LinkedIn has emerged as one of the leading social platforms for B2B providers. With these tips, you’ll massively boost your presence and increase engagement.
Though many see LinkedIn as a secondary social platform, its reach has increased massively in recent years. According to LinkedIn, the platform has over 600 million members in 2019. And according to data from Kinsta, 303 million of those users are active on a monthly basis.
That’s a huge potential audience for your marketing campaigns, especially if you offer services in the B2B space.
So why don’t you have an effective LinkedIn marketing campaign?
In this article, we’re going to provide some tips on how to market effectively using LinkedIn. But first, let’s look at a few more reasons why LinkedIn is such a powerful platform for marketers.
Why Should You Try Promoting Your Business on LinkedIn?
We spoke about the raw numbers above. However, it’s not just the number of people who use LinkedIn that makes it such a valuable platform.
It’s the demographics that make it such an effective marketing tool.
LinkedIn has always promoted itself as a social media platform for professionals. For marketers, that means it provides easier access to the key decision-makers that they need to speak to.
Practically every person who uses the platform tells you who they are and what they do.
With LinkedIn, you can create targeted marketing campaigns. These can hit the people who can make key decisions. Often, this means you’re cutting out the middle-men and getting straight to the source.
This results in faster decisions on whether to make use of your service. And that means you’re spending less time and money on trying to connect with the right people.
Beyond that, LinkedIn holds greater networking potential than any other social media platform. Building connections with the right people can give you access to a huge pool of users. Plus, your connections can also be a great source of opportunity for your business. Even if somebody doesn’t want to buy from you, they can often refer you to people who would.
This means you generate more leads, which helps you to scale your business.
Finally, LinkedIn can be used to establish yourself as an authority and influencer within your industry. The content you post on the platform gets viewed by professionals. When it reaches the right people and they decide to share it, you open up even more opportunities for the business.
Of course, these are just potential benefits. You won’t experience them if you’re not an effective LinkedIn marketer.
These are the tips that you can use to give your profile a boost so that you can generate leads using LinkedIn.
Tip #1 – Create Content for Your Connections
The connections that you build on LinkedIn may hold more value than the connections you have on other social media platforms.
Why?
Your LinkedIn connections are usually professionals who want to engage with you. They can see your areas of expertise and they want to find out if you can deliver on your promises.
That’s important to remember when building content for LinkedIn. You’re not always trying to create something catchy and shareable.
In most cases, you’re building content to engage those existing connections so you can prove that you’re an authority to them.
That’s what’s going to convince the people you connect with to share and engage with your content. It’s also what’s going to convince them to message you when they have an issue that falls into your area of expertise.
Learn as much as you can about the connections you create. Check profiles, look at the types of content they’re consuming, and create to fulfil the needs that you discover.
Tip #2 – Use the Matched Audiences Tool
Beyond appealing to your existing connections, you can use your own data to build your audience on LinkedIn.
In 2017, LinkedIn introduced its Matched Audiences tool. This allows you to import customer data collected from your website and your email list into LinkedIn.
From there, you can retarget people who’ve already engaged with you using the LinkedIn platform.
Using Matched Audiences allows you to expand on the number of platforms where pre-engaged people can see your messages. For example, you can use it to retarget those who abandon a website shopping cart with ads offering reminders or new deals. Or, you can use your email list to find people on LinkedIn, which allows you to build a larger pool of connections.
Automation Agency can help you to leverage your email list to find a larger audience using LinkedIn. Just send a task to the Concierge Service to find out more.
Tip #3 – Join and Participate in Groups
A quick search on LinkedIn will usually reveal dozens, if not hundreds, of groups related to your niche. Each represents an opportunity for you to build your authority and gain new connections.
The key to effective marketing using these groups is to not try to sell yourself and your product. People don’t join these groups to get sold to. They want to find useful information that will help them with specific issues.
Focus on sharing useful content and participating in discussions within your chosen groups. This will establish you as an influencer within your niche without you having to sell directly.
As a side-note, take care when selecting the groups that you join. LinkedIn only allows users to join 100 groups. And it’s very easy to hit that limit, especially if you sell a wide range of products or services.
That means you need to assess each group you join to ensure it’s delivering a good enough return on the time you invest in it. If it isn’t, leave the group and replace it with one that has more potential.
Tip #4 – Avoid Spamming Messages
It’s always exciting to get a new connection on LinkedIn. Unfortunately, that excitement can lead to you spamming the new person with messages to try to convert them.
Often, that leads to the connection disengaging from you and your services.
Remember that every new connection enters at the top of your sales funnel. Pitching to them immediately after they connect doesn’t work. You need to engage these new connections with useful content and messages that speak to their pain points.
Every message needs to have the purpose of moving the connection through your funnel. The pitch should only come when the connection has a genuine interest in what you have to offer. In many cases, this focus on engagement will lead to the connection messaging you when they need something.
Tip #5 – Manually Search for Influencers
LinkedIn offers you the ability to manually search for people using a number of filters. Clicking on the search bar and selecting “People” from the dropdown menu will reveal filters for:
- Locations
- Current Companies
- Connections
- Past Companies
- Profile Language
- Industries
Use these search functions to find the top influencers in your field. When you find somebody who’s worth connecting with, send an InMail to introduce yourself.
Often, it’s these influential individuals who’ll help you to build your reputation and find new opportunities. This is also a great way to find the key decision-makers in the companies that you want to connect with.
Tip #6 – Add Your Profile Link to Your Emails
You won’t have many connections when you’re just starting out. And using LinkedIn alone may make it difficult to build connections with people who’ll actually buy from you.
This is where your email list can come in handy.
Specifically, adding a link to your LinkedIn profile to your email signature makes your existing list aware that you’re on the platform. Many will connect with you to find out if you have more useful content to share on LinkedIn.
Of course, each of these new connections opens doors to other connections.
If you’re looking to build an audience quickly, the emails you’re sending out may be the key. And you can contact our Concierge Service to create any email campaigns that use your new signature.
Leverage LinkedIn
LinkedIn is now one of the most powerful social marketing tools, especially for B2B service providers.
Your goal is to build a large list of connections and to provide the content that these people want to see. This helps you to build authority, which establishes you as the go-to person in your niche.
These tips will help you to build your audience and market effectively using LinkedIn.
And if you need help leveraging your email list to build your LinkedIn presence, Automation Agency can help. Just send a task to our Concierge Service to find out more.
Or, chat with our Right Fit Chatbot to find out if we can help you to leverage the power of automation to the benefit of your business.
