Top LinkedIn Marketing Strategies That Actually Work

Over the years, LinkedIn has transformed from being that social media platform everyone thought was suitable for job hunting into one where brands are eager to promote their products or services.

With a community of over a billion members and 67 million registered companies, LinkedIn is a powerful platform for businesses to reach their target audience and drive leads and sales.

An inclusive LinkedIn marketing strategy leverages the power of your workers’ personal accounts and company pages. The comprehensively designed company pages not only share company updates but also build brand awareness.

This blog will give you the do’s and don’ts of creating a stand-out LinkedIn marketing strategy, so you can get your brand noticed, followed, and loved.

What is LinkedIn Marketing?

LinkedIn marketing is the act of using LinkedIn to promote your personal or professional brand, expand your network, grow exposure, and build trust. It takes on different forms when used for personal and business purposes.

Both strategies aim to build a network and establish credibility, but their approaches and goals can differ significantly. Through this channel, you can stand to expand your network, gain visibility, increase your brand’s reputation, and build trust within your community.

But for all that, you need a strategy to guide you through the process of promoting your brand’s products and services on LinkedIn and keep you accountable.

Why You Should Utilize LinkedIn for Marketing?

Since LinkedIn’s community is business-oriented and professional, you can find the relevant audience and make quicker decisions. LinkedIn’s members have double the purchasing power compared to random traffic on the website.

LinkedIn data shows that 93% of B2B content marketers use LinkedIn for organic social marketing. Moreover, 96% of marketers prefer LinkedIn for lead generation to both Facebook and Twitter (now X) as per Strait’s Research. This proves that LinkedIn is an essential platform for your business when it comes to marketing.

Here are some key benefits of utilizing LinkedIn for marketing:

1. Strong network

For anyone, but especially for a founder, C-level executive, or someone in any other decision-making role, networking is very important. LinkedIn is the right place to do it, as it allows you to connect with top voices in your industry, encourages you to discover more and more people, and expands your influence.

2. Targeted audience

LinkedIn allows you to cut through the noise and get through to the people who are most likely to be interested in the products/services you’re promoting.

3. Thought leadership

If there’s one place where thought leadership has taken off, it’s LinkedIn. On behalf of your brand, you can connect with subject matter and industry experts. Also, you can establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry, which will in turn help your brand gain more visibility and be perceived better.

4. Brand awareness

Because it’s so business-oriented, LinkedIn marketing offers a huge opportunity for brand awareness. By sharing quality content to leverage employee advocacy, you can boost the number of impressions. This will result in more brand awareness on groups, feeds, and other community channels on LinkedIn.

5. Employee advocacy

Employee advocacy is something unique to LinkedIn, although some other platforms have tried to adopt it as well. By inspiring your team to post on behalf of your company, you can start to build your brand’s image, reputation, and credibility.

Top LinkedIn Marketing Strategies

1- Optimize your profile and page

No matter what goals you’re working towards, make sure you have a complete LinkedIn Page that takes advantage of all relevant tabs and sections. LinkedIn data shows that complete Pages get 30% more weekly views.

For larger organizations, Showcase Pages can be used as an extension of your main business page, to highlight specific business units, brands, or initiatives. For example, if you have an exciting Q4 campaign launching or important resources you want to highlight, creating a Showcase Page can help draw attention to it.

Don’t let your main Page content get stale: LinkedIn recommends updating your cover image at least twice a year.

2- Use LinkedIn hashtags

The right LinkedIn hashtags add visibility to your posts and profile. This makes them a great addition to your LinkedIn marketing strategy. Make sure to optimize your posts with hashtags relevant to the topic. This will improve the chances of getting your content in front of people who are interested in the topic.

Use your analytics data to see how posts with specific hashtags are performing. Then build a list of top-performing hashtags to use consistently in your LinkedIn strategy. You can even add relevant industry hashtags to your page to improve its visibility in relevant searches.

Additionally, get inspiration from trending hashtags to identify popular topics on the platform. Then use those to come up with in-the-moment content ideas to engage your audience.

3- Post relevant and engaging content

If you don’t have a hook and a catchy story for your readers, you lose them. Time is precious. You have to draw your audience’s attention and make them relate to your story. Post quality content and carefully split the paragraphs because no one will read the bulk of the text.

Your carousels should have an eye-candy design and every slide to offer valuable insights. If the reader scrolls through your LinkedIn post and doesn’t get value from the start, they will leave your page.

4- Focus on leads, not sales

LinkedIn is more about social selling than social commerce. As mentioned earlier, it’s the top brand for B2B lead generation. It’s a perfect platform for building and nurturing connections that will lead to sales over time.

It’s less effective as a platform for spur-of-the-moment purchases. It’s just not the place people go when they’re looking for the latest trending items to buy. So, rather than trying to sell directly on LinkedIn, focus on building relationships and credibility.

Reach out when you see an opportunity, but offer expert advice rather than a hard sell. You’ll be front of mind when the time is right for a buyer to make the purchasing call.

5- Know the best times to post

Frequency and consistency matter on LinkedIn just as they do on any other platform. For brand accounts, we don’t typically see multiple posts per day (or even daily). Those who do post regularly tend to see the most engagement during the weekday mornings and early afternoons.

Getting those times right will help you engage your audience when they’re most active. The best times to post on LinkedIn for businesses are Tuesdays and Wednesdays between 10 a.m. and noon.

However, posting multiple times per day is fair game for personal accounts. Figuring out what’s “optimal” is going to require some testing.

6- Use polls to increase brand awareness

By posting LinkedIn polls a few times per week, you manage to keep in touch with your community. Polls help increase brand awareness. Also, any time the user is allowed to interact with your poll, your engagement increases.

Moreover, if you use the following trick, you will build a solid community around your brand: As a last choice in your poll, ask readers to offer you their opinions in the comment section.

In this way, you will not only engage with your audience but will also display the human side of your brand.

7- Mention people in your posts

Tagging people, you’ve quoted or you’ve referenced in the content you’re sharing is an essential step in your LinkedIn marketing strategy.

The people you’ve tagged will be notified, along with their connections, and people who follow them, so your content will be seen by more people.

However, it is really important to not abuse this feature. Mentions are not meant to be spammy. The key here is to provide value to both your content and to the people you tag in your LinkedIn posts.

This LinkedIn algorithm will make your posts more visible and ultimately contribute to the increase of your page’s LinkedIn engagement rate.

How to Create a LinkedIn Marketing Strategy?

Creating a LinkedIn marketing strategy requires in-depth research on how this platform works, what should you do to attain different audiences, and which audiences will be the right fit for your business.

Just follow these steps to create a perfect LinkedIn strategy that works:

1- Defining marketing goals for your LinkedIn profile

Like any marketing strategy, it’s important to have a clear goal for your LinkedIn presence. This could be anything from:

• Increasing brand awareness,
• Generating website leads, or
• Establishing thought leadership.

Once you have a goal, identify your target audience and tailor your content and messaging to appeal to them. Be sure to set SMART goals- Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. You need to use appropriate metrics to gauge your market campaign’s success.

2- Finding the right audience

At first, when you set the pillars of your brand on LinkedIn, you tend to connect with everyone since you want to increase your following.

However, you should ask yourself who is your target audience and what are they searching for. This way, you will know exactly how to craft your content to win over their hearts.

Besides learning what kind of content they’d prefer, you also have to ask yourself who is your ideal customer. Think about the fact that you need to connect with the right audience to trigger conversion and lead generation on LinkedIn.

3- Do Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis is a tried-and-tested way to determine your rival’s strengths and weaknesses in the industry. When you understand what works for your competitors or doesn’t, you expand your practical knowledge of the appropriate marketing strategies.

So, before you get into the planning phase, research your competitors in the market. And if you have no idea how to go about it, watch marketing tutorials to learn how you can conduct a competitor analysis.

4- Develop a content strategy

Anything B2B brands can do to squeeze more out of their content strategies is a plus. And with the type of engagement LinkedIn generates, it’s a great addition to your social media content strategy.

You should have a solid strategy in place for the types of content to create and how to distribute them on the platform. For instance, “thought leadership” content is a staple of B2B social media and marketing on LinkedIn. This includes:

• Storytelling posts
• Firsthand tips and experiences
• Discussions and threads

Formats and content types aside, make sure to create content that addresses your audience’s needs and pain points. Answer their questions, teach them how to do something, and share insights that could inform their strategies.

5- Track and Optimize Consistently

Another thing to include in your LinkedIn marketing strategy is evaluating your work. Keeping an eye on your LinkedIn analytics dashboard can help you make informed decisions that lead to better results.

Remember that your LinkedIn marketing strategy should be based on data, with your content tailored to what you saw your audience resonate with.

Track LinkedIn KPIs – followers demographic, number of followers, impressions and reach, engagement rate, profile views by job title, etc. It will help you increase your reach in your industry.

Leverage eSearch Logix LinkedIn Marketing Solutions

The power of LinkedIn as a platform for professional networking and brand building cannot be understated. By implementing the strategies outlined in this blog, you can harness the potential of LinkedIn to achieve your business goals, whether it’s attracting top talent, generating leads, or establishing thought leadership within your industry.

eSearch Logix, a leading social media marketing agency, understands the intricacies of the LinkedIn landscape. We offer a comprehensive suite of services designed to elevate your LinkedIn marketing efforts to new heights. Our team of experts can assist you with content strategy and creation, social media management, paid advertising, and performance analytics and optimization.

By partnering with eSearch Logix, you gain access to a team of experienced professionals dedicated to propelling your LinkedIn presence forward.