilities.

When to Use Lead Gen Forms vs Landing Pages Across the Funnel

Your choice between Lead Gen Forms and landing pages should align with where prospects sit in your marketing funnel and what action you’re asking them to take.

Top/Mid-Funnel Offers that Favor LGFs

Top-of-funnel (TOFU) offers are perfect for Lead Gen Forms. These include educational content like ebooks, industry reports, templates, and checklists. Your audience at this stage seeks information, not a sales conversation. They’ll happily trade their contact information for valuable content—if you make it easy.

Webinar registrations represent another ideal use case. Since attendees expect follow-up emails with joining instructions, the lower friction of Lead Gen Forms actually improves show-up rates. We’ve seen webinar registration costs drop by 60% when switching from landing pages to Lead Gen Forms.

Newsletter subscriptions, podcast downloads, and free tool access all benefit from the frictionless Lead Gen Form experience. The key pattern: offers where immediate value exchange matters more than deep qualification.

Mid-funnel (MOFU) content like comparison guides, ROI calculators, and buyer’s guides can go either way. Test both formats, but lean toward Lead Gen Forms if your nurture sequences are sophisticated enough to qualify leads post-conversion.

Bottom-Funnel Offers that Need Landing Pages

Bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) offers demand landing pages. When someone’s considering a demo, consultation, or pricing discussion, they need convincing. A simple form won’t cut it—you need a dedicated lead form on the landing page to capture user information, address objections, showcase social proof, and demonstrate value.

Free trials and product demos particularly benefit from landing pages. Prospects need to understand what they’re signing up for, see the interface, and grasp the implementation process. A landing page provides the real estate to communicate these complex details.

Case study downloads present an interesting edge case. While they’re content (suggesting Lead Gen Forms), they’re also bottom-funnel assets targeting buyers in evaluation mode. Our testing shows landing pages work better here, as prospects appreciate seeing case study highlights before downloading the full PDF.

Decision Tree: Pick the Right Path in 30 Seconds

Ask yourself three questions to make the right choice:

1. What’s my primary KPI?

Volume → Lead Gen Form

Quality → Landing Page

2. How complex is my offer?

Simple/Educational → Lead Gen Form

Complex/Consultative → Landing Page

3. Where are prospects in the buyer’s journey?

Awareness/Consideration → Lead Gen Form

Decision/Purchase → Landing Page

When in doubt, test both. The 14-day methodology we’ll outline next removes guesswork from this critical decision.

Setting Up a Two-Path A/B Test (Lead Gen Form vs Landing Page)

Testing beats guessing every time. Here’s how to run a statistically valid experiment comparing Lead Gen Forms against landing pages for your specific offer and audience.

Step 1 – Campaign Setup & Budget Split

Create two identical LinkedIn campaigns with one variable: the conversion mechanism. Use the same targeting, ad creative, and copy for both paths. This methodology can be applied across different platforms, not just LinkedIn, allowing you to test format impact on various channels. This isolation ensures you’re testing format impact, not creative effectiveness.

Budget allocation requires careful consideration. Since Lead Gen Forms typically convert at 3x the rate of landing pages, equal budgets will generate uneven sample sizes. Instead, allocate budget proportionally: if you expect a 12% LGF conversion rate and 4% LP rate, give the landing page campaign 3x the budget to generate similar lead volumes.

Set a minimum test budget of $5,000 per path to ensure statistical significance. Lesser amounts risk making decisions on random variance rather than true performance differences.

Step 2 – Key Metrics to Track (Leads, MQLs, SQLs, CPL)

Track these metrics for both paths:

• Click-through rate (CTR): Should be identical if ads are the same
• Conversion rate: Clicks to lead submissions from both lead forms and landing page forms
• Cost per lead (CPL): Total spend divided by leads generated
• MQL rate: Percentage of leads meeting marketing qualification criteria
• SQL rate: Percentage of leads accepted by sales as qualified opportunities
• Cost per SQL: The ultimate efficiency metric

Create a simple tracking spreadsheet with daily entries for each metric. This discipline prevents end-of-test surprises and enables mid-flight optimizations.

Step 3 – Duration & Significance Calculator

Run your test for a minimum of 14 days to account for day-of-week variations and allow leads time to progress through qualification. Shorter tests risk premature conclusions.

Use a statistical significance calculator to validate results. With typical B2B lead volumes, you’ll need approximately 100 leads per path to detect a 20% difference in SQL rates with 95% confidence. Smaller differences require larger sample sizes.

Don’t stop your test early if one path appears to be “winning.” Random variance can create false leads that reverse over time. Stick to your predetermined test duration unless one path completely fails.

Step 4 – Interpreting Results

Look beyond surface metrics. A path generating 3x more leads means nothing if those leads never convert to opportunities. Calculate the full funnel impact:

Total ROI = (Number of SQLs × Average Deal Value × Close Rate) – Campaign Cost

Sometimes the “losing” path by CPL standards wins on ROI. We’ve seen landing page campaigns with $300 CPLs outperform $75 CPL Lead Gen Form campaigns when SQL quality and deal sizes are factored in.

Document lessons learned beyond just picking a winner. Which creative elements resonated? What form fields had the highest abandonment? These insights improve future campaigns regardless of format.

How to Sync LinkedIn Lead Gen Form Submissions to HubSpot (Step-by-Step)

Manual CSV exports are dead. Modern marketing demands real-time lead flow, and HubSpot’s native LinkedIn integration delivers exactly that by ensuring all contact details collected via LinkedIn are seamlessly transferred to HubSpot. Here’s how to set up automatic syncing that gets leads to sales within minutes, not days.

Connect Your LinkedIn Ads Account

Start in HubSpot by navigating to Marketing > Ads. Click “Connect account” and select LinkedIn. You’ll be redirected to LinkedIn to authorize the connection—make sure you’re logged into the correct LinkedIn account with admin access to your company’s ad account.

Grant all requested permissions. HubSpot needs read access to your campaigns and forms, plus write access to create tracking parameters. Don’t worry about HubSpot accessing anything beyond your ads data—LinkedIn’s API is strictly limited.

Once connected, HubSpot will import your campaign structure and historical data. This initial sync can take 10-30 minutes depending on your account size. You’ll see your campaigns appear in HubSpot’s ads dashboard once complete.

Toggle Lead Syncing & Select Company Pages

Navigate to the Lead Syncing tab within your ads settings. Here’s where the magic happens. Toggle on “Sync leads from LinkedIn” and watch your Lead Gen Forms appear below.

Select which Company Pages to sync from. If you run ads from multiple LinkedIn pages (common for multi-brand organizations), you can choose which ones flow into this HubSpot portal. Each form will display its name, associated campaign, and sync status.

Pro tip: Create a naming convention for your LinkedIn forms that includes campaign ID and offer type. This organization pays dividends when you’re managing dozens of active forms.

Field Mapping Best Practices (Standard & Custom Questions)

Click any Lead Gen Form name to access field mapping. HubSpot intelligently maps standard LinkedIn fields to corresponding HubSpot properties:

• LinkedIn Email → HubSpot Email
• LinkedIn First Name → HubSpot First Name
• LinkedIn Company → HubSpot Company Name
• LinkedIn Job Title → HubSpot Job Title

Custom questions require manual mapping. If you asked “What’s your biggest marketing challenge?” on LinkedIn, create a corresponding custom property in HubSpot or map it to an existing field like “Pain Points” or “Notes.”

Avoid mapping multiple LinkedIn fields to a single HubSpot property, as data will overwrite rather than append. If you need to combine fields, use workflows post-sync instead.

Verify Real-Time Lead Flow (5-15 min)

Test your setup immediately. Submit a test lead through your LinkedIn form using an email address you control. Set a timer—your submission should appear in HubSpot’s contacts within 5-15 minutes.

Check these elements on your test contact:

• All mapped fields populated correctly
• Lead source shows as “Paid social”
• Original source drill-down 1 displays “LinkedIn”
• Form submission appears in contact timeline

If leads don’t appear within 20 minutes, verify your form is published and the campaign is active. LinkedIn won’t sync leads from paused campaigns or draft forms.

Automating Follow-Up: HubSpot Workflows That Prevent Lead Leakage

Syncing leads is just step one. For any business, automating follow-up is crucial for growth and efficiency, especially when it comes to collecting leads efficiently through automation. Without automated follow-up, even perfect lead capture means nothing. Here are three essential workflows every LinkedIn-to-HubSpot integration needs.

Instant Assignment & Slack Alerts

Speed kills deals, but velocity closes them. Create a workflow triggered by LinkedIn form submissions that immediately assigns leads to sales reps based on territory, company size, or round-robin distribution.

The workflow structure:

• Trigger: Form submission from any LinkedIn Lead Gen Form
• Branch: If company size > 500 employees → Assign to Enterprise Rep
• Branch: If company size < 500 → Assign to SMB Rep
• Action: Send Slack notification to assigned rep with lead details
• Action: Create task “Follow up within 2 hours”

Our data shows leads contacted within 5 minutes convert at 9x the rate of those contacted after 30 minutes. This workflow ensures no lead waits in limbo.

Conditional Tasks for Missing Data

LinkedIn’s pre-filled data isn’t always complete. Create conditional workflows that identify gaps and generate research tasks:

If phone number is empty: Create task for SDR to find direct line

If company website is unknown: Create task to research and update CRM

If job title seems generic: Create task to verify actual role and decision-making authority