XING - Still relevant for B2B?

11/27/2023

What role does XING still play for companies?

For a long time, XING was considered the platform in the DACH region for recruiting, networking, and B2B marketing and sales. However, since LinkedIn entered the market, the platform has come under increasing competitive pressure. Let's be honest: XING has never really been a great platform for networking, exchanging ideas or advertising your own company. While traditional social media platforms have always been on the move, creating new functions, features and opportunities for users and advertisers, XING has remained relatively rigid, with hardly any changes visible. Networking and marketing have always been more of an afterthought on the platform than a core feature.

Of course, B2B platforms have a different target audience than Instagram, for example, but LinkedIn showed that there was definitely interest in similar features and functions here as well. Unlike XING, LinkedIn clearly focused on the networking aspect and was more oriented toward Instagram or Facebook in terms of functions and features. LinkedIn came across as much fresher, offered significantly more functions, and provided users with features they were already familiar with from classic social media. It was much easier to build a community on LinkedIn, create reach for your own topics, and promote yourself and your company well, even beyond recruiting, than on XING.

While LinkedIn is becoming increasingly popular, especially among younger users, and user numbers continue to rise (now over 1 billion worldwide and 20 million in Germany), XING tried slowly, then faster and more frantically, to adapt and change. Unfortunately, this was not successful. After many half-baked new features and functions, XING finally changed its strategy – moving away from social media and focusing on recruiting. The platform removed many of its poor features and, at the beginning of this year, some of its very good ones too. Since then, it has concentrated entirely on recruiting and is putting significantly more energy into its kununu brand.

What remains of this once so important platform for companies? What role can it still play in your B2B marketing? And is LinkedIn really better than XING? These are all questions we want to answer here.

LinkedIn or XING for B2B marketing?

LinkedIn has completely overtaken XING in B2B marketing. This is partly due to the sheer number of users. LinkedIn has over 850 million users worldwide. In the DACH region, the platform now has more users than XING, which had a significant head start and at times had four times as many users as LinkedIn. But beyond user numbers, LinkedIn is also much better suited to B2B marketing than XING in terms of its range of functions and targeting options. It enables extremely precise targeting of decision-makers through advanced algorithms, which is significantly weaker on XING. The platform offers a wide range of marketing tools, including company pages, ads, and targeted recruiting. Like other social media platforms, it also offers the opportunity to share high-quality content, demonstrate expertise, and build a community. These are all features that XING never had to the same extent or, as in the case of the popular groups, has discontinued as part of its reorientation.

In summary: If you want to do B2B marketing, you should definitely use LinkedIn and steer clear of XING. XING has significantly reduced its functions and features, while LinkedIn continues to refine its tools and improve.

B2B sales: XING and LinkedIn compared.

The same applies to sales. LinkedIn has focused heavily on this area in recent years and offers a wide range of options for using the platform as a sales channel. Disciplines such as social selling have only gained significance through LinkedIn and are now an integral part of the platform. Other features, some of which are subject to a fee, such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator, offer salespeople many opportunities to generate new leads, attract the attention of potential clients, and integrate the platform into their own CRM system. In addition, the platform offers many tips and options for customizing your profile for sales and provides a wealth of information about the business target group that XING does not have. LinkedIn's sophisticated algorithms also allow you to target specific audiences, which is crucial for B2B sales. Both platforms have ads, but LinkedIn offers better targeting with more options and more prominent placement than XING. If you compare the ads on both platforms, you will quickly notice that XING is almost exclusively used for job ads, while LinkedIn covers the entire B2B portfolio. Key sales options on XING, such as groups, were discontinued in early 2023.

So for B2B sales, you should also use LinkedIn and slowly familiarize yourself with its features. XING hardly plays a role here anymore.

Recruiting: XING is still somewhat relevant

To put it very figuratively, recruiting is like a last island in the LinkedIn ocean where XING has found refuge. Anything else would be very surprising, given that the platform wanted to specialize in this area in particular. XING and LinkedIn offer some very similar functions here, so both platforms can be considered for this topic. To generalize, one could say that the group of potential applicants on XING appears to be slightly older and more conservative than the younger and more communicative LinkedIn users. At the same time, however, LinkedIn's international reach also becomes a problem here. Anyone who advertises a vacancy and even places an advertisement for it will, even with well-targeted advertising, receive significantly more applications that are hardly or not at all suitable for the vacancy than on XING. However, LinkedIn now also offers many features for recruiters that make the process on LinkedIn somewhat easier and more pleasant. On the other hand, XING has the kununu platform and the associated company reviews. This is a strong advantage, as it gives potential applicants a (more or less) genuine impression of the company culture, atmosphere, salary, etc. You can find out more about kununu below.

For recruiting, XING is therefore still an interesting platform that you should not rule out from the outset. You should try out which platform is better suited to your company and generates the best applications.

Is XING still suitable for networking?

Similar arguments apply here as in marketing and sales: LinkedIn has the larger network and offers a wide range of functions and features for this purpose. XING used to have strong exclusive networks of experts, decision-makers, and specialists through its groups, but failed to develop these further and then shut them down at the beginning of 2023. LinkedIn, on the other hand, now has its own group feature and uses advanced algorithms to provide precise recommendations for contacts in your own field. The platform not only promotes professional connections, but also offers a dynamic environment for following industry trends and sharing expertise.

In summary, LinkedIn is the significantly better platform for expanding your B2B network, while XING now only offers a rudimentary range of functions.

Conclusion: LinkedIn is better than XING.

A bit provocative at the end. But yes – especially those looking for a platform to promote their B2B brand, actively engage in sales, and generate important leads don't need to think twice (anymore). XING has almost completely withdrawn from these areas and is therefore no longer a real alternative. The platform is therefore only of interest to companies that are “merely” looking for new employees or rely on a broad distribution of ads across a wide range of B2B platforms. Everyone else will be much happier on LinkedIn and, with the right strategy, will achieve similarly good, if not better, results in B2B marketing and sales.

Would you like to know how you can make LinkedIn work for you, create compelling content, and place successful ads? Then write to us at pole-position[at]drive.eu and we will contact you for a free initial consultation. As LinkedIn-certified marketing strategists, we support many of our clients on the platform in developing an effective strategy, planning and implementing content for the platform, and placing ads. We look forward to supporting you in your project with our expertise and experience.