• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, November 3, 2022

B2B marketers cite data privacy as a priority, as do B2C buyers -- but not many seem to talk about supporting the market segment. 

LinkedIn on Thursday said it will continue to invest in innovative technology to help B2B marketers navigate the privacy landscape, as well as help marketers build relationships with multiple decision makers. B2B marketers go through various stages of a buying journey that spans a longer period of time, and many more people, anywhere from six to 10, according to Abhishek Shrivastava, vice president of product at LinkedIn.

“It’s not easy, but privacy changes are giving us the opportunity to reimagine how we reach buyers,” he wrote in a post.

Apparently, marketers are excited about the products. Gil Mark, lead product manager at Chime, wrote in the comments of the post: "We had been talking about this forever! So cool. Congrats on the launch!"

LinkedIn has begun to test a solution that preserves privacy while being purpose-built. It’s called Group Identity. It leverages LinkedIn’s first- and zero-party data, such as title, seniority, industry, interests, and more to help marketers reach buying committees, measure campaign performance, and optimize toward objectives that matter.

Early beta testers gained 37% higher average clickthrough rate on group-delivered campaigns across channels, like the LinkedIn Audience Network, compared with campaigns targeted at individual profile characteristics.

The company also is testing On-Device Experimentation, which aims to ensure marketers have access to the insights they need while preserving anonymity of members. This product sits in LinkedIn’s suite of Brand Lift and A/B Test offerings.

Some 87% of B2B marketers shared in a recent survey of 1,703 senior B2B marketers fielded by YouGov that first-party data is important to their marketing strategies. It pushed LinkedIn developers to work on more ways to integrate company first-party data with its platform of more than 875 million professionals. B2B marketers in the U.S., UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, UAE, KSA, Brazil, Australia, India and Singapore from September 13 to 30, 2022, participated in the study.

Tests on a project called Conversions API also have begun. Conversions API connects first-party conversion data to the LinkedIn platform to help marketers better understand full-funnel performance. And investments are being made in clean rooms and other privacy-based technology that enable marketers to gain actionable insights and advanced measurement in a secure environment.