LinkedIn marketing is one of the easiest ways to promote and grow your business, or even find a good business partner. Passive marketing tactics like setting up your profile, building connections, and updating your account regularly, will help you get the attention of potential customers, clients, joint-venture partners, and influencers.
However, to use LinkedIn like a business magnate, you should utilize proactive marketing tactics. These include approaches like posting status updates regularly, using LinkedIn advertising, participating in groups, upgrading your account, and sending targeted messages and invitations. Before discussing these tactics in more detail, let’s explore why LinkedIn is such a powerful marketing tool for small businesses.
The Marketing Power of LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the world’s largest network of professionals. With more than 610 million members as of 2019, it can be a great platform to market your business. Most of these users are influential, high-level executives, that you could target in your advertising and marketing campaigns. Here are some interesting LinkedIn statistics:
– 303 million active monthly users, with 40% visiting the site daily
– 63 million senior decision marketers use LinkedIn
– A LinkedIn user, on average, spends 17 minutes per month on the site
– Job seekers spend, on average, 30 minutes a day on LinkedIn
– 97% of B2B marketers distribute their content via LinkedIn
– 92% of the Fortune 500 companies use LinkedIn
– 90% million senior-level influencers use LinkedIn
– More than 77% of recruiters are on LinkedIn
– More 57% of the companies in the world have a LinkedIn company page
– B2B company sites derive more than 46% of their social media traffic from LinkedIn
– LinkedIn contributes to about 80% of the B2B leads from social media
How to Use LinkedIn for Your Success
LinkedIn offers a great platform to grow your business through referrals, networking, and client introductions. LinkedIn is a critical resource because of the high number of professionals concentrated in one place. However, in order to succeed, you must take the time to build trust and develop relationships. Below are some of the ways you can use LinkedIn successfully:
Complete Your Profile
The success of your marketing efforts on LinkedIn relies heavily on the thoroughness of your profile. Your profile should be complete, and should include your name, products, and the services that you offer. Include information about your previous work experiences, qualifications, and skills. The summary section of your profile offers 2,000 characters that you can use to speak directly to your audience. When people visit your profile, you should impress them and offer an opportunity to further your business.
Highly Target Your Customers and Connections
You should be specific about your target audience. The advanced search feature enables you to hone in on specific job roles, industry, or even company size when choosing your target audience. For instance, if you are selling a data management system to small businesses in the U.S, you can target businesses based in the U.S with less than 50 employees. You can be more specific by choosing individuals with specific titles, like human resource management, under the same criterion.
Post High-Quality Content
Like in all other online marketing efforts, content is the king in lead generation. You should write high-quality content that is specifically targeted. Features like hashtags, tagging people and companies, short videos, and long-form posts can help in targeting the right audience. The aim can be to teach your reader about solving a specific problem or an alternative way to accomplish a task. Doing so will help to build your audience but it will also establish you as a thought leader in that space. Eventually, you will get more conversions and get real value in exchange.
Utilize LinkedIn Ads features
Ads features like sponsored content, direct sponsored content, text ads, and sponsored InMail help to reach a targeted audience directly. Sponsored updates enable you to push your posts onto the newsfeeds of individual targeted users. You can either choose a pay-per-1000 impressions or use the pay-per-click feature to sponsor updates. Unlike other social media platforms where you select your audience based on demographics like age and gender, LinkedIn offers a wider range of options. They include job title, company name, schools, job function, groups, and more. This means that your content will be viewed specifically by people who find it relevant.
Make the Most out of LinkedIn Groups
To get the best out of LinkedIn, you should join groups in your relevant field and stay active. As a group member, you will have the opportunity to listen to relevant conversations surrounding your target audience. Groups can also be a good place to interact with other professionals in your filed and seek relevant advice. One of the attractive features of groups is the ability to message other members even when you are not connected. This means that you can form connections easily for the benefits of your business. You can also create your own group to attract people who are interested in your field of specialization.
Add and Keep Your Company Profile Updated
The company profile is a great place to share information about your products and services. You can use this space to give more insights about your business, the people you work with, and other relevant information. A good approach to use is to match the appearance of your LinkedIn company profile to your website. Add photos that depict your brand, descriptions, and links to your products, and explanations of your products and services. It is also important to update the page regularly and keep the audience engaged.
Make Connections First Before Building Relationships
LinkedIn is built to enable connections between professionals. The best way to accomplish this is to make connections with prospects, referral partners, strategic partners, and other business owners. Once you have made these connections, you can then decide the approach you wish to utilize to nurture these relationships. This also means that you should avoid hard selling, focusing instead on being discovered. The right people will discover you if you are posting the right content and making the right connections.
Advanced Tactics for LinkedIn Lead Generation
– Make your LinkedIn company page a lead generation page by adding a clickthrough to your website
– Create a showcase page to promote your products or services
– Use the advanced search feature to identify the exact type of audience you wish to target
– Save your searches and set up alerts for your prospects
– Utilize LinkedIn features, including ads, video posts, sponsored InMail, groups, and client recommendations
– Upgrade your basic account to a sales navigator account or premium business account, to get more targeted leads
– Claim your custom URL to ensure your profile ranks on top of the search engine results
LinkedIn is a great platform to expand your network, create a professional image for your business, and find clients. Even if you do not think the platform aligns with your mode of business, it is worth a tour to find how other professionals, in your field, are using LinkedIn. As a social networking site, LinkedIn allows you to connect to more people, which often leads to greater business growth opportunities. Using the tips shared in this article, you can maximize your use of LinkedIn to build and grow your business.