real business insights

CMAG 43
Presented by Dan Shapero
General Manager, LinkedIn Research Network
The right professionals for
real business insights

Agenda
• A little about LinkedIn
• Why we got into market
research
• What we’ve learned
• A few predictions
• Q&A

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional
network
• 45M members, 200 countries,
150 industries & 4 languages
45M members
As of August 2009
• 40% of the membership is outside
of North America
• 32M members available for B2B
research
• 2M new professionals join per
month
4.4M members
2005
8.5M members
2006
33M members
As of Dec 2008
10M members
2007
• Small businesses to global
enterprises are represented
1.6M members
2004
• 15 million business decision
makers
85,000 members
2003

The LinkedIn Global Footprint
North
America
Over 21M
Western
Europe
Over 6M
UK
Over 2M
Eastern
Europe
Over 1M
Pacific Rim
Over 850K
Central &
South America
Over 950K
India
Over 1.7M
Oceana
Over 1.3M
Africa
Over 500K
200+ countries are represented
LinkedIn is available in 4 languages!

Over 100,000 market researchers on LinkedIn

46 million members means depth in many
specific areas (1/3)
400k+ SMB Owners 100k+ CAD Designers/Engineers

46 million members means depth in many
specific areas (2/3)
300k+ IT decision makers
(manager+)
300k+ Software Engineers

46 million members means depth in many
specific areas (3/3)
50k+ lab scientists 140k+ facility/office managers

LinkedIn is now a mainstream professional tool

LinkedIn is about building your professional
brand and advancing your career
LinkedIn helps you exchange
knowledge, ideas, and opportunities
with your trusted business contacts.
• Build Personal Brand
• Strengthen Professional
Relationships
• Share opinions through surveys,
group discussion, answers, and
polls
• Hire & Search for Jobs

It starts with your professional profile
Headline, Industry,
Geo & Photo
Brief CV
Recommendations
Connections

The LinkedIn Profile represents your
professional brand around the web

How can LinkedIn add value to the
market research industry?

We heard a consistent voice from the
market
We were told:
I don’t really know who is
providing the answers
driving my major
marketing decisions.
Personally, I feel that my
reputation is at risk because
I don’t trust the data.
I know I need to throw 30%
of my online B2B sample,
but I don’t know about the
next 20%.
There is no reliable
B2B sample!
Can you help us?

The Stakes Are High
You Recommended
• Buying a company
• Launching a new product
• Entering a new market
• Who to hire and who to fire
• Expanding overseas
Based On Input From
• A college student?
• A retired engineer?
• An overseas call center rep?
• A graduate student in SE Asia?
• An SVP who takes surveys
repeatedly to accumlate points?
One major panel quality solution vendor claims it sees fraud rates in B2B panels of
three times the rates in consumer panels, and these fraudulent respondents answer
differently enough to wreck studies —exhibiting an upward bias and overstating their
interest in the area being surveyed.
Watch Out For the Landmine of B2B Online Research , Forrester, April 2009

Forrester Study Suggests Screening Alone
Does Not Create Confidence in B2B research
Presumed
Good
22%
Cleaned/
Trapped
28%
Screened
50%
N = 12,000
Data from a recent Forrester US/Europe
B2B Software decision making study

Confirming professional identity is a huge
challenge
Digital
fingerprinting
Panel and survey
de-duplication
Address/DOB
verification
Invitation-only
recruitment
Elimination of
speeders and
satisficers
Profiling/
screening
for decisionmakers
To what extent do today’s B2C quality efforts
address the challenges of B2B quality?

LinkedIn’s Mission in Market Research
Become the premiere supplier of high
quality B2B sample to the market research
community
Provide LinkedIn members with an
attractive avenue to share their expertise
and be rewarded for their participation

LinkedIn Surveys Process
Also available for
web to phone/focus
group recruiting
Member receives email
Member takes survey
Member receives incentive
• LinkedIn emails list of targeted
members
• Email invites member to
participate in research study
• Links direct members to
linkedin.com, which re-directs
members to survey site
• Email offers opt-out from receiving
further research opportunities
• Member takes survey on client
platform or platform provided by
LinkedIn
• Depending on the study, survey
fielding takes 3-10 business days
• Upon survey completion, members
are redirected to landing pages
and/or incentive site
– Completion incentive
– Terminate incentive
– Over-quota page
• Within re-direct link, client provides
appropriate member information

Professional Networks Are Uniquely Positioned
to Drive Accurate Profiles
I have to be accurate and up-to-date in
my profile…
…it’s how I present myself to my current
(and future) business colleagues

LinkedIn delivers real professionals with the
right responsibilities
• 98% of LinkedIn members that were identified as IT Professionals and
Developers through their profiles had their professional identities confirmed
by a third party
10% 2%
Phone interview with HR
Public online sources
Unable to reach
88%
N=50
Research conducted by
Merrill Research, April 2009

LinkedIn Profiles Provide Accurate
Targeting Capabilities

We have quite a different model than other
online panels
LinkedIn Research Network
Online Panels
Panel Recruitment
NA; Professionals opt in for professional
networking
Online and offline solicitation through
publications and partnerships with company
loyalty programs
Professional Survey
Takers
Members join to further their careers, not to take
surveys. No relationship between a member
joining and interest in survey
participation/earning incentives
Panelists sole purpose in joining is to take
surveys and earn incentives
Profile Validation
Self-policing nature of social network drives
professional profile accuracy and frequent
updating with job changes
No objective measures to validation professional
profile and little incentive for panelists to update
profile information
Phone Follow Up
With member permission, survey respondents
may be contacted via phone to corroborate their
professional identities or for additional research
Few companies will allow phone follow up with
survey respondents

Quality-Conscious Clients Have Tapped Into
LinkedIn’s Vast Network to Reach…
Example projects
Reference clients
• Hospital IT managers
• SMB Software VARs
• Residential realtors
• Corporate real estate brokers
• HR benefits decision makers
• Telecommunications equipment buyers and
vendors
• Corporate credit card decision-makers
• Network security engineers
• Supply chain executives in specific industries
• Law enforcement officers
• Global developer community
Over 30 clients including 7 of top 12 Honomichl
market research firms

Recent study: 11k IT decision makers provide
insight on next-generation technologies
Q. Of the following emerging technologies which one
excited you the most?
Q. And which of these technologies have been adopted or will be adopted by
your company in 2009?
% of respondents
100%
80
60
40
20
Other
Social networking
Mashup
Web-oriented
architecture
Green IT
Mobile
Computing
Cloud computing
or SaaS
Business
Intelligence tools
Virtualization
Virtualization
Business Intelligence tools
Web-oriented architectures for enterp. sol.
Mobile Computing
Social networking within your company
Unified communications
Green IT
Quad-Core Computing
Cloud computing or SaaS
Mashup
Google's Chrome
USB 3.0
Live Mesh
Memrister
None of the above
0
Emerging technologies
0 10 20 30 40 50%
% of respondents

Success Story: LinkedIn Research Network
Delivers 1,000 Global Executives
Challenge
• Global management consulting firm sought to understand trends in strategic
planning processes on a global basis
• Data from previous sample provider was unreliable
• The firm required insights from global population - including North America,
South America, Eastern and Western Europe, and Asia
Solution
• Director of Customer Insights Group contacted the LinkedIn Research
Network to field a 10-minute survey among 1,000 global executives
• The LinkedIn Research Network targeted and successfully delivered 1,000
Directors, VPs, and CXOs
• Senior executives from 15 countries provided thoughtful feedback on strategic
planning processes and tools
Results
LinkedIn promised and delivered 1,000 mid to c-level executives across
company sizes, industries, countries and languages. I would not hesitate
to work with LinkedIn.
Director, Customer Insights Group, Global Management Consulting Firm

Forrester Selects LinkedIn Research Network
for Global IT Surveys
• Helps companies acquire a deeper
understanding of their clients’ key issues
• Each year Business Data Services collects data
through surveys of more than 14,000 technology
decision-makers across 19 countries on six
continents
RESULTS
• Will deliver 9,750 IT decision makers and
business executives across 7 industry categories,
multiple company size segments and 5 countries
in North America and Europe for 5 studies

Head to head comparisons with online panels suggest greater
confidence in respondent authenticity and engagement
For this US research, our B2B panel competitor was 3X as likely to yield middle-ofthe
night responses raising doubts about their panelists’ professional identity
0.3
0.28
0.25
0.2
0.15
0.1
0.05
0
0.06
0.19
% of respondents taking survey
between 3 am and 7 am EST
0.1
% of respondents finishing in less than
10 minutes
Study conducted for global management consulting firm
among US Higher Education IT Decision Makers
LinkedIn
(N=175)
Commonly used B2B panel
(N=275)
We were very pleased with
quality of the responses from
LinkedIn – LinkedIn
respondents spent more time
in the survey answering the
questions and were more likely
to be actual decision makers
Consultant, Global
Management Consulting Firm

We’ve learned the advantages of profile
targeting over screening
• IT Decision Makers (BY TITLE) rate Brand1 much higher than Brand2 while
there is little difference between Brand1 and Brand2 among IT Implementers
• If you cannot accurately verify whether someone is a Decision Maker your
conclusions may be impacted
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
% of IT Ind
Contributors
very satisfied
% of IT
Managers+ very
satisfied
Source: LinkedIn’s internal IT survey conducted with over
10,000 IT Professionals
Brand 1
Brand 2

Key questions to consider
• Where do online panelists come from?
• How is profile information collected?
• Do screening questions work for “responsibility” or
“influence”?
• What incentives are required to attract the right
audience?
• How frequent is too frequent?
• Am I inviting the right people?
• Does this audience exist?
• Would you enjoy taking this survey?

A Few Predictions
1. Market researchers will demand greater transparency and take a
deeper look at the quality practices of their sample vendors
2. Major B2B end-clients will take a greater role (even sole decisionmaking)
in sample selection
3. Role validation will become the next frontier in B2B quality
4. Market researchers will dabble with new forms of research that are
enabled by social media (product diffusion, node-analysis, crowdsourcing,
etc)

Q&A
For questions or additional Information, please contact:
Dan Shapero
dshapero@linkedin.com