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LinkedIn is a powerful platform for B2B marketing with over 690 million users in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. When used effectively, it can be a great marketing tool to grow your B2B business. Studies have shown that 80% of B2B leads come through LinkedIn. This is a lot of business you’re missing out on if LinkedIn isn’t in your B2B marketing strategy. To support your business achieve this, we have come up with 5 ways to use LinkedIn in your B2B marketing strategy.
The first place to start if you haven’t already is to create a company page on LinkedIn. In order to do this, you need a personal account. Once you’ve filled out your company details and created the page, you should write an engaging description about your business. You have up to 2,000 characters to describe your business and encourage users to follow your page.
It’s also recommended to add a clear profile image and cover image. The company profile image size should be 300 x 300 whilst the company cover image size should be 1,536 x 768. LinkedIn now allows admins of company pages to invite their connections to follow the page. This is a great way to encourage your connections who you believe would be interested in your company to follow your page.
Once you’ve created your company page, it’s important you’re posting regularly. However, users on LinkedIn don’t want to be constantly advertised to with salesy posts. Create posts which have more helpful content that’s relevant to your target audience. Posting this type of content will encourage users to click through to your company page to learn more. You don’t always have to come up with new content either. If you’ve created blogs on your website, create posts around them with a link directing LinkedIn users to your website to read them.
Whilst you should post regularly, you should avoid overposting and spamming your followers’ feeds. HubSpot suggests posting between 2-5 times a week between Tuesday and Friday. As LinkedIn is a business social media platform, not many people are thinking about work over the weekend so are unlikely to be on the platform. Mondays can be busy for some meaning they don’t have much time to check LinkedIn until Tuesday.
Did you know that 98% of LinkedIn users are part of at least one group on the platform? Back in 2013, LinkedIn posted some stats around LinkedIn groups and found that there were over 2 million LinkedIn groups that had been created. Before you create or join a LinkedIn group, think about the reasons for joining. Will you be adding value to a group that has already been created? Or, if you’re creating a new one, what type of content will you post that will engage and encourage conversations among members?
LinkedIn groups offer a number of advantages for B2B businesses. By creating a group and growing it to a large audience, group admins are able to send weekly emails to all of the members as well as an email to new members when they join as long as they opt in. This is a great way of getting your best content out to your target audience and can include links to your website.
If you’ve managed your group well or have joined a relevant group, it should be full of members who are your target audience. This means they can be great to gain feedback on your business, service or products. It’s important not to word in a way that you are trying to sell but you can ask questions regarding certain aspects that you want to improve.
LinkedIn ads can be a great way for B2B businesses to build brand awareness and increase leads. The main benefit of LinkedIn ads compared to other ad platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google is that you’re able to target professionals in your target industry. It allows you to target users based on job title, location, industry, seniority, level of education and more.
As with the other ad platforms, you can also use LinkedIn ads for retargeting. You can create lookalike audiences after uploading emails you already have and also retarget users who have visited your website. There are a number of different ad formats you can choose from depending on your objective. This includes:
Videos are a great and engaging way to share your knowledge with your target audience on LinkedIn. Instead of a user having to read a long post or blog, you can make it easier for them to digest by creating bite-size videos. In terms of popularity, LinkedIn is now the third most popular social media platform for video marketing - ahead of Twitter and Instagram. 66% of marketers have also said they will be using video on LinkedIn in 2020.
LinkedIn have also introduced a new feature - LinkedIn Live. This allows individuals and businesses to stream live video content to their network. As this is at an early stage, you currently have to complete an application form and be approved in order to use this feature.
Whether you’re a small or large B2B business, LinkedIn should be a part of your B2B marketing strategy. Make sure to spend time creating an engaging company page and plan the content you’re going to post on your page and LinkedIn groups. If you have the budget, look into LinkedIn ads to target professionals in your target industry. Don’t get left behind by your competitors and start creating engaging videos that are relevant to your target audience and provide value.
