10. Gary, congratulations!
You have one of the top 1% most viewed
LinkedIn profiles for 2012.
LinkedIn now has 200 million members. Thanks for
playing a unique part in our community!
Read More
11. The globally connected
professional network
200,000,000+ UK
11M+
NL
3M+ DACH
registered members France
3M+
4M+
Italy
Canada
Spain 4M+
7M+ Europe
3M+
USA 39M+
74M+ India
18M+
SE Asia
4M+
Brazil
Australia
11M+
3M+
15. 50%
Decision makers
41%
Generated
60%
CEO’s actively using social;
business 41% active on LinkedIn
80%
Use social media for
65%
Conduct research
4x
Visit to conversion vs.
recruitment other social networks
16. Brand relationships have evolved, fueled by the significant
influence of social platforms
From top-down funnel To a dynamic customer journey
1. Awareness
6. Advocacy 2. Consideration
Influence
Loop
5. Loyalty 3. Purchase
4. Experience
18. How does mindset differ on personal vs. professional
social networks around the world?
6,000+
…to learn how Personal social networks …compared to Professional networks
20. % of campaign strategies that report very large
profit gains
Emotional
Combined
Rational
Research shows that
it can lead to
0% 10% 20% 30%
greater ROI
source: IPA Effectiveness Awards
21. “ Perhaps one of the biggest myths in
B2B branding is that the nature of
the decision process is so rational
that emotions do not really play a
“
significant role..
Kevin Lane Keller & Philip Kotler
26. “ B-to-B companies often forget they are selling to
people not big glass buildings. It doesn’t matter
“
if the product is soft drinks or software –
creating real, human, emotional connections is
the only way to build trusted relationships and
inspire advocacy..
Jonathan D. Becher,
SAP Chief Marketing Officer
27. Different purposes drive different mindsets
Personal Networks Professional Networks
Socialize 1 Maintain professional identity
Stay in touch 2 Make useful contacts
Be entertained 3 Search for opportunities
Kill time 4 Stay in touch
Share content 5 Keep up to date for career
Source: Q10a– Information to receive
Base: Professional SN users (5204) Personal SN users (8692)
“Spend Time” “Invest Time”
28. Companies are expected to participate on professional
networks
Personal Networks Professional Networks
Info on friends 1 Career info
Info on personal interests 2 Updates on brands
Entertainment updates 3 Current affairs
26% higher than
personal
Source: Q10a– Information to receive
Base: Professional SN users (5204) Personal SN users (8692)
“Spend Time” “Invest Time”
29. Professional networks want brands that help them improve;
personal networks want brands that entertain
I want to see brands that I use to:
…improve myself professionally 15%
…help me to make business decisions 10%
Higher association with
„professional‟ networks
…gain advice / recommendations 5%
…express my personality 4%
Higher association with
…follow personal interests 6% „personal‟ social networks
…meet my entertainment needs 10%
Source: Q23 – Types of brands / products / companies would expect to see on site | Normalised data | Base: Professional (n=5204) Personal (n=8692)
30. This purposeful mindset results in more influencers on
professional networks
I consider myself likely to:
Share knowledge Share knowledge
with others with others
65%
61%
7% higher
Be first 39%
45%
15% higher
Be first
in the know in the know
31. Top 5 tips to
optimize your marketing with the right mindset
Recognize the mindset divide 1
Frame how your brand helps build knowledge
and success 2
Engage information-hungry influencers 3
Align your brand with emotion 4
Build meaningful relationships by participating,
sharing and listening. 5
32. Frame how your brand helps users gain knowledge and
success
50 followers
at start 12,000 followers,
5 weeks later
240x
increase in just 5 weeks
33. Engage information-hungry influencers with exclusive
information
Average
LinkedIn
Member
More likely to share updates
6x with their network
Influencers
6x More likely to follow
companies
9x More likely to create content within Groups
34. Community through content and conversation
100K+ Total Members
2.5x More Engagement
Fastest Growing Group
in 2012
48. A Truckload, Trucking,
Logistics, Supply Chain group
The CIO Network group
The CPG Supergroup
The Rotary Kiln Refractory
Problems and Solutions group
49. MEMBERS
CIO Network 67,551
Lou Marcoccio
A CIO and IT advisor
Many CIOs are abandoning ITIL, while others use it
religiously. Is it still appropriate and why?
1 month ago See all 115 comments >>
65. “ Through LinkedIn, we are
working to identify and empower
influential brand advocates to
increase word of mouth and
“
awareness of our products.
Heesun Kim
Director of Media & Digital Marketing, Samsung
66. Samsung Mobile Follower Results
47% 37% 33%
Increased Awareness of Increased Likelihood to Increased Purchase
Samsung Products Recommend Consideration
67. Samsung Followers are informed and connected
I am more up to date 76%
I have learned more about products/services 69%
I feel closer to the brand 51%
68. Company B2B Company
Followers Conversions Presence
2x 4x 50%
are more likely to
more likely to
better vs. Twitter purchase from a
purchase and
and Facebook2 company they
recommend1
engage with on
LinkedIn3
Sources: 1. Client Follower research study in the U.S., 2012; 2. Hubspot study of 3,128 B2B companies in 2011; 3. LinkedIn
Follower Research, 2012
72. Run of Professionals
7MM+ Professional Members
InCrowds
Small &
Business Financial
Medium Sales Marketing Startup Corporate IT Career
Decision Service
Business Professionals Professionals Professionals Executives Professionals Changers
Makers Professionals
Professionals
Finance Marketing
Professionals
Professionals Professionals, Professionals, Directors &
Directors & Professionals Professionals Professionals who have
working at or those who or those who above at
above at a whose job working at whose job changed
companies work in the work in the companies with
company of any function is companies with function is IT or positions or
between 50 and Financial Marketing & more than 500
size Sales 1-50 employees Engineering employers in
500 employees Services Advertising employees
the last 60 days
Industry Industry
Custom Audience Segments
Job Function Industry Company Size Seniority Job Title
Gender # of Connections DMA Age Customized Segment
Additional Segments Business Travelers Opinion Leaders Influencers
73. Core Social API / Off-Platform
Standard Display Ads Company Pages APIs/Plug-Ins
300x250, 1x1 text Social Ad: Follow Company Custom Executions built by
link, 728x90, 160x600 Social Ad: Recommendation LinkedIn Certified Developers
Ads (CDP)
Polls
Groups Mobile
Content Modules Social Ad: Join Group iPad
Sponsored InMails LinkedIn Audience
Network (LAN)
Social Ads
Join Group & Follow Company Slideshare
Precise Targeting Authentic Profile Data
74. Who Visits Your Page? Who Saw Your Campaign?
Who Clicked On Your Ads? Who Viewed Your Ads?
Hello, and welcome to this overview of LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. I’m Gary Fearnall – the Director of Global Marketing Solutions at LinkedIn Canada.I’m here today to talk about how social solutions can drive business results and what LinkedIn is doing in this landscape. But even most importantly, sharing some research and insights that we’ve done to look at the differences in mindset across professional and personal networks with hopefully some really interesting take-aways that we’re applying to our business and we’re talking to our clients about that hopefully will be of benefit for all of you.
It starts with our mission; to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful. And, of course, connecting people to their career opportunity is a core part of this. We’re very proud of that – and we’re going to continue to do that very well.But over the last couple of years, we’ve started to invest in a very specific area…
Before we really get started, I have a quick question: how many folks in the room have connected to an opportunity because of LinkedIn? Remember – this is a LinkedIn meeting…we like the people who are raising hands! The most surprising thing – through the lens of connecting to a career opportunity – is that that’s not the primary use case on LinkedIn any more. And it really hasn’t a been for some time. And so what I want to talk through today is I want to tell you what has been the primary use case on LinkedIn. I want to tell you what has become the primary use case on LinkedIn and talk to you a little bit about what’s behind that trend. What’s happened over the last couple of years. And then finally I want to touch on why you should care. Why you, as marketers should really care about that transformation that we’ve seen on LinkedIn.
This is what LinkedIn looked like in 2005 – the year I started using it. Not a lot of style, (at least, not the way we look at style today) but quite a bit of substance. Started building network “find out who.” Discovered some of the most important professional relationships in my life to date. I had no idea I had these connections until I started using the LinkedIn products. How many folks in the room have connected to an opportunity because of LinkedIn? Remember – this is a LinkedIn meeting…we like the people who are raising hands! The most surprising thing – through the lens of connecting to a career opportunity – is that that’s not the primary use case on LinkedIn any more. And it really hasn’t a been for some time. And so what I want to talk through today is I want to tell you what has been the primary use case on LinkedIn. I want to tell you what has become the primary use case on LinkedIn and talk to you a little bit about what’s behind that trend. What’s happened over the last couple of years. And then finally I want to touch on why you should care. Why you, as marketers should really care about that transformation that we’ve seen on LinkedIn.
To help you be great at the job you have today. To make sure that you’re the best you can be in your current role.
Transition from members – this is what we offer our members.Connecting talent with opportunity at massive scaleThe value we bring to our members
We’re fortunate that over 200 million professionals globally have become members of LinkedIn. This gives us an unmatched set of targeting data that advertisers can use to find the right people based on attributes like their company, title, role and geography. You can enhance targeting using attributes available only on LinkedIn, like what groups they belong to, when they change jobs, and how much they share content.
When we think about how this plays out, this value proposition for professionals that LinkedIn has been offering is really playing out in that our network now spans more than 200 Million Professionals globally. And we’re adding more than 2 members every second. And so when you think about the dynamic workplace and the opportunity to connect with people, it has enormous opportunities that I think for all of us you probably all feel this new pressure in your lives. And it’s really about this world of work is fundamentally transforming. And if you’re like me, there’s enormous potential to connect, there’s also, I think probably, you all feel more professional pressure than you ever have. Right? We have to all work faster. You have to make better decisions on less information. And do everything in a shorter period of time. At LinkedIn, when we work on marketing strategies or we think about positioning the business line at LinkedIn, projects that might take six months at any of my former employers, we’re trying to do in six weeks, literally. You present the plan and it’s like, “Great Alison, so cut it in half and let’s go.” So I think all of us can probably relate to that pressure. I think that’s why people are gravitating toward Social Networks in general, right, to find a common ground, find people like you, who are going through similar phases, trying to make similar decisions, and this collective power of decision-making is amazing.
What’s unique about LinkedIn – transition to network---------The business of connecting talent with opportunity at massive scaleThree diverse, sustainable, and scalable business lines---------LinkedIn helps companies and professionals be more productive and successful. Whether it’s finding the right talent, engaging the right professional with the right brand message or making the sale – the needs are the same. You have to be able to:identify the right personengage them with content that is compellingspur them to an action
By the end of the presentation, you’ll understand why LinkedIn is the most effective place online for advertisers to engage professionals.
So why LinkedIn?LinkedIn is delivering impact on businessLinkedIn 4x better for B2B leads (visit to conversion rate for b2b companies) source: hubspot study of b2b companies in 2011Socially engaged companies have great impact on their business50% of LinkedIn's users are decision makers within their company41% of people using LinkedInfor marketing generatedbusiness with it60% Of CEO’s are actively using socialmedia to grow their business41% are personally active on LinkedIn80% of companies use social media for recruitment; 95% are using LinkedIn65% of journalists use social media sites like LinkedIn to conduct research LinkedIn 4x better for B2B leads.Visit to conversion vs.other socialnetworksLinkedIn is Fundamentally Transforming the Way the World WorksSo when you think about LinkedIn, everything that we do goes back to Professionals and to professionals on an individual level. And it’s really about connecting with each individual person and then giving them a platform to connect with others and exchange insights and information and the best way to kind of depict what this network can look like is in this visual.
But when you think about how consumers are trying to keep up with social networks being at the core of how they’re connecting and getting information, it also has created a totally different landscape for how marketers and brands can connect to people. And again, with any major change, come opportunity but then some challenges. And so I think for many of us, the days of having kind of this “top-down” expectation of being able to drive a message through, and impact and drive intent is changing quickly to a much more dynamic process, where people are in and out of decision making and using social platforms to inform their decisions. Even taking, you know, from my self, I think about the decisions that I make, both personally and professionally, it looks a lot more like this dynamic circle than it does this kind of very structured process. You know, for example, when we think about even investing in these events or partnering with research forums, we might have our list of 5 preferred vendors and people that will help us support our strategy, and we might wittle that down to two, and we’ll cast a net to some of our friends and partners and say, “hey have you worked with this firm,” or “what about this research agency,” and some other brands might come back into consideration set. So it’s not this funnel. And as a marketer you can kind of think about the amazing opportunities to intersect and play an amazing role in this journey, but you have to have a different mindset. You need to come into it thinking about, how to engage with people with the right content and insights, at the right time. And it’s this, transactional nature of always being on that’s filtered in large part by social networks; where brands can have increasingly critical role and that’s what we think is so exciting. I’m not going to say it’s simple and easy to do, this requires kind of a fundamental shift in how marketing teams are structured, how companies allocate budgets, and how team’s work together. But this circle is absolutely where we’re going and where we need to start to optimize our businesses.
But for us, what was really powerful was what we thought about and observed this landscape from where we sit, and really trying to partner with our brands and clients to advise them how to both leverage our platform but how to think more broadly about this brave new world. And for us we kept coming back to context. Right, when you think about the power of a social network, it’s this one-on-one dialogue. You’re on there to connect to people that are going to help you make better decisions, that are additive to your life, either personal or professional. And so, how do you think about a dialogue and a one-to-one conversation, it’s really about thecontextand the mindset. Right, if you have a conversation out of context, which maybe we’ve all had at various points; you don’t know what someone’s talking about or there’s a language difference and you’re kind of talking like this (circle’s arms) past each other, it’s not that productive of a conversation. It might even be flat out strange, or you might not be invited back to that cocktail party. You don't want that to happen if you’re a brand or a marketer. So understanding the mindset and the context for us in fundamental. And this is what we decided to do, to really understand this better. There really had not been a definitive study done on mindset, and the context, and the differences between personal and professional social networks. So, we set out last year to really try to tackle this. We want to know the hypothesis that we see different behavior on LinkedIn to personal networks like Facebook and Twitter. But until we kind of did the research, it was just another kind of hypothesis.
So, we worked with TNS, which I think probably many of you know TNS which is a sub-brand of Kantar, part of WPP’s amazing network, and we really set out to kind of dove really deep into this topic of understanding mindset. So we surveyed 6000 social media users in 12 countries around the world using both quantitative and qualitative feedback, and I’ll show you some of the results. But the big qualitative for us was incredibly empowering and we had a kind of whole executive team rooting for the qualitative studies. What we did was, we had TNS researcher cast kind of a question in kind of a micro-blogging online format, kind of like an online diary. And we asked the respondents to reply to these general questions that we asked over a series of weeks. Questions like, “what social networks are you using;” “how are you technology;” “where are you in your life, personally and professionally;” “how do these platforms help you, distract you;” really trying to get to the motive of what we’re doing. And some of the insights from that qualitative research is really what drove home some of the key messages I’m going to talk about today.
And one of those key themes that we found was how emotional people are and how much they are bringing themselves into these social settings. And how much they’re sharing, and how deeply they are trying to connect again with their family on personal networks, with colleagues and peers on professional settings. But there’s, I think we take for granted that these networks are omnipresent in our lives and we’re all kind of doing stuff; we’re posting or reacting, we’re inviting. But the quality of feedback was so rich that it really is about emotion. And so when you think about these social platforms, again not just specific to LinkedIn, but any social platform, the opportunity to tap into emotion, and have an emotional message, is absolutely there. And it’s not only there, but it’s really what users around the world are looking for. They want that same connection with brands and marketers.So I’ll play this quick clip that kind of shows how VISA does this which is done on a world-class scale, and watch this video that I think for us really kind of personifies emotion.
And so this was just one of many creative executions that VISA had as part of the Olympic games last summer. I won’t call anyone out, I don’t know how many people remember this from the 1976 Montreal games, I’m probably totally dating myself, but in the spirit of transparency…So I was 4 years old when this event happened and I was a disastrous gymnast. I was not aspiring to be a gymnast, it was not my bag at all, but I distinctly remember watching this performance. And this amazing, I think she was either 13 or 14 year old girl, not even come of age, planting her feet and for the perfect ten. And so this notion of, it was awe-inspiring, I actually still get goosebumps about it, I’m kind of a big sports fan on the side. But it was awe-inspiring, and so what VISA’s doing right is bringing that human achievement back. And I think even if you don’t remember that, if you’re a younger person in the audience, right, you can relate to kodachrome look and feel and this nostalgia that was so powerful. And this campaign kind of broke every record coming out of the Olympics. It had over a million likes, think of every volume, 30 million views on YouTube, just this creative execution alone. And so we know people, even the world of constant technology, we feel like people are starved for emotional connection frankly now more than ever.
And emotion makes sense in marketing. This was some really interesting data that came out of the UK where research from there analyzed 600 marketing campaigns and the types of messaging that was in those types of campaigns, with emotional campaigns generating outsize return versus those that kind of combined a rational and emotional message versus just a purely rational message. And at LinkedIn, we are fortunate to work with some amazing brands both in B2C and B2B marketing strategies and I think this is probably even more prevalent for anyone in the room who kind of works on B2B advertising goals & strategies that there’s this enormous myth in terms of B2B branding that kind of plays out in social networks. That it’s this super rational sort of process, right, you kind of follow this very rigid procurement mindset when you’re a B2B buyer. And as I was explaining earlier, at least for me as a B2B buyer for a Global marketing team, you know that’s not at all the case. We’re still very much influenced by peers and feedback. We’re still very much influenced by our previous experience with that Vendor, who else they might know and any recommendation that comes with it. So brining that into advertising, especially in a Social Network environment we think is critical for success.
So getting now more into the research that we performed, back to this theme of emotion, again we saw it in every type of respondent. That there is a fundamental difference in the type of emotion on a personal platform versus a professional platform.
On the personal side, the networks were really about reminiscing; having fun, there’s a lot of nostalgia, right, I have two young daughters. I had my first daughter; I had her picture of there in her chicken costume right from her first Halloween, which is still my picture to this day. You know connecting with old friends, high school reunions, it’s very conversational, it’s very social. And the mindset is very much there. It’s very much entertainment driven, it’s very lightweight.
On a professional side we found this other kind of extreme, where people are extremely focused on the future. They’re leaning in, they’re there to make progress and they’re very purposeful and aspirational. And this really came out of this both he qualitative and quantitative feedback of what people are looking for.
And I think that was surprising for us. I think a lot of people think of a professional networking platform as generally being kind of a modern day job board; this kind of transactional place to engage, with just a very limited scope of activity. And that was absolutely not the case. Again, not specific to LinkedIn, there are other professional networks in markets around the world that serve kind of distinct national geographic areas; and what we’re found is that even though you might see networking and job search on the surface when you kind of go into a professional networking setting, what people are really there for is about future achievement; it’s about forward progress. They’re there because they see the opportunity to connect with people to get insights; they see the opportunity to get recommendations to help improve their professional profile; they're following companies and brands that will make them kind of more competitive, gives them more competitive intelligence; they’re connecting with customers; all in the spirit of what you see as kind of the bottom of this iceberg. That there’s all this emotion kind of below the surface. And again, it’s not, in some cases it’s not eco-driven right, “I just want to get ahead,” “I’m trying to climb up this corporate latter.” The aspirational feedback came with people talking about I’m progressing so I can afford a bigger house, right, I have a big mortgage to pay. I’m progressing because I have a talented child and I want to send them to a very particular school. It was very much about family and re-investing in the things that matter most to them. Literally we saw these diaries come in from around the world, we were copying & pasting them to our CEO and other executives to the company because we’ve never done this kind of qualitative research like this before with these kinds of questions, and it was just so powerful to read how all of these platforms are playing such a formative role in people’s lives. It was so inspiring.
And this was another kind of great perspective on from Jonathan Becher who recently, he’s a CMO of SAP, who’s becoming a really vocal thought leader about marketing SAPs and just an amazing B2B company doing some very ground-breaking, especially highly creative work. You probably have seen some of the great, kind of award winning ad campaigns that SAP has put out there, called run SAP and it has all kinds of amazing footage, things you do not expect to see, again, from a typical B2B, fortune 100 company. And his quote is dead on. We’re not marketing to glass buildings, we’re not really marketing to audiences; we’re marketing to people. Right, regardless of what you’re buying; it’s a person on the other end of that order, and it’s a person on the other end of that campaign. And so thinking now about your brand and your advertising campaign as carrying your voice, of being human. You’ll hear a lot about being “authentic,” in the world of marketing and I think when it comes to your social advertising, that can’t be more true. Because again, back to the point of having a conversation and being in context, if you’re kind of talking like a corporate voice, that’s perfectly on script, that’s not really resonating with how people engage in these platforms. And we all make the mistake; we’re working on some positioning for our business and we’ve done some interesting qualitative feedback. When I’m on the phone listening to a critique of the work that our team has written; and we’ll get feedback, like this is just a bunch of marketers; it’s really jargon-y, we don’t want to be talked to like this. So we’re learning, in our shoes too, but I think it’s something that really calls for more examination for doing things. And it’s a really exciting time to try these new things and see what works through all the incises.
So we starting digging into the research, and a couple of the fundamental things that we wanted to find out about mindset; the first thing was, what’s driving people? What do they want out of this experience? And really what we found was on personal networks, the drivers of their activity,why they were going there, was very much about how they wanted to spend time there. The single biggest driver was to socialize. Right, so you’re in and out, you’re connecting with your friends and peers; old friends, new friends, maybe people you don’t know but you’d like to know. Socializing was the number one driver across the world for personal networking. On the professional side, the mindset was quite different. And it was about investing time. People are there for a very purposeful mindset with the number one objective to maintain their professional identity. This is their professional record; this is how when you look for any one around the world, you type in someone’s name into the Google search bar or generally any search engine you might use, you will almost always find the first organic listing, is someone’s LinkedIn profile. That’s powerful. To be found with LinkedIn showcasing your professional record, your economic opportunity, is just an incredibly powerful thing. Right so lots of people are investing in this professional identity. But they’re also really looking for useful contacts, again this notion of very purposeful engagement. They’re searching for opportunities, again not specific to job opportunities, they’re looking for opportunities to find former colleagues, to for new talent for their team; to get insights from companies and groups they might follow or be a part of to kind of get a competitive edge. And also looking to stay in touch and then obviously they’re keeping up to date with their career. On the personal side, it’s very entertainment driven and people are killing time, it’s kind of a break for them. And I think that this difference in mindset and what people want is really fundamental to understand when you’re thinking about how to engage on the platform from a marketing standpoint.
As we get deeper into this split of what people are doing, we asked the follow-up question of what kind of content do you want. Now we understand what you’re doing there; what are you looking to engage with besides kind of just the people? And really what came back was further reflecting this split in mindset. And how on the professional side, actually updates from brands was the number 2 most expected valued content in a professional setting. And on personal networks, updates from brands ranked number 9 in the stacked rank list. And so I think it’s contrary to how people think about all of the commercial volume and the marketing effort has gone into personal networks. And quite frankly it’s a little bit less developed on the professional side. And this is what people want. Right, people are coming to get a head and connect with the people that are important to them. And brands and companies are hugely important to professionals when they’re in this mindset. On the personal side, right, it’s not that surprising; it’s information from friends, reflecting their personal and friends that, again, back to entertainment, right, there’s so much power for the entertainment vertical in particular on the personal side, videos and music content, you know, is fundamental to a personal network platform. Much less so on the professional side.
As we going deeper into our survey, the next series of questions were asking more specifically, the kinds of brands and the kinds of brand content that people want. And again you see the bars - you see the arrows going in the opposite directions. And on the professional side, people again go back to improvement. They want brands who are going to improve them professionally. And they want brands that are going to help them make business decisions. I mean, think about the power of that. If you can orient your marketing around exchanging value with people which I know we all talk about doing, we all try to do it. But if you really adopt what’s being discussed in the industry now with the focus on content marketing that’s been discussed now for some time, you know this is really the opportunity. TO be in the position where you’re exchanging value with the people that matter more to your brand and your company, and with that people will return purchasing behavior, they will return recommendations and advocacy of your product and kind of driving a loop back to your business. And that’s exactly what was really uncovered in this research. On the personal side, again really, the key driver was around entertainment. They want brands who will meet their entertainment needs and that tape into their personal interests. Hugely valuable channel there’s no question, just fundamentally very different.
Kind of the final aspect of the research was kind of looking at how people are inclined to share and really what’s kind of something for them that’s really meaningful about the experience on these platforms. And what we found was that there’s actually a higher propensity and interest to share on professional platforms versus personal. And to us, an even more interesting point was that there’s a higher degree of people that want to be in the know. For a professional, that’s very important. It’s not a good day when your boss says, “Hey Dan, did you see this going on in Canada” “Uh, no, you know, I didn’t.” People need to be in the know; we all have to live on the cutting edge – that’s the Professional pressure. That’s the bar that everyone in this room has to rise up to. I think everyone in the room sort of feels that on a daily basis. And these social platforms are a way to do it. Gary will talk about it a little later but we have some news properties and some content properties on LinkedIn that are built fundamentally for this reason. To really help professionals be in the know and stay on top of the news that is most relevant to them.
So when we take a step back to kind of summarize the research results that we found, there are five tips, five ways to think about how to start optimizing marketing and advertising today. And I think that these are pretty easy things that I think our team are starting to re-engineer our marketing around and I’m hoping they are something that you guys can take away today. The first is recognizing this mindset divide. This is fundamental. We surveyed 6000 people of every major market and we saw this consistent feedback. And so it doesn’t mean that one is better than the other, they are just different environments between personal and professional. And there are just unique ways to engage; and if you are engaging in the right way, you’re going to cut through to the people that you’re trying to connect with. The second is, really trying to frame your brand and aspects of your marketing that really helps build knowledge and success. You see what people are looking for in a Professional platform, which is they’re looking to help make business decisions. Your brand can help do that. If you are in B2B or high-consideration B2C goods, people are taking a lot of input; we take a lot of information in before we make a big decision, a big investment, both in our personal life and in our professional life. And so if you can start to frame your marketing and your social presence around an exchange of value and really around insights that is what these audiences are going to respond to. And again, drive loyalty and drive purchase, and become advocates for your brand you can kind of strike that connection with them. The third piece here is around information hungry, and that was just fundamental. One of our pillars at LinkedIn is around insights, and really delivering insights to professionals. That’s exactly why, in my Network Map, you didn’t see four different isolated circles, of people from my current and past professional life, they’re all kind of mixed together; there are big arrows going around the world. I know someone in Tokyo who’s sharing insights with someone in New York and vice-versa. And that’s really our world of work. And marketers have this amazing opportunity to be part of that information flow and participate in a really incredible way unlike they have before. The fourth piece is aligning your brand with emotion, and I think probably for most of us in the room, this is something that is hopefully an easier change. It can just be about some aspects of your creativity: your taglines, and your tone in voice that really, kind of thinking about in a social experience, it’s this 1-to-1 or this kind of 1-to-few. It’s generally not 1-to-many. So tapping into that emotion is really fundamental for success. And the fifth, and probably frankly one of the most important things on this five point list is to really share, and participate, and to listen. I think for many brands, involving yourselves and immersing your companies in social media, I think some are very far up the curve and some are taking a little bit slower to get there for very understandable reasons in terms of the structure that companies have to have to control, an that companys’ are losing, to how to engage with people. And it’s scary, and it’s new. But we kind of all in this room have no choice <smiles>, and there’s more opportunity to get closer to people than you ever have before using these social platforms. And that’s the opportunity. But you have to get into it. You need to participate. You need to generate some lightweight content and you can use it as an enormous listening tool. What we gave back from, we manage a group on our platform called marketing innovation with LinkedIn – the feedback we get from that group is just incredible. A lot of our clients are using our platform for listening. We have different advertising opportunities to listen to feedback and take polls and get surveys and get quick feedback. That is probably equally as valuable for brands that are ready to go there. Just even marketing on the platform.
So I am going to walk through a couple of examples to kind of bring this to life for everyone. This is my example of Mercedes Benz and they are a partner of ours from around the world. And this is a specific example from the UK. Mercedes was in kind of a “dog-fight” with other premium brands in the UK with BMW and Audi, really touching up, driving a lot of innovation, getting a lot of younger audiences buying their cars. So we worked with Mercedes to try to do something very unique for professional audiences. And for Mercedes, and for a lot of our high-consideration B2C marketers, having a really affluent and influential audience that’s on LinkedIn is really a very attractive proposition for them, and the targeting that we can do to the UK only. So knowing that we had these insights, we worked with Mercedes to really help them frame their brand and provide value back to professionals. So in this example we have a content module ad unit that allows you to have different types of content on a couple different tabs. And we branded these as “IN tips.” So, letting professionals have more insights into how to improve their professional profile was something that added enormous value. For a lot of people new to Linkedin and new to social platforms, people don’t always know where to start. This is a new experience of people; how do you fill out a profile, what’s the right way to do it, how much content should I have under each job, you know, where do I go… and Mercedes really jumped on this. And said we can add value by branding these insights and helping craft these insights. And as a result they grew their follower base to their LinkedIn company page 240 X over a series of five weeks. So when people saw these ads they had a higher propensity to engage with Mercedes and their primary vehicle was to start to follow them. We also had all these incredible anecdotes. That people seeing the brand and increasing their brand preference for Mercedes in this brand market. So that’s just kind of one example of a high consideration marketer really tapping into the idea of really framing your brand around insights and adding value.
A second way to think about using these social platforms and in particular the unique opportunities of LinkedIn, is the targeting facets that we have. So because of the profile data that we have, we are able to turn that around into the most robust targeting set that’s possible on the social web today. And this is one example where we created a targeted set of what we call, “the influencers” on our platform. So these are people that have, in their profile, are either bloggers or they’re part of the media, they’re tied to politics in some way, they’re very active on our mobile experiences on Linkedin, so they’re adopting aps on their mobile devices. So we take that whole group of people, and we have marketers reaching out just to that specific group of influencers. And what we found, is that when we start to break apart our 200 million network of professionals, you find these really powerful cohorts of people that are really compelling and just very relevant depending on the brands and your strategies. They can be extremely relevant and again you can’t just find these cohorts just anywhere else on the web. And so when we compared this group of influencers to kind of the average LinkedIn member, you see they are just off the charts in terms of their engagement and the influence and the amplification that they have around the web. And again, not just to their first degree connections but they’re amplifying information throughout all those different lines that you saw on my in-map and to everyone else connected to them. They are 6 X more likely to share updates with their network and contribute to group conversationAnd 9 X more likely to actually generate content within groups.And so when people generate content, it all flows through the newsfeed that is the dominant part of the experience similar to that which you find on other networks. Again the targeting capability to get you the right mindset 1-to-1 is hugely powerful.
And the last example I’ll walk through is the work we’ve done in the last year with Citi Bank. And so Citi came to us with a really interesting proposition, and this is kind of why, for me, this is a dream job to kind of work on these types of problems with some of the biggest brands in the world. They had a huge investment in marketing to Professional women. So, if you’re not familiar with it, Citi has kind of co-branded a portal with Women in co, where they try to really create an online community really geared towards women to help them make better,smarter, faster financial decisions. Not just obviously for Citi products, but obviously for a lot of thought leadership and really kind of nurturing Professional women to make the most sound financial decisions. And I think many of you have seen the data that women now make 80% of the household decisions, and are generally the key decision maker in their household for financial decisions. So Citi came to us and said we have this enormous effort we’ve had for over a decade now. We want to bring it to a platform to bring it to life.We want to bring this into the new world to have people discussing and make this kind of live bigger than where it’s living as kind of a portal website. So we built what's called a managed group. Where both Citi and LinkedIn are contributing content to this very unique experience geared towards professional women with Citi kind of being a key contributor and sponsor of this experience. But a sponsor is a very lightweight way. Their presence is really felt through their social team and their executives contributing content into this women’s group. So this group that launched at the end of April last year and now has over 100, 000 members is by far the most engaged group on our platform when we have over 1 million groups on the platform. And really again, why this is so different than the other million groups on our platform is tapping into that mindset. They are catering to a very specific audience of professional women and they are delivering something that they women are craving which are insights and information which are going to help them make better decisions. And really what we’ve seen is the engagement has been off the charts in terms of people coming back to the group, posting comments and sharing. And all the social gestures are important, and I’m sure everyone in the room are sitting there thinking, “well what about the bigger marketing and strategic results?” And those have been amazing too.Citi saw over a 30% increase in consideration of their brand in kind of a broad consideration set. They have seen double digit increases in preferenceAnd they've seen an over 30% increase in a likelihood to recommend Citi to other people. So this presence and this, frankly, very simple execution on our platform really ties back to the value that people want and to Citi’s overall value props. The alignment of those two things is just incredibly powerful.
And this is an example of some of the content. I think when we started the group, we felt like it would generally reflect a more senior profile of professional women. And what we found was, as the group started getting some traction and there was vitality and activity coming through the network of people being invited from around the world we found that younger women were joining just as much as some of the more seasoned women professionals who are on our platform. So you have this really interesting mix of women entering their careers for the first times to as you can see on the upper part of the slide, a women asking for advice. She’s just coming into her career, any advice for how to think about getting started. And there are lots of threads on this with women who are more advanced in their careers adding comments of, “hey don’t do these 5 things, you know, these are my 3 big mistakes, learn from that.” And so this incredible, multi-generational exchange, going on. Then you have the 2nd comment which is about retirement savings, so Fidelity issued some new sets of guidelines and there was this string on fire about women on the group, “have you seen the guidelines,” “how do you think about them?” And hundreds of people commenting and kind of exchanging ideas topics again that are deeply personal and really matter.
And probably the ultimate payoff is when you see something that’s an online community become offline. So there has been comments from this group that the women have had more mentoring as part of this hundred-thousand-person group than they have in their entire careers. People they did not know before April 2012, are now fundamental to them as part of their professional development. So women were taking it upon themselves to create meet-ups in major cities around the US, that kind of reflect the concentration of the group. So in this case, this is women posting about creating a networking event in NYC. And we saw this happen in Seattle, in San Francisco and in some other cities. And we are working now with Citi to see how our two brands can come together and put some structure around offline events as a byproduct of this group. And so, from all of this, if there is kind of one thing that I want to leave you all with today is really just the opportunity. And depending on where you are and your companies and your brands are, your management is, with embracing social platforms, this is the time to get started. These transformational shifts in technology and consumer behavior; you know, we don’t go backwards, right. As I was preparing for this talk, I was thinking about my own – you know, the inflections in technology in my professional life and again at the fear of seeming too old , we had Fax machines; they were fundamental like ten years ago in my work place. We were faxing, that was how we got a lot of business done, maybe some people still use some, we don’t have very many of them. So I just think technology is not going back, we’re not going to re-adopt to have a Fax machine in every office. And so, this is kind of where our future’s going. Despite some of the challenges and some of the uncertainty that I think many of us face going into this brave new world, this is the time to embrace it. And if you think about the technology not as kind of unknown but as a something that can allow you to be more relevant than ever before, get closer to people than ever before, and learn from your customers and prospects, I think it’s actually the most exciting time in our lives to be in marketing and advertising. And we just really hope that kind of everyone embraces it and of course we would love to be a partner along the way. Thank you.
So, what else are they doing?They are reading news, following thought leaders and influencers, participating in groups, there are activities they are undertaking which are professionally oriented. Like, looking for leads, finding references for business opportunities.
Hi, I’m Paul Love – Account Executive at LinkedInSo, what is LinkedIn's goal?
It starts with our vision – to create an economic opportunity for all professionals in the world.Today LinkedIn has over 7 million professionals in Canada alone. It is the largest professional network in the world.LinkedIn helps companies and professionals be more productive and successful.
And that manifests itself in what we call our key content properties: Our influencer’s productOur group productOur news product And our Slideshare acquisitionThese content properties deliver expert insights and help make professionals better at the job that they currently have.
Today, when you compare how many people are connecting with LinkedIn for career opportunities vs. visiting our content properties, there’s 5x more engagement on content vs. careers.
Over the last couple of years, we’ve actually become one of the largest sources of business content on the web – period. So, across the web, relative to folks who have been in business for a long time – publishing business content, curating business content, LinkedIn is now a major player in this area. So, with that, I want to delve a little bit deeper into some of these properties and give you a little bit more color about the kinds of things that are popular, the kinds of conversations that we are seeing, within some of these content properties.
So, first, I want to start with a product that we launched a few months ago – and that we’re very proud of – and that’s our LinkedIn Influencers product.In October 2012, we launched the ability for members to follow an exclusive group of Influencers and thought leaders who are sharing their knowledge and insights with our 200 million members. We started with 150 high-quality business luminaries on our influencers program. Collectively, these influencers have already posted more than 2,300 original posts on LinkedIn. We have much more planned this year to make it even easier for you to find relevant content, share that content, and directly engage in the millions of professional conversations that are taking place across LinkedIn. And this is taking place across the world.
A fantastic set of people participating in a forum allowing them to create original long form content – well beyond 140 characters – to really communicate what’s on their mind. Can be a full multimedia experience…One of the best aspects of the influencer program is that you follow real thought leaders in the business industry. People who are in executive roles today. Who haven’t had the platform to communicate to a mass audience – before now.
You can read content from the CEO of IDEO, the CEO of Intuit – experts that you don’t normally hear from when they’re still in their operating roles. At the top of their game. And this is something that only LinkedIn can offer.
Groups are another core product for LinkedIn. There are now over 1.3M groups on the LinkedIn platform. There are so many, because there really is a group for everyone.
Looking at the names of the groups and the members within them, you see this incredible diversity.The intent of LinkedIn groups is to enable very specific conversations around your particular profession. And you see high quality conversations – some of which are very strategic.
In this case you have a CIO asking a question around a strategy. Unless you’re in IT Service Management, you may not be familiar with ITIL, but that’s the point of groups. They’re valuable to the people who are in them, because they’re having conversations in their language. Around topics that are important to them. And in some cases you see very tactical topics, such as very specific product recommendation.And, again, as you look by job function, you see them reaching out to their peers, and co-workers, for advice to help them be better at the job they have today.
The working language of business today is presentations. With the acquisition of Slideshare, LinkedIn was able to acquire the largest collection of presentations – anywhere.There are over 9 million presentations on Slideshare, providing rich content and a powerful marketing tool.
While the audience interested in learned about how to scale Zen Rackspace Cloud Servers may not be large,SlideShare provided 43,000 views against this specialized, hard-to-reach target audience. Only LinkedIn can take all this content – 9 million SlideShare presentations – and connect that information with the right people.
And, finally, LinkedIn Today. LinkedIn today is our news product, and it starts with our share button. But LinkedIn’s share button is very different from regular share button you’ve experienced. With most, you click and it shares to your network. You see news being consumed by people that are immediately connected to you.
But LinkedIn does one more thing – and that’s what makes it powerful.Because of our rich database, we know who’s clicking,we know where they work,we know their company’s size.We also know their industry,title,their level of education, and we can use all those channels to create a tailored content experience. So when you log into LinkedIn, you’re not just seeing content shared by people you’re connected to. When you read your news on LinkedIn Today, you’re reading what’s popular with other employees. You’re reading what’s trending from others in your industry, regardless of their location
And the information is different depending on your job. A sales director’s LinkedIn Today is different from a PR executive’s. Each has a news feed specifically targeted to them. The difference is that LinkedIn has data behind all of our products. And that’s what’s incredibly powerful for driving tailored marketing. TO SEE THIS IN ACTION HACK INTO YOUR FRIENDS…. NAHHHH, SIT WITH YOUR FRIEND IN A DIFF INDUSTRY, SEE WHAT THEIR NEWS FEED LOOKS LIKE. THE DIFF IS WE HAVE DATA BEHIND WHAT IS RELEVANT TO YOUR IN YOUR CURRENT JOB.
Over the past couple of years, we’ve gone from something that people think about as a place to connect to career opportunities, to one of the largest content publishers and distributors on the web.So what are the shifts on LinkedIn that caused this trend?And what’s in it for marketers? The first shift is that Linkedin looks very different.
Well really the first one is that Linkedin looks very different. We’ve spent quite a bit of effort to simplify the experience and create this rich feed-based homepage. And that’s really made a big difference. We’ve put the content from publishers, the content from companies, and the content from marketers front and center.
The second primary change, and I’ve talked a little bit about this already, is the incredible amount of data that we have on LinkedIn. But one thing in particular that I want to share today, maybe a feature you’re familiar with, and that’s our recent endorsements product. So our recent endorsements product literally launched two months ago , and in that amount of time, we’ve had 500 million endorsements. These are people going to somebody else’s’ profile, making a specific comment about a specific specialty or area of expertise they have…500 million times. So, when you think about the vast amount of data that it takes to make a more relevant experience for the users, whether it’s news, the content from those of you in the room, whether it’s the influencer posts, we’re able to combine all of this data, with the data from the member profile, to really make and engaging and taillored experience. And that’s the really exciting aspect of what we do.
And the last trend, and most certainly not the least impactuful is the advance of mobile. So everyone in the room here of course knows about mobile, knows about mobile trend, but this is has been key to this transition of Linkedin and Content.
The bottom axis is time of day. So the green line is showing Linkedinusage from a desktop computers throughout the day. That’s kind of what it looked like pre-mobile. Then came the introduction ofmobile. (blue line forms). People start using it very early in the morning and then we see a lot of usage in the afternoon. So a big impact has been extending 2 key times that people are engaging content. This engagement at either end of the day gives us insight into what members are viewing at these times of the day.So, the move to mobilehas really been fantastic for us at LinkedIn.
So on a pragmatic level the really compelling thing about content updates from company pages, is that they flow across our entire ecosystem and onto our mobile properties.How does a marketer take advantage of LinkedIn’s mobile ability? This is how! Get in front of the mobile audience.Send updates into your follower base, they’ll consume on their mobile devices – and from there they can “like”, “comment” and “share and re-distribute” that content through their network providing the multiplier effect. And your company pages and groups are all visible on mobile devices.
TrRANSITION OUT OF THIS SLIDEThis feed (content ecosystem) we’ve created is a fantastic opportunity for all the content that companies have already built across various channels.We have the distribution, professional network and data to get your content precisely in front of the right people. But it doesn’t stop there. Once in front of the right person – those people have easy ways to share, comment & spread your highly targeted content message through their professional network.
So, where does it being? On LInkedIn, the beginning of how you build relationships with your customers is the company page. We have over 2.8M company pages (ask audience how many have a company page – praise or chide with joke).I’d like to show you an example on how HP is using their company presence on Linkedin. They’re using this as a starting point for all of their marketing communications. They’re also using targeted status updates to send targeted messages to their 800K followers that they’ve acquired on LInkedIn.
This is an example of one update they’ve sent – you can see it has 245 likes and 27 comments about their new hybrid PC. Rather than me telling you about it, here’s a short video on HP describing how they used some of this content strategy to build their relationships.
So, that’s HP and how their using content distribution to build-up their follower base on LinkedIn.I also wanted to share another example of Samsung mobile and some of the results that their program achieved.Samsung’s goal was to establish relationships with LinkedIn members before and while they’re in-market for a new mobile device.To achieve this goal, they built out a Company Page on LinkedIn and populated it with engaging, informative content.They then bought Followers from LinkedIn, acquiring just the right type of company followers and acquiring them fast. They then created a stream of status updates to engage these followers and attract new ones for free through the viral nature of the LinkedIn social network.
Check out the results: <Read results>Now, these are the results for their active Followers. Pretty awesome, but I know what you’re thinking. How does that compare to similar professionals who weren’t following this company? So we compared their followers to people who followed the competition, but not our client.
So, really strong tie-back to some of the key metrics marketers tie their strategies against.Also, in terms of building that long-term relationship of followers – because that’s what the content marketing opportunities on LInkedIn are all about – getting followers and having a long-term channel to communicate with them. They also managed to move some of the connection that their follower base felt with the brand.They felt more up-to-date, learned more about products & services and felt closer to the brand.
Brands that engage on LinkedIn - drive relationships and superior results!LinkedIn company followers are 2X more likely to purchase & recommend than non-followersLinkedIn is 4x better for B2B conversions vs. Twitter and FB, and generates 3x more leads than FB And 50% of our members are more likely to purchase from a company that is more engaged with its followers. Our clients have seen success with the formula Audience + Context = Results
So how do marketers take advantage of most effectively? LinkedIn has a proven model for successfully engaging professionals.
Our core Engagement framework has 3 componentsCreate a Presence by building your Company Page and by establishing or sponsoring a GroupWe know that brands must participate at every step of the customer journey to most effectively influence purchase decisions. Brands start by creating experiences through owned media. Attract an Audience with Targeted media like Display Ads and iPad Ads and InMails that go directly to the members’ inbox. Companies also attract audienceby acquiring Followers of your company page, who you can communicate with on an ongoing basis, Engage with Content through Status Updates that go to followers, Content Ads that enable you to embed rich media like videos or whitepapers, sharing content in Groups, as well as by adding information about your products and services to your Company PageOnce your audience is there your brand can engage in meaningful conversations with this audience through a combination of paid and owned media. LinkedIn makes this easy through polls, company status updates, paid media and more.
For each component, the underlying LinkedIn platform delivers Amplification, because the members’ social gestures – liking, commenting, and sharing – can be visible to their entire network. And throughout, LinkedIn can offer rich data and insights to help marketers analyze and refine their strategy
Lets look at the Marketing Solutions that help make LinkedIn so successful.LinkedIn Marketing Solutions offers 3 Types of products:Core ProductsSocial ProductsAPI and Off-Platform Solutions Please note that Social Ads can run across both the Core and Social product buckets. The purpose of follow company and join group ads is to drive traffic and engagement to a company’s social presences on LinkedIn. Spanning throughout all 3 solutions is LinkedIn’s precise targeting capabilities using authentic profile data.
And once your engagement and marketing investments are up and running on Linkedin we provide you the metrics to evaluate, adjust and adapt to developing circumstances over time.Robust reporting that maximizes campaign effectivenessLinkedin will include post campaign inSights reports.The report will include:A detailed look at specifically who saw your ads and who acted on themProfile-specific data about your adsLearn which targets were engagedAND BEST OF ALLDiscover new audiences.
Here are a few of the organizations that count Linkedin as an essential asset to leverage their marketing dollars.
Thank you for your time and patience this afternoon. I’d now like to open the floor to question.
