Adgully Exclusive | B2B advertising has arrived in India: LinkedIn India's Dhiman Mukherjee

While social media has assumed a lot of importance off late, but the idea of congregating on two of the busiest portals in the space is quite fascinating. Even though B2C marketers are considered to be the early adopters of social media platforms, their B2B counterparts have not yet used the online medium to its full potential.

For B2B brands, aversion to move away from the tried and tested ways has long acted as a barrier to experimenting with the online platform. Few Indian companies like Cisco India, SAP India, Huawei and Trend Micro have successfully gone online to build active B2B marketing programs.

Started in India in 2009, LinkedIn has emerged as one of the fastest growing professional networks in India, being valued by its members as professional, trusted, and creating a remarkably different social environment.

Having managed to outperform expectations by clocking over 14 millions+ users in a span of just two years and further generating business leads in the range of 149 million, it was an opportune time for the network in India to get together the community responsible for driving such a change.

"It's a first of its kind initiative ' the idea is to showcase LinkedIn as the thought leader in the space because we definitely felt there was need to be fulfilled and I think it's firm step in the right direction," says Mukherjee.

"There was a lot of brain storming going for the initiative as we felt that there is so much happening in the B2B side of things. We felt the need to have a platform where our people could leverage on each other's success stories ' so very the intent of doing it and LinkedIn is just enabling people to come and share their opinions," he adds.

With a strong user base, Mukherjee hopes that it would be able to break into each and every vertical, including energy, construction, real estate, and so on. "We are aiming to increase our focus towards financial, travel & tourism, auto, and others," Mukherjee says.

Agrees Olivier Legrand, Senior Director ' Marketing Solutions, APAC, who feels it's a great first step and plans to start such initiative in other markets as well.

"We plan to start such initiative in Australia, Malaysia and Korea; we are looking to engage the B2B more so that they can be more successful," says Legrand.

So what else do marketers need to do to understand the true potential of B2B marketing?

"As I said it's a positive step ' we have made the right moves to make the initiative successful. Now we will have to see how we can engage the marketers a little better and that will happen only with time as more such initiatives take place," says Mukherjee. "In the past we have done three B2B connects so this is all that has culminated into one, so we are taking steps to make it successful," adds Mukjerjee.

Legrand feels it's a highly under-leveraged market and there's a lot more that can be done. "Both us and marketers need to understand each other ' the marketers need to understand our platform better and we need to understand their needs better," says Legrand.

"The marketers, I think, don't have same share of voice and opportunity to leverage the case study as compared to the consumer marketing. At the social front it's ever changing ever growing world with 150 million professionals on it and there so much that one can do, so we are working on it to provide solution for all.

"To connect the professionals in a way so as to make them productive and successful. So what we bring is focus, what we bring is professional identity online, what we bring is opportunities for users to connect with businesses," he adds.