"The funnel marketing approach is dead": Nishant Rao, Country Manager, LinkedIn India

LinkedIn India started with 3.4 million users in December 2009. Today, with over 27 million, it has become the second largest user base outside US. Initially, the platform attracted a lot of small businesses that were focussed on generating leads on the platform. Gradually, as the user base increased, and with the introduction of various marketing products that help brands to advertise, mass brands like Van Heusen, Citibank and Volkswagen have taken to LinkedIn for advertising. afaqs! caught up with Nishant Rao, country manager, LinkedIn India to understand the latest developments. Excerpts:

Edited Excerpts

In terms of users, the early adopters in India were mainly senior professionals from the technology and finance sectors. Today, we have almost every industry on LinkedIn. Besides, there has been an expansion from the metros to the smaller towns in India where businesses are growing.

A major chunk of mid- and entry-level professionals too have come to LinkedIn. Students are our fastest growing segment of users. A professional goes through many stages in his career - from being a student to becoming a seasoned hand - and we have features that can help them further their careers.

We aspire to be the professional's daily dashboard. As a professional grows in his career, the needs change. For example, when a student or an early-stage professional is on LinkedIn, the focus is on jobs and we have tonnes of jobs listed across sectors on the site to help them. As they evolve, the need for networking and knowing their counterparts better grows.

Further, contact management and building your own professional brand becomes important and we have tools for that as well. Besides, there are general tools like LinkedIn Today (news feed service) and LinkedIn Influencers where a professional at any stage can benefit by learning about achievers like Nandan Nilekani or Kiran Mazumder Shaw. Fundamentally, our member proposition rests on three pillars - identity, network and knowledge. That is where we are different from other networks.

LinkedIn is not just about leads, it is a very good engagement platform. Earlier, for brands, the internet was either leads or display banners. Now is about generating conversations with the users and we are gradually seeing a lot of brands realise that.

We are also working towards changing the mindset of the advertiser from leads to conversations. The funnel marketing approach, where acquisition of a lead was the most important task, is dead. In the social world, it is all about identifying the right TG and getting into a dialogue with them. Marketing in the social world is no more about transactions alone.

We are also working towards educating the advertiser to realise the user mindset and act accordingly. TNS did a survey some time ago where they analysed the LinkedIn user as opposed to other personal networks. On LinkedIn, people come to invest time and are aspirational. Brands need to realise that because one is aspirational, he is looking for help on a certain piece.

I would say both these groups are our focus areas currently. And we are also seeing a lot of SMBs using us for engagement.

The targeted reach on LinkedIn is much higher than any other platform because it operates in a niche and has a deeper understanding of its users in terms of the industries and work group they belong to. Thus, brands tend to gain more through display advertising and in-mail promotion (private emails that can be sent to a LinkedIn member) on LinkedIn as the reach is much targeted.

Then there are engagement products like sponsored updates, which can be customised according to the TG's profile. For example, if I am Samsung, I can use different content to reach a tech guy vis-à-vis a sales guy.

And there is the third category of product where brands want users to take some action. For example, Van Heusen's 'best dressed professional' campaign asks one to vote and nominate the best-dressed employee he knows. Besides, our content marketing suite also helps our advertisers generate content of interest for our users.

Jobs had moved online long back - now it is the social recruiting age. Because we know you so well as a professional, we can send the relevant job to you. On other job sites, people are actively looking for jobs. However, not all LinkedIn members are active job seekers and we need to identify which candidate suits which job well. With our recruitment solutions product, we have the capability of identifying that candidate even if he is not looking for a change.

We assure quality and meaningful candidates. India has a sixth of the world's professionals and still it has a high short-time resignation rate of 17 per cent (people resigning within a year of joining). That is bad for the company and the person. That is where LinkedIn comes into play as job boards are mass in nature and one can do pinpointed targeting. In India as well as the APAC, many job boards have seen their revenues go the wrong way after LinkedIn changed the paradigm.

Being a consumer internet company we don't spend on marketing much as others in India do. But, having said that, there is a conversation going on with the team where we are realising that all these emerging markets behave differently and they might need some handholding in terms of how best to use the platform.

We are actively looking too promote our platform more in India. What we have so far done is to have partnered with colleges and institutes to educate students about the importance of having a LinkedIn account and how this can help them in their career growth. We have stayed away from TV but, as we gain more marketing professionals on board, we are open to all these ideas.