The professional network company had a rough start this year with its stock tumbling by 44% during its quarterly earnings announcement at the start of February.
Despite the bumpy start, one area was growing: Sponsored Updates. The Sponsored Updates exceeded 50 percent of the total marketing revenue, with 21 percent coming from its advertising business. When looking at a bigger picture, at least ten percent of the company's professional network's revenue came from Sponsored Updates.
This is what pushed the network to focus on this area.
"We see a huge opportunity for more brands to harness Sponsored Updates on LinkedIn to target their audiences with useful content at the right time to the right audience," Henry Clifford-Jones, director of LinkedIn Marketing Solutions in the UK, Spain, and Germany told Business Insider.
Sponsored Updates allows you or your company to reach more people and attract the respective target audience. Since the feature has comprehensive targeting options, you are sure that your updates and content is going to entice the right people. The Sponsored Updates also comes in handy as you can use it in your desktops, tablets, and mobile phones. You also get to set your own budget and choose from two options: cost per click or cost per impression options. Finally, you can use the Direct Sponsored Content for messaging purposes.
Clifford-Jones also said that people now look to LinkedIn not only to find jobs but also to browse for the content on the site.
"We now see there's something like more than 15 times more engagement in the feed with content than there is with job listings," he said. "That's been a rapid shift and what that means is that people don't look for jobs all the time, but people are interested in what influential business people are seeing and sharing."
