Marketing Strategy for LinkedIn: How to Market on LinkedIn
February 12, 2021
Sarvesh Bagla
LinkedIn is a hub for professionals to interact with other professionals and brands, seek job opportunities, share engaging content, subscribe to a LinkedIn newsletter, and so much more. However, LinkedIn has emerged as an excellent platform for brands to achieve critical objectives.
In this blog, we have covered some actionable tips to help you make the most of LinkedIn for your marketing initiatives.
What is Linkedin Marketing?
We can define LinkedIn Marketing as the strategies devised and executed by marketers to achieve unique objectives – scaling website traffic, enhancing brand visibility, generating sales queries, forging business partnerships, acquiring customers, etc.
As such, we can say that any paid advertising campaign, networking strategy, content marketing initiatives, and business InMails tailored to the objective of meeting a goal is called LinkedIn marketing.
Here’s a perfect demonstration by DATAREPORTAL of the global advertising audience on LinkedIn.
This makes it clear that if you can set quantifiable goals, you can get results as well as exceptional RoI on your marketing objectives.
However, you will have to build a marketing strategy to achieve your goals on the platform because not everyone is on LinkedIn to buy something.
Also, a Salesforce Study found that 67% of B2B buyers have switched to a new vendor for a more consumer-like experience.
Thus, while devising marketing campaigns, adopt the best practices, be authentic, and make your content valuable.
LinkedIn B2B Marketing Best Practices: Actionable Tips to Maximize Your Linkedin Marketing Efforts
Optimize Company Page-Level Information
Create a Company Page
If you do not have a company page, one of the first things you should do is create one. Fortunately, creating a company page is incredibly easy.
Source: Linkedin.com
Once you’re on the ‘create a company page’ and choose an option that best describes your brand or venture.
After you do this, add all the basic information about your company related to brand identity, summary, business email, website, etc. Adding relevant information to your page is important because pages with complete information get 30% more weekly views.
Once this exercise is completed, your company page will act as the foundation of your brand’s presence on LinkedIn.
Update LinkedIn Profile & Banner Images
For a LinkedIn page, a profile and banner image are great for communicating your identity and sharing the USPs of your brand. It is best to use your logo as the company’s profile image and make a banner that conveys the unique objective of your company. Follow LinkedIn’s Page Best Practices to make the most of your company page.
Source: Linkedin.com
Optimize Your Company Page For More Traffic and Leads
Google processes nearly 40,000 search queries every second, and it is a key source of inbound traffic. Optimizing your company for search engines can expand your page’s footprint. More importantly, this exercise will help you meet your target audience’s search intent, directly making your content more relevant to the users.
However, you need to adopt a tactical approach to this. For the tagline, be concise. For instance, we have added “Digital Excellence” in the tagline of our LinkedIn page. It conveys our USP of delivering Transformational Growth to brands with Digital Excellence. Similarly, you can identify your own unique USPs as per the business and target audience.
After optimizing the tagline/title, you can direct your attention to the “About” section. Here, you get a chance to talk about your brand in a longer form. The “About” section is an ideal place to add keywords for SEO purposes.
Since it just isn’t about getting more inbound traffic, you need to direct your optimization strategy to boost the conversion rate. Having a proper vision and mission statement, value proposition, and CTAs are crucial.
Define Your Goals and Audience
Now that you have set up and optimized your company page on LinkedIn, you need to define your LinkedIn campaign objectives.
Source: Linkedin.com
As you can see in the image above, the objectives can be grouped into three categories: awareness, consideration, and conversions.
It is equally important to identify the target audience. Like any other marketing campaign, you need to appeal to the target audience; otherwise, your message will get lost amid the noise. Fortunately, LinkedIn allows various targeting possibilities.
Source: Linkedin.com
This means you can target members using their job title, experience, company, education, interests, and more. Check the example below.
Source: https://business.linkedin.com
Create Showcase Pages to Endorse Your Products/Services
The beauty of having a company page is that you can make small subpages called Showcase Pages. You can make a showcase page(s) to promote different products and services or make the experience personalized.
For instance, if you have multiple buyer personas, the showcase page can direct the prospects to products and services that are relevant to them.
Check the Data Center and Cloud showcase page below.
Source: Linkedin.com
| Page Type |
Page URL |
| Parent Page |
linkedin.com/company/cisco/ |
| Showcase Page |
linkedin.com/showcase/cisco-data-center-and-cloud/ |
Moreover, LinkedIn provides businesses with valuable analytics for each showcase page, from which you can gain insights and better optimize them.
Make a Content Strategy
Another thing that a platform like LinkedIn prioritizes is activity and engagement. In fact, companies that post weekly see a 2X boost in engagement.
To drive this, you need a viable LinkedIn content strategy to achieve quantifiable objectives.
- Share Long-Form LinkedIn Articles to Build Authority
- Devise Engaging Posts Using Quotes From Experts and Designing Carousels
- Share Blog Posts You’ve Published On Your Website
- Create and Publish Native LinkedIn Videos
- Share Hiring Posts & People Operations Activities to Boost Employee Engagement
- Bolster Reach With LinkedIn Ads and Sponsored Posts
Your LinkedIn content strategy does not have to be rigid. You can always use and review LinkedIn analytics to adjust your plans and improve your content accordingly.
Use the Matched Audiences Feature for Advertising
Do you want to target visitors and customers related to the ones already in your sales funnel? If the answer is yes, then LinkedIn’s matched audiences feature is the perfect marketing tool for you.
You can create a customized mix of highly niche audience groups for advertisements through the LinkedIn Matched Audiences feature. This ad feature allows you to upload a list of contacts or email addresses and integrate contact details from a third-party platform.
Once you configure it, LinkedIn will explicitly show your advertisements to the people who are interested in buying your products and services.
Make LinkedIn Advertising Campaigns
LinkedIn has different ad types: Sponsored Content, Sponsored InMail, Dynamic Ads, and Text Ads.
| Ad Type |
Overview |
Content Format |
Device Availability |
| Sponsored Ads |
These ads appear in the professional feed of your target audience. LinkedIn labels these posts as “promoted” to distinguish them from organic posts. Sponsored ads allow you to share your brand’s message with more people on LinkedIn. For these ads, you can go with a carousel, single image, and video post. |
1. Single image ads
2. Carousel ads
3. Video ads
4. Single job ads
5. Event ads
6. Document ads |
All |
| Text Ads |
Text Ads appear on the right side of the screen (LinkedIn’s desktop screen). These ads consist of a headline, brief text, and an image. Text Ads are great for building strong leads within the professional demographic. |
Single Format: Compelling headlines, description, and strong CTA. |
Desktop |
| Sponsored InMails |
Sponsored InMail or Messages enable you to directly advertise into the inbox of LinkedIn members. |
InMail Copy: It should be concise, personalized, and relevant. |
All |
| Dynamic Ads |
Dynamic ads are small, personalized and visible to the audience on the right side of the feed.
There are two types of Dynamic Ads: Follower Ads and Sponsored Ads. |
Automated |
Desktop |
Here are the objectives you can achieve using LinkedIn Advertising solutions:
- Brand Awareness
- Website Visits
- Engagement
- Video Views
- Lead Generation
- Website Conversions
- Job Applicants
Conclusion
This blog has highlighted how to intelligently build a LinkedIn marketing strategy with actionable tips.
LinkedIn marketing can be a little tricky and needs to evolve as per trends, audience needs, and what works: like any marketing strategy.
We hope this blog bridges the gap between these things and helps you come up with the right LinkedIn marketing strategy. You can also connect with our LinkedIn marketing services experts to get expert insights.