With more than five million companies, the German market offers enormous growth opportunities. To reach these companies, networking sites are also an effective marketing tool in our neighboring country. Whereas in the Netherlands we mainly use the networking site LinkedIn, in Germany the networking site Xing is popular. The platform lends itself particularly well to building brand awareness and authority within your industry. How important is Xing and how can you best use the platform?
The most important B2B social network in Germany is Xing. Xing, originally a German company, is the market leader and has over 15 million users in the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland). LinkedIn, known to us, has 13 million users in the same region. Xing's large market share is mainly due to the fact that Xing is the first networking site in Germany. In addition, the cultural difference also plays a role in Xing's popularity. In general, Germans are more cautious when it comes to new trends. The adoption of the international LinkedIn therefore took longer. It is still uncertain how both networking sites will develop, but those who want to achieve maximum reach cannot ignore Xing for the time being.
A business page as a starting point
With a company page, you create a permanent place for Xing users to find and follow your company. By default, such a company page contains information about the company, vacancies and contact information. With XING, you also control the layout, so you can use your own company colors and logo. Once you have such a company page, Xing accurately tracks who views the page, this offers the possibility to contact these visitors. Very interesting for expanding your business network in Germany.
Content is King
Xing is all about good content marketing: making it clear why your company is interesting and relevant to follow. Xing supports the English language, but since almost all members of Xing are native German speakers, it is important to do marketing on this platform in German. Xing users can follow your business page and get updates directly in their newsfeed. However, many users prefer to follow an individual, a real person rather than a business. So to stay visible, your employees themselves must also post new articles regularly.
Realizing visibility
For visibility, the implementation of organic (posts) and paid growth (ads) are very important. Xing offers the ability to reach B2B contacts through ads, industry groups and personal inmails. Advertising is through ads, sponsored articles and sponsored newsletters. A popular channel within the networking platform are the many Xing groups. These bring together companies and people interested in one specific topic. So it is ideal for gaining relevant contacts and posting your own articles. In all these avenues, "less is more" applies. It is better to occasionally publish a relevant ad or interesting video than to spam your target audience with mediocre articles. In this way, you are building a strong brand within your industry. With advertising for your postings, you have the opportunity to make your content visible in a targeted way. Xing's advertising platform offers opportunities for segmentation based on industry, education level, region and age group.
Promote events as a unique feature of Xing
Through Xing, you can very well promote events. To do this, you set up an event site and advertise directly through the platform. The special thing about this is that as a company you can see who has visited your event site and then you can send this visitor a message. This way you can very well test which themes resonate with your German target audience. Another feature of Xing are the business pages. This is not the same as a business page. A business page focuses on the multimedia of your company's sales and marketing. You can create different business pages for your company. This way you can position different products or product groups with different target groups. Also with a business page you can see who has visited your page and you can contact the visitors directly.
Don't forget to network
For Germans, trust is very important. You don't achieve this just by advertising a lot. It works very well to comment on other articles, like or share posts from industry peers, post a relevant message yourself from time to time and maintain your accumulated Xing contacts regularly. Patience is a virtue on Xing. Your contributions and activities in Xing groups within the industry ensure that you will be known as relevant and trustworthy. Then, referrals to your website and products ensure that Xing users actually visit the website.
Side note
An important note is that with Xing, you are primarily betting on the awareness phase within the marketing mix. On Xing, people and companies follow each other and information is mainly shared. People are much less concerned with searching for services and products on Xing. Therefore, the cost per lead is initially higher than you are used to with Google campaigns.
To Xing or not to Xing
For those starting out in the German market with a small budget and little manpower, a Google campaign may be an obvious first step. If by now you already have a lot of experience with LinkedIn in the Netherlands, you can translate this approach to the German market as well. However, anyone who is serious about reaching a large part of the German business market cannot ignore Xing. Even Andreas Giese, CEO of Dexport, specialist for online marketing in Germany, notices this. "The content marketing strategy is essential for success with Xing. It's best to involve specialists in this. Don't go for short-term results." In addition, the social media behavior of Germans remains different from what we are used to. It is therefore advisable to keep abreast of all developments. Engage with peers and visit events. This is the only way you can keep up with and respond to the rapidly changing landscape and requirements of the German business market.
On October 3, Dexport is hosting the CrossBorder Event. Find out how your company can grow internationally and discover all the ins and outs of the German market, among others.
