Linkedin marketing plan final team b9 escp europe 2014 by Sofia Cruz

Sara Bleger – Cana Cezairli - Sofia Cruz Daddato – Var Sahakyan

Table of Contents I. Executive Summary.................................................................................................3 II. The Challenge.........................................................................................................4 III. Situation Analysis 1. Category Definition and Analysis.................................................................4 2. Company Analysis……………………………………………………………………………………6 3. Competitor Analysis………………………………………………………………………………12 4. Customer Analysis…………………………………………………………………………………20 5. Collaborators/other externalities…………………………………………………………..26 6. Climate (PESTLE & SWOT)………………………………………………………………………26 IV. Objectives……………………………………………………………………………………………………….29 V. Alternative Marketing Strategies…………………………………………………………………….31 VI. Selected Marketing Strategy………………………………………………………………………….31 1. Justification of strategy selection………………………………………………………….32 2. Target Market Segments………………………………………………………………………32 3. Differential Advantage………………………………………………………………………….33 4. Marketing Mix………………………………………………………………………………………34 Product…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………35 Price……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..41 Distribution (Place)……………………………………………………………………………………………….43 Promotion…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….44 VII. Short & Long-‐Term Projections (Budget)………………………………………………………47 VIII. Implementation, Monitors and Controls……………………………………………………..48 IX. Contingency Plans…………………………………………………………………………………………..51 X. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………………….52 Appendix……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..53

I. Executive Summary LinkedIn is one of the largest social networking platforms and the market leader of all professional network service websites worldwide. This marketing plan is aimed at both at strengthening LinkedIn’s positioning towards other professional networking services and other social networking platforms as well as increasing LinkedIn’s revenues over time. The structure of this marketing plan consists of first, understanding LinkedIn’s current situation and positioning in the market, identifying of potential gaps after and last but not least, presenting a professional networking service that is more consumer oriented, matching the jobs to be done of the LinkedIn’s premium accounts for individual users with the services provided by the platform. Our marketing strategy is built on the redefinition of LinkedIn premium accounts by introducing completely new features as well as reconfiguring certain existing ones under a new bundle and pricing options. We believe that there is an underlying potential for individual users of premium accounts to grow if substantial value is added. Currently, as mentioned by LinkedIn’s CEO Jeff Weiner himself, only 14% of the overall revenues are generated from individual users premium accounts while 56% come from recruiting services and 30% from advertisers. In our understanding, the current LinkedIn premium account has two main issues to be addressed: a clear separation between the networking and the job seeking offer which doesn’t reflect the way LinkedIn users think about these jobs to be done – in fact they are a continuum of one another – and also the fact the premium offer seems too complex, not communicated to its full potential and not adding enough value for money, which is reflected in the low percentage of users that have a premium account. It is our belief that the suggested marketing strategy will increase premium account sales for the first year in 5% as well as increase the attractiveness of the platform for all users, recruiters and advertisers creating a win-‐win-‐win context for the stakeholders. Moreover, by redefining the premium account features and by making free some features that have been currently paid we will be tacking one of the major weaknesses of LinkedIn which is the fact that even though it helps users to establishing first connections with their network it doesn’t help them going beyond that putting LinkedIn in a vulnerable situation when compared to other social networks where the time spent per user is increasingly higher.

II. The Challenge LinkedIn More, in its innovated form, is a professional networking service with high functionality features that allow self-‐expression and content presentation in a user friendly and interactive way. This service evolved from its previous condition within a market competitive landscape that posed a threat to LinkedIn’s future as a market leader of professional networking services. These threats came primarily from social network platforms where increased trends of professional networking and communication have been recently registered. Through the following marketing plan our objective has been to address these treats by filling the missing gaps in the services and reorganization of already existing features. However our strategy also allows Linkedin to capture a new market segment and convert 5% more of the free user base into paying users. By that our strategy address both, threats and creates opportunities for growth.

III. Situation Analysis 1. Category Definition and Analysis

Social networking services can be defined as a web-‐based platform that allows users to build social networks or social relations among people who share interests, activities, backgrounds or real-‐life connections. These services enable individuals as well as organizations to create a representation of themselves, usually in the form of a public user profile, including basic background information, interest, pictures as well as their social links. Users are given the opportunity to interact over the Internet over several options, including e-‐mail or instant messaging, and share ideas, knowledge, pictures, posts, activities, events and interests with people in their network. People join social networking sites because it gives them an opportunity to express their views, a feel of independency and self-‐esteem. It’s just a click way to create a virtual profile and connect with millions of users across the world. Social networking websites can be divided into seven main categories: Social Connections, Multimedia Sharing, Professional Networking, Informational, Educational, Hobbies and Academic (see Figure 1).

Figure 1 – The Social Networking Classification

Within the general social networking services industry, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter represent the market leaders, closely followed by Google Plus and Yahoo Answers. The beginnings of professional network services were in 1997 with the launch of the first recognizable site called sixdegrees.com. The platform combined features like creating profiles, adding and searching friends. Since then, the professional network services market continued to grow with more and more sites being launched. By 2010, the number of active social networking users had reached 1.5 billion people worldwide. Below is a list of the top 5 social networking sites according to their market share in the United States in June 2013. In order to better understand this chart, the percentages in perspective represent the absolute number of visits (1% of market share is approximately 35.1 million visits.

Rank

Site

Market Share of Visits(%)

Facebook

57,13

YouTube

24,80

Twitter

1,72

1,10

2. Company Analysis History

LinkedIn was founded in 2002 and was launched in May 2003 by Reid Hoffman, former CEO and current Chairman of the board. LinkedIn was created with the idea that a network that is focused on business can connect professionals worldwide in order to make them more productive and successful and offering them better opportunities. After two years LinkedIn had a membership base of almost a million professionals worldwide and in 2005 it launched its business lines jobs and subscriptions and introduced a premium service for recruiters and researchers. In 2011 LinkedIn went public under the symbol of “LNKD” and traded its first shares on May 19, 2011 on the New York Stock Exchange. The Company

LinkedIn can be described as the world's largest professional networking service (PNS) website worldwide. It is a platform geared towards companies and industry professionals looking to make new business contacts or keep in touch with previous co-‐workers, affiliates and clients. LinkedIn can count 300 million users from 200 countries and is available in over 15 languages, including English, French and Spanish. About half of the members are from the United States and 11 million are from Europe. Approximately two new members per seconds join the network, with 57 million added only in 2012. This leads to high level of monthly traffic of 21.4 million users in the US and 46,7 worldwide. As direct competitors of LinkedIn there are Viadeo, a French-‐based company with more than 50 million users from 186 countries and XING, a German-‐based company with 13 million users from more than 190 countries. Please refer to Figure 2 below.

Figure 2 – LinkedIn Competitors

More and more social network sites are now being used for professional purposes with an increasing number of job seekers using social networks to look for work and connect with potential employers. According to Jobvite’s 2012 Social Jobseeker Survey, the three main social networking platforms used for professional purposes are LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. In fact Twitter has become lately a mainstay for professional development. Furthermore as the world population is getting younger, Facebook and Twitter have shown to be the best platform solution to follow the evolution of these more and more younger users, who may not have found LinkedIn as an interesting tool jet in order to express themselves in the right and most appropriate way. Mission, Vision, Value and Strategy

Mission: “Connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful”

As the company says in its official releases, the main mission for LinkedIn is to enhance the professional performance and success of every single member by prioritizing their needs in order to connect them with the worlds best talents, including recruiters, companies, managers, future employees and so on, and create a long-‐term value for the members. Vision: “Create economic opportunity for every professional in the world”

LinkedIn’s culture is reflected in the company’s values, which show us the urge of excellence of the offered service. Values:

“Our customer comes first” “Relationships matters” “Be open, constructive and honest” “Demand excellence” “Take intelligent risks” “Act like an owner”

Stategy:

The key strategic elements in order to implement the company’s mission are the following: • “Foster Viral Member Growth.” With over 277 million members currently, LinkedIn wants to keep its viral growth at the highest level by optimizing the registration experience and the search engine performance. • “Serve as the Professional Profile of Record.” It is extremely important to maintain the trust with the members in order to enhance the profile tools and offering the best service in searching the right professional profile member. • “Be the Essential Source of Professional Insights.” LinkedIn assists its members by providing them relevant insights. Thanks to the acquisition of Slideshare, now it is even easier to share the content publicly or privately. • “Work Wherever Our Members Work.” The objective is to continue to grow and to even offer the service via open application programming interfaces or APIs. • “Increase Monetization While Creating Value for Our Members.” LinkedIn can leverage on its business model and on providing talent solutions in order to monetize the platform. An example would be offering the members better tools to share their professional skills. In all these points we can find the three main pillars of the LinkedIn’s strategy: Simplify: The company wants to offer its members a service, which is easy to understand and to use. Grow: As we have seen before, LinkedIn would like to expand in a geographical way but also increase its revenues in order to to expand its monetary services for the members. Everyday: It is extremely important that this service is disposable at any moment and at any place for the LinkedIn members

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Furthermore the professional network service is based on the concept of “six degree separation”, according to which every user is six or fewer steps away from any other user in the world via introduction. Solution LinkedIn has free and monetized solutions, each one providing specific services that are listed below. Free solutions: This offer permits the expansion of the professional network of users. There are different possibilities that every user has for their own LinkedIn profile: Manage professional identity by adding your professional experiences and specific skills (hard and soft skills) Build and engage with the professional network by inviting new contacts in order to expand the network and have a visibility of “people you may know”, indirect contacts that are already connected with your established LinkedIn network Have access to knowledge, opportunities and insights by becoming a member of groups of specific professional subjects and by uploading documents and presentations through Slideshare (slideshare.com is a separated website from LinkedIn which is an added service) Multiplatform access, by having access to LinkedIn through the smartphone Monetized solutions: Apart from the free solution, users can add several features, which are payable in order to increase their profile performance. These include the following: Talent solutions: With this feature companies can identify talents according to their needs in a more efficient way Marketing solutions: This feature is specifically for advertisers and its purpose is to reach the most relevant audience with a product through a graphic or text link in LinkedIn Premium Subscription: This is aimed for users, who want to improve their profile We can distinguish between four main service categories, which offer free and monetized solutions. For Networking: This service is aimed at individuals, who want to find and contact the right people. There are four subcategories, Free, Business, Business Plus and Executive, which differ

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only by the amount of information that LinkedIn provides to the registered user. These offers vary from 0 to 49,99 pounds per month. For Jobseekers: This service is aimed at individuals, who want to accelerate their career. Here we can also differentiate between four subcategories, which are Free, Job Seeker Basic, Job Seeker, Job Seeker Plus. As for the Networking offer the price (from 0 to 39,99 pounds per month) can vary according to the disposable data offered by LinkedIn. For Recruiters: This offer is aimed at recruiters, who want to reach top talent on LinkedIn. The subcategories for this service (Free, Talent Basic, Recruiter Lite and Recruiter Corporate) vary from 0 to 499.95 pounds per month and are reasonably alter according to the data amount they will be offered. For Sales Professionals: This offers is aimed at sellers. There are four subcategories (Free, Sales Basic, Sales Plus and Sakes Executive), which differ only by the amount of information that LinkedIn provides to the registered user. These offers vary from 0 to 49,99 pounds per month. Company Performance The following information has been provided by the “LinkedIn Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2013 Results” report. Revenue: • Revenue from Talent Solutions products: $245.6 million (increase of 53% compared to the fourth quarter of 2012). It represents 55% of total revenue in Q4 of 2013. • Revenue from Marketing Solutions products: $113.5 million (increase of 36% compared to Q4 of 2012). It represents 25% of total revenue Q4 of 2013. • Revenue from Premium Subscriptions products: $88.1 million (increase of 48% compared to Q4 of 2012). It represents 20% of total revenue in the Q4 of 2013.

Figure 3 – Revenue by product category

61% of revenues are generated by the United States along, followed by Europe, Middle East and Africa with 24%. After that comes the Asia-‐pacific region with 8% of the generated revenue. The Net income for Q4 of 2013 was $48.2 million ($40.2 million for Q4 of 2012)

Adjusted EBITDA for the Q4 was $111.4 million, or 25% of revenue ($78.6 million for Q4 of 2012, or 26% of revenue).

Figure 4 – Adjusted EBITDA

Data from “LinkedIn Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2013 Results” report (31.12.2013) (in thousands) Total assets: $ 3,352,793 Current Liabilities: $ 641,991 Total Liabilities: $ 718,399 Cash from operations: $ 82,453 Cash from investing activities: $ -‐ 714,413 Cash from financing activities $ 38,596 Net change in cash: $ -‐ 593,203 Forecasts: Full Year 2014 Guidance: Revenue is expected to range between $2.02 billion and $2.05 billion. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be approximately $490 million. The company expects depreciation and amortization to be approximately $225 million, and stock-‐based compensation to be approximately $325 million. 3. Competitor Analysis

The two direct competitors of LinkedIn are XING and Viadeo, which both are social networking services dedicated to professionals. LinkedIn has the leadership in terms of numbers of users, revenue and brand awareness Figure 5.

Figure 5 -‐ Professional network service market

Xing XING is a social media platform aimed at professionals. The platform is present in 200 countries. It counts 14 millions members worldwide, including 7 millions based in German-‐speaking countries. About 76% of all page views come from Germany and 90% from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It is available in 16 languages. It is a platform, where professionals of all kind of industry can meet up, find jobs, colleagues, new assignments, corporate partners, experts, generate business ideas, and meet at networking event organized by Xing. Basic membership is for free and the Premium membership cost ranges from 6,35€ to 9,95€ per month and provides the following features to the user: • Search people and companies with more specific qualifications with advanced an research • Identify the members who have visited the user’s profile and find out exactly how they find them • Send private message to members who are not connections • Have more storage space • The user can add references and awards to his information page

Xing continues to develop their premium offer for its members. They have started offering new features: • Premium members can advantage from tailored partner offers to help them during their daily work • Statistics provide precise information profile visits • Keyword analysis, which enable profile optimization and makes it easier to be found XING offers the system for closed communities, called Enterprise group in which the group has its own access paths and interface designs. Their application is comparable to the LinkedIn’s offering, but nevertheless offers the user the possibility to scan its business card. In 2010, XING acquired Amiando AG, a company based in Munich, which provides online event management and ticketing, for both business and entertainment events. Moreover, XING acquired Kununu in 2013, the leading employer review platform in German-‐speaking countries, to reinforce its position as social recruiting market leader. XING continues trying to guarantee the maximum data security for its members, insisting on the German quality. XING is one of the few social networks with SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption, the same used for online banking. The XING security team is a part of the cyber security team at the Federal Office for Information Security. In the 2012 financial year, Xing generated revenue of 73,3 million, rising by 11% from 66,2 million in 2011. Weaknesses XING’s brand recognition is not very high. It is mostly known in the German speaking countries and thus it is very localized. After several years of trying to expand worldwide, XING has abandoned their international strategy, closing down offices and subsidiaries in China, Spain and Turkey. Therefore, XING is a European player, with a very local strategy. Their point of differentiation is not very strong, which hinders them from competing with LinkedIn. Strengths

XING highlights the German provenance of the platform to prove the quality and above all its high security. The premium membership is less expensive, in comparison to both competitors. In terms of subscribers, they are number one worldwide with 810.000 premium members at the end of March 2013, that is to say 5,78% of the actual users. It means that they are capable of creating a loyalty towards a large numbers of their customers. The figure below shows us that even if LinkedIn has the greatest number of users, its number of subscribers is proportionally low compared to both XING and Viadeo.

Viadeo Viadeo has been launched in 2004 in France. It is the second biggest professional network platform worldwide, followed by LinkedIn. The company counts 55 millions members, is present in 186 countries and is available in seven languages. It is the leading PNS in France with 8 millions users, as well as in China with more than 17 millions users. Viadeo’s strategy is to focus on emerging markets, such as China, Russia and South America. They want to offer very localized services to each country. That is why they acquired Tianji in 2007, but chose to keep the name. Viadeo aims to appeal to “more than just white collar workers” explains Fécherolle. Viadeo follows a multi-‐local strategy. They keep growing in Europe and through acquisitions in emerging countries, which has allowed Viadeo to become a leader in China and in Brazil. LinkedIn has developed an international brand, while Viadeo adapts its offer to each country in which it is present. They have a glocal approach, assuming that professional do business locally. Finally, the Viadeo lab was launched in 2013, located in San Francisco, where a team is in charge of shaping future products and services development. “Viadeo needs to be different to LinkedIn, which means a focus on innovation and new ideas; that’s the aim of the Viadeo Labs team,” explains Olivier Fécherolle, the chief strategy and development officer at Viadeo.

The premium membership costs 8,95€ per month and offers the user the following features: • See who has visited your profile • Write to all the members of Viadeo • See all the profile of the website • Add contact to your network • Use all the search criteria • Spread your events The company refuses to communicate on its revenues, audiences, and number of subscribers, because it is not listed in the stock exchange. Nevertheless, Viadeo is planning to provide this information by 2015. It appears, however, that the company has around 300 000 subscribers. The revenue can be estimated around 65 millions in 2013. Weaknesses For now, the acquisitions of Tianji and ApnaCircle as well as their focus on emerging countries allows Viadeo to grow its number of users. However, it creates difficulties in generating higher revenues, given that they haven’t developed a business model in those countries. Moreover, the platform is limited regarding the range of languages it is offering. Strengths With their acquisition strategy, the brand has grown in recognition. It is the second social media for professionals in the world. While LinkedIn is more well known in the United States, Viadeo has managed to reach emerging countries such as China and India Viadeo is a challenger, it is following the leader LinkedIn. Nevertheless, it is trying to differentiate itself by creating new features with innovation such as the Viadeo lab. Their premium offer (8,95€ per month) is not as expensive as the offer of LinkedIn. LinkedIn, Viadeo and XING depend on three sources of revenue, which include the premium membership, advertising and human resource services. 56% of LinkedIn’s revenue comes from the recruiting services, 30% from the marketing solutions and 14% from the subscriptions. Regarding Viadeo, the revenue is generated 50% from the premium membership, 30% from the RH services and 20% from advertising. As for XING’s revenue, it is generated 79% from the premium subscribers, 7% from the advertising, 13% from the HR solutions. Amongst other professional networking services, LinkedIn is the leader, far from its two competitors Viadeo and XING. But this leadership can rapidly be weakened considering the dynamism of the market and the changing tastes of the customers. Finally additional features and innovation could attract new consumers as well.

Facebook and Twitter If LinkedIn has the leadership among social media dedicated to professionals, it is far behind among others social media platform, such as Facebook and Twitter. They can both be considered as indirect competitors. Even if, they can be complimentary, the first two being dedicated to personal life and LinkedIn to professional life, they are all social media services. Users have the choice on which website they want to spend their time. However, Facebook and Twitter increasingly used for professional purposes. LinkedIn users tend to be in their 40s and older, and tend to be white collars with college degrees. However, the current generation of young professionals grew up with platforms like Facebook and Twitter. They are used to sharing, connecting and communicating through these mediums. 15% of the job seekers find a new job via Facebook, 8% via Twitter. Users can update their profile with professional information. Additionally they can provide their profile on a job application and connect with potential employers. It is now common to follow or like the companies users are interested in and show their passion for certain brands to potential employers. By the end of 2013, Facebook recorded 1,23 billion monthly active users, while 241 million people are monthly active on Twitter. The amount of unique visitors (desktop and mobile based) from September 2012 to September 2013 is represented in the graph below.

The revenue of Twitter for 2013 is 664,9 million dollars, rising by 52,3% from 316,9 in 2012. The revenue of Facebook for 2013 is 7,872 billiard of dollars, rising by 35,35% from 5,089 in 2012. Weaknesses Facebook and Twitter were initially meant for sharing content of the users’ general interest and personal life. So it can be difficult to separate private from professional information. Strengths Facebook and Twitter target younger people, who have entered the adult life with these social networks. Therefore, they are used to sharing and communicating information about their private and professional life’s on these media platforms. Facebook and Twitter allow their user to show their personal interests. It is not about displaying degrees and work experiences, given that usually young people have either none or few professional experiences. However, Facebook and Twitter can help them in promoting themselves towards possible recruiters. The figures below display how Twitter and Facebook mostly reach young people, with moderate income and with few degrees (see Figure 6 and 7).

Figure 6 -‐ Profile of the job seekers on Twitter

Figure 7 -‐ Profile of the job seekers on Facebook

Furthermore, Facebook and Twitter are part of the user’s daily habits. Facebook is a very engaging social media platform. In the US alone, 114 billion minutes are spent on Facebook on a monthly basis. By comparison, only 5,3 billion minutes per month are spent on Twitter. Each month, consumers spend 6,45 hours on Facebook, 170 minutes on Twitter and only 17 minutes on LinkedIn. In order to analyse the market, we have assembled every type of competitor (see Figure 8). The competitors that exist on different competition levels are detailed below. The direct competitors of LinkedIn are the one competing on the exact same market, the professional network service: Viadeo and XING. Then, we considered the main social media platform.

Figure 8 – Level of Extended Competition

4. Customer Analysis Market On April 18th 2014 LinkedIn announced that the total number of registered users worldwide has reached 300 million. 93 million users come from the United States and 65 million users come from Europe, which means that 57% out of all users worldwide are American or European. Europe is followed by India with 9% of users, Africa & Middle East with 6%, Brazil with 6%, Canada with 3%, Southeast Asia with 3% and Australia with 2%. Please refer to Figure 9.

Figure 9 – Geographical representation of the LinkedIn members

Currently the LinkedIn network is growing by two members per second or 10-‐15 million members per quarter. The rate of unique visitors measures how many users (member or non member) have visited the website at least once during a month. This measure shows the growth in brand awareness among users. The average of monthly unique visitors has increased from 16 million (in 2008) to 123 million (2012). This important metric shows us the overall success as well as growth in other business segments such as premium account subscriptions. Additionally the graph below aims to show that LinkedIn in continuously gaining market share in the United States, even if it has to fight against the big players, such as Facebook, Youtube or Twitter (see Figure 10).

Figure 10 -‐ Market Share of social media in the US (April 2008 – December 2013)

Segmentation Type of Customers The LinkedIn business model is created on the assumption that free access will by itself increase the added value for the paying members, which are mostly companies. We distinguish between two main segments: the private users and the companies.

Private users: These type of customers are the ones who use LinkedIn mostly to build and engage with their professional network. Either they can actively seek a job or they can network for potential job opportunities. The latter category is the most significant as stated by LinkedIn itself: “80% of individual users are passive candidates that aren’t currently looking for a new job.” Individual LinkedIn users tend to be white-‐collar workers and, as shown in the graph below, cover industries of “higher education, information technology services, financial services and retail account” with more than 50% of all users. Please refer to the graph below.

Product usage of private users: Individual LinkedIn users have a tendency to use LinkedIn on a free bases, which allows them to have access to four main activities: • Create/Manage their professional identity by adding professional experiences as well as hard and soft skills to their profile • Expand their professional network, inviting new contacts and exploring contacts that have already been established • Access to career opportunities by searching or replying to LinkedIn suggested opportunities • Access and share knowledge and insights, by being a member of groups of specific professional subjects and by uploading documents and presentation through Slideshare.com (a LinkedIn owned website for sharing content, presentations, results, research) When managing their professional identity, users usually require the following: • A simplified yet relevant version of their CV • The ability to express who they are as person • The opportunity to stand out from other LinkedIn profiles Based on the last point mentioned, we found a gap between the client’s and LinkedIn’s offer which is mainly focused on standardization. When expanding their professional network, those same users will mostly look for the following: • Initiate or strengthen their relationships with business contacts • Gather the maximum information available about who has visited their profile • Connect to successful and relevant professionals in their areas of interest and expertise • Reinforce personal awareness, image and reputation When approaching potential career opportunities, individual LinkedIn users will look for the following: • Increase their confidence regarding potential employment opportunities • Find job opportunities • Save time when applying for a job • Make the most of the existing network connections when applying to a specific company Finally, when accessing knowledge and insights, these same users will mostly want to:

• •

Find or provide valuable insights on specific areas of expertise (access and share information) Reinforce personal awareness, image and reputation

After defining the requirements for the activities used the most, it is our understanding that there are other transversal needs, with the most important being the following ones: • Simplicity when using the platform • Have access everywhere, available at all times Individual LinkedIn users have a tendency to use LinkedIn on free bases, although they could also choose the premium services. According to Jeff Weiner himself on a 2014 interview, premium accounts are responsible of 14% overall LinkedIn revenues. Therefore, price sensitivity is very high. The services provided by the premium subscription are the following: • InMail: the possibility of contacting members, which are outside of the direct network. • Advanced search: the ability of 1) accessing more results while searching for connections, 2) accessing complete profiles (more detailed) while searching for connections 3) using more criteria while performing a search in the network and 4) receiving notifications regarding a specific search. Companies: There are 2,6 million companies worldwide that have company profiles on LinkedIn. The main objectives of companies using the LinkedIn platform are the following: • Make better and faster decisions • Find the best candidates for the job considering both technical and behavioral competences. • Develop brand awareness, brand image and brand reputation Product’s usage of the companies:

Enterprise recruiting tools The recruiting solutions that LinkedIn offers are: • LinkedIn Recruiter (the company’s recruiting platform) gives companies access to the entire database of 150 million professionals to find and seek passive candidates, • LinkedIn Job Postings let you post jobs and buy highly targeted ads (LinkedIn ads are very intelligent and they promote themselves to LinkedIn users in a very powerful way), and our research shows that they can be much more effective than ads placed on Facebook for professional positions, • LinkedIn Employment Branding services now let you build out a career website within the LinkedIn network, to attract candidates, promote jobs to the right people, • LinkedIn Talent Pipeline manages your stream of incoming candidates, giving you capabilities similar to a candidate marketing and applicant tracking system. LinkedIn has transformed these operations and now even the recruiting companies are using LinkedIn as their primary network capital. 5. Collaborators/Other Externalities LinkedIn Corporation has different types of subsidiaries. It has acquired companies from different categories to improve its features. In 2012, LinkedIn has acquired Slideshare, the world’s largest community for sharing presentations. The system is free and can be accessed by everyone, who is interested in viewing a presentation that has been uploaded. LinkedIn has more than 60 million unique visitors per month. LinkedIn users can share Slideshare presentations directly from the LinkedIn website. Pulse is an application that was purchased by LinkedIn in 2013 and in 2014 a Pulse App was launched called LinkedIn Pulse. The app allows the user to access and share articles and topics both with the application and on the LinkedIn website. In addition to that, LinkedIn has acquired the Cardmunch App in 2011. Users can take a picture of a business card, which will automatically be converted into a contact. LinkedIn has announced the launch of a Chinese version for the website. The expansion will take place as a joint venture with Sequoia China and China Broadband Capitaline. 6. Climate (PESTLE & SWOT) Political factors Governments can express concern about privacy content. There is also a concern about the use of social network for illegal behaviour, such as unauthorized spread of national security information. On the other hand, government is part of the privacy issue, because they collect all the data on individuals on social media.

Economic factors The global economic crisis goes along with the increase of the unemployment. Young people with college degrees or people in their 50s are the most affected. Social factors Professional social network offers the possibility to connect with possible recruiters or colleagues, to show the experiences, and eventually to find a job. It is a more convenient, simplified and less expensive way to find a job. People change their jobs approximately 5 to 7 times throughout their professional lives. Besides, opportunities to move into different countries for a job or for any other reason are more important, international professional social network offer to possibility to facilitate the finding process in a completely new country. The CV and the selection process are different in each country. For example adding a picture is mandatory in South America, but in some European countries it is not recommended. Professional social media offer to opportunity to standardize the CV and the selection process. Technological factors The global trend is to complete as many tasks online as possible in order to save time as well as money. Younger people are used to sharing and communicating information about their private and professional life on social media. The number of applications (for smartphones and tablets) keeps growing very quickly, with lots of innovation. Legal factors Laws concerning labour agreements, privacy of data, acceptable marketing has to be taken into consideration. There is also privacy and data protection laws, and their application to the Internet is unclear and changeable according to each country. Issue around this topic can potentially harm the brand. Environmental factors Green tendency can conduct to the usage of digital tools. Users do not have to print CVs for each company they want to apply to.

Strenghts - Brand recognition - Leadership in its category - A lot of features - International presence - Innovative brand

Weaknesses - Low number of subscriptions - Lack of transparency of the premium offer - Complicated features, not well explained - Expensive price of the premium offer - Weak presence outside of the US - Privacy issue - Not a lot of time spent on the platform - Not ideal PNS for niche professional (doctors, artists…) - LinkedIn is seen mainly as a networking tool instead of a job finding tool. - After the first contact among users, communication tend to be very limited.

Opportunities Emerging market : Asia, South America Application trend Everyone around the world can be a potential user New target groups (artists, doctors, physicians)

Threats - Direct Competitors but also media all type of social media with more attractive ways to display your CV or your personality towards possible employers

IV. Objectives To estimate top line growth we conducted forecasting of future sales. A number of criteria that are discussed below were used as sources of insight and data for the future sales: 1. Big data (internal and external) 2. Information from previous sales 3. Promotion campaign A strategic decision was faced regarding the choice of strategy for forecasting: shall the path of segmentation according to population be taken or the job done approach? A decision was made to concentrate on the job done approach based on the rationale that any population segment that uses LinkedIn potentially may be interested in integrating these new features in their professional self-‐expression and communication. Therefore only a job done approach allows us to capture the actual size of the demand for the introduced innovations. As mentioned above the following sources of insight and data have been consulted for the forecasting: Big Data: It is well known that online platforms have access to vast amount of information on customer behaviour patterns. Internal LinkedIn data was one source for user behaviour analysis to determine potential tendencies for self-‐expression through multimedia sources. External big data analysis from other social media platforms for similar user behaviour analytics were purchased and analysed. The data analysis based on our assumptions would reveal that 100 million people in the US exhibit behaviour for self-‐expression. Additionally the LinkedIn internal data on profile completeness shows (according to www.undercoverrecruiter.com) that by 2012 above 50 % of the profiles had 100% completeness as defined by LinkedIn. The growing trend in the customer profile completeness after the improvement of the feedback interface tells us that there is tendency among customers to push their profiles towards better self-‐expression. Information from previous sales: According to the Economist in 2010, 1% of the user base were paid users. By 2012 this number was 8.4%. According to www.socialmediatoday.com the paid user percentage had grown in 2013 to 15.1%. These tell us about growth tendences worldwide in terms of premium accounts. Based on the available information it was extrapolated that US based premium accounts would be This proves that there is a worldwolde Our objective is to increase this number to 25% as a result of the innovations introduced. Promotion campaign: With the rate of $1.44 per 1000 impressions (for Google platforms /according to http://www.profitworks.ca) we will leverage 75 million impressions in order to promote the service which will cost the platform a respective $108000. This scope of promotion is essential for creating enough momentum and magnitude on the campaign by that allowing us to add the additional 5%.

As mentioned, premium accounts constitute 14% of the revenues and our objective is to increase that percentage up by 5%. Below are presented numbers and calculations relevent to market share and sales forecast. Current Linkedin revenues $860 Million (80% market share) Market value: $1075 Million Forecasted increase in revenues: $860 Million * 5% = $43 Million Out of the increased revenues, 10% are forecasted to be as new account holders while the dominant portion, the 90% convertings from free accounts to paid ones. Therefore, according to Ansoff’s matrix, our growth strategy can mainly be seen as product development, once we are recreating the existing service into a new one and targeting it to the existing market (free LinkedIn users). The equivalent revenues are respectively 10% of the $43 Million -‐ $4.3 Million 90% of the $43 Million -‐ $38.7 Million The $4.3 million that accounts for the 10% covers for 0.4% increase in market share. The forecasted increase in revenue was broken down over a quarterly plan with the following structure: October -‐ December = $8 Within this quater we have the launching of the two videos and therefore we have an initial spike in the service demand. Jan -‐ March = $15 April -‐ June = $11 July -‐ September = $9 Anual increase in sales = 5% = $43 Million

Forecast $16 000 000 $14 000 000 $12 000 000 $10 000 000 $8 000 000 $6 000 000 $4 000 000 $2 000 000 $0 Oct-‐Dec

Jan-‐Mar

Apr-‐Jun

Jul-‐Sep

V. Alternative Marketing Strategies Given that we believe that LinkedIn premium accounts have growth potential that has not yet been exploited, we have decided to focus our strategy on this product. Initially, we were considering the creation of one or two features that would simply be added to the existing offer of premium accounts, which would increase the added value for end users. However, after deeper analysis, we came to the conclusion that features of LinkedIn premium accounts needed to be rebuild from scratch because they were too complex, poorly communicated to the end user and not valuable enough considering the price. On top of that we believe that networking and job seeking are much more interconnected than considered by LinkedIn. This is why instead of just adding random features, we took the approach that takes into consideration the complete consumer experience with LinkedIn and reinvents it.

VI. Selected Marketing Strategy With our objective of offering LinkedIn members a more consumer-‐oriented, user-‐friendly experience and interactive, we have chosen to redefine the structure of the premium subscription model. From now on individual users will have the choice of one type of free and one type of premium account. This is a turnaround from the existing premium account structure, which is divided into two different offers, one focused only on networking purposes and the other focused job seeking activities. In addition to that, the premium account now incorporates

one unified package with real value-‐added features, which will allow individual users to fully express themselves beyond text and through interactivity. 1. Justification of Strategy Selection Even though we understand that the LinkedIn business model is created in a way that recruiters and advertisers pay so that users can freely access LinkedIn, we believe that there is an underlying potential for individual users of premium accounts to grow if substantial value is added. As mentioned by LinkedIn’s CEO Jeff Weiner in an interview for Exame Magazine, currently only 14% of the overall revenues are generated from premium accounts. By adapting our strategy, we think that individual user premium accounts will become an increasing source of revenue over time. Currently, LinkedIn premium accounts have two different offers, with one of them targeting networking purposes and the other one targeting job seeking purposes. However, we have realised that the networking offer is too complex, poorly communicated and not valuable enough. In addition, we believe that professional networking and job seeking are interconnected a lot more than it is considered by LinkedIn. Therefore, we have decided to come up with one offer only that increases added value and that combines both networking and job seeking purposes. Moreover, we think that for a professional profile to be fully representative of the person behind, features need to be added that go beyond past experience towards showing character and personality. Apart from that, we decided to offer certain networking features for free in order to increase the attractiveness of the platform. This strategy will tackle one of LinkedIn’s major weaknesses, which is the fact that it helps users to establish a connection for the first time, but doesn’t motivate them to make the most out of their network after the connection has been made. We believe that value is added to LinkedIn users if needs are addressed for a price that consumers are willing to pay. This is what we are aiming for with the creation of a new, simplified, user-‐friendly premium account that adds value to the consumer. 2. Target Market Segments Our target market consists of LinkedIn individual users that are in different moments of their career life and have a desire to stand out from the masses. We believe that creative people, young souls, students and business people that want to build on their own personal brand are the ones that are most likely to adhere to our premium offering. Even though we expect new and existing users of LinkedIn to subscribe to the new premium offer, we believe that the conversion rate from free to premium account will account for the majority and will increase consistently over time. We think that students as well young professionals are the ones that require advice and support when it comes to their future careers. With features including Profile Feedback and Career

Advice services, our target group of students and young professionals will be provided with the advice and support they need. Moreover, given that a user-‐friendly platform with features allowing members to stand out from the masses with a profile that goes beyond text is a requirement for people interested in using professional networking services in general. This is why we are targeting existing as well as potential new subscribers of LinkedIn, which include students and young professionals in particular. 3. Differential Advantage LinkedIn’s main competitors, Xing and Viadeo, offer a premium version of their service that is comparable to LinkedIn’s current premium scheme. Features include the following: • Tracking of who has visited your profile • Direct contacting of other members via (including non-‐connections) • Viewing of complete profile of connections • Targeted searching tool for companies, individuals, suppliers etc. These findings bring us to the conclusion that LinkedIn, as it is now, has no concrete differential advantage regarding the features and services it offers to the user. On the other hand, LinkedIn’s main competitive advantage is the large network of professionals, companies, recruiters and head-‐hunters it has developed. Thus, it provides users with access to a number of sources. It steadily continues to acquire new subscribers, which proves that LinkedIn is constantly attracting new users. This can be attributed to the strength and recognition of the brand. The new LinkedIn will be offering a new package with features that do not exist in any other business-‐oriented social platform. It will allow users to customize their profiles according to their preferences and represent themselves on a more personal level that goes beyond text. Moreover, the future add-‐on services, which include one-‐to-‐one profile feedback and career advice, will be features that have not been offered by any of the other platforms in the professional networking category. As a summary, the new LinkedIn will be a fully user-‐oriented platform providing career related help and support to the individual. On top of that, profiles will go beyond the professional backgrounds of the user, but more into the individual’s comprehensive personality, interests, aspirations and motivations. Thus, LinkedIn will differentiate itself from its competitors by completely redefining the philosophy of business-‐oriented social platforms with real value-‐added features, which put the user in the focus of the business model.

4. Marketing Mix We believe that real value is added only if specific consumers needs are addressed for a price that consumers are willing to pay. As previously mentioned, LinkedIn, as it is now, has not yet leveraged its services to its full potential. With our objective of offering LinkedIn members a more consumer-‐oriented, user-‐friendly and interactive experience, we have decided to completely redesign and reinvent the structure and content of LinkedIn user accounts. Currently there are two different premium account options offered to the individual user. One is the “LinkedIn Premium” account with features targeting networking purposes and the other is the “Job Seekers” account. Each of the two premium accounts is additionally divided into three price levels, which include a range of features for the specific user (see Figures 11, 12 and 13).

Figure 12

Figure 11

Figure 13

After having carefully analysed each of the features offered in the LinkedIn Premium account and Job Seekers account (please refer to the Appendix for the detailed analysis of the premium account features), we found that LinkedIn has established a separation of the features for the two different accounts that is in fact not clear. The features of the two premium accounts are not all attributed well from a jobs-‐done perspective, given that a number of “networker” and “job seeker” account features overlap, whereas others are only available for one account type. We believe that some of the latter ones would however add substantial value for both. For example, “Full Profile” views are only granted for Premium LinkedIn users, whereas “Salary Data” information is limited to Job Seeker account users. We, however, believe that networking and job seeking are much more interconnected than considered by LinkedIn and that access to certain type of information and services should be available for both. Moreover, we could not identify the real benefit and added value for certain features, which we think have to either be improved and redesigned or completely removed. On top of that, the way in which the account types have been categorized increases complexity and makes the consumer decision journey overly confusing. As a conclusion, we found that a more simplified and user-‐friendly structure of the user account offering needs to be introduced that takes into account both the networkers and job seekers requirements and unifies them into one simple, consumer driven configuration. Our second major finding relates to the fact that LinkedIn, as it is now, is extremely uniformed and standardised and only partially represents the person behind the profile. It provides little opportunity to its users to differentiate themselves and stand out through their profiles. We believe that in the professional world, in particular, it is important for individuals to stand out from the masses. In our opinion this goes far beyond the work experiences and educational backgrounds, but also includes the interests, inspirations and other personality related aspects of an individual. This is why we decided that a more personal and creative form of profiling needs to be introduced to LinkedIn, which allows users to fully express themselves beyond text and through creativity.

Service

Slogan: You are more than your CV The new service comes under the name “LinkedIn More” and represents a complete redefinition and restructuring of user accounts as well as a redesign of their features. The user will have the option from two types of accounts: a free one and a premium one (see Figure 14). The features that will be available within the free account are those that grant consumers with access to information by itself. Based on this criterion, a number of features previously included in the premium account, will now be available for free. On the other hand those features that allow users to make sense of information and use it to reach a specific outcome, will form the premium account. Please refer to Appendix to see the analysis and justification of the new account-‐structuring model.

LinkedIn Free Account

LinkedIn Premium Account

Figure 14 LinkedIn members choosing the free account option will have a variety of features and services available to them that are listed below in Figure 15. We have added a new feature to the free account, which is the “Print CV” function. It will allow users to export and print their LinkedIn profiles per mouse click. When pressing the “Print CV” button, a full version of the profile in CV format is created for the user, who can then see a preview and edit information to be shown. After finalizing the preview the user has to simply confirm and the CV is printed out with the LinkedIn logo as a heading.

Print CV

Garrett Ive

Confirm a nd Print

Figure 15

Who’s Viewed Your proﬁle

LinkedIn Free Account

Full Proﬁles Full Name Visibility InMail Messages

Unlock the list and see how people found you See full proﬁles of everyone in your network -‐ 1st, 2nd and 3rd degree. See full names of 3rd degree and group connecvons Send direct messages to anyone on LinkedIn with guaranteed response

Premium Search

Get up to 8 advanced search ﬁlters

Proﬁles Per Search

See more proﬁles when you search

Print CV

Print CV with LinkedIn logo per mouse click. Preview is developed before ﬁnal version is printed.

Resulting from our findings that there are currently two different LinkedIn premium user accounts named “LinkedIn Premium” and “Job Seekers”, we decided to create one only premium user account that is more simplified, user-‐friendly and interactive and therefore adds more value to the user. Therefore we simplify the existing user account model by getting rid of the categorization between networkers and job seekers, because we think that, as previously explained, networker and job seeker needs are far more interconnected than defined by Linked (please refer to Appendix). Thus, the premium account now unifies all features applicable to both, networkers and job seekers. The premium package will be available for users for the price of $20.50 with the features explained below in Figure 16. For the justification of the features being available for paid user accounts only, please refer to Appendix. The premium account consists of several features that were already available on LinkedIn. Those are Salary Data, Featured Applicant, Introductions, Reference Search, Saved Search Alerts as well as Job Seeker Group and Webinar. We have decided to modify the Introductions feature, marked below in yellow. Currently, in order to connect to sources that are connected with LinkedIn connections, a message is simply forwarded by the middleman. We believe that this feature can only add value if the middleman establishes the connection with a message designed by him/herself, which is why this feature will be improved with a job-‐done approach in mind. Major innovations and changes are, however, represented by the three new features, marked below in purple: LinkedIn Express Yourself, Profile Feedback Service and Career Advice Service. Apart from Express Yourself, the two other features will be available for premium users on-‐ demand for the price of $12.50 and $29.99 respectively.

See detailed salary info for each job

Salary Data

Move the job applicavons to the top of the recruiter's list

Featured Applicant

Get introduced to inside sources at companies through your LinkedIn connecvons

Reference Search

Get a list of people in your network who can provide a reference for someone yo are interested in

Saved Search Alerts

Save searches and get novfied when new profiles fit your criteria

Job Seeker Group & Webinar

Get support and advice on landing your dream job

LinkedIn Express Yourself

Allow users to create a customized user proﬁle that incorporates several unique funcvons

Proﬁle Feedback Service

One to proﬁle review and feedback

Career Advice Service

One to one career advice session on how to land the dream job

LinkedIn Premium Account

Introducjons

Figure 16 LinkedIn Express Yourself LinkedIn Express Yourself is a completely new feature available for premium account users, which will allow them to fully express themselves beyond text and through interactivity. Several new applications and functions offer users the chance, to creatively design and present their profiles in a unique way giving them the opportunity to stand out from the masses.

Express

Yourself

Video Function A new optional video function will be introduced that allows users to create a video message, also called “elevator pitch”, for up to 30 seconds. The feature includes template frames with different colours and themes in order to fit the users’ preferences. By doing so, we want to give users the chance to present themselves beyond their profile picture and incorporate their own personal messages when introducing themselves. Another aspect of the video function is the introduction of a video conferencing option for LinkedIn. This is an invitation-‐based application and is therefore optional. It can be used for a variety of different purposes, but an example could be direct face-‐to-‐face job interview conferences taking place through LinkedIn. By offering this, we aim to revolutionize the way in which interaction takes place through professional networking services. Profile Design Toolbox The Profile Design Toolbox found on the new LinkedIn premium account is an optional application allowing users to configure and design their profiles according to their taste and interest. The toolbox offers a variety of background themes and layouts with different pictures, formats and colours to choose from. Moreover, there are different font styles and colours for the profile display as well as options to upload up to five personal pictures and videos. These could involve personal photos that were taken or videos that have been independently created. As a summary, instead of just having a white paper background with one profile picture and the information displayed chronologically, this application allows a more interactive exchange of information with the real representation of the person behind a profile. We believe that this is an important step in providing users, such as artists, graphic designers or advertisers, a platform to present and share their work within a professional environment. Mosaic of Inspirations and Interest As previously mentioned, LinkedIn user profiles only partially represent the person behind the profile. They do not go beyond a picture and texts, even though we think they should. This is why we introduce the Mosaic application, which will allow users to show their interests, inspirations, motivations and views in a simple and enjoyable way. The mosaic lets the users choose up to 10 tags at a time. These can reach a wide range of different topics, including literature (books, articles), music (musicians, compositions), personalities (writers, politicians), business (theories, brands) and so on. Each tag will be attributed to a box within the mosaic and the user is given the option to leave a comment for each box that can be viewed by profile visitors when scrolling through the mosaic. After having completed as many boxes as desired, a mosaic is created that is displayed on the user’s profile. We believe that this application increases interaction and insight

for LinkedIn users, who are able to show others what they stand for and interact with them on a more personal level. Profile Feedback Service The new Profile Feedback Service offered by LinkedIn is a service that will allow members to receive personalised one-‐to-‐one feedback on their LinkedIn profiles. This will include an assessment of the different sections, such as Work Experience, Languages and Educations on their informative value and meaningfulness. In addition to that, the feedback service incorporates a check of the language level in order to eliminate any false formulations or spelling mistakes. We believe that this service is an important step for users to feel comfortable when it comes to presenting their profiles online, which will then lead to a better perception and attitude towards LinkedIn, given the confidence that a potential job might indeed be found on the platform. Career Advice Service The new Career Advice Service is an extension to the Job Seeker Group and Webinar that is a feature currently offered by LinkedIn. Instead of the group format, the new Career Advice Service will provide users with personalised one-‐to-‐one career advice sessions, in which users can receive information regarding potential industries, companies or job offers. Within these sessions, the user will be in the focus of the career advisor, which means that any questions can be addressed throughout the offering of the service. We believe that this will add high value, especially for users who are in the beginning on their career lives and require the help and support.

Price As previously mentioned above, the new LinkedIn premium account will be offered for $20.50. We have divided between fixed features, which will be available to all users who have the premium account, and add-‐on features, which can be additionally purchased on demand for a one-‐off price by users of the premium account. The fixed features include Salary Data, Featured Applicant, Introductions, Reference Search, Saved Search Alerts as well as Job Seeker Group and Webinar. The add-‐on features available for users of the premium accounts are LinkedIn Express Yourself, Profile Feedback and Career Advice. In order to define a price that consumers are willing to pay for the premium user account, we started by ranking each of the fixed features according to their benefit and added value their provide to the user. The ranking ranged from 1 to 5, with one being the smallest and 5 being the

highest amount of value added to the specific consumer needs. Each ranking was associated with a price that we defined as equivalent to its added value (Figure 17).

Ranking

Price

$ 0.50

$ 1.50

$ 2.50

$ 3.50

$ 4.50

Figure 17

After ranking each of the features and associating prices accordingly, we came with a total price of $ 20.50 for the premium package, as well as $ 12.50 and $ 29.00 for the add-‐on services. Please refer to Figure 18 for details.

Premium Features

Ranking

Price ($)

LinkedIn Express Yourself

4.50

Salary Data

3.50

Featured Applicant

3.50

Introductions

2.50

Reference Search

2.50

Saved Search Alerts

2.50

Job Seeker Group & Webinar

1.50

Total: $ 20.50

Add-‐on Features

Price ($)

Profile Feedback Service

12.50

Career Advice Service

29.99

Figure 18

Distribution/Place The new LinkedIn will be launched in the United States exclusively for the first year. This is because of the success of social media platforms in the United States. Social media platforms are the 6t most visited websites by reach in September 2013. There are around 100 million LinkedIn users in the United States, which represents the main market. In fat the company was born in the United States. This year will allow the brand to test the market by first launching the new offer in the United States and to observe if the new offer is attractive for users and help convincing new users to subscribe to the platform.

Promotion

Express Yourself. Tell your Story.

Become Successful. General consideration In order to endorse the changes made to LinkedIn, in our promotion we want to focus mainly on two aspects of the new marketing strategy: the new offerings allowing users to express themselves beyond text as well as the added services providing users career related advice and profile feedback services. LinkedIn’s recent launch of a promotional video aimed at students, leads us to the conclusion that the company is trying to reach out to younger audiences and move them to use the platform. Moreover, due to the threats of competition arising from other social networking platforms, LinkedIn wants to encourage a wider user base by reinventing itself with a more interactive user experience and a more diversified online presence. We want to remain loyal to this direction with the new promotion campaign. Our findings suggest that there are issues regarding the perception of LinkedIn premium, given that it is unclear how the benefits match the price you have to pay for the premium membership. On top of that we haven’t understood the limitations of the features provided as well as the categorization and structuring between the different premium accounts and their price levels. Therefore, with this campaign we aim to introduce clarity on the benefits of the LinkedIn Premium membership. A one-‐minute video will cover all the changes in the LinkedIn Premium offering. Two additional 30-‐second videos will be created to cover the new Express Yourself, Profile Feedback and Career Advice Features Psychological Analysis of Campaign Name The campaign will be launched under the name “LinkUP” and will address the core features of the new LinkedIn Premium. The goal is to maximize the regular-‐to-‐premium account conversion rate amongst exiting LinkedIn users as well as the creation of new accounts with premium subscription. For this purpose the name LinkUp has been chosen. LinkUp, as a name for the campaign, acts as a verb in a command form that reminds us to link up to something better and bigger. The [link] part of the word preserves the brand name and aspect, as does the layout and

design. The [up] part creates connotations to the word upgrading and also plays with the psychological notes of striving for something higher and better. Structure of the promotion The promotion will be viewed as a sequence of events that will take place. Initially the LinkedIn one-‐minute video will be launched to introduce the changes applied to the platform. The video will be available on the LinkedIn page to remind current users of the changes and benefits that are being newly offered.

STAGE 1: COACHING/WORKSHOP EVENT

COACHING TALK/CO-‐CREATION WORKSHOP UP

An event will be organized, where 50 young people will come together to attend a lecture talk on the art of pitching yourself through an elevator speech. A keynote speaker will give a talk on the nuances of an elevator speech. Excerpts from movies will be used to illustrate the material. Following the speech there will be a workshop where multiple cameras will be placed in the different corners of the space with background screens and lighting. The attendees will have a chance to try out and record their videos on spot and receive instant feedback from the ten coaches that will be available and will be circulating during the event. The same coaches will also be able to review the profiles of the attendees and give advice on key areas for improvement. This aspect of the event will highlight the feature of profile feedback service. The activities taking place during the event will all be recorded and the footage will be used to create the respective viral videos.

STAGE 2: VIRAL VIDEO + COMPETITION ANNOUNCEMENT By linking up people are encouraged to use the new functionality features for better self-‐ promotional purposes. It is widely believed that a picture is worth a thousand words. The same is true for a video in relation to a picture. By adding an elevator pitch to their profile, users add advantage to their personal brand as well as take their online professional presence to a new level. This feature allows the person behind the CV that was just a picture before to express themselves and broadcast a brief and powerful message on who they are, what they stand for, what they do and what they are after. Competition The promotion will continue with the announcement of a competition. UP

Expre ss

yours elf

Tell your story

sf cces u S me Beco

ul!!!

LinkedIn users are encouraged to participate in the competition by joining the LinkedIn Premium and using the additional functionalities to give competitive edge to their profiles. They can then fill out an application form for the competition, where their profiles will be reviewed. The best 300 winning profile owners will then get a chance to have an interview with their dream company.

Logistical aspects of the competition High profile companies will be contacted to confirm participation and later a comprehensive list of these profile companies will be published for participants to choose from. LinkedIn will channel the applications according to prefered companies of participants. Considering the publicity that will be created around the companies through the Linkedin website as well as the viral video promotion for the competition, LinkedIn believes that outsourcing the profile viewing to the companies themselves is a fair way to cut custs as well as create value for the company. Depending on the negotiated number of applications that companies will be willing to review and the number of participating companies and organizations – a cap will be set for the total submissions number beyond which the competition will autolock. An alternative strategy would be to set a time limit, such as three days, for submissions. We would like to play on the uncertainty factor. Therefore we will promote a message such as “First X number of submissions will be considered for the competition. Hurry up ! Express yourself-‐ tell your story-‐ become successful”. The -‐ Express yourself – tell your story – become successful is a powerful way to break down a slogan into 3 components each of which contain actionable verbs and together constitute a storyline sequence. The verbs are: Express-‐ tell-‐ become. And the other elements are Yourself-‐ your story-‐ success. Together they call to action which is very characteristic to people: people want to express themselves, tell their stories and be listented to and most of all get successful in life. The slogan combines all these individually fundamentally human and force driving components into a sequential command.

VII. Short & Long-‐Term Projections (Budget) Budget The budget addresses the service redesign and repositioning as well as the promotional campaign costs. In terms of the costs associated with redesigning Linkedin services, our strategy has allowed us to avoid added costs. The servers under our possession as well as the inhouse designer and programmer personnel working for the platform will not require additional expenses as they are already part of the fixed costs. External big data will cost us $15.000 Below are presented the according budget numbers for the production of the event, filming the footage, editing and creation of the video as well as promotion of the video through Google owned YouTube platform.

Event Costs related to the carrying out of the event will be as follows: Key note speaker: $1000 Space: $0 (the headquarters space will be used to cut on costs) Cameras: 10x$100=$1000 (10 cameras rented for a day ) Background screens: 10x$30=$300 Coaches: 10x$100=$1000 (4 hour event with $100 per coach for 10 coaches) Lights: $300 Video Filming: $500 Editing: $1500 Viral Video promotion: $1.44x75000=$108000 (Price per thousand impressions on Google platforms $1.44 ). Personnel for viewing video subscriptions: HR consultancy-‐ $3750 (30.000 video views with $15 per 120 video views) Total: $132350

VIII. Implementation, Monitors and Controls This marketing plan will help to implement the rollout of the promotional activities for the new LinkedIn More in the US market and use the $ 132 350 budget in the most efficient way. The budget will be implemented according to the promotional objectives that we desire to achieve The budget will be implemented according to the promotional objectives that we desire to achieve.

June 2014 Initially there will be a first negotiation step with the suppliers and advertising agency in order to find the best implementation strategy and elaborate an appropriate time schedule for the promotion process. Additionally we will have to establish a first contact with the “dream companies”. Moreover we have to outsource the process of the videos’ evaluation to a Job Recruitment & Employment Agency. September 30th 2014 The LinkedIn coaching workshop will take place. For this purpose we will hire 10 coaches that will perform a motivation speech in front of 50 selected students. For the selection of these students, we will contact 5 top schools in the United States. They will chose internally the 10 most appropriate students for the workshop (10 students per school). This event will be filmed in order to create content for the next advertising videos. The instruments (cameras, editing and post production tools) for the videos are taken into account in the total budget as well as the location. Two weeks will be needed to edit the content of the videos. October 15th 2014 National launch of LinkedIn More pushed by the online launch of the video ad. November 1st 2014 Online launch of the contest video, which will last one moth, the same period of the contest registration(candidates will be able to subscribe on the online application).

December 1st 2014 Once the application process will be over, the Job Recruitment & Employment Agency will select out of the first 30 000 videos the 300 winners.

January 15th 2015 The winners’ names will be announced to the participants and to the “dreams companies” as well. The selected “dream companies” and the winner will have one month time to meet for the interview.

March 1st 2015 In order to have a control of the meeting experience the winners will receive from us an online questionnaire. This aims to en evaluation of the general process of the contest.

IX. Contingency Plan In order to minimize the risk and observe the potential outcomes of the strategy chosen, we have decided to launch the new LinkedIn exclusively in the United States. This will allow us to analyse the perception of the new offer, in order to understand if we can launch it in the rest of the world or if we will have to go back to an older version of the platform. The best-‐case scenario We think that our chosen strategy answer the current weaknesses of LinkedIn. That’s why, in the best-‐case scenarios, current users will be convinced by the new offer, and subscribes to the new services (profile Feedback service and career advice service). The New LinkedIn will convince new users, especially young people, which are a very important consumer base, among which the word-‐of-‐mouth is essential. LinkedIn will become for them the best and easier way to actually find a job. Globally, users will find the navigation easier and more interactive. They will spend more time on the social media, sharing information, visiting profile, connecting with others. They will find the premium offer transparent and clear. All these new features will add value to their experience with the platform, so that they will recommend it to their acquaintances. Given that the US market is the most important market, it will allow us to measure the potential success to other market in order to launch it worldwide, and eventually to reach new emerging market (China and South America). In the best-‐case scenario, we would achieve our objective of reaching 0.4% increase in market share. The worst-‐case scenario In this case, current Premium users could not like the new LinkedIn offer, find it expansive and regret the old version. That’s why in any case; 2 months after the launch of the new product, we will send an email to all the users who were already subscribers before the introduction of the new LinkedIn, to ask for feedback. The users will have to rate the new features and the overall website, and will be asked to propose possible improvement. Besides, young people could not be aware of the new LinkedIn or not be convinced by it. In this case, we will keep supporting our promotional strategy, trying to get more people to discover the new version and its new features. Nevertheless, we will try to reduce the number of feature and as a consequence the price, in order to simplify even more the offer.

X. Conclusion The conducted research revealed that Linkedin currently has captured the majority of the professional networking service (PNS) market with the respective percentage of 80% compared to direct competition within the PNS sector. However a closer look revealed that while within a tighter PNS sector boundaries Linkedin’s positions may be solid, an expanded view of competition poses threats to the prosperity of Linkedin. These threats come particularly from social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter where there are registered increasing trends for professional networking, communication and recruitment. Considering the pace and speed at which developments on internet that appear small today can escalate we anticipate that Linkedin will be in a disadvantageous position in the near future may it remain static and not adapt and respond. With this line of thinking we conducted a thorough analysis of the Linkedin product to understand the added value it delivers to users through its pallet of features and platform functionality. The conclusion was that for individual users, Linkedin differentiates among premium packages for networking and job seeking purposes with a clear separation between the two offers. However, from the user’s point of view they are two sides of the same coin. The goal of all professional networking is to create new opportunities for cooperation, business and, mainly, employment. Furthermore, the premium offer for networking purposes incorporated features that didn’t add value as part of the paying feature while they could have been strategically placed as free to increase the platform use in general. One such feature as we discovered is the ability to network more freely without limitations to who you can contact. This would address one of the major weakness of Linkedin which is its difficulty to help users to go beyond first connection while using the platform. To answer these challenges as well as to convert untapped market potential for topline growth in terms of conversion of free accounts into premium ones, we repositioned the product through new features, pricing strategy and feature reconfiguration as a user friendly, more expressive and desirable platform for professional self-‐expression, networking and communication. We conducted a sales forecast and arrived at the objective of adding 5% revenue from the paid subscription service with a respective $43 million in the first year. The estimated costs on the contrary for the entire service redesign and the promotion campaign add up to a $132350. In our opinion this marketing campaign will be a smart investment for Linkedin considering the cost and benefit associated with it.

XI. Appendix Feature

LinkedIn Premium

Who's Viewed Your Profile (complete list) InMail Messages Full Profiles

✓

Job Seeker

To-‐be Feature available for both NW and JS

✓

Feature available for both networkers (NW) and job seekers (JS).

✓

Feature available for both NW and JS.

Feature available for both NW and JS

✓

✗

Ensure Full Profiles feature available for both, NW and JS

Full Name Visibility

✓

✗

OpenLink

✓

✗

Premium Search

✓

✗

Profiles Per Search

✓

✗

Introductions

✓

✗

Reference Search (ask for references about a person interested in) Saved Search Alerts

✓

✗

Seeing the complete profiles of everyone in the network is an important source of information access for both, NW and JS. rd Seeing the full names of 3 degree and group connections is an important source of information access for both, NW and JS. No superior added value evident (for NW and JS) with this feature, allowing everyone on LinkedIn to message you for free. Moreover, difference to InMail messages not clear. Possibility of receiving up to eight advanced search filters is particularly important for users seeking a job, as well as networkers. Seeing more profiles when searching is an important aspect for users seeking a job, as well as networkers. Possibility of being introduced to inside sources from companies through LinkedIn connections is particularly important for users seeking a job, as well as networkers. Possibility of asking for references about people you want to find out more about is a feature important for users seeking a job, as well as networkers.

✓

✗

Ensure Saved Search Alerts feature available for both, NW and JS

Salary Data

✗

✓

Possibility of saving searches and getting notified when new profiles fit your criteria add high value for both users seeking a job, as well as networkers. Possibility of seeing detailed salary info could be equally as important for NW as well as JS.

Comment on As-‐Is

Ensure Full Name Visibility feature available for both, NW and JS

Elimination of feature

Ensure Premium Search feature available for both, NW and JS

Ensure Profiles Per Search feature available for both, NW and JS Ensure Introductions feature available for both, NW and JS

Ensure Reference Search feature available for both, NW and JS

Ensure Salary Data feature available for both, NW and JS

Featured Applicant

✗

✓

Premium Badge

✗

✓

Applicant Insights

✗

✓

Job Seeker Group and Webinar

✗

✓

Given our perception that networkers could potentially be passive job seekers, the possibility of moving a job application to the top of a potential recruiter’s list could be equally as important for networkers as well as job seekers. No added value evident in having a premium icon on the search results for both NW and JS. Benefits not clearly defined. No added value evident of seeing how you compare to other applicants for any job, given that criteria for judgement not well defined and solely based on estimations. Option of receiving support and advice on landing the dream job is a value-‐ adding feature that could be important for both NW and J. Feature can, however, be leveraged on

Ensure Featured Applicant feature available for both, NW and JS

Elimination of feature

Elimination of feature – Introduction of a new service of customized/one-‐ to-‐one profile review and feedback, which adds read value to the user Redesign and improve this feature with the introduction of a career advice service available for both, NW and JS

Feature

In the Future

Who's Viewed Your Profile

Paid for

Free

InMail Messages Full Profiles Full Name Visibility

Paid for Paid for Paid for

Free Free Free

Premium Search

Paid for

Free Free Paid for

Profiles Per Search Introductions

Reference Search (ask for references about a person

Currently

Paid for Free up

Paid for

Justification Having the visibility on who has been visiting their profile is a core piece of information for networkers (NW) and job seekers (JS) to have access to Instant communication is the core business function of social networks providers and should therefore be free Having access to full profiles of everyone in network is a core piece of information for NW and JS to have access to rd Seeing the full names of 3 degrees and group connections is a core piece of information for NW and JS to have access to Having the option to getting up to 8 advanced search filters is part of accessing information and should therefore be for free Having access to more profiles when searching is a core piece of information for NW and JS to have access to Should be paid for when introducing the following: middleman establishes connection. This feature goes beyond information accessing and makes sense of information that can lead to a specific outcome Possibility of asking for references about people you want to find out more about is a feature important for users seeking a job, as well as networkers. It goes beyond just accessing information, but processes it.

interested in)

Saved Search Alerts Salary Data Featured Applicant Applicant Insights Job Seeker Group and Webinar

Free (up to Paid for Paid for Paid for Paid for Paid for Paid for Paid for Paid for

Paid for

Possibility of saving searches and getting notified when new profiles fit your criteria processes information to a great extent and adds value to the user Possibility of seeing detailed salary is a crucial piece of information and adds high value to users Processes information and uses it for a specific outcome Should be paid for when introducing the following more value-‐added service: customized/one-‐to-‐one profile review and feedback Should be paid for when introducing the following more value-‐added service: one-‐to-‐one career advice service

Feature

Added Value for Premium Account (1 to 5)

Justification

Price for Feature

LinkedIn Express Yourself

$ 4.50

Salary Data Featured Applicant Introductions Reference Search Saved Search Alerts Job Seeker Group and Webinar

4 4 3 3 3 2

$ 3.50 $ 3.50 $ 2.50 $ 2.50 $ 2.50 $ 1.50

Total Price: $ 20.50

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http://www.focusrh.com/recrutement/sites-‐emploi/actualites-‐rh/2012/11/21/viadeo-‐lance-‐le-‐ nouveau-‐viadeo-‐recruiter.html http://www.journaldunet.com/media/publishers/dan-‐serfaty-‐viadeo.shtml http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/financials/financials.asp?ticker=TWTR http://web.jobvite.com/rs/jobvite/images/Jobvite_JobSeeker_FINAL_2012.pdf http://www.concentricmarketing.co.uk/Portals/124530/docs/Essential%20LinkedIn%20Strategie s.pdf http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ABEA-‐69T44N/3054927789x0x723940/f4e8258e-‐a64c-‐ 4f6d-‐a8fd-‐07aa3ac27c0e/2013_Q4_Earnings_Slides.pdf http://socialnetworking.lovetoknow.com/What_Types_of_Social_Networks_Exist