LinkedIn has become an invaluable tool for conducting market research in today’s digital age. With over 722 million users worldwide, LinkedIn provides access to a massive professional network that can provide key insights into your target demographics, competitors, industry trends, and more. Conducting thorough market research enables businesses to make data-driven decisions about their marketing strategy, product development, competitive positioning, and overall commercial success.
What is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking platform. Founded in 2002, LinkedIn allows users to create professional profiles summarizing their background, skills, accomplishments, and interests. Users can then connect with other professionals in their network. LinkedIn leverages these professional connections to become a powerful tool for recruiting, marketing, sales prospecting, and now, market research.
Why use LinkedIn for market research?
There are several key advantages that make LinkedIn a valuable platform for conducting market research:
- Access to a massive professional network – With over 722 million users, LinkedIn provides access to a huge pool of professionals worldwide.
- Targeted data on demographics and buying intent – User profiles contain valuable data like job titles, skills, interests, education, locations, and more.
- Ability to identify key decision makers – You can use LinkedIn to identify and connect with influential people in your industry or at key companies.
- Monitor competitors and industry leaders – Observe what your competitors and other leaders in your industry are posting and engagement levels.
- Join industry-related groups – There are thousands of niche industry and interest groups full of engaged professionals.
- Post content and get feedback – Share content and collect real-time insights by engaging your target audience.
In summary, LinkedIn enables B2B companies to gain first-party data directly from their target audience versus relying solely on second or third-party market research. The level of transparency and depth of insights available make LinkedIn one of the most valuable market research tools today.
How to use LinkedIn for market research
Here are some best practices and strategies for using LinkedIn to conduct thorough market research:
Research target demographics
LinkedIn’s detailed user profiles provide a wealth of data to analyze your target audience and ideal customers. You can use LinkedIn’s advanced search filters and Premium account tools to research demographics like:
- Job titles and functions
- Industries
- Seniority levels
- Locations
- Company sizes
- Skills and expertise
- Gender
- Age range
- Education and academic background
This data enables you to define your total addressable market, identify underserved segments, and create detailed buyer personas.
Monitor competitors
Analyze the LinkedIn activity of your competitor brands and key employees to gain intel such as:
- New product or feature launches
- Marketing and advertising campaigns
- Hiring patterns
- Company growth
- Thought leadership and content strategy
- Partnerships and integrations
This competitive intelligence helps you identify industry trends early and inform your own strategy.
Research target companies
Use LinkedIn to thoroughly research key companies you want to target by reviewing:
- Employee data like seniority level, job function, location, skills, education, tenure
- Followership and engagement on company pages
- Groups and Associations company employees have joined
- Related and recommended pages
- Advertisements the company is running
These insights help you identify the right stakeholders to target your outreach and messaging towards.
Join industry groups
By joining relevant industry, interest, and niche groups on LinkedIn, you can observe real-time discussions and insights into:
- Current trends and innovations
- Pressing pains and challenges
- Emerging technologies
- Regulatory issues
- Conferences and events
Engage in group discussions and pay attention to the most active members and popular posts to collect consumer insights.
Gather competitive intelligence
Use LinkedIn to monitor your competitors’ employees, especially sales, marketing, and executive leadership. This can reveal:
- New hires and departures
- Job posting activity
- Leadership changes
- Patents, news coverage and publicity
- Marketing messages and positioning
- Partnerships, integrations or acquisitions
This intelligence enables you to identify new market threats and opportunities.
Conduct LinkedIn surveys
LinkedIn now provides powerful survey capabilities to poll your connections and gather first-party data on:
- Product interest and demand
- Brand awareness and perception
- Customer satisfaction and loyalty
- User/buying experience
- Desired features and enhancements
- Purchase intent and sales funnel status
- Media consumption habits
Surveys provide quantified, detailed insights vs. anecdotal observations.
Share insights and collect feedback
Post your own content, insights, data, presentations, and more onto your LinkedIn profile and company page. This will organically attract engagement from your target audience, enabling you to:
- Get feedback and reactions to your messaging
- Start a dialogue to learn consumer perspectives
- Build relationships with key stakeholders
- Generate new leads and sales prospects
This level of engagement provides invaluable qualitative data through comments, shares, and discussions.
LinkedIn data sources for market research
In addition to your personal network and Company Page, here are some of the core LinkedIn data sources available for market research purposes:
LinkedIn Ad Analytics
LinkedIn’s self-serve ad platform provides robust analytics on ad performance, reach, and audience targeting. This enables you to:
- Test demand by audience segment
- Gather demographic and firmographic intelligence
- Refine your ideal customer profile (ICP)
- Track engagement metrics
LinkedIn Audience Insights
Audience Insights shows target audience demographics, interests, professional skills, and location data. You can leverage this to:
- Size your target market
- Identify strategic geographic concentrations
- Refine personas based on skills & interests
- Inform content strategy
LinkedIn Talent Insights
Talent Insights enables you to research industry hiring and talent migration trends including:
- Fastest growing skills
- Emerging jobs
- Competencies in demand
- Talent availability by region
These talent-focused intel can guide your product development, content strategy, and recruiting.
LinkedIn Company Pages and Showcase Pages
Monitor competitors’ Company Pages and employees’ activity. Review Showcase Pages featuring brands, products, and initiatives to identify:
- Marketing strategies and campaigns
- Brand messaging and positioning
- New product features
- Partnership activity
- Hiring initiatives
LinkedIn News
LinkedIn News features recent articles and coverage on companies, products, executives, industry trends, and more. This provides insights into:
- New product launches
- Partnerships and acquisitions
- Leadership changes
- Funding and IPO announcements
- Emerging technologies
- Regulations and policy updates
LinkedIn Groups
Joining and contributing to niche LinkedIn Groups exposes you to industry discussions and breaking developments on:
- Pressing B2B buyer needs and pain points
- Reactions to new innovations
- Regulatory issues
- Conferences and events
This real-time peer intel complements broader market data.
LinkedIn Sales Insights
Sales Insights shows you real-time updates whenever your target accounts and contacts update their LinkedIn profiles, enabling you to:
- Identify new leadership at key accounts
- Stay updated on your contacts’ job changes and new skills
- Monitor key accounts for business developments
This ensures your CRM data stays up-to-date.
LinkedIn Recruiting
Leverage LinkedIn Recruiting to gather talent pool data on skills, experience levels, locations, employers, titles, and demographics. This illuminates:
- Compensation benchmarks
- Employment trends
- Talent availability
- Competencies in demand
Intelligence to refine your employer branding and recruiting strategy.
Tips for effective LinkedIn market research
To maximize the impact of your LinkedIn market research, keep these best practices in mind:
- Use both free and Premium tools – Mix free tools with Premium features like InMail, talent pool searching, and profile visibility.
- Follow key accounts and contacts – Stay updated on developments from target companies and contacts.
- Develop an authentic profile – Share insights, join groups, and post content to organically attract engagement from your audience.
- Ask for introductions – Grow your network by asking for introductions to key executives, investors, and industry experts via shared connections.
- Segment and filter your searches – Leverage LinkedIn’s robust filters like title, industry, function, skillsets, location, and company size for more targeted data.
- Export data – Export search results data to conduct further analysis and segmenting in Excel, Tableau, or other platforms.
- Monitor campaigns – If running LinkedIn ads or content, monitor performance analytics to identify high value audience segments and messaging that resonates.
- Triangulate with other data sources – Combine LinkedIn intel with website analytics, social listening, surveys, focus groups and other research sources.
Conclusion
In summary, LinkedIn is an invaluable platform for conducting powerful market research by tapping into its extensive professional network. The wide range of user profile data, company intel, talent analytics, interest groups, news developments, and advertising insights available enable B2B companies to deeply understand their target audience, competitors, industry, and overall market landscape.
Following best practices such over utilizing Premium tools, joining industry groups, exporting data, and triangulating with other research sources will ensure your LinkedIn provides impactful, data-driven intelligence to guide strategic business decisions.
