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How PCB Manufacturers Use LinkedIn to Increase Sales
May 19, 2014 |Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
A few statistics from my annual PCB manufacturers survey of social media use:
Sixty Percent of North American PCB Manufacturers Have Created a LinkedIn Company Page
This is up 80% over last year. It can take a couple of hours to set up a really sharp looking LinkedIn company page. Even if a company never does any further work, there is the company page with photos, logos, a description of what the company does, along with a link to the company website. Then it just sits there, advertising the company and searchable on LinkedIn. Free. Twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week. Forever.
So my question is: What’s wrong with the other 40% of these companies? Who can afford to turn down free advertising?
Twenty Percent of Those with Company Pages Issue Status Updates
Company status updates can be used for news, to establish credibility, to link to a company website, to make special offers, or just about anything a company would want to do. The cost for status updates is also zero.
As I've said many times, all of the prospective B2B customers that a PCB manufacturer could have use LinkedIn. Here's a statistic of my own: Three years ago the number of LinkedIn users in North America involved with PCBs was 32,000. Today that number is 99,000. Of course, the market for PCBs hasn’t tripled in North America in three years. What this statistic says is that more and more people involved with PCBs are using LinkedIn: People involved in designing PCBs, people involved in using PCBs in their products, and people that purchase PCBs. If the number of prospective customers going to a trade show tripled in three years, that would be a trade show to which vendors paid attention. LinkedIn requires that same attention.
Some vendors are paying attention. Need proof that LinkedIn works? Here’s part of an interview I conducted with Judy Warner, director of Sales and Marketing at Transline Technology Inc, a PCB manufacturer specializing in RF/microwave:
Me: You've tried just about every social network. What's surprised you?
Judy: How open and receptive engineers are on social networks, especially LinkedIn.
Me: Which social network has been more effective?
Judy: Hands down it's LinkedIn. I couldn't believe the openness of people to talk business. I would go in a LinkedIn group and ask a question about RF and get as many as 60 or 80 people wanting to talk with me. I didn't try to sell, I just asked questions, and everyone wanted to talk with me.
Me: Do you have success stories you could share? Any customer that you got solely because of social media?
Judy: I can't name just one, because most of my customers came from LinkedIn--my largest customer came from the site. How's that?
Me: Pretty good, I’d say.
In the past two years over 65,000 people involved in the design, use, and purchasing of PCBs in North America have started using LinkedIn as part of their jobs. That’s a number of which every PCB vendor should sit up and take notice.Bruce Johnston is a sales consultant specializing in social media and especially LinkedIn. He has over 25 years experience in high-tech sales and management. He can be reached at brucej@practicalsmm.com or through his profile on LinkedIn.