LinkedIn, the most popular business and employment oriented social networking service, has introduced a new tool that allows businesses insights into who’s visiting their websites. The tool will also allow users to look at statistics from certain sections of the site and filter by date range, providing valuable insights on the success of campaigns.
The new tool is called Website Demographics. It separates website visitors across 8 categories, including:
This is information that the 500 million LinkedIn members have already given to the site, so it’s a smart move to utilize it. By connecting this data to website visits, LinkedIn is using the same conversation tracking technology that powers its Matched Audiences ad targeting.
LinkedIn said in a blog post that this move is “a major leap forward in helping you make more informed marketing decisions to grow your business. With the ability to gather insights before, during, or after campaigns, you can improve your strategy and make smarter marketing decisions.”
For businesses, knowing their target audience is critical to driving ROI, and to optimize ROI they need to understand whether they have created the right content for the right people. This way they avoid overstepping and wasting marketing budgets.
Hence why the data provided by Website Demographics will be very useful to businesses. Visitor data will show whether a new ad campaign was successful, what kind of professionals are visiting their website and what marketing changes they can make for more effective results.
Website Demographics will be free for anyone using the company’s Campaign Manager. Campaign Manager is a function that allows LinkedIn users the chance to receive detailed reporting on all social actions, target ads, and build optimized campaigns.
This marks the first time LinkedIn has provided businesses with professional visitor data. Sudeep Eldo Cherian, the director of global product marketing for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, said, “We think that by understanding this information, businesses can create higher quality content campaigns.”
When asked whether LinkedIn could use this kind of analysis to measure the effectiveness of ad campaigns, Cherian confirmed it is a possibility. He said, “We’re constantly thinking about how we can continue to evolve the reporting and analytics that we offer to marketers so that they can make better decisions.” From this, it is clear that LinkedIn is not planning on slowing down anytime soon.
Cherian went on to say, “You don’t have to advertise on LinkedIn to leverage this.” He said LinkedIn’s true goal is to turn Campaign Manager into a “must-have analytics solution”, which is more important than building more ads on their website.
Cornerstone OnDemand is a business that has already begun using Website Demographics. Bhanu Chawla, the Head of Digital Strategy said, “Website Demographics is giving us some really useful insights about the different segments of our international websites. It’s helping us clearly understand if we’re reaching the right audience with our web marketing strategies and also providing clarity about our web audiences throughout the entire customer life cycle.”
To learn more about LinkedIn’s new business tool, watch an informative video here.
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