When LinkedIn was launched in May 2003, it was mainly recognized as a professional networking site. However, it has become the world’s largest professional network in less than two decades, with 774+ million members in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. It is not just a platform that connects job seekers with prospective employers; it has transformed into an invaluable marketing tool.

LinkedIn is an effective marketing tool for businesses to increase collaboration opportunities, share best practices, and target marketing efforts to generate leads. It has become important for every business to develop an effective LinkedIn marketing strategy to help you build brand awareness, generate leads and forge long-term professional relationships. 

What is LinkedIn Marketing?

LinkedIn marketing is the process of using the platform to generate leads, improve brand awareness, make relevant connections, foster relationships and partnerships by sharing content to drive traffic to your website. 

According to LinkedIn statistics, 93% of B2B marketers consider LinkedIn the most effective lead generation platform. For B2B companies, LinkedIn generates more leads than Facebook, Twitter and blogging. LinkedIn marketing involves strategies executed by an individual to achieve their conversion goals. Being a business owner is not necessary to engage in LinkedIn marketing, even though it is primarily targeted towards business to business relationships. The goal of the individual using LinkedIn marketing may be scaling website traffic, building brand visibility, making a sale, forging business relationships, or acquiring customers. 

Why Should You Use LinkedIn as a B2B Marketer?

• Improve reputation: LinkedIn is an ideal platform to increase your online presence, and with an increasing number of contacts signing up, businesses have an opportunity to network. LinkedIn can improve credibility and expand the visibility of both brands and individuals.
• Thought leadership: By posting content relevant to your business, you can establish yourself as an industry expert. Besides providing quality content, you can improve your profile by participating in LinkedIn communities to answer questions and become a trusted advisor. 
• Generating leads: In addition to traditional techniques like making a mention of valuable content available for download to attract prospects, LinkedIn offers various ways of identifying potential leads to engage them and turn them into paying customers.
• Social CRM: Most social CRM applications offer integration with LinkedIn, allowing you to see what your contacts are doing on LinkedIn, offering valuable information about their behavior and preferences. 
• Traffic building: Like other networking platforms, LinkedIn enables you to share content in status updates and LinkedIn groups or communities. Business content is shared more often on LinkedIn than on Facebook. 
• Gaining insights: It is a perfect platform to raise questions, get answers and gain insights. 

Set-up Your LinkedIn Business Profile

A LinkedIn page helps others to learn more about your business and interact with your brand on the platform. Page creation is currently available only on desktops, so let’s go through the steps of creating a business page.

1. Click on the “Work” icon at the top right-hand corner of your homepage and select “Create a Company Page” from the bottom of the menu. 
2. Select the Page type you would like to create, whether it is a small business, medium to large business, showcase page, etc. 
3. Enter information like Page identity, Company details, and Profile details.
4. Confirm that you have the right to act on behalf of the company and click Create. 

Now you can start building your business page. 

• Upload a logo and banner image.
• Post company updates that your audience will find interesting or helpful. 
• Tailor content to your audience’s preferences and interests. 
• Promote your page on other platforms to attract followers. 
• Create LinkedIn Showcase pages for specific products so you can customize your messages for different sections of your target audience.

LinkedIn’s Best Practices for B2B LinkedIn Marketing 

• Customize Your Profile URL

Instead of having confusing numbers, change your public profile URL to make your profile look professional and easier to share. You can do this by clicking View Profile and then choosing Edit Public Profile and URL. Assuming another LinkedIn user hasn’t already taken the same URL already, you can change your URL to anything you’d like.

• Update Your Profile

Keeping your profile updated is one of the most impactful ways to enhance your contact rates. Your profile matters because people do business with other people, too, not just your brand. Aim for 100% completeness and optimize your profile to create a positive impression with contacts and benefit your search presence. Add new skills, achievements and samples of your latest works. Be authentic and introduce your personality in your profile.

• Build an Effective Company Page

Offer plenty of opportunities for prospects to learn more about your brand and the people who work there. Provide relevant content they can engage with as well. Upload a high-resolution image for your profile and banner because that’s what searchers will see first when they land on your company page. 

• Define Your Target Audience and Goals

Before executing any marketing campaign, you need to understand your audience and determine the goals that you wish to achieve. These will help you measure your campaign’s success and increase those chances by delivering the right message to the right people. Once you know what you want to accomplish, it is easier to figure out your target audience, whether it is to raise awareness or generate leads. 

• Optimize Your Company Page
  • Add Keywords: Include keywords and phrases that the searchers might use. Incorporate them in the About section that represents who you are and what you do to provide clarity.
  • Link to your Website: The bulk of the information that prospects are looking for will probably already be present on your website. Provide your website URL so you can direct prospects to drive traffic to your site as well.
  • Share relevant content: To make the most out of your LinkedIn presence, post regularly and share valuable, high-quality content that your network can engage with so your page will be at the top of the search results. 

• Get More Followers

Here are a few tips and tricks that you can use to increase your follower count on LinkedIn.

• • Add a Follow Button on Your Website: Including a follow button on your website, so visitors know that your company has a LinkedIn page and can follow you there to stay updated. 

• • Encourage your employees to join LinkedIn: If your employees don’t have a LinkedIn profile, ask them to join and complete their profile. When they include the company name, they become followers of the page as well. 
  • Promote on other social media pages: You can share a post announcing that your company has joined LinkedIn on other social media channels like Facebook and Twitter. So, your followers on those platforms can follow you on LinkedIn as well. 
  • Participate in LinkedIn groups: You can launch your own discussion or join popular groups and contribute to relevant discussions by sharing your insight. More people would get to know you and want to connect with you when you share your thoughts. 
  • Engage with followers: If you are simply gathering followers without engaging with existing ones, you will lose them quickly. Like, share, comment, and interact with others posts and share relevant content valuable to your followers. 
  • Share images and videos: According to LinkedIn, posts with images get twice as many comments as text posts, and for videos, this is five times more likely. Don’t hesitate to add images and Youtube links to your posts. 
  • Optimize your page: Optimizing your LinkedIn page for search engines by adding keywords in the description and your posts. It will increase visibility and if people like the content and want to stay updated. 

• Publish Engaging Content

It can be tempting to sell in your posts but refrain from making every post about sales. Publish thought leadership content that your target audience wants to read and present fresh ideas in your posts. A healthy combination of 80% useful content that educates, entertains or offers a solution and 20% promotional content that focuses on promoting your business is ideal. 

• Increase Engagement Using Rich Media 

Experiment with different types of media to figure out what works best for your audience. Whether it is custom image collages, short videos (1-2 minutes), live videos generate 24X more comments than regular videos, pdfs that followers can download or shout-outs to team members and colleagues.  

• Use Sponsored Content

By boosting your content directly in your followers feed, you can guarantee that they will come across your content. This is the chance where you grab their attention and make an offer that they can’t refuse. LinkedIn offers comprehensive targeting to reach the right audience. You can also test variations of your message and track your leads with conversion tracking. 

• Create Ad Campaigns

Campaign Manager is LinkedIn’s all-in-one marketing platform that allows you to run self-service ad campaigns using Sponsored Content, Message Ads, Dynamic Ads or Text Ads. The platform has several features that are designed to help you achieve your marketing goals. 

• Try Advanced Analytics

Increase your platform results using advanced analytics tools and analyze your business profile visitors. LinkedIn’s Data Analytics shows the views of specific pages, and it will also tell you why they visited based on job function, location, seniority, industry type, etc. Update highlights show aggregate metrics for individual updates and help gain accurate insight to generate a successful LinkedIn presence.  

This covers almost everything you need to know about setting up your LinkedIn business page. Use these actionable tips and tricks and implement them in your next LinkedIn marketing strategy. Many things go into making your LinkedIn B2B marketing a success. If you need the help of a digital marketing agency to boost your business and achieve your conversion goals, feel free to contact us.