What is the best kind of advertising? Giving your prospects quality! It is especially true regarding growing your business on LinkedIn. Why? LinkedIn is a place filled with experts, decision-makers, professionals, executives, and business owners. It means that an attractive ad with a nice picture won’t be enough.
The implementation of a LinkedIn B2B marketing strategy is impossible without consistency, focusing on expertise, and the development of relations. Even being Edward Bernays or Henry Ford won’t help you.
But this article may. Read on to know how to develop a LinkedIn marketing strategy and get some practical tips.
What is LinkedIn Marketing Strategy?
LinkedIn marketing strategy contemplates an array of actions within the specific platform that allows promoting products, attracting leads, or establishing trust in the brand. It involves creating a particular image by presenting products, sharing valuable content, producing value, and answering the leads’ needs.
Is LinkedIn marketing effective?
Without a doubt, LinkedIn marketing proves to be efficient. I would say that it has enormous opportunities for B2B marketers. I’m not the only one who thinks that way. Subject to data, more than 90% of B2B lead generation specialists use it as the primary channel for marketing on social media.
Notably, the reasons are valid.
- It offers outstanding targeting features.
- It allows researching and studying the data of prospects.
- Lastly, most of the decision-makers and executives do digital communication there.
Sounds good? Let’s see some tips to show you how to develop a LinkedIn marketing strategy and attract quality leads.
How to Do Linkedin Marketing Strategy
Before doing any actions, you should set the ground for your future LinkedIn strategies. They refer to the fundamental concepts of expertise, image, and social selling.
Tip#1: Decide why you apply strategy
The primary advice for most strategies, especially LinkedIn strategies, is to set the goals according to your business needs and priorities. What do you want to achieve? Raise awareness and trust, support new products, get quality leads or build community?
In the first case, you should focus on expertise and content. In the second one, I would use sponsored posts. The latter scenarios will likely require higher engagement and expert opinions or lead magnets. Thus, first, set a goal and define the path for you to achieve it.
Tip#2: Set a worthy profile
Most of the “marketing on LinkedIn tips” searches in Google would tell you that you should develop a great profile. What does it mean?
For example, my team struggled to get the attention of prospects without conveying a proper image of an expert. In this regard, my recommendation is to fill in all the info concerning your expertise, skills, and experience and back them with the content or cases. That way, when you approach leads, they will see that you have something to say and can be trusted.
Tip#3: Provide insights
LinkedIn social strategy contemplates the answer to the needs of the audience hanging out there. Right, the decision-makers and executives crave lessons to be learned. The latter came from success stories, guides, facts, and data. That’s why you should not hesitate to share your insights that will create value for the followers, adding to your image.
In this regard, a great strategy is to find experts within a B2B leads database and contact them to produce joint reports or even organize events. During one of the campaigns, I used it for outreach and found good writers to create blog articles and e-books.
Tip#4: Do not sell instantly
Besides, do not forget that, usually, a LinkedIn B2B marketing strategy is not about selling. It is about social selling. Why? The very principle of social media marketing contemplates creating bonds and developing relationships so that people trust and see you, and resort to you only when they feel so
Let’s consider an example. Imagine a new manager is looking for a solution to a business problem. He is likely to do research and ask questions on forums. To do so on LinkedIn, he will study trends and post in groups, at this point, looking for advice, not an ad.
Thus, if he comes across your sounding post and finds it helpful, you will be the first to whom he will resort next time. Next, you will direct him further within your sales funnel.
Tip#5: Focus on your network
Another principle to follow in terms of growing your business on Linkedin refers to networking. Since professionals look for career development and opportunities there, much depends on the number of followers and connections you have. Thus, try to add people to your network, especially if you act as a brand advocate or use a personal profile for business promotion.
Notably, you can start a habit of adding some people on a daily or weekly basis. After 2 or 3 months, you would have a solid foundation that you can use for building community. What are the real benefits? Getting access to people’s connections and their pages! Importantly, it is great for social listening and prospect research. As a result, you are getting not only greater coverage but comprehend the buyer’s persona better.
How to Be Successful On Linkedin
Now, you have an idea of what it takes to create a LinkedIn social strategy. However, it may not be enough to be visible or get substantial coverage. On LinkedIn, visibility and engagement are the driving forces in achieving success. What are your options, then? Check the next tips:
Tip#6: Engage with the audience
Some consider engaging with prospects to be an easy part. However, getting the key to the minds of the LinkedIn audience would require creativity and consistency from you.
Using LinkedIn for your business promotion means commenting and starting discussions with your prospects. For instance, you find a lead who writes on their management problem. What is your next step? Right, offering a solution in the comments or writing a direct message with the link to a guide.
Sometimes, even liking the post, as an act of recognition, may be enough to get attention, as they would go to your page and would see your content.
Besides, you can make your page a starting point of the discussion by posting articles, polls, or just sharing insights there. In this regard, utilize hashtags, simple tags, or LinkedIn promoted content. The latter can help you promote page updates or specific messages outside your network. Yet, if you do so, do it frequently as LinkedIn algorithms favor active users.
Tip#7: Use groups
Sometimes, growing your business on LinkedIn is impossible without groups. Why? There are several reasons.
The first one is that you can develop your own community that will support your brand by creating the group. There, you can share your content and ask for insights, problems, and issues, study the market and define trends.
On the one hand, it will help you with social listening. On the other hand, if you answer the issues adequately, you will likely get an army of loyal customers. Don’t forget that B2B purchases are concerned with sustainability and long-term investments. Thus, such a group will add to your image of an expert and caring company.
The second reason is that you can use groups to attract leads to your page. The main condition is to share a valuable comment and answer someone’s questions. Yet, it is essential not to be promotional and pushy.
For instance, recently, I left a comment in the small community of Growth hackers and the next day got a notification that several people viewed my page. For me, it became a signal to send an invitation to them and share some relevant insights to develop relationships.
Tip#8: Hold events
What is in demand among LinkedIn users? Educational content! It aims to fulfill their need to develop and grow professionally. Accordingly, one of the best ways to contribute to your LinkedIn social media marketing strategy is to organize an event. LinkedIn offers features that will help you hold it.
Under this strategy, the main goal is to provide value. For it, you will need to study trends, do social listening and invite an expert. What do you get in the end if you succeed? The audience’s interest, greater trust and visibility, quality content, and possible leads. The deal is that webinars or lectures can work very efficiently in the form of lead magnets helping you to attract quality leads.
Tip#9: Support campaigns with sponsored posts
Even though LinkedIn strategies vary depending on a goal, ignoring LinkedIn sponsored posts would be a crime. To start with, they are backed by practical targeting features, allowing you to spread a message across and outside your network. If used to support the distribution of your new posts or launch a new product, they can be very effective.
For instance, the Direct Sponsored Content allows you to distribute a specific message across the news feed, messages, and InMails of your prospects. Thus, if you have a profile page that needs a boost, or a new article on your blog that you believe has good conversion potential, you can design a separate template and target specific people with it. Besides, it works great for lead magnets distribution or your page update.
Tip#10: Join conversation with experts and influencers
Lastly, the last tip that can help with your LinkedIn B2B marketing strategy refers to tagging the experts or influencers in your posts. Such a tip may be insignificant. However, for many marketers, it is a way to start a dialogue leading to collaboration. For sure, if you tag Bill Gates on your post, he is unlikely to answer.
Nonetheless, there are enough nano-micro-macro influencers that you can engage with. What are the best occasions to engage for the sake of your LinkedIn strategies?
- When they mention your product or your post
- When you use their data
- When you repost their advice or recommendation
For them, tagging or using their quote with a direct reference can be a gesture of appreciation. For you, it may be a networking opportunity, not to mention that it is a trick to make them see you and your product. If they like your page, you can be mentioned in their post that can bring you some quality prospects.
Wrapping It Up
As you now know, using LinkedIn for your business is not easy. You should have an image of an expert, know your audience, and offer quality content. However, if you fit these criteria, it is only a beginning.
The true B2B marketing gurus are successful because they know how to develop a LinkedIn marketing strategy with high engagement and a suitable relationship-building model in mind. At the end of the day, a successful Linkedin B2B marketing strategy is about good planning, consistency, and proper research Yet, there is no guarantee that you will get fast results and you should keep it mingt.
