In today’s scenario, digital marketing is a prerequisite for the success and online visibility of a business. One cannot ignore promoting their brand on the web if they want to see tangible results. The results include increasing user engagement and bringing more people into the sales funnel.
Social media management is one of the most crucial arms of digital marketing. The popularity of social media platforms in the last decade has only increased. Thus, it has become an inseparable part of digital marketing. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., are some of the goliaths in the social media marketing realm. They are preferred for B2C(business to consumer) marketing.
Another social media platform that often gets overlooked and underestimated for its marketing capabilities is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a social media network for the business community. It focuses on career development and professional networking. These aspects make it suitable for B2B(business to business) marketing.
Want to know more about B2B marketing through LinkedIn? Keep reading.
This article will discuss the value of LinkedIn for B2B marketing. We will learn why it is suitable for effectively connecting to other businesses. Furthermore, we will learn how to build a strategy to make your B2B marketing endeavor successful on LinkedIn.
Why LinkedIn and How Can It Help B2B Brands?
A common perception that goes around is that LinkedIn is for job seekers. But in reality, it is a social media platform that seeks to build and foster a community of professionals. It does much more than connect professionals to better job opportunities. It helps create and foster connections between brands and brings businesses closer.
LinkedIn has grown immensely ever since Microsoft acquired it in 2016. It has seen a huge influx of new users and the addition of business-friendly features. Examples of some of these features are better search options, detailed analytics for user engagement, a new blogging interface, and more. Many of these features are capable of helping businesses get a better ROI(return on investment) on their marketing investments.
There also is enough data in the public domain that supports the argument in favor of LinkedIn’s B2B marketing effectiveness. LinkedIn has emerged as the second most popular social media platform for B2B marketing. It only trails the social media behemoth Facebook(now Meta) at the moment.
Nearly 95% of marketers use LinkedIn for their organic B2B marketing. For paid B2B marketing, 76% relied on LinkedIn. When it comes to B2B social media leads, about 80% originate from LinkedIn. The numbers speak for themselves.
LinkedIn has a considerable command over B2B marketing. It has the right tools and features to maximize the marketing output for B2B businesses. If you follow the right strategies and implement them successfully, it has the potential to spearhead your B2B marketing efforts.
Strategies To Use LinkedIn For Successful B2B Marketing
Digital marketers need to embrace LinkedIn in 2022 for B2B marketing. It will only continue to grow in its stature for maximizing lead generation and to build conversion-qualified communities. It creates visibility in relevant circles and promotes a brand among professionals.
If you don’t want to take our word for the effectiveness of LinkedIn for B2B marketing, you can see for yourself. You can implement the following marketing strategies on LinkedIn and witness visible results:
- Strengthen Your LinkedIn Business Profile
A LinkedIn business profile is crucial for you as a business owner. The latest updates in the last few years have added more interactive features to the business profile. Now, you can list more than just your work experience and education.
You can post status updates about your business on your profile. Status updates help strengthen connections with your networks. Your status updates can attract potential business leads if they are engaging.
You can ask for recommendations from your connections. Recommendations help you enhance your expertise and learn more about the new trends. They also help attract attention to your profile.
You can list out your expertise as a business owner on your profile. It allows first-time visitors to get a better idea about your business.
You can add the projects that your business has completed. They can serve as examples of your work ethics and excellence in your given field. Projects also help establish your business’s prowess by exposing your connections to your projects.
You should also add all the patents, awards, and certifications that you have amassed. In this way, you can establish the credibility of your work and your business.
- Build An Informative LinkedIn Page For Your Company
A company page speaks volumes to your prospects. Having an informative and compelling company page is vital to creating awareness about your business. LinkedIn Company Pages are discoverable by your target audience and tell a favorable story about your brand.
Your company page needs to be helpful for your connections and engage your target audience. It must contain clear information about the work of your company and its mission. It should also have precise information about the products and services your business offers.
The company page contains various essential elements. An apt banner image and your business logo should be the starting point of your marketing. They introduce the leads to your business.
Your company description should succinctly encompass everything about your business. The initial two to three lines of the description should be compelling enough to grab a visitor’s attention. It should compel them to click on the see more option. You should use the most relevant keywords here.
The company page should not overdo the marketing aspect and keep things minimal. It should be informative and satisfy the initial curiosity of the target audience about your business. But at that same time, it should not overwhelm the visitors. It should project a professional and sophisticated image of your business.
- Optimize The Company Page For Performance
You must optimize your company page to increase its visibility in LinkedIn search. Users rely on keywords to search for relevant businesses. Therefore, you must identify the right keywords to optimize the content on your company page. Use a keyword research tool to find the most relevant keywords.
You should include graphics, images, and videos on your page to make it more interactive. The headers should be eye-catching. You can further optimize your company page by adding details of key employees of your business.
You should implement other SEO best practices to help your company page rank in the SERPs. Your brand presence on LinkedIn will get a significant boost when your company page is optimized for performance.
- Identify The Target Audience
You can only expect success for your B2B campaigns when you target the right audience. LinkedIn provides Website Demographics to help you get insights into your potential audience and its behavior. You can identify your audience with their traits through these metrics.
These traits concern your company page and how visitors react to it. You get insights about the content that your audience engages with the most. You can analyze this data to better identify your target audience.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is another powerful tool to help you recognize your target audience. Other third-party automation tools help identify the right audience across demographics. You can generate potential leads by using these tools.
- Create And Share High-Quality B2B Content
Once you have identified your target audience, you should focus on pushing high-quality content. B2B marketing, like B2C marketing, relies heavily on creating awareness about the products/services through valuable content. Engaging content captures the audience’s attention. It compels them to learn more about your business.
Valuable content also helps increase followers on your company page. More followers signify the trustworthiness of your business. The content should focus on solving common problems of the target audience in your industry. It should propagate knowledge about your niche and the insider details of your industry.
Your content should be interactive to hold the audience’s attention for long. Use images, videos, infographics, etc. The idea is to make it more comprehensible. Your content should also showcase your expertise in your field.
LinkedIn allows you to share a variety of content, including videos, documents, pdf, images, and articles. Remember to share content regularly. Consistency is key for better user engagement.
- Take Help Of Your Employees
Your employees can help your marketing efforts by engaging with your posts. Early engagement on a post(within the first 60 minutes of posting) determines the quality of your post. The LinkedIn algorithm classifies your post as quality content if it receives good traction in this time frame.
The range of your audience significantly increases if your posts are seen as quality content. You can increase the overall engagement on your post to all three degrees of connections. The “Notify Employees” feature helps you remind your employees to start engaging with your content as soon as it is published.
You can also turn your employees into influencers for your business. LinkedIn favors content shared by your employees and offers a 2x engagement rate as compared to regular influencers. Moreover, your employees know more about your products and services than anyone else. They can provide the most relevant information and create a healthy impact on your B2B marketing campaigns on LinkedIn.
- Leverage Linkedin Analysis
LinkedIn has in-built Analysis features to give teeth to your B2B marketing campaigns. You can analyze the insights and extract actionable information to make relevant changes to your marketing strategies. You can also gauge the performance of your company page and its content.
LinkedIn Analysis provides data on a range of metrics. Ideally, you should analyze all of them, but practically it would not be possible in some cases(due to time constraints, etc.). Moreover, your objectives decide which metrics will matter more to you.
You can use the time-range filter, page filter, or various other filters to get the required analytics.
Examples of some of these metrics are:
- Traffic
You can gather information about page views from this metric. It presents absolute and average page view data.
- Followers
Find data on your followers and understand their engagement pattern. You can use this data to better engage people who are already in the fold.
- Visitors and Visitor Demographics
You can find potential leads or followers among page visitors using the visitor metric. You also have the option to identify your leads based on their job profiles, location, company information, seniority, etc. A B2B business requires this information for business development.
- Engagement
You can use this metric to monitor the performance of the content on your company page.
- Use The Community Features Well
LinkedIn focuses on building communities and connecting businesses with each other and professionals. It offers powerful community features. These features help enhance communication with clients, partners, and interested users.
Community features on LinkedIn not only help to build connections, but they also help with marketing efforts. There are two basic community features, namely influencers and groups.
Influencers are thought leaders in their respective industries and help shape people’s perceptions. They connect with their followers by sharing knowledge and information on new trends in a given industry. You can partner with influencers to increase the impact of your B2B marketing strategies.
Groups are formed based on interests, industries, expertise, and skillsets. You can create a group for your business and add relevant participants to it. They are a great place to learn about new business trends and keep in touch with people & businesses.
If you use these community features judiciously, you can promote your B2B business and its product/services more efficiently.
- Trust LinkedIn Ads
Once you have built a significant organic presence of your business on LinkedIn, you can take the paid route and reap the rewards from the same. LinkedIn Ads work wonders when you have established credibility for your brand.
When you start getting sizable engagement on your quality content, you are moving in the right direction. It is a signal that you can use LinkedIn Ads.
You can choose from a wide variety of paid campaigns to promote your business via LinkedIn Ads. They are an effective way to generate quality leads for your B2B business. There are ad formats like TextAds, Sponsored Content, Sponsored InMail, Video Ads, etc.
LinkedIn Ads help you target your audience based on professional attributes like skills, job roles, industry type, company name, etc. This helps in micro-targeting, which is a very effective way of digital marketing. LinkedIn Ads help you reach a decision-making audience.
- Retarget Website Visitors On LinkedIn
You can extend the functionality of your website using LinkedIn. You can do so by monitoring the interactions of your website visitors and using website retargeting ads by LinkedIn. These ads work based on their past behavior.
These paid campaigns by LinkedIn allow you to target visitors who: bounced early, didn’t convert, or never returned. They help bring back such visitors to your website.
You can increase the conversion rate on your website significantly with these ads. The retargeting ads need to push communications that relate to their previous interactions with your site.
You can get started by embedding the LinkedIn Insight Tag on your website. Once you add the tag, you can use the LinkedIn Campaign Manager to analyze the audience behavior on the website and do the rest.
Conclusion
LinkedIn can give wings to your B2B marketing goals with its practical features and user-centric approach. LinkedIn differs from other social media platforms because it focuses on content quality and building meaningful connections. You can craft an effective LinkedIn B2B Marketing strategy by taking into account everything discussed here.
