Does LinkedIn seem kind of boring to you? Or, if not boring, than at least 75% annoying (what with their many update emails and all)?
You can’t share gifs, nothing seems to be happening and every once in a while you get a connect request from someone who seems to be a spammer, or that guy you met at that networking event one time. You know the one — where you were frantically trying to get your friend to notice that you were trapped in a terrible conversation and needed a rescue, but they never noticed. That guy.
Here’s what you need to remember: LinkedIn is a massive database of business people, all happily sharing exactly what they do and where they work.
Often, when we mention LinkedIn as a possible advertising channel for our clients, we’re met with skepticism: “People use that?” They sure do, and there aren’t a lot of advertisers on the platform.
It’s true that not every person of working age has a LinkedIn profile, but we were wondering — exactly how popular is LinkedIn in Canada? You’ll see the answer below.
We obtained this data from LinkedIn’s advertising database and compared it against StatsCan’s population data. The city information is based on what LinkedIn provided for city options, and to be honest, it’s a bit weird. I’m not sure how LinkedIn defines Kitchener/Waterloo boundaries — do they include Cambridge and Guelph? And why isn’t Hamilton there?
Dana knows from close, personal experience (as a Hamilton resident) that if you’re in Hamilton (a 45 minute drive from Toronto), you’re included in the Toronto group. At 721,053 people, it’s bigger than a lot of the other cities included as options, yet still lumped in with Toronto.
That being said, take the major city percentages with a grain of salt – they’re provided for amusement only. The provincial per capita usage seems most accurate. The regional differences are really interesting – Ontario (25%), British Columbia (22%), Quebec (21%), and Alberta (21%) are the big winners, and then there’s a big drop until you get to the Yukon (17%, or 6,338 members). We suspect that there’s a strong correlation between an urban population and LinkedIn usage.
Marketing on LinkedIn is relatively inexpensive since there aren’t a lot of people doing it, and the targeting you can use is impressive. Want to market to accountants in Edmonton? Sure thing — there’s 3,233 with Accountant and related job titles in the city. How about Human Resources professionals in Vancouver? 2,785 people, right at your fingertips.
This is a huge opportunity for highly targeted advertising — what other advertising venue can you use to (inexpensively) reach out to your target market with the level of accuracy that LinkedIn offers?
If you want to find out more about marketing on LinkedIn, get in touch.