LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional social network, making it the best B2B platform.
As the social network grew, so did its saturation.
Naturally, it’s more difficult for businesses to reach their potential customers when newsfeeds are crowded with content.
The trick is knowing how to stand out.
Here’s how you can use LinkedIn to generate quality leads for your business.
Think Big Picture
This might sound obvious, but some of you need to hear it.
Keep your KPIs fresh in your mind!
You only have so much time to work with, so it’s imperative to focus on the purpose of what you’re doing.
Every action you take should take you one step closer to your goal, in this case, using LinkedIn to generate leads.
Don’t get distracted (and waste time) with metrics that aren’t directly moving you towards your goal.
Establish Your Short and Long-Term Goals
Set goals, especially for processes like Lead Generation that take time.
Without these goals, it will be more difficult to quantify your progress and be sure you’re working effectively.
Here’s an example.
Your long-term goal might be to generate 50 quality leads by the end of the year.
That’s great! But a goal like that can be overwhelming and a lot to wrap your head around.
So to generate 50 quality leads, you’ll need an average of 4 per month (or 1 per week). Working towards getting that 1 quality lead every week would be a great way to stay on track.
Strategize
This will largely boil down to your industry and target audience.
To understand your ideal customer, you have to think like them.
Ask yourself questions like this:
Why is my ideal customer on LinkedIn?
What kind of obstacles might they face?
What kind of groups do they participate in?
What company pages do they follow?
What kind of content do they subscribe to?
Answering these types of questions will create a marketing persona that will help you understand what your potential customers are looking for. Knowing this will help you craft content that will better resonate with them.
After all, you can’t sell a solution without a problem.
Consider Having a Brand Representative
Company pages are limited in what they can do on LinkedIn, so many invest in promoting an individual employee with the intention of them becoming synonymous with their brand.
It’s a great way to break through the noise and extend your content reach.
For example, when some people hear Moz, they think Rand Fishkin or when they hear WordStream, they think Larry Kim.
Granted, these two examples were founders, but they still marketed their respective companies with everything they did. Their industry influence reflected on their brands, helping them grow in the process.
Brand Reps: Build Your LinkedIn Network
When it comes down to it, more connections means stronger post impressions. Though impressions themselves are useless if they aren’t from the right people.
Connect With Colleagues
Being in the same industry, your colleagues will be more likely to recognize and engage with your posts. This will increase your overall engagement and showcase your content to 2nd degree connections (connections of these connections).
Having a mutual acquaintance might be the first step in building a new customer relationship.
Join/Participate in Industry Groups
Engage with like-minded individuals in your industry by asking/answering questions and creating conversations.
Utilize LinkedIn Pulse
Think of Pulse like LinkedIn’s personal blog platform that ties author’s to their LinkedIn profiles. This allows professionals to speak about their industry in-depth and encourage conversations in their comments section. As your representative gains traction, so will your brand!
Why is this useful?
Social Media users typically prefer not to click off their platform, so LinkedIn allows them to view your content faster and easier.
Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile/Company Page
Think about what your ideal customers are going to be searching for and optimize your page accordingly, similar to how you would with Search Engine Optimization! People use LinkedIn’s search features and how your Company Page is laid it can significantly impact your rankings.
Use a Custom URL
Having a custom URL helps personalize your company pages and speaks to your branding.
Simply put, it makes you brand look much more “official” and recognizable, plus it’s better than having random numbers in your URL.
Optimize Your LinkedIn “About Us”
Write a nice description of your business and include relevant keywords, just as you would with your website. The description tells visitors about your business and the keywords help your page become more visible on LinkedIn’s search engine. This also applies to individual profiles.
Also, make sure sections like Industry, Address, Website and Company Size are filled out!
The Universal Content Strategy: Offer Value
Once people find your profile or business page, you have to win them over.
Why would someone on such a saturated network follow and pay attention to your content?
Share Content Regularly
As with any social network, building an audience is a way to establish credibility.
Sharing quality content:
1. Reminds existing customers and prospects of your brand and gives them the incentive to follow and pay attention to your page.
2. Provides more opportunities for potential customers to discover your business, engage and visit your page or website.
3. Offers additional unique ways to promote your brand.
Consider LinkedIn Advertising
Like with other social platforms, there’s a plethora of objective-based advertising options that Campaign Manager offers.
Relative to other social advertising platforms like Facebook Ads Manager, Campaign Manager is expensive. This means higher CPC (Cost Per Click) and likely higher CPR (Cost Per Result).
But this is for good reason.
Higher Quality Audiences
LinkedIn is a professional network, so you can bank on your intended audience being in “work mode” when they see your B2B ads.
Contrast this to more broad platforms like Facebook where users can be looking for anything.
Niche Market
Due to its niche nature, LinkedIn simply has less (and therefore more competitive) ad space, making it more valuable. You’re promoting a business product/service on a B2B social network!
Wrapping Up
LinkedIn is highly competitive and reaching quality prospects is difficult, but it offers valuable opportunities.
Thinking about utilizing LinkedIn for your B2B strategy? Contacts the experts at Active Web Group! With over 20 years of experience, their professionals have helped businesses of all sizes and industries succeed. Can’t wait? Give us a call at (800) 978-3417.
