New LinkedIn tool tells businesses about who’s visiting their websites

LinkedIn is giving businesses a new way to see what kinds of audiences they’re attracting with their marketing efforts.

The Website Demographics tool allows businesses to break down their website visitors across eight categories including job title, industry, company and location.

After all, that’s the kind of data that we’re all providing as LinkedIn users. To connect that data to website visits, the company is using the same conversation tracking technology that powers its Matched Audiences ad targeting.

As an example of how the data might prove useful, Sudeep Eldo Cherian, the director of global product marketing for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, said a company that’s trying to bring IT professionals to its website could open up Website Demographics and discover that the majority of visitors actually come from the healthcare industry. It could then adjust its marketing efforts to target that audience.

“We think that by understanding this information, businesses can create higher quality content campaigns,” Cherian said.

LinkedIn Website Demographics

Marketers can also get more granular, looking at the professional breakdown of specific sections of their website, not just the site as a whole.

Asked whether LinkedIn could also use this kind of analysis to measure the effectiveness of ad campaigns, Cherian said it’s possible: “We’re constantly thinking about how can we continue to evolve the reporting and analytics that we offer to marketers so that they can make better decisions.”

Website Demographics will be available for free to anyone using the company’s Campaign Manager.

“You don’t have to advertise on LinkedIn to leverage this,” Cherian added. Sure, it would be nice for LinkedIn if that was one of the outcomes, but Cherian said the real goal here is to turn Campaign Manager into a “must-have analytics solution.”