LinkedIn is the most professional of the major social media websites, used by over 450 million working professionals throughout the world. It is accountable for more than 80% of a business’s social media leads. It is majorly focussed on B2B connections, LinkedIn should definitely be a large part of your social media strategy.
Its one of the best ways to grow your business, by making connections, to generating leads, establishing partnerships, and creating brand awareness. It makes up for an invaluable addition to the digital marketing strategy.
What is LinkedIn mainly used for?
At the core, LinkedIn is a professional social network. Its related to career development, professional connections, industry discussions and other business related activities. Its not like the other social networks where businesses have direct access to consumers by sharing updates.
LinkedIn requires a completely different approach when it comes to getting the results you expect. It is not like other social networks where brand followers are aware that companies use the platform to sell their product or service. This is not the case with LinkedIn because hard selling is a big no no.
All of us often question that is LinkedIn marketing really effective? Well, the answer is yes! In fact there are some facts which I would like to throw light on:
1. 51% of companies acquired a B2C customer through LinkedIn
2. 93% of the B2B marketers consider LinkedIn to be the most effective site for lead generation
3. LinkedIn generates more B2B leads for companies than Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, etc individually
4. LinkedIn is responsible for 64% of all visits from social media platforms to the websites
5. 50% of LinkedIn members report that they are more likely to buy from a company that they engage on LinkedIn
6. 80% of LinkedIn members wants to connect with companies to enhance their decision making
All of the above are a lead generation magnet itself!
Here are 12 LinkedIn marketing strategies to generate leads and boost your brand in the right direction
1. Beef up your LinkedIn profile:
Treat your LinkedIn profile as an interactive resume on steroids. It allows you to enhance your profile with interactive capabilities that showcase your experi ence instead of just listing your work experience and education. You can fill in the following details to improve your LinkedIn profile in 2019
a) Status Updates
b) Articles
c) Videos and Presentations
d) Recommendations
e) Projects
f) Skills and Expertise
h) Publications
i) Volunteering and Causes
j) Courses, Awards, Certifications
2. Create a Company Page:
A company page will tell your company’s story by showcasing your products and services, share updates with followers, and recruit new employees. The following points can help improve your LinkedIn company page
a) Banner Image
b) Products and services
c) Status updates
d) Career opportunities
3. Post actionable content:
Multiple, spread out posts everyday will be of great help to engage and reach with your audience. There are three post types available on LinkedIn and all three should be used effectively! Creating content that will stand out from the crowd and cater to the needs of your audience is the key to winning! LinkedIn themselves claim that it takes ten pieces of content to get one conversion.
4.Use the matched audience feature:
LinkedIn has stepped up their game! They’ve come out with new features that lets you now create custom audiences. They are now part of a well-oiled tool that you can use to put your business in front of a highly selective and very profitable audience. You can design sponsored content, regular text ads, or even send targeted messages with a sponsored InMail. With LinkedIn’s Matched Audience tool, you can now retarget visitors that are already in your sales funnel. According to a study, 98% of your website visitors aren’t going to convert on their first visit. With retargeting, it’s a useful way of reaching those 98%, since LinkedIn’s audience is all professional and they are more likely to buy.
5. Take advantage of LinkedIn community feature and search for individuals:
Apart from company and profile page, LinkedIn provides a number of community features that allows you to communicate and collaborate with other LinkedIn users. Sometimes, all you need is one connection with a company to make inroads that leads to sale. You can communicate via groups or influencers and also connect with an individual.
6. Start your own groups:
Another way of lead generation on LinkedIn is to create groups. If you are unable to find a community for your industry, then creating your own group is a good option for you. Let your group be exclusive and have a invite only community.
7. Use InMail:
There is only one downside to InMail, that it is a paid feature. But, it is definitely worth your money! Once InMail is activated, you can directly contact anyone on LinkedIn. It gives you a leverage to build relationships in a more personal format with individuals you have met through groups. Response of InMail is three times more than that of traditional mailing.
8. Follow the LinkedIn Marketing Blog:
LinkedIn Marketing is a curation of selected articles designed to help you improve your LinkedIn marketing. You can be up to date with their new releases and features. You can implement these ideas for your lead generation and boost your growth!
9. Use the paid LinkedIn Sales solution:
When you’ve got 500 million professionals on your site, it’s only natural that you would eventually create an exhaustive database that makes it easier than ever to connect. This is what LinkedIn has done with their Sales Solutions platform. It allows you to target, research, and engage with new prospects in one seamless motion. When anticipating needs is paramount, it’s hard to undervalue a tool that gives an insight like this. It is flexible enough to accommodate any sized sales team too.
10. Avoid hard selling:
The best way to get attention by users on LinkedIn is by being discovered. Treat this as any other platform and get clued to the latest trends.
11. Enable your best advocates; your employees:
We as humans would trust peoples reaction on anything over what the company/brand will say! So, empower your employees to share your company’s content and updates with their own connections so as to expand reach and increase credibility of the brand.
12. Reshare your top content:
Due to sophisticated social media algorithms, its likely that a very small percentage of audience (2-6%) have seen your posts on LinkedIn feed. If there is a backlog of successful social media content, it is likely that the content will perform well again in the future.
In the coming years, LinkedIn will become an integral part of online lead generation strategy as the platform will continue to grow. If you wish to learn more about linkedin marketing and it’s various benefits, contact us ☺