HubSpot LinkedIn integration: how to sync leads, ads and messages

Integrating HubSpot with Linkedin allows businesses to synchronise contact data, advertising metrics and communication history between the two platforms. By bridging these systems, teams can eliminate manual data entry and create a unified view of the customer journey, ensuring that every interaction on LinkedIn is captured within the CRM.

Many businesses struggle with fragmented data, often losing track of high-value prospects as they move between social engagement and the sales pipeline. Implementing a solid CRM integration solves this by automating lead generation workflows, providing accurate attribution for ad spend and enabling sales teams to use B2B social selling tools without leaving their primary workspace.

Key takeaways

• Unified data: automatically sync LinkedIn leads to HubSpot to make sure that no prospect is missed and that data remains clean.
• Ad optimisation: use the LinkedIn ad tracking pixel and HubSpot data to build precise retargeting audiences and measure ROI.
• Sales efficiency: log InMail messages and view LinkedIn profile details directly within HubSpot to improve outreach relevance.
• Content management: centralise LinkedIn post scheduling and metrics on HubSpot to maintain a consistent brand presence across the UK B2B market.

The three main pillars of the HubSpot LinkedIn integration

Integrating HubSpot with LinkedIn syncs your most valuable B2B network with your central database. 

Marketing: social publishing and scheduling

Managing a brand presence across the UK market requires consistency and strategic timing. This integration allows you to handle social media scheduling directly from the Marketing Hub on HubSpot, making sure that your content reaches your audience when they are most active.

• Centralised management: you can draft, schedule and publish posts to LinkedIn company pages or personal profiles without leaving HubSpot.
• Engagement tracking: every click, share and comment is tracked within the portal, allowing you to see which topics resonate with your audience.
• Campaign alignment: by linking social posts to specific HubSpot campaigns, you can measure how social interaction contributes to your overall lead generation goals.

Advertising: syncing lead gen forms and audiences

Connecting your LinkedIn Ads account to HubSpot transforms how you capture and nurture demand.

• Automated lead capture: sync Lead Gen Forms to ensure that when a prospect submits a form, a contact record is created or updated instantly in your CRM.
• Precise retargeting: by installing the LinkedIn ad tracking pixel through HubSpot, you can build website-matching audiences to retarget visitors who have engaged with your site.
• Closed-loop reporting: you can track exactly which ads were most effective.

Sales: prospecting and InMail Logging

Sales teams often struggle with old school cultures that resist change, but this integration provides tools that make their lives easier rather than more complex.

• LinkedIn Sales Navigator Advanced Plus integration: this feature allows for the most cohesive connection, enabling sales leads to see HubSpot CRM data directly on LinkedIn and vice versa.
• InMail integration: sales professionals can send and log InMail messages directly in a contact's timeline in HubSpot, creating a complete communication history.
• CRM data enrichment: the HubSpot LinkedIn integration helps keep your records accurate by flagging when a contact changes jobs or companies, allowing for timely outreach and reduced data decay.

Limitations and third-party tools

While the HubSpot LinkedIn integration is powerful, it is important to understand its boundaries to make sure that your architecture remains scalable.

The limitations of the integration

The HubSpot integration with LinkedIn is designed for reliability and ease of use, but it does have some constraints, including:

• Message logging: the native integration primarily logs InMail sent through the LinkedIn Sales Navigator. It doesn’t automatically capture every standard LinkedIn message or 'connection request' note.
• Personal profile data: due to privacy and technical constraints, the native tool cannot 'scrape' all of the data from a personal profile to create a contact unless the person engages with a form.
• Bulk actions: there are limits to how many profiles you can import at once to prevent spamming.

When to use third-party tools (e.g., Surfe, Lusha)

If your strategy relies heavily on an Account Based Marketing (ABM) approach or a high-volume Outbound strategy, you might consider combining your setup with specialised B2B social selling tools such as:

• Surfe (formerly Leadjet): this tool is often used to bridge the gap in message logging, allowing teams to sync regular LinkedIn conversations directly to HubSpot with one click.
• Lusha or Apollo: these are excellent tools for CRM data enrichment, helping you find verified email addresses and phone numbers for LinkedIn profiles that HubSpot might miss.
• Zapier: for highly specific workflows, Zapier can provide an added layer of marketing automation.

Step-by-step: connecting LinkedIn Ads to your CRM

To build a predictable pipeline, your ads must communicate with your CRM. Following this process will help make sure that your technical execution supports your strategic goals.

Mapping lead gen form fields

The goal here is to obtain clean data and accurate forecasting. Thus, when you connect your LinkedIn Ads account in HubSpot's settings, you need to map your form fields correctly.

1. Go to settings: navigate to Marketing > Ads in your HubSpot portal and connect your LinkedIn account.
2. Select lead syncing: turn on the 'Lead Syncing' feature for your specific LinkedIn business page.
3. Field mapping: make sure that standard fields like 'First Name' and 'Email' map to the correct HubSpot properties.
4. Custom questions: if you use custom questions in your LinkedIn forms, create corresponding properties in HubSpot first to avoid data loss.

Building retargeting audiences in HubSpot

Once your LinkedIn ad tracking pixel is active, you can use HubSpot's powerful segmentation to feed your LinkedIn campaigns.

• Contact list syncing: create a 'Smart List' in HubSpot composed of people who have visited your pricing page but haven't booked a demo or consultation.
• Automatic audience updates: HubSpot will automatically sync lists to a LinkedIn 'Matched Audience', so that your ads are only shown to high-intent prospects.
• Exclusion lists: you can create a list of existing customers to make sure that you aren't wasting ad spend on people who have already bought your service.

Conclusion

Integrating your LinkedIn activity with HubSpot is a key step to building an efficient, data-driven B2B marketing engine. Whether you are a marketing director looking for better attribution or a sales operations manager aiming to reduce manual work, this connection provides the clarity and efficiency you need to scale your business.

By automating your lead generation and centralising your communications, you give your team a reliable partner in both strategy and execution. If you are ready to modernise your commercial processes and move away from fragmented data, now is the time to optimise your HubSpot ecosystem.