LinkedIn: Do New Offerings Make It the King of B2B?

Picture of a Lion at the Oregon ZooIf you are in B2B advertising, you cannot ignore LinkedIn. With great reach (#22 US site in January 2013 according to ComScore), extensive profile data actively maintained by the audience and granular targeting options, LinkedIn is a powerhouse in the world of B2B advertising.

So when LinkedIn introduces a new advertising option, as a B2B advertiser, you need to pay attention. Here are two new offerings LinkedIn introduced in the last quarter that seem to have slipped under the radar of most B2B marketers.

Use Your SlideShare Content in LinkedIn Ads

More B2B marketers are embracing content every day, but maximizing distribution of content continues to be a challenge.

Now you can promote your SlideShare content on LinkedIn with both the benefits of advertising on LinkedIn (including excellent targeting options) and content posted on SlideShare (including sharing and engaging). You can even include, in typical SlideShare fashion, lead capture within your content.

If you are looking to increase distribution of your content within a targeted business audience, this offering is definitely worth learning more about.

Of course, information about this offering is available in a SlideShare deck, embedded below.

Note: If you use Flite, you can embed a SlideShare presentation easily into an ad for use across the web as well, although the functionality is a bit more limited.

Target Advertising Across the Web Using LinkedIn Data

LinkedIn is a major site but it is still only represents a small portion of the time most people spend online. Targeting a niche audience beyond LinkedIn has generally meant going to trade publications or using data from Bizo.

Now, as part of a partnership between LinkedIn and Media6Degrees, you can use LinkedIn’s audience profiles to target your audience across the web.

The strength of LinkedIn’s profile data makes this one of the most interesting new online targeting options for B2B marketers in quite some time and one worth paying attention to. If LinkedIn makes their audience data available to additional partners, this could become the new standard for audience targeting in B2B.

Will LinkedIn Become the B2B Marketing Leader?

LinkedIn is already a powerhouse, but as they innovate around their advertising platform, leverage the data they already have and expand their publishing initiative, can LinkedIn establish itself as the king of of the jungle in the B2B publishing landscape?

Note: Neither of these offerings are available through LinkedIn’s self-service platform but for larger B2B marketers that are already accustomed to running larger programs with LinkedIn, these new offerings are worth learning more about.

Your Turn

What has your experience been with LinkedIn’s advertising programs? Share your experience or reaction in the comments below or with me on Twitter (@wittlake).

Photo Credit: Ian Sane via Flickr cc

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