Leveraging LinkedIn for B2B Marketing

Did you know that more than 50% of all business to business (B2B) social traffic comes from LinkedIn? And a whopping 80% of leads are from LinkedIn, too. Which makes sense when you consider that over 560 million professionals use the platform. LinkedIn is quickly pushing out other social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Medium and proving it reigns supreme as a distribution channel, publishing platform, and referral network.

LinkedIn is the most effective place for B2B marketers to engage with a targeted audience.

93% of B2B marketers think LinkedIn is the most effective site for lead generation.

Neil Patel

The platform is constantly adding new features and functions to its marketing and advertising offerings. Are you doing everything you can to leverage LinkedIn as a powerful tool? Here are a few items to incorporate into your approach to using LinkedIn.

Showcase Pages & Targeting

Once you have the basics of your LinkedIn Company Page set up, you want to think about whether you need to also create niche pages. Showcase Pages are extensions of your main page and designed to promote a brand, initiative, or product. Showcase Pages are also good opportunities to market to a particular buyer persona. They allow B2B marketers to share specific content and company updates with a targeted audience.

Showcase Pages have the same tools and options as your Company Page so you can use the same techniques to promote content and foster relationships.

Thought Leadership & Pulse

We already know that for businesses and thought leaders, publishing content on social is great for reputation building, increasing trust and credibility, and reaching a larger audience.

More than 90% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to share and distribute content. And LinkedIn Pulse is key to driving traffic and subscribers to your blog or website, thus positioning you as a leader and authority within your industry. LinkedIn Pulse is a great blogging feature for getting your best content in front of a large audience. (Pulse content is now integrated into you homepage feed, rather than being solely a standalone app.)

To publish a Pulse post, log into your company’s account and click ‘write an article’ under the post box. Just be sure you have a content strategy beforehand!

Optimize for Organic Visibility

Savvy B2B marketers will optimize their LinkedIn pages to increase organic reach. Company Pages and posts created in LinkedIn Pulse are indexed by Google and other search engines.

By optimizing your company profile and posting regularly you’ll see a boost in organic search visibility, unique user traffic, and referrals. Your Company Page needs all messaging to be accurate, and have up-to-date information (from location to products). If you’ve decided to use Showcase Pages to highlight different products, similarly optimize those. In your posts, be sure to link back to your landing pages! Incorporate hashtags and tag other users, where appropriate.

Paid Advertising

Amplifying organic reach is crucial; you also need to set aside some budget for promoting posts. LinkedIn’s advertising platform is fantastic. Want to drive high-quality leads and reach your target audience, all while working within a budget of your choosing? Here’s a rundown of the types of ads you have to play with:

Text ads are basic and effective. They’re ideal for targeting specific audiences, sourcing job applicants, and increasing traffic to landing pages. Format: 50×50 image with a 25-character or less headline and a description of 75 characters or less.

Sponsored content is essentially a normal post that you boost with a budget. It’s great for increasing follower count, building awareness around an event, generating leads, and promoting your thought leadership pieces. Format: Typically a company page update with a headline of 150 characters or less, introduction copy of 70 characters or less, and a 1200×627 image.

Sponsored Inmail is private Inmail that is delivered directly to your target member’s LinkedIn inbox. Marketers often use this to send personalized invites to events and webinars or to promote downloadable content. Format: Sender’s name, subject line, body copy, and a CTA button.

Dynamic ads change its content and image depending on who is being targeted. These help get new followers and highlight job opportunities based on a users career history.

Video ads auto play in feeds without sounds. Videos are useful to build brand awareness through storytelling, to demo products or services, and to preview events.

Clearly there are plenty of options! And LinkedIn has a superior targeting and segmentation selection that will ensure you effectively deploy your ads to the right audience. You can define you audience based on gender, age, company name, industry, size, connections, followers, job titles, job seniority, years of experience and much more.

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LinkedIn is, without a doubt, a powerhouse for lead generation, promoting thought leadership content, and driving quality traffic to your company’s websites. Generally speaking, users are used to and more open to being marketed to and networked with so now is the time to develop a solid marketing strategy.

If you need help perfecting your LinkedIn B2B marketing strategy in 2019 and beyond, don’t hesitate to contact us!