Classic Linked Premium Accounts have taken flack lately. Yep, LinkedIn gutted Premium accounts, moving out and enhancing advanced search, alerts, plus adding supple new features. The new-and-improved LinkedIn Premium is Sales Navigator. Cancel Premium. Run, don’t walk. Sign up for Sales Navigator.
Sales Navigator is deeper than old Premium accounts, most notably in our ability to mine organic psychographics using “Lead Builder.” Lead Builder is the replacement for Premium’s former “Advanced Search.” This post details applying Lead Builder for occupational psychographic organic community analysis, plus actionable tactics to launch therefrom. Let’s get started.
Gathering organic psychographics for business intelligence
Lead Builder is LinkedIn’s advanced search engine. Think of Lead Builder as a tool that applies psychographic targeting filters, each with the AND operator in between. Some filters take Boolean input. Applying more filters reduces organic audience size.
First we need an audience to analyze. Well, we’re proud that four AIMCLEARians are speaking at SMX West in San Jose this week. To show our SMX pride, we’ll study the SMX LinkedIn Group, even sharing a few deft marketing surprises at the end.
The Lead Builder Groups filter can be powerful indeed, commensurate with a group owner’s commitment to content and community. SMX is a great example because of committed work in-channel.
Apply first filter
Start by filtering all of LinkedIn to only SMX and SMX Paris group members. Paris is the only other SMX city with its own group. While there is overlap, Paris members are real people and including Paris saves work to evaluate overlap and won’t hurt anything.
Keep in mind membership in the SMX LinkedIn group is not an absolute measure of who goes to conferences. However, years of marketing to membership in various groups has shown fabulous focus for KPI targeting. At a minimum, group membership is a strong proxy for community.
No doubt, if someone compares SMX’s CRM data to LinkedIn Group data, audiences will not align perfectly. Either way, SMX group members who do not attend are obvious organic and paid targets for physical conference marketing.
Sales Navigator Easter egg
Here’s a fascinating hack to provide sterling psychographic data on SMX Group members (or any) root audience. After applying the first filter (SEARCH), you’ll hit the results page. There are 7.7K members in the SMX group.
At the bottom of the right filter sidebar, click “View all filters.”
When Lead Builder opens, the first (root) selection (SMX Group) is still in place. Click on other filters for fascinating psychographic data. For instance, it’s easy to see top companies SMX group members cite as their current Company.
Now, with group membership as the psychographic root, test other filters to see if they give up data. A number of filters do, which is the core of this data-mining hack.
The next sequence of LinkedIn Sales Navigator screen-captures below profile SMX group members, starting with Years in current position. Such data can be useful to a range of professionals from many businesses targeting SMX group attendees to conference organizers who market the event.
Geography: Note LinkedIn Sales Navigator clusters both cities and countries in the same list, sorted by reach, descending. San Francisco has more group members than the UK.
Interestingly, there’s no SMX conference in India, but more Indians belong to the SMX LinkedIn group than Canadians and just below New York.
Perhaps it’s the plummeting Rupee. 
On the other hand, perhaps SMX can persuade wealthy Indian marketers to take in an American conference. Such thinking is an example of theories formed.
School: Knowing which schools yield SMX group members tells conference marketers which college audiences may respond to student empowerment initiatives.
Find a way to offer marketing students at these schools value. Indoctrinate their loyalty, without nary an investment, before competitors vie for mindshare later. Use Schools psychographic data to build a new generation of unclaimed customers.
Profile language is important. Segment outbound communications by language in both paid and organic campaigns, advised by this data.
SMX may be able to recruit bilingual Italians for US and European shows via P2P outreach. Test asking Spanish SMX group members using mixed Spanish and English creative to inquire if Spanglish LinkedIn users would enjoy SMX in English in New York, only a 8.5-hour flight for only €419 bundled if booked today. The media spend for organic outreach is free. One conference attendee is a big deal for free, especially if she or he comes back.
Relationship is a standard psychographic filter. Make your KPI to move SMX-connections from second- to first-degree connections. When a second-degree community member sees you’ve a common friend, it could suggest you are a credible person. Though I’ve been involved in SMX for the better part of a decade, obviously there are plenty of interesting people to meet. Also, probably some spammers to avoid.
As a conference attendee, Seniority level is a fantastic measure to determine if attending a conference is valuable. Of course, this data is potentially also useful to conference organizers. Seniority can be misleading because a one-person shop can call him/herself the owner, partner or CXO. That said, seniority in tandem with other filters is powerful. If a higher percentage of group members work for a larger Company size, then seniority data is often clarified.
Years of experience might not have all been accumulated working for group members’ current company. Consider this filter in tandem with seniority.
In each of our LinkedIn profiles, we can designate what types of community interactions we’re interested in. Observers might read willingness in others Interested in choices. Here’s what SMX LinkedIn group members are interested in.
It looks like SMX is an awesome community in which to find a job. I know several advanced marketers who found their current position via SMX. Herein lie vertical hooks with which to market the conference. I love how SMX group members want to reconnect, speaking to group warmth and steadfast relationships.
In this case Groups means OTHER groups, since our root psychographic is the SMX group. So far as interacting with SMX group members, you’ll easily find them as members of other Groups, likely cool places to hang out yourself.
Groups data can be priceless, as it offers a focused roadmap to interact with root group targets. Interacting with folks in a group is one method to move targets from second- to first-degree connections.
Works for audiences of most sizes >1
Gathering organic psychographics for business intelligence is not limited to large datasets. Staying with the SMX conference metaphor, we’ll slice our good friends working at Third Door Media, parent company of SMX, Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and other publishing assets. In Lead Builder, root psychographics with the Company filter this time.
There are 37 TDM employees according to LinkedIn as of this writing. So far as actionable tactics, there is so much power in knowing who these beautiful people are, where they come from, office location, their jobs, credentials, content, social profiles, etc. In this bucket are people who help choose speakers, sell sponsorships, purchase wholesale t-shirts and any number of other professional motivations.
Have a look at available filters profiling Third Door Media employees. Where are they living?
Which colleges did TDM team members attend?
What is my relationship to these folks?
How is seniority distributed?
Interestingly, company employees don’t all list their industry in the same category. That’s no knock. Most companies present similarly. It’s a fuzzy line where employers offer suggestions to employee social profiles, but can’t require anything. Here’s how TDM employees see the industry they work in.
A high percentage of TDM employees list “reconnect” as a top activity they’re interested in. <3. That’s exactly what we’ll be doing in San Jose at SMX West — reconnecting.
Sales Navigator and beyond
It’s striking how few professionals seem to know, let alone understand, what’s under Sales Navigator’s hood.
For you competitive intelligence geeks, compare interest for Sales Navigator with SMX from 12/1/16 (when SN began it’s tiny PR buzz) to 3/19/17. TDM kicked LinkedIn’s ass, analyzing Boolean share of voice as indicated by Sysomos MAP.
LinkedIn obviously needs a boots-on-the-ground, grown-up digital PR company to tell Premium account holders to quiet down and move to Sales Navigator.
The organic psychographic profiling technique discussed herein is a hidden gem amongst Sales Navigator’s documented features, which make data even more actionable, therefore valuable. Sales Navigator is more advanced than old Premium accounts, most notably users’ ability to develop organic psychographics profiles using “Build Leads.” Use Build Leads for occupational psychographic organic community research. Develop KPIs rooted in making relationships and selling to fleshed out business audiences.
We hope to see y’all at SMX West in San Jose this week. Safe travels and we hope it was enjoyable to read about your own psychographic attributes.
