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by Juliette Anderson
LinkedIn is a well-known social media platform for B2B marketing. However, getting your desired results from the platform isn’t as straightforward as you think.
You can’t just expect to fill out your company page with basic things, send a couple of invitations, and everything will fall into place.
While LinkedIn is a fantastic platform to help you connect with the best professionals, you still need to put in the work to help you generate valuable B2B leads.
LinkedIn is a fantastic platform to connect professionals in one place.
While some marketers use LinkedIn as an inbound marketing platform, you must attract prospective customers through organic posts and paid ads.
In this post, we’ll walk you through the strategies for using LinkedIn for lead generation.
When you’re first starting out, it can be tricky to know where you have to dedicate your initial efforts. Will you be writing a compelling LinkedIn page as soon as you post your content to your business feed? Or do you have to start posting all job openings to attract new talent?
Thus, it would help if you optimized your profile to boost your LinkedIn search visibility. That way, when someone visits your page, they already have all the information they need to learn about your company.
After you ensure that you have a strong LinkedIn presence, the next thing that you need to do is to create an impressive company page.
Make sure that your page is active. Moreover, it should have thought-provoking content—also, contributions to conversations that are already happening on the platform.
To build a strong brand presence on the platform, you need to be consistent in posting and sharing relevant content that benefits your target audience.
Doing so lets you establish your authority in your industry. You’ll also become well-known to your target audience as a reliable source of information and an expert in your field.
LinkedIn also allows you to publish posts with images, videos, and documents. This enables you to become more innovative in the information you share in several ways.
LinkedIn groups, like Facebook groups, allow you to get in touch with a smaller, niche audience that’s a better target for your products and services. However, before you go in and immediately start pitching, you also need to take time to contribute valuable content and information.
Even better, you can start a group that doesn’t exist yet. The long-term goal here is to begin creating groups on LinkedIn, one that’s big enough that it can be a source of B2B leads.
It will take some time, and you must build a robust collection of high-quality connections first. After you’ve established yourself as an authority in your field, more and more people will be compelled to trust your groups. Thus, they’ll consider this a valuable place for knowledge and discussions. Check out these effective account based marketing examples.
Again, if you want people to notice what you want to say, you first need the authority to do so. People will want to listen to B2B brands with plenty of creative ideas. So, if you’re creating “how-to” types of content, then make sure you’re offering tips that add value.
People and businesses want to work with brands that have expert knowledge and foresight in the industry. Change is a constant thing in almost every industry these days. Thus, businesses are more compelled to listen to industry experts that can help them get ahead.
These are usually groups of people who could be interested in your product but haven’t heard or interacted with it.
Often, these are audiences created by LinkedIn to help you identify people with the same characteristics as your target audience. Similarly, you can make out lookalike audiences from your current clients, site visitors, and other database contacts.
This is an effective way to generate new leads without spending a lot of money on advertising to a broader demographic that isn’t your ideal customer.
A staggering 65% of B2B marketers have already run paid promotions on LinkedIn. That’s because LinkedIn ads are made with lead generation in mind. Marketers efficiently target particular professionals within given parameters in the industry. Examples include job title, company size, and the industry.
It would be best if you also kept in mind that lead generation ads on LinkedIn are more costly than on other platforms. However, they don’t have to drain your marketing budget because of your low ROI. All you need to do is to use it wisely.
Rather than using ads to target users that have a typical customer persona, you can use them instead to target your most profitable prospects.
You’re selling marketing CRM to small businesses or enterprise brands. You can utilize LinkedIn Display Ads to target enterprise prospects instead. That’s because the deal value is higher. Thus, this can lead to a more significant ROI in the campaign investment.
Undoubtedly, LinkedIn has built a reputation to be the ultimate source for B2B leads. It’s one of the largest social networks that allow you to contact one of the world’s best professionals, who, in one way or another, are open to doing business in some way or the other.
However, it doesn’t mean it is a free ride. There are millions of businesses on the said platform that use it as their form of marketing channel. Thus, you have to make your brand stand out in your niche.
We’re not saying that the strategies that we’ve mentioned aren’t going to turn your B2B into an overnight success on the platform. But it would help if you also had patience, hard work, and determination to achieve results. Good luck!
About the author
Juliette Anderson is an Outreach Community Specialist for an e-commerce fulfillment company. She works hand-in-hand with e-commerce stores to achieve optimal sales for four years already. Her specialty lies in social media marketing and paid promotions.