You know that you need to be on LinkedIn, but you’re not quite sure how to make the most of it.
Maybe you’ve tried out a few B2B marketing recommendations, but you’re not seeing the results you want.
Make no mistake, with over 900 million users worldwide, LinkedIn is a powerful tool for any business to grow its presence online.
In this guide, we’ll show you 12 best practices and strategies for using LinkedIn to attract more prospects to your business.
Let’s start by answering a couple of questions.
What Is LinkedIn B2B Marketing?
LinkedIn B2B Marketing is marketing from one business to another (rather than to the end-user) using Linkedin.
This sort of marketing is utilized by software, manufacturing, and advertising companies to gain the attention of key corporate decision-makers in their respective sectors.
According to their own reporting, LinkedIn has approximately 630 million decision-makers in over 200 countries, and it accounts for 46% of social traffic to enterprise websites.
With that kind of user base, the social media platform can definitely help your organization increase marketing ROI.
Its lead conversion rates are three times greater than those of Twitter and Facebook.
LinkedIn can help your business flourish in the digital advertising market by providing features like:
- Improved search choices
- Precise data for user interaction
- A new blogging interface
Should You Use LinkedIn for B2B Marketing?
40% of marketers agree that LinkedIn is the best platform available for generating high-quality leads.
However, to deliver genuine business value and achieve success, you must have a strong presence on LinkedIn.
Using LinkedIn Ads, providing high-quality content, optimizing profiles and posts, and communicating with potential customers are all good places to start.
Develop a Linkedin strategy and put your marketing team to work by connecting with your target demographic through various strategies.
12 LinkedIn B2B Marketing Best Practices and Strategies
Linkedin is a robust platform that offers various methods to connect with other businesses or to advertise and sell products and services.
In this article, we’ll cover strategies and best practices involving:
- Company pages
- Company matched audiences
- Campaign groups
- Lead generation forms
- Linkedin articles
- Rich media content
- Employees as influencers
- Company engagement reports
- In-person events
- Linkedin ads
- Retargeting website visitors
- Bidding strategies
1. Company Pages
Creating a LinkedIn company page can be used to highlight your products and services while also increasing brand visibility.
Make the most of the 2000-character restriction by writing an informative and interesting description that will entice potential consumers.
Additionally, you can construct showcase pages tailored to a certain client category.
This will assist you in developing long-term relationships with your target audience.
2. Company Matched Audiences
You can hyper-target your B2B marketing efforts with company-matched audiences on LinkedIn. They enable you to develop specialized target groups based on job title, seniority, and industry.
You can also obtain insight into your audiences by using the extra information accessible through LinkedIn’s Company Engagement Reports (as explained later).
Furthermore, you can generate targeted ads for a defined B2B demographic with highly relevant content in your ad campaigns using over 20 distinct audience variables.
3. Company Engagement Reports
Review company engagement reports to learn how the employees of specific organizations are connecting with your brand on LinkedIn.
Analyze the data to find organizations on your list that warrant further attention or that may be ready for outreach.
You can start by using LinkedIn’s inbuilt analytics dashboard to track your performance.
More specifically, use the “Visitors page” to learn who is looking at your company. This data can work to greatly strengthen your account-based marketing (ABM) approach.
Finally, use LinkedIn’s conversion monitoring dashboard to track the effectiveness of your ad campaign.
4. Lead Generation Forms
Lead-generating forms help to mitigate tracking and attribution issues.
When running an ad campaign, you can develop forms directly within LinkedIn’s “Lead Generation objective.
Forms can then be modified to incorporate contact information pulled directly from a user’s LinkedIn profile, as well as up to three unique questions.
You can also augment your company page by converting it into a lead-generating page and by providing content customized to your target demographic.
Using the Hidden Fields area, lead generation forms can contain urchin tracking modules (UTM) parameters. These allow for more precise lead tracking.
5. LinkedIn Articles
Regularly publishing articles on LinkedIn (and promoting through posts) is an excellent approach to developing inbound marketing and engagement with prospective clients.
Thought leadership pieces, repurposed content, and regular updates all work to increase brand recognition and potentially position your company as an industry authority.
Additionally, LinkedIn articles are SEO friendly, which means that anything you publish on LinkedIn could appear in Google search results.
6. Rich Media Content
Your company should strive for a diverse range of media formats and content types.
Video posts are 20 times more likely to be re-shared on LinkedIn than text-only posts.
Engagement rates for rich media content, such as webinars and presentations, are even higher.
This kind of content is also excellent for demonstrating specialized industry knowledge, which increases brand credibility.
Another form of rich media, podcasts are becoming increasingly popular on Linkedin, particularly in B2B.
Lastly, remember to optimize your posts for organic reach by adding relevant keywords and hashtags.
7. Employees As Influencers
Turning employees become influencers is historically one of the most successful B2B LinkedIn marketing strategies.
You can enhance your brand’s visibility, improve engagement, and promote your products and services by utilizing the reach of employee profiles and activity.
Here are a few measures you can take to assist your staff:
- Encourage staff to follow new connections on LinkedIn and monitor their activities
- Show your enthusiasm for their work by liking or sharing their articles and updates
- Develop relationships with industry decision-makers who are influencers outside your firm, such as CEOs and CMOs to expand visibility
- Make an employee engagement program to recognize and reward employees for their contributions
8. Campaign Groups
Using LinkedIn campaign groups can enhance your organizational structure and allow you to manage your campaigns more efficiently.
Set budgets and campaign run periods for your campaigns as a group, allowing each to keep their structure simpler and more structured.
This helps you better understand your target audience, solve problems, and foster mutual understanding.
If you’re executing multiple campaigns with defined goals, consider using a separate campaign group for each.
9. In-Person Events
In-person events are another great way to showcase industry experts and build your brand, bond with prospective clients, and enhance trust and credibility.
It also connects your company with a specific demographic and generates leads.
As a supplemental strategy, regularly seek to create relationships with like-minded individuals, establish thought leadership, and increase your exposure by engaging in relevant groups.
10. LinkedIn Ads
LinkedIn Ads allow you to directly contact a defined highly valuable audience.
You can tailor your target audiences by region, firm, industry, age, gender, education, experience, job title, and other characteristics.
Sponsored content, message ads, dynamic ads, and text ads are some of the formats available.
Although LinkedIn Ads are more expensive than other social media advertising platforms, the cost per lead is 28% cheaper than Google Adwords.
Setting a budget and timetable for each ad campaign is critical, as is A/B testing ads to discover which one performs best.
11. Retargeting Website Visitors
Approximately 98% of website visitors depart without providing their email addresses.
Consider using LinkedIn website retargeting ads to reach out to visitors with relevant messages based on previous engagements.
Customize your retargeting to website visitors and other prospective decision-makers from the same firm.
Use analytics to determine what type of content resonates with prospects and incorporate it into your Linkedin-published content.
At the end of each post, be sure to provide a CTA to lead readers to your website.
12. Bidding Strategies
You can increase the efficiency of your Linkedin ad campaigns through various bidding tactics.
Different techniques entail deciding how much they are ready to pay for a specific objective, such as clicks, impressions, leads, or video views.
You can also use manual bidding to establish your own bids on the initial event.
Cost cap bidding, on the other hand, enables you to establish a fixed price for your final product.
Continuous A/B testing should be used to identify which technique is most effective.
Conclusion
LinkedIn is a great platform for networking and building relationships. With patience and dedication, following the best practices above is a surefire way to make LinkedIn a successful B2B marketing channel.
If you need help getting started, or if you’re ready to commit to a Linkedin plan that generates qualified leads, schedule a free strategy session with us.