As a business-to-business platform (B2B), Microsoft owned LinkedIn seems have earned its place when it comes to marketing spends. Case in point: as per Microsoft’s Q3,FY23 earnings, in April 2023, LinkedIn’s global revenue increased eight percent year-over-year (10% in constant currency). More than 930 million members turned to the professional social network to connect, learn, sell, and get hired, said its parent company. In its earnings report, Microsoft further said that LinkedIn has 100 million members in India, up 19%. As Gen Z entered the workforce, LinkedIn recorded a 73% year-over-year increase in the number of student sign ups.
The platforms further stated that approximately 63 million companies have a page as of April 2023 and More than 96,000 products have Product Pages on LinkedIn as of March 2023. Pages which post weekly have 5.6 times more followers than pages which post monthly, and its following grows 7x faster than monthly posting Pages, as of July 2022. In an interaction with BrandWagon Online, Ashutosh Gupta, India country manager, LinkedIn talks about what makes the platform works for B2B sectors, besides why its precision targeting often helps marketers to drive return-on-investments (RoI). (Edited Excerpts)
How have different products including subscription, ad sales solutions, marketing solutions, and talent and learning account have been performing for LinkedIn?
Hiring in the market is still strong with our SaaS product – Recruiter, which is in high demand. On the learning side, there has been increased demand due to the pandemic with companies emphasising the importance of learning and development for their employees. Assessment-based Professional Certificates in LinkedIn Learning enables employees to close their skills gaps with Professional Certificates from leading third-party providers. Both talent and learning solutions are performing reasonably well. Speaking of numbers, 80% of the Fortune 100 companies use both LinkedIn Talent Solutions and LinkedIn Learning along with more than 7,400 organisations using both Hiring and Learning products. More than 7,20,000 companies use LinkedIn Talent Solutions to find, source and hire talent in the pool of more than 5.2 million talent professionals actively using LinkedIn. We have seen 253% growth in paid learners since January 2017 and 39.7 million seats purchased (on active contracts) for LinkedIn Learning and more than 1.3 million sellers use Sales Navigator to connect with sales professionals and optimise sales.
LinkedIn has a higher cost of customer acquisition (CAC) as compared to other platforms. With the muted market sentiment and reduced spends on marketing, will LinkedIn increase or decrease the cost?
We are very competitive when it comes to cost of customer acquisition in the market. LinkedIn has a data lake which can be used for extreme precision targeting and this includes personalised conversations. We are a value-driven company and we focus on the value that we give to our customers and not the cost.
How is LinkedIn leveraging Generative AI (aritificial intelligence)? What is the outlook of B2B marketers in using LinkedIn’s Generative AI tools?
One of the top priorities for India’s B2B marketing leaders is to champion bolder creativity in their campaigns to improve mental availability. The biggest buzzword in the industry is Generative AI. Generative AI will play a big role in boosting creativity at scale, and take up volumes of creative work and content creation that we didn’t think was possible, at an unimaginable pace. Generative AI will act as a co-pilot to help marketers land the right opportunities for their campaigns.
To help B2B companies bolster brand building, measure effectiveness, and connect with audiences in new ways, LinkedIn has launched new products and services including AI-generated Copy Suggestions which uses generative AI to create intro text and headlines for ad creatives by leveraging data from an advertiser’s LinkedIn. Another product called the CMO Scorecard which provides marketers with quantitative results to brand advertising by providing companies with the creative, media, and outcome metrics they should measure to show the effectiveness of their brand marketing.
The Revenue Attribution Report last year – a new measurement tool helps B2B marketers demonstrate business impact on the bottom line, and helps them implement more strategic plans in the future. Thought Leader Ads, Conversation Ads, In-stream Video Ads and others have been introduced to help marketers connect to audiences in new ways. We have also unlocked 100 free Generative AI courses on LinkedIn Learning for free to help marketers stay ahead of the curve.
How are marketers using LinkedIn Marketing Solutions (LMS) for their content marketing efforts?
We have been seeing signs of creative confidence since 2022 — new B2B practices at agencies, more budgets for influencer marketing, and evolving B2B marketing roles. In India, we work with brands and marketers across industries to help them with tools and solutions which cater to marketing goals across the funnel. Products launched last fiscal year such as Revenue Attribution Report help advertisers track leads influenced as they convert to opportunities won, with new metrics such as Revenue Won, Return on Ad Spend and Pipeline Amount. Additional updates for advertisers include new A/B testing and new domain-level publisher reporting on LinkedIn Audience Network. Relationship Explorer tool in Sales Navigator helps sellers identify the key decision-makers at an account and why they may want to reach out, based on unique insights like job changes.
We have also observed digital adoption among small and mid size business (SMB) sector with nearly 35% of these marketers ramping up their investment in measurement tools to maximise RoI and showcase campaign results with efficiency.
How is the B2B marketing landscape evolving? How has the role of a marketing officer (CMO) evolved over the years?
According to LinkedIn’s recent B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, 74% chief marketing officers (CMOs) have learnt the language of finance and have strengthened their skills to prove the value of brand marketing to their CEO (chief executive officer) and CFO (chief financial officer). With this, CMOs are gradually becoming growth officers and creativity is no longer a B2C marketing prerogative. Creative strategy, innovative thinking, problem solving, as well as marketing technology and data analytics top the list as some of the most important skills among B2B marketers in India.
LinkedIn data shows there has been a 46% increase in creative skills added to profiles of marketers on the platform across the globe in the last year. One in two B2B marketers agree that purchase decisions in the sector are just as emotionally driven as a B2C marketer.