LinkedIn is the Place to B2B.

The year is 2024, social media is becoming the fabric of our reality, and the timeline is becoming an ever-competitive landscape. Brands, personalities, mom’s just sharing fun photos of their kids, social media is FLOODED, and you know that.

Well today we’re going to peek behind the curtain and look at how this competition is affecting the social media platforms themselves and how my fav social media platform is positioning itself for the next decade.

You’re going to want to link in 😉 for this one as we learn the need for niches, why B2B content doesn’t have to be boring, and the subtleties of an effective slogan…

The Santa Cruz Mountains, a tech hub, and young atmosphere, meet Mountain View, California. We’re at the turn of the century, Google is rising to prominence in their humble headquarters based in Mountain View, and there is a new scrappy tech startup on the horizon.

One that today employs 18,000 people, does $15B in revenue, and supports the best Marketing community on this planet, The Marketing Millennials, DUH.

Marketing Student, meet LinkedIn, the place to B2B (more on that later).

Reid Hoffman had recently left PayPal and had a grand idea building a social networking site to allow business professionals to see job opportunities and meet other industry professionals.

LinkedIn initially began building steam when small business owners adopted the platform to access address books, but that was short-lived. It wasn’t until 2006, 3 years after launching, that public profiles were released, meaning you could connect with other people in your industry (how we know LinkedIn today), that’s REALLY when LinkedIn took off.

In the 18 years since, LinkedIn has taken on many different faces, from being publicly traded to becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft, but the current state of LinkedIn is its most important and definitive moment.

LinkedIn is facing its largest outside pressure from the competition to date. The recent rise of TikTok the last 5 years, Meta’s bridging of Facebook & Instagram, YouTube continuing to be in a class of its own, and now Elon Musk buying Twitter.

There are SOOOO many great social media options for consumers. The competition is nothing like it was back in 2003 LOL (shoutout MySpace).

LinkedIn isn’t cowering from the competition, they’re doing the exact opposite. LinkedIn saw its largest user base in 2023 (930M) and its revenue crossed the $15B mark for the first time EVER. I guess you can say they’re thriving.

But how are they doing this?

Their latest campaign, “No One Knows What You Do”, is a microcosm of their entire Marketing strategy shift since 2020 and it all starts with niches.

While other social media platforms focus on trying to have a solution for everyone, getting as many new users regardless of interests, age, occupation, LinkedIn stepped back and honed in on B2B.

They’re not trying to provide a solution to the high schooler in chemistry, or the 78 year old retired cop, they want to provide a solution for a B2B professional either looking for a job, to build a network, or to learn new skills.

We both know the saying “If you’re selling to everyone, you’re selling to no one.” But I never see anyone take it a step further, what does that even mean?

To get a consumer to act, you need to hit them with Marketing that resonates. And if you’re speaking incredibly broad, using generic lingo (BUZZWORDS), then there’s no chance of your message resonating, aka you won’t be able to sell to anyone.

In this recent push towards B2B, LinkedIn is also showing us that you don’t have to be BORING in B2B (but this doesn’t mean we just want to make B2B Marketing like B2C Marketing). 

LinkedIn’s “No One Knows What You Do” campaign is hilariously niche. It’s a message you’re only going to understand if you’re in B2B, which makes the message even more impactful if you do understand it (back to the importance of NICHESSS).

The campaign takes on a 60-minute interview style focused on asking parents about what their kids do. “My son sells clouds”, “She sells SEO and MRM to CPGs”, “She needs to check the CTR in an ESM ASAP”. The parents are confused, disappointed thinking they failed their kids.

Acronyms galore. Everyone who has worked in B2B at some point has had this EXACT type of conversation with a mom, dad, friend, anyone who doesn’t get B2B.

But guess what? If your parents don’t get B2B, that’s no big deal because LinkedIn does.

Produced by Ryan Reynolds agency, Maximum Effort, LinkedIn tapped the mind of one of the greatest guerrilla marketers ever for an extra ounce of creativity in the campaign.

B2B Marketing doesn’t have to be boring. This is a campaign for one of the largest B2B platforms in the world, yet the content in the campaign is stand-alone funny. With a focus on relatability, dry humor, and simplicity this campaign is a home run for LinkedIn and sets the tone for all B2B companies in 2024.

The biggest lesson to grab is LinkedIn’s confidence to look outside of just B2B for campaign inspiration, taking notes from the humor style we see in DTC and the emphasis on jingles we see in the insurance industry.

Oh wait, I just realized I didn’t talk about that second part. Yes, JINGLES.

At the end of these commercials LinkedIn hits us with this clever and fresh, “LinkedIn is the place to be B2B”. Subtle, yet memorable, a slogan/jingle like this is a brand power move. 

The tone of the phrase is welcoming, sophisticated, and matter-of-fact, all of the things LinkedIn wants to exude as a brand. 

A slogan like this condenses the entire company’s message and value prop into one short catchy phrase and can become an earworm (as I like to call it LOL). This earworm will spur word of mouth, I mean, that’s exactly what’s happening right now by me breaking it down.

Now go tell your classmates about LinkedIn and what you learned!!