How to connect LinkedIn Ads and LinkedIn Pages to Looker Studio
Looking for ways to connect your LinkedIn Ads and LinkedIn Pages to Looker Studio but unsure how? Check this article, we’ve got you…
LinkedIn is a beautiful social network for professionals. Even us find gigs and customers there! And we’ve seen many companies using it as a lead generator (shall it be to find customers, leads, candidates, positions, …). So in this article, we’ll review how to connect LinkedIn Ads and LinkedIn Page to Looker Studio so you can seaminglessly monitor your performances there.
Looker Studio connectors we use on a daily basis and are happy with (w/ free trials): Supermetrics - Windsor - Catchr - PMA - Funnel
Not sure which one to pick? Reviews here and there. Still unsure?! Contact us with your tech stack and budget, and we’ll guide you in the right direction:
API calls, the not so good idea
We are technical people, don’t get us wrong. But when it comes to re-building the wheel, we’re a bit reluctant. So yes, you could write API functions in Python and then export raw data to a database before analyzing it and sending it back to Looker Studio, but it requires time, efforts & maintenance.
In our opinion, not worth the hassle, knowing that you’ve got third-party tools that do the job very well at an affordable price tag, so why bother?!
Connector or integrator?
There are two main kinds of third-party softwares:
Connectors, that will get your data straight to Looker Studio for you to play with
Integrators, that will replicate tables to a database like BigQuery. From there, it’ll be on you to write SQL queries to generate datasets that can be rendered in Looker Studio
At Looker Studio Bible, we work with both, depends on the needs of our clients. If you want to run in-depth complex analysis crossing data from various sources, integration to build your own Customer Data Platform can make sense, but beware it comes at a higher price plus will require technical skills within your company (or hiring an agency like us ^^).
But if you’re only looking for reporting all in one places and get a quick grasp on how you’re doing on the different platforms you’re operating with, a connector might do the trick. Comes at a cheaper price point, and will likely cover most of your need (you can even blend data to make comparison between platforms). Not as deep as raw data analysis, but for most cases, good enough.
What’s important then?
At this stage, you should know exactly what you want to report on for your LinkedIn Ads or LinkedIn Page. So, when chosing the connector, beware of:
What fields do I need? You can check documentation, but for LinkedIn sources, almost all connectors cover all fields
What data freshness & historical data do I need? Based on the price point, you’ll get either weekly or daily or real-time data freshness. As per the historical data, most connectors offer 2-years worth of data (free options are sneaky and only offer 30 days)
Does the solution also cover my other platforms? You don’t want to end up working with 5 connectors, so when picking one, makes sure it also covers other tools you have so they day you expand your analysis, you’re ready. And if they also have pre-blending, makes the work easier in Looker Studio
So, what connectors do you recommend?
There are dozen of options out there, but here’s a solid list of 5 connectors we work with on a daily basis with our clients and that they are pretty happy with. Different price points, different features, different interface, but at the end of the day, all are good solutions to retrieve your LinkedIn data and send it to Looker Studio:
Windsor: Good and cheap option for up to 3 data sources
Supermetrics: solid option, does the job with a reasonable price for up to 3 data sources / 3 accounts each
Catchr: Another good (and French!) solution that offers a friendly priced single-connector plan
Funnel: most powerful option (maybe our favorite), as you can pre-blend your LinkedIn Ads & LinkedIn Page data with other data sources directly in the tool and only use one Looker Studio connector to display all
Power My Analytics: A good trade-off also, as price does not go wild when you increase your number of connectors / accounts
Our take: try, compare, and go with the winner!
Please note that they all offer 14-day trial.
So don’t be shy, try several and see which one you prefer. At the end of the day, prices and plans are somewhat close, so it’ll come down to taste and colours…
And that’s it, with this article, we’ve shown you how to connect LinkedIn Ads and LinkedIn Page to Looker Studio.
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Tools we use and we like:
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Tools we’d like to use (if we had the budget…):