Importance (for B2B marketers): [rating=5]
Recommended link: Showcase Pages replacing 'Product and Services Tab' from Company Pages
In November, we alerted you to the new Showcase pages on LinkedIn where businesses can create a page for each brand, so Microsoft can create a separate Showcase page for each of Office and Windows, for example.
Following on from this, LinkedIn have now announced that Showcase pages will become the only option for businesses to directly feature specific products and services via a page.
If you're a page admin you will likely have received an Email from LinkedIn alerting you to this, but if not...you need to be aware that although company pages are remaining, they are removing the 'Products and Services Tab' from the 14 April.
What do you think of this? For us, we can't see anything positive about it! It's another useful LinkedIn feature which has been withdrawn which seems to favour BIG BRANDS and LinkedIn advertising revenue.
It may be a good move for a company like Microsoft who can afford to manage a separate Showcase page for each of its brands, but most businesses wont want the extra effort, particularly when LinkedIn company pages get limited traffic compared to a company blog. But they won't be able to explain their proposition so well - it's like not being able to include products or categories on a website. We also lose recommendations for products which was a useful feature.
This move has understandably created a lot of anger in the LinkedIn community. This comment is typical:
"LinkedIn does it again. They've made an arbitrary decision to remove content previously entered by its subscribers. On April 14 all the hard work done by subscribers who created product and services pages will be sent to the trash bin by LinkedIn. I have a number of clients who paid to have their products and services pages created for them. LinkedIn has decided that their investment means nothing".
and this comment explains that Showcases pages don't provide an adequate replacement:
"I am extremely upset with this. Managing a Showcase Page for every product or service is unrealistic. There are no options for recommendations currently in the Showcase Pages, so will that change? The target market views that LinkedIn created for the products and services tab was brilliant and there is nothing else like it out there".
Immediate actions to consider are:
What actions will you take - will you be creating Showcase pages, or just putting up?
This is one of many recent changes LinkedIn has made, some more positive fortunately. To review the latest changes see our latest LinkedIn Guide update.
By Susanne Colwyn
Susanne is a Marketing Consultant and Trainer, with over 20 years marketing experience in the public and private sector. She's passionate about supporting companies with practical result driven marketing, to help focus companies on evaluating and driving their marketing forward. Experienced in Integrated Strategic Marketing Planning, Data Segmentation, Customer Relationship Management Systems, Customer Insight and reviewing internal systems, data and processes, to maximise conversion strategies and the customer experience. You can connect with her via her LinkedIn or follow her @Qtymarketing.
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