A possible link to success

Digital advertising and social media expert Alexandra Kolleth has been responsible for expanding business in Germany, Austria and Switzerland as Head of Marketing Solutions DACH since March 2014. LinkedIn has over 5 million members in this market. This figure has doubled over the past year. For the future, the company sees a potential of 20 million members in the DACH region.

"It's great news for me when someone reports that they don't see many ads on their profile. It really is supposed to be like that," says Alexandra Kolleth when asked whether advertising on LinkedIn is not yet fully effective. "The most important thing for us is targeting. We can work without wastage because we tailor marketing messages very precisely to our members," explains the Head of Marketing Solutions DACH region. The criteria for delivering advertising could therefore be What size of company does someone work for? What seniority does he or she have there? In which function does someone work in which industry?

Alexandra Kolleth has been working at LinkedIn for four years. Based in Munich, she has been responsible for Marketing Solutions in Germany, Switzerland and Austria since this spring. The professional network with more than 300 million users worldwide generates its revenue in three business areas.

Talent Solutions: This is about recruitment solutions. Central to this is the LinkedIn Recruiter product, where companies search for passive candidates on the platform. Strong growth is expected from this social recruitment channel.

Marketing Solutions: This is about marketing solutions for companies that LinkedIn wants to help target other members and then offer their products or services. This happens for B2B campaigns or B2C.

Sales Solutions: Premium subscriptions are sold in this area, as well as the option to send e-mails via contacts.

Alexandra Kolleth started her career at the Süddeutsche Zeitung in Munich with an apprenticeship in publishing. She then went on to study publishing management in London. During her studies in England, she worked at Publicitas, the publishing agency of Süddeutsche Zeitung. "During this phase, I became more and more interested in the digital sector," says Kolleth, explaining why she then switched to Economist.com. "We set up The Economist's website when everything was still in its infancy," she remembers this pioneering time. What she lacked at the time was knowledge about performance and targeting. "It was all driven by the editorial team. But I also wanted to know: How does the technology behind it work?"

To learn this, Kolleth moved to News Corp. At a start-up within the news giant, she was able to work on the development of performance measurement tools. Then came a unique opportunity with LinkedIn, where she was able to close the circle: "Combining technology and content." That was four years ago in London, "which makes me a dinosaur at LinkedIn," she laughs.

At LinkedIn, Kolleth initially looked after English agency groups, then increasingly focused on the German-speaking market "to bring marketing solutions closer to customers in the German and Swiss markets".

During this time, she has already implemented several interesting ideas. For example, the "reward marketing" concept. In one of these campaigns, LinkedIn members are contacted by a car manufacturer specifically for a new car if they enter "a job change up" in their profile. This can be a banner campaign, advertising through content with content marketing or even a very personal email. For such "in-mails", LinkedIn ensures that the inbox of the person contacted is blocked for other advertisers for 60 days. "We don't want our members to feel that we want to bombard their inbox. The content we send should be relevant," promises Kolleth. The portfolio also includes a Swiss luxury watch brand. A global campaign is running for this brand on LinkedIn, but with a special focus on Switzerland. The targeting is aimed at a high seniority, and the banner ads are only delivered in Zurich and Geneva, where the brand's boutiques are located.

Company pages are playing a growing role on LinkedIn. Here it is various stakeholders who "feed". The PR department can place its news. The HR department wants to address potential employees. The marketing department wants to present a specific product. There can also be various subpages within these company pages. For Nestlé, for example, a "focus page" with news and background information on innovations from the company was set up together with Corporate Communications. Nestlé's company page already has a total of 500,000 followers worldwide. In all these activities, LinkedIn acts according to one motto: "We want to make our members more productive and successful, so everything we do is aimed at this."

Andreas Panzeri