Finding Your Market: LinkedIn Statistics You Should Know If You Want To Reach The Right People

With almost 700 million active users as of 2020 and new features like live video sharing, LinkedIn’s growth makes it an indispensable tool in the B2B marketing industry. Its user base continues to expand on a steady rate. And marketers are quick to realize the potential of building an online presence on the world’s largest professional network.

The key to making the most out of LinkedIn is knowing your market and creating targeted content. We divided this article into two parts: Realizing LinkedIn’s growth and understanding the importance of market segmentation.

LinkedIn’s growth by the numbers

There’s no better way to illustrate LinkedIn’s impressive growth than through real numbers. Knowing the effectivity of a platform is also crucial for businesses who are still undecided about whether the channel is worth spending time and effort on.

Demographic Stats

For starters, LinkedIn users a different crowd compared to other big platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Currently, there are 600 million monthly users, 46 million of those are students and fresh graduates.

The divide between male and female users are almost at 50/50. As for the countries, majority (at a number of 167 million) of LinkedIn’s users are from the United States, with India and China tailing close by.

Compared to other social networking platforms, LinkedIn can target a more specific audience (focusing on professionals) with ages around 25 to 49 years old. For these alone, more than 80 per cent of B2B marketers rely on LinkedIn to generate leads.

Content Marketing Stats

Content is king, but the type of content isn’t the end-all-be-all of B2B marketing. Based on LinkedIn’s numbers, there are a lot of other key variables that you should know if you want to take your content marketing to the next level.

LinkedIn is currently the number one choice for content distribution in the B2B industry, with around 280 billion feed updates viewed per year.

Professionals also give LinkedIn credit for churning out valuable content, as 60% of its users actively seek industry insights on the platform. In fact, approximately 15% of marketers generate content for LinkedIn, contributing to the 3 million users that create and publish content on the platform weekly.

Finding the right audience

LinkedIn’s statistics can be quite overwhelming. A few marketers may even feel that their content marketing efforts fall in vain because of the tight competition. While it’s true that LinkedIn’s environment is as competitive and dense as it could be, there’s still a way to move past it and stand out. 

A common strategy used in the world of marketing is segmentation, or breaking down a huge group audience into smaller, more reachable segments. The end goal of segmentation is to reach the right people with the right content.

Why should you segment your market?

The greatest gift that market segmentation brings is that it allows you to focus all your marketing efforts and resources on getting the highest quality leads and reaching your business goals. Along with it, here are some other benefits that market segmentation has to offer:

1. Make and tell better marketing stories

The key to sending compelling brand messages is knowing who your audience is. Market segmentation allow you to speak directly to your market and address their wants or needs – instead of generic messages that don’t make a mark.

2. Pinpoint the most effective marketing tactic

There are a ton of available marketing strategies out there. So how exactly will you know which one is the best? Utilizing marketing segmentation can help point you towards the marketing tactics that are guaranteed to work well with your brand.

3. Create hyper-target advertisements

Digital advertising services, such as ads on popular social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, enable you to target people based on their gender, location, and interests. Market segmentation can help you define your audience to create more effective targeted advertisements.

4. Establish deeper customer affinity

Addressing the wants and needs of your customers will enable you to communicate and serve them better. It’s the first step to establishing a relationship that can lead to long-lasting brand affinity.

5. Determine niche market opportunities

Niche marketing is the process of pinpointing parts of industries which have a wide audience that can be served in new ways. By segmenting your target market, you will can discover underserved markets that you can develop brand new services and products for.

Creating your own market segmentation strategy

You’ve finally decided that it’s time to implement market segmentation to scale your business. But where do you start?

Step 1: Analyze your existing customers

If you already have existing customers, kickstart your market segmentation process with audience analysis. You’ll find the trends that exist within your present pool of customers that could help you identify which among your them are part of the right market. 

Step 2: Create a buyer persona for your ideal customer

After completing your audience analysis, you will now have a better picture of who your customers are (or who they should be). The next step is for you to use this information and create a buyer persona that describes the exact kind of prospect you would want to sell to.

Step 3: Identify market segmentation opportunities

Your third step is to start searching for market segment opportunities— a trend that can lead to new strategies or offerings in marketing.

Step 4: Do your research

Before you launch a marketing campaign, you should first determine the best options for your brand. Dig deep about best practices and conduct a quick competitor analysis to prepare your business for your launch.

Step 5: Test it out

Upon finding a new (and probably underserved) market that you want to explore, don’t rush in. Good results come from careful preparation. Don’t be afraid to test the waters – it’s a good investment that will pay off in the long run.