LinkedIn Marketing Solutions is a recently (2015) expanded marketing platform for reaching audiences through the popular Linkedin work-oriented social network that includes modules like the Lead Accelerator (supporting segmentation features to improve conversion), Sponsored Updates, LinkedIn Onsite Display, LinkedIn Network Display, and Sponsored InMail. While still at its core a social marketing engine, Linkedin Marketing Solutions now presents a more comprehensive B2B advertising platform. The…
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LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Score 8.5 out of 10
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LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a sales intelligence software solution offered by LinkedIn.
Although it offered great features, we didn't really see a lot of traffic or results from the ads we placed. Working in hospitality, we had to strategically time and place our ads around holiday seasons and it can be difficult to predict a marketing campaign. Depending on your market, LinkedIn may not be the best avenue to advertise with.
Flexible Saved Searches: I love how we can save a very complex search created for future use so that we don't have to repeat it again and again. The cherry on the top is that you can even share this saved search with your other colleagues having the LinkedIn Sales Navigator license. Access to Decision Makers: With a single click, I can filter out decision-makers in any company. This is again a time saver in many ways. Alerts and Reminders: which can be set custom-based covering specific use cases. For example - if prospect A changes companies today, I can get an alert for it on my email (the only drawback being I need to manually save this prospect in a list first).
The Campaign Manager is not good. It seems like the Campaign Manager (where you create and manage your self-serve ad campaigns) is buggy and doesn't have a good flow. Contrast with FB Ad Manager of the Google Adwords/Ads interface, which has a much more simple process to create and edits campaigns, ad groups, ads, keywords, audiences, budgets, etc. LinkedIn Campaign Manager seems to actively work against you trying to make changes to your campaigns.
LinkedIn Campaign Manager offers three options: sponsored content, InMail, and text ads. LinkedIn used to offer other ad services that you couldn't access unless you had a "managed ad account" run by LinkedIn Staff with a dedicated monthly ad spend. It seems most of those "hidden" features have disappeared, though you still have to contract with LinkedIn to offer dynamic ads. It would be better if LinkedIn empowered marketers to create the ads they want. (Perhaps with a dedicated acct. manager like how Google Ads works.)
This is silly, but it isn't easy to navigate to Campaign Manager. I have a bookmark for Campaign Manager because if you want to click there through LinkedIn, it takes 2 or 3 different screens to get to Campaign Manager. In my opinion, when you click the "Work" dropdown from the LinkedIn header (by your profile picture) you should have a link to Campaign Manager.
LinkedIn, in recent months, has made substantial changes to the Ads platform and Campaign Manager. Though these changes work to address some of the above issues, LinkedIn still has quite a ways to go before their platform is on par with their competition.
This question is a no-brainer. The tool is the industry standard for anyone tied to sales and marketing. The name "LinkedIn Sales Navigator" is synonymous with streamlining relevant customer and account data in an easy to use format that is actionable and intelligent. The focus on continuous improvement and richer means of communicating with customers and prospects is evident each time new features are rolled out. The social component of the tool even includes a gamification component to ensure that peers remain relevant among each other, which is refreshing and enjoyable for those who engage the tool on a daily basis.
in terms of promoted content reporting and usability, the platform is not as flexible or easy to use compared to more established social platforms like Facebook. However, it does offer plug-ins to Google Data Studio which makes pulling and manipulating data easier. My main usability gripe comes when looking at organic performance of a company page. There isn't an easy way to export organic performance data.
It lets you pull people with specific titles in specific areas and with the criteria you choose--job changes, mutual connections based on schools, roles, and companies, etc. It is easy to upload these lists into other software or download and save them to a drive.
So, everything what I just said previously adds up to the value of LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. Definitely recommending it to a friend. It has its things to improve but its nothing major or nothing to worry about. So I give a 9 because it still has that, some user interface glitches that can be improved but do not damage the experience that you have with it.
The tool speaks for itself, but the support is definitely a significant portion of why we use the tool. The company cares about their customer's success and it shows. We do not have to wait for long periods of time for the support team to respond; they do so in a timely manner, and virtually always with relevant insights and solutions.
I am unsure of the rollout, as I was not involved. I was an early adopter, and I have had a lot of success with the tool personally at multiple organizations, but I have no idea whether the implementation process encountered any errors. I can personally say that it works, and that I have not encountered significant issues with the tool since adoption, although a few issues like messages showing up as being unread even though they have been opened have been an on-again/off-again issues throughout the past few years. Overall, the company is doing a great job, and our implementation seems to have been effective.
If you want more precision in B2B targeting, then LinkedIn is without question the better alternative. However, as I established before, I've rarely seen LinkedIn campaigns be successful for anything other than brand awareness/thought leadership. And that's almost 100% what Twitter is for. Twitter campaigns almost always have a cheaper CPC AND CPM than LinkedIn and accomplish the same thing, so I would say go with Twitter. At times LinkedIn campaigns are just so you can tell someone at a higher level that you did precise targeting to the exact audience they wanted and check that box, because it's easier for them to understand how you'd do well on LinkedIn, and more difficult to tell that story on Twitter. But I honestly prefer Twitter and its platform for B2B awareness campaigns. Heretic, I know, but it's how I feel after several years of experience with both. Facebook is bottom of the barrel for B2B in my mind, so I'm not really going to discuss it. I would take LinkedIn over Facebook for many reasons, but Facebook is an option too, but more for SMB and just covering all bases, not as a primary choice for B2B marketing.
linkedin has way better data cleanup and relevant contact information. It provides a great insight into how to target personally your prospects, and gives great engagement highlights. ZoomInfo is sometimes outdated, the prospect has moved companies or is no longer employed there-- alot of filtering through the weeds can be hard if you are trying to hit high metrics and make your time valuable
We have seen a marked increase in inbound agent calls since we began LinkedIn marketing.
LinkedIn marketing is an excellent way to put your content in front of people that are actually going to read it, this has led to a major increase in our content being consumed and acted on.
