LinkedIn Aims To Disrupt Mkt Solutions Biz

LinkedIn aims to generate about $1 billion in annual revenue from its marketing solutions business in the next three to five years, Russell Glass, head of products (marketing solutions) in LinkedIn.

In India, Glass said that LinkedIn was now focusing on mobile for its service delivery. “In India, there are huge opportunities on the mobile front,” he said. India is the second largest market for the company with 35 million users and 700 employees spread across three locations.

The marketing solutions business, which is a B2B platform, helps businesses market and advertise to other firms and has been boosted by the acquisition of Bizo last year. Bizo, which was bought for $175 million, offers technology products and social advertising programmes specifically focused on professional audience segments. It helps integrate with existing CRM, content management, marketing automation and web analytics programmes.

“Even though talent solutions is a bigger business today, the bigger opportunity is actually in marketing solutions and so over time, the opportunity for us is to do a business that is as big, if not bigger, in the marketing solution side of the world,” Glass, who was on an official visit to Bengaluru, said.

As part of the move, LinkedIn has been beefing up offerings that help businesses find customers and build relationships through e mails, advertising and sharing content. Revenue from the company’s marketing solutions business was $454.5 million, or 20.5% of total revenue, for 2014. In comparison, the talent solutions business, which connects professionals to one another for purposes of hiring, contributed about 60% or $1.33 billion.

“We are looking at disrupting the world of marketing in the same way as we did in the world of talent acquisition,” Olivier Legrand, head of marketing solutions, Asia Pacific and Japan said.