Blog

LinkedIn has announced that a new platform called LinkedIn Business Manager is rolling out now. The tool offers a centralized dashboard for managing both your Page and Ads in one area and could be particularly useful for companies with various people or teams working on your LinkedIn campaigns.

While not yet officially launched, this free new marketing tool will be available globally in the coming weeks.

Here’s what will be included:

• View and manage marketing assets in one place, including “your team, ad accounts, Pages, and business partner.” from a centralized dashboard. You can also jump easily between your ad campaigns and company pages.

• Simplify administrative tasks like user access permissions and billing. You can also perform tasks like downloading your monthly invoices.

• Share and update Matched Audiences across your ad accounts.

As mentioned by Social Media Today, the Business Manager may essentially turn out to be a slimmed-down version of LinkedIn’s paid Sales Navigator tool, “with the idea being that by enticing more businesses with its basic brand management tools, that’ll get more marketers to sign up for a Sales Navigator subscription.”

The announcement comes as LinkedIn is also rolling out other initiatives aimed at enhancing offerings for B2B marketers including:

• A new consultancy called B2B Edge

• A new CRM data validation feature

• An integration with “revenue intelligence” company Gong

• A Products on Profiles feature, and

• A new Certified Marketing Experts program.

Why it Matters

Many marketers rely on third-party tools like Hootsuite or Sprout Social to manage their brands across various platforms. Even still, a robust native management tool offers features you’re not likely to find in third-party tools and can seriously enhance your capabilities. So it’s a great sign that LinkedIn is investing in helping marketers do their jobs more efficiently.

This is especially important for B2B marketers, where LinkedIn is a must.

Overall, the tool does not appear to be as in-depth as similar tools that have existed on Facebook for years, but it looks like this will be similar to dashboards we’ve seen on sites like Twitter or Pinterest. However, Microsoft-owned LinkedIn promises that as this new dashboard evolves, “it will play a key role in how you uncover strategic insights that make marketing at scale more efficient.” So keep an eye on it!