Strategy

A LinkedIn Primer for B2B Marketing

by Mar 30, 2021

Why Use LinkedIn for B2B Marketing?

For business-to-business (B2B) marketing and advertising, LinkedIn is a powerful marketing and advertising tool for audiences that use it. Why? Because unlike other social networks, LinkedIn lets you target your audience by company and professional data, not consumer data that is largely irrelevant to B2B marketing. For example, using LinkedIn, you can:

  • Target advertising by company, role, position, industry, education, degree, and more
  • Use your professional network
  • Grow your professional network

The Elements of LinkedIn

When using LinkedIn, it is important to distinguish between what you can and can’t do using your personal LinkedIn profile and your LinkedIn Company Page.

Personal Profile

Your personal profile is meant for you to promote yourself as a professional. This is of course useful if you are seeking a job, and useful for companies looking to hire. If you are a company executive or founder, it  can be a way to establish the credibility of your company leadership, particularly if you have a small business or startup. It’s intended to showcase and build professional credibility and your network. NEVER allow anyone to use your login credentials as part of your B2B marketing. This violates the terms of use. (LinkedIn is ruthless about enforcing this policy.)

Company Page

Your company page promotes your company, and it’s the only way to allow a third party (like a social manager or agency) to post content to promote your company.  You can restrict what administrators have permission to do with your page. Additionally, you can view your page as an administrator or as a LinkedIn member. Use the LinkedIn member view to see what your followers or page visitors will see when they come to your page.

There are some key things to remember about the company page. First and foremost, your company page will not automatically create followers from your personal LinkedIn account. You will need to attract company page followers as a specific campaign. This can be through invitations, organic growth from content, and paid promotion.

Complete Your Page

LinkedIn’s advice for small businesses states that completed pages get 30% more weekly views. In addition to your organization’s details, like company name, website, headquarters, office location(s), industry, type, size and description, we recommend the following items to complete your page setup:

  • Cover Image. Use an image that is wider than it is tall and sized 1536×768.
  • Logo. Use a 300×300 png or jpeg file. Make sure your logo is readable at this size. You may have to use a brand symbol that reproduces well in a small square rather than your entire logo.

Ask yourself these key questions when writing your organization’s description:

  • Vision. What future are you trying to create?
  • Mission. How will what your company does help create that future?
  • Values. What values support your company’s vision and decision-making processes?
  • Positioning. What makes your brand different? What is your brand uniquely positioned to do or solve for your customers?
  • Products/Services. What are your core product & service offerings?

Best Practices for Posting

Unlike Twitter, posting frequently hits diminishing returns fast on LinkedIn. One post a day is sufficient. You can stick to the work week as well. Looking at a max of 5 posts, we recommend posting 34 posts about others in your industry and 1–2 posts about your own company a week. Cross-post on other platforms like Twitter once a week if you also have an audience there.

Use the Page Analytics

One of the advantages of your LinkedIn company page is that it has analytics. Pay attention to what content gets seen, liked, shared, and commented on. View what campaigns and content result in new followers. Review and revise your post strategy regularly based on the analytics.

LinkedIn Strategies and Tactics to Improve Your Page Performance Organically

LinkedIn cites that once pages gain 150 followers, their opportunity for growth becomes exponential. There are several best practices that can help you increase your page followers and effectiveness organically (meaning without paid advertising).

  • Set follower and engagement targets
  • Maintain a steady posting cadence
  • Grab attention with eye-catching media and layouts
  • Respond to comments
  • Take advantage of hashtags
  • Include a call to action

Reach your goals organically by following in the footsteps of the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions team:

  • Tell your brand story via content
  • Focus on building trust
  • Work towards growing your audience

Exhaust all the ways you can use your LinkedIn Page as a dynamic marketing tool:

  • Deliver value
  • Mix up your content
  • Act on LinkedIn Page insights
  • Invite your connections (or other admin’s connections) to your page (100 invitations/30 days for pages with <100,000 followers.)
  • Add a link to your LinkedIn company page on your website and in your company’s email signature (use the call to action “Follow Us On LinkedIn”)

By investing time and money in a LinkedIn organic strategy that focuses on content your audience will find valuable, you can use it effectively for lead generation and brand awareness.

References

General Information:

Video on how to use free content suggestions:

Content on how to get started with your LinkedIn business page:

<a href="https://foundertraction.com/author/brad/" target="_self">Brad Oliver</a>

Brad Oliver

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