Item: LinkedIn Premium Business
Rating: 8
Author: Arthur Norman

Overall Satisfaction with LinkedIn Premium Business

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Used it to find more industry connections, share industry news, and to create new prospects and leads. Since people change positions and companies, they usually update their LinkedIn account, so we hope to get more accurate contacts for our campaigns.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Good at finding people and contacts within certain company profiles
Nice to see the profile with updated job history to validate the contact
Easy to find other contacts within the same organization

Cons

limited search capabilities, credits, and restrictions and connections
difficult to filter some contacts by desired categories depending on payment tier. Can be expensive.
it takes time to build brand credibility and get access to certain types of connections
Not easy to search for contacts and download a list for prospecting. Limited to connections list.

Return on Investment

found good connections and contacts for companies in our industry
not the best system for navigating around, still more for career finding than business prospecting compared to the competition
the ROI is there for a short term, but not a long-term solution for us due to the cost and some limitations compared to the competition offering like a Hoovers, Zoominfo, etc.

Usability

There is good data in this system, but the navigation and easy of use is not as intuitive as the competition because it is designed for job finding first. Improvements are being made on the business side and hopefully it will get better with time and feedback.

Alternatives Considered

D&B Hoovers, ZoomInfo Marketing and GetProspect

LinkedIn is expensive like a ZoomInfo, but not as useful for prospecting.
LinkedIn has some more accurate contact information, but could be more personal contact information compared to business contact information. Interface of the competition is better than LinkedIn for prospecting purposes.

Key Insights

Do you think LinkedIn Premium Business delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with LinkedIn Premium Business's feature set?

Yes

Did LinkedIn Premium Business live up to sales and marketing promises?

Did implementation of LinkedIn Premium Business go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy LinkedIn Premium Business again?

Yes

Other Software Used

D&B Hoovers, ZoomInfo Marketing, GetProspect

Likelihood to Recommend

It is good to look up people and hopefully find a current connection. But you might need other tools retrieve the information you need about the contacts. If you can afford the solution, then it is helpful tool, but it will have to work in addition to other tools if you want to make a business case for it.

Using LinkedIn Premium Business

Users and Roles

2 - Marketing used it for connections, searching for prospects and lead, and verifying contact information.

HR used it for recruiting and verifying candidate background information.

Support Headcount Required

2 - People with skills to search, interact with connections and manage basic social media & CRM functions should be able to use LinkedIn Premium account.

Business Processes Supported

Find candidates for hiring open positions
search for prospects and leads
verify contact information of people

Innovative Uses

None
Wish there was some better functionality and options compared to the competition

Future Planned Uses

None
Decided to go with another solution that is more robust and cost effective.

Likelihood to Renew

It was great to use for a specific project and campaign, but did not find an ROI for a long-term solution. We might use it in the future if there is another similar project in the future that needs a similar result. For now, we have been using another more cost-effective solution for the same purpose.

Evaluating LinkedIn Premium Business and Competitors

Products Replaced

Yes - Zoominfo and D&B Hoovers

Key Differentiators

Other

Accuracy of contact information of prospects and connections.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

Ease of use is key and Linkedin solutions has good contact information and updated connections, but the ease of use and payment restrictions keeps it from being a better solution than the competition. So it is a good solution for some types of campaigns but not for others.

Comments

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LinkedIn Premium can be a good solution if you know how to use it