LinkedIn started as a professional networking site but has grown into a B2B marketer’s dream.
The platform has more than 660 million users in 200 countries and territories worldwide. Plus, about 95% of B2B marketers use the platform (Statista, 2019).
LinkedIn is a B2B powerhouse because it’s a great platform to use for distributing content and getting it in front of decision-makers at your target organizations.
According to LinkedIn, 94% of B2B marketers share content on the platform. This means 2+ million publishers who are posting unique long-form content, sharing thoughts on their feed, engaging with interested people in LinkedIn Groups, and running 7+ million branded company pages.
If you’re a B2B marketer, you need to have a LinkedIn B2B marketing strategy. Keep reading for tips on how to get started!
Why Use LinkedIn for B2B Marketing?
LinkedIn is just like every other social media platform in that it affords you and your brand the chance to boost awareness of your business, products, and services. Since LinkedIn is a professional networking site—filled with users who are decision-makers and thought leaders—it gives B2B marketers the unique opportunity to nurture meaningful relationships with the people who are in a position to buy and use your products and services.
Users on the platform are serious about the work they do and pay attention to the content that’s relevant to their industries and jobs.
The connections you’re making on LinkedIn are with the very people you need to convince to buy. In fact, 90+ million LinkedIn users are senior-level influencers and 63+ million are in decision-making positions (Business of Apps, 2019).
According to Wpromote, 89% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for lead generation, with 62% of them saying that it works to generate leads. This is more than 2X more than the next highest social platform.
Ready to grab some of those leads? You need to develop the right B2B marketing strategy for LinkedIn.
How to Create a Robust LinkedIn B2B Marketing Strategy
LinkedIn outshines other channels in a few key ways that make it the go-to platform for B2B marketing professionals.
First, LinkedIn has the business audience that B2B marketers need. With LinkedIn’s tools, B2B marketers can target users based on job titles, making it delightfully easy to zero in on the decision-makers or influencers.
When you consider that 91% of marketing executives list LinkedIn as the best place to find high-quality content (LinkedIn, 2017), it’s pretty easy to see the benefit of marketing on the platform.
Second, by publishing your own high-quality content on LinkedIn you’ll get your name in front of the key players and decision-makers you need to impress. This helps to establish you and your business as the authority on your industry.
And, the more people engage with you and your content through comments, shares, and endorsements, the better your credibility.
Third, LinkedIn users are creators. This means that LinkedIn offers a wealth of current takes on your industry. You can share your thoughts with other industry leaders or even get content ideas that you use on your own site.
LinkedIn is perfect for B2B marketers. That’s why we’ve put together this guide to show you how to create your own LinkedIn B2B marketing strategy.
Create a Company Page
To start off, create a page for your company. No, your personal page doesn’t work. You need to have a dedicated company page that represents your business.
Creating a company page on LinkedIn is both free and easy. Just log into LinkedIn using your personal account and click on Work in the upper right corner of the page.
From the dropdown that appears, click Create a Company Page at the bottom of the list.
You’ll need to answer a few questions about your business before agreeing to the terms and clicking Create page.
After you create your business page, you’ll want to personalize it a bit. To do this, add your logo and header image as well as a short, user-drive, engaging company summary.
In the About Us section, you’ll share more information about your company, like your history and how you came about, the people you serve, and what drives you to do what you do, along with anything else you care to share.
This is a great place to include keywords that are relevant to your business. This helps users find you when they search the platform.
Beyond that, make sure to share your location, website, contact information, and industry on your profile.
Target the Right Audience
LinkedIn has terrific audience targeting tools. You can target users by industry, seniority, job title, skills, and a lot more. This means that B2B marketers can deliver ads to just the right audience with laser-like precision.
With all the different ways to target LinkedIn users, you can get creative with how you reach out and the ads you deliver.
In addition, LinkedIn lets you target matched audiences (similar to lookalike audiences on Facebook) and target individual accounts based on information shared in a user’s LinkedIn profile.
With all of the different ways you have to target audiences, we highly recommend that you test your LinkedIn ads with different audiences. This helps ensure that you get the most from your advertising budget while still reaching your target audience.
Pro Tip: When setting a target audience on LinkedIn, remove your competitors to save some money and keep some secrets.
Optimize Your Page
To fully optimize your company page on LinkedIn, make sure that you have your entire profile filled out. It should include professional, high-quality images, as well as information about your employees and work.
Don’t forget that LinkedIn pages and profiles are indexed by Google, so put relevant keywords within the first 100 words of your page’s description and throughout the rest of the content on your page.
5 LinkedIn B2B Marketing Best Practices
As you’re probably aware, a well-optimized profile on a social media platform isn’t enough. Even if it is a professional network like LinkedIn.
In this section, we share five things you can add to your LinkedIn B2B marketing strategy to start driving traffic, generating leads, and boosting sales.
1. Create Great Content
As we mentioned earlier, 91% of marketers believe that LinkedIn is the best place to go for high-quality content.
Give the people what they want.
Of course, there are a few things to be aware of before you just start creating and publishing content on LinkedIn.
For starters, your content needs to be written for your target audience. They want useful content that’s going to touch on their pain points and give them real strategies they can use to solve them.
Does that mean you can’t push your products and services?
Of course not. But you have to be intentional about it.
Avoid overly salesy content that doesn’t do anything except ask readers to buy. Your content needs to be helpful and engaging if you expect people to read it.
To find out what’s on everyone’s mind at any given time, you can take a look at the posts that are trending or the hashtags you’re seeing on LinkedIn to find out. Then, create timely content around those topics.
And, remember that you can repurpose content from your blog to post on LinkedIn as well as sharing (occasional) updates about your business.
The really good news is that the posts that you create from your LinkedIn business page are indexed by search engines. By optimizing that content with the right keywords you can get those posts ranked and drive more viewers to your LinkedIn business page.
Our last content tip is to pace yourself when posting on LinkedIn. If your network gets an update from you every hour, their eyes will start glazing over and they’ll miss your content entirely.
Post to LinkedIn once every weekday and use the rest of your time on the platform to build your network by commenting on the posts of others.
2. Join and Create LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn Groups are a fantastic way to network with professionals already interested in your industry. And, if you can’t find one, start one! Usually, though, all it takes is a quick search to find groups that are focused on the very things you’re interested in.
Groups are a place to connect with likeminded people and ask or answer questions. They aren’t a place to drop by and tell people to buy your products.
If you can’t find the right group for you and decide to start your own, it’s really easy to do. Plus, starting your own group can go a long way toward positioning you as a thought leader in your industry.
3. Use Your Page to Generate Leads
We mentioned this earlier, but it bears repeating: 62% of B2B marketers say that LinkedIn brings them leads.
But how can you start getting leads from your own LinkedIn page?
Fortunately, if you’ve followed the other tips in this article, you’ve already done a lot of it.
To get LinkedIn users to engage with your brand, you need to make sure that you stand out from your competitors. This involves creating and optimizing your LinkedIn business page and creating content (with eye-catching visuals) that meets the needs of your target audience.
Adding a call to action to your posts, content, and LinkedIn business page can also help generate leads.
Rather than just posting and hoping that people engage further, give them a direction. This could be something as simple as directing them to your website, asking them to leave a comment, or sharing your content.
4. Engage With Your Audience
Marketing, especially marketing on social media, is all about nurturing relationships. Be the type of person online that you want to do business with and use both your LinkedIn business page and personal profile to build connections.
Social media is intended to facilitate conversations, not be a soapbox for you to stand on and deliver information. To keep your audience engaged with your brand, you have to consistently engage with them.
5. Track Your Success
When you have a LinkedIn business page you get access to analytics that will help you understand how your B2B marketing strategy is working. You’ll be able to see how many people are engaging with your content along with finding out who is engaging.
There are a few different dashboards that provide information, starting with the company page. This page shows the following data from the previous 30 days:
- Visitors to your page (followers and non-followers)
- Post impressions (how many people saw your updates)
- Followers (how many subscribed to get updates from your page)
There’s also an activity dashboard that shows:
- Likes
- Shares
- Comments
- Mentions
Finally, the analytics page shows in-depth information on:
- Visitors
- Updates
- Followers
The metrics you choose to track will depend on your overall marketing goals.
Take Advantage of LinkedIn for B2B Marketing
LinkedIn is a powerful social network platform with a large audience of professionals who are great contacts for B2B marketers. The LinkedIn B2B marketing strategy tips that we shared here will help you generate qualified leads, generate more traffic to your site, and will ultimately lead to more sales.
