When thinking about a platform for professionals the first name that hits our mind is LinkedIn. No doubt, LinkedIn is one of the largest platforms that host millions of professionals from around the world.
But, do you know that it can be used for marketing what you are selling?
Usually, when companies market their products or services, LinkedIn stands last in their marketing strategy. The reason behind it varies from one company to another.
But mostly, it is due to the unawareness about LinkedIn Marketing among companies and what strategies should they apply to make the best out of this amazingly crowded platform.
In this article, I will walk you through a detailed understanding of marketing on the world’s most powerful professional platform and what it takes to be successful on it. Be my guest and keep reading ahead!
When hundreds of thousands of people are gathered online with some shared interests it forms a social network. Companies leverage this crowd to get likes and followers by providing some value to their target audience.
If you want people to buy from you, you don’t have to sell, at least when you are just starting off. People will not buy from you when they only know your brand’s name. They will buy from you when they will trust and like you.
It is not fair to post online about your products or services and expect people to swipe their cards instantly. It is a connection that intrigues them towards you, and eventually to what you are selling.
But for that to happen, you need patience and months of hard work. Greece was not built in a day. Likewise, your brand authority among your target audience can’t be built in a month either!
It will take some time, you just need to keep sailing!
If you ask me – how would I do it for my business? Then my answer to your question would be – I will create a content strategy for the next 6 months from today. During that phase, I will just create content that helps my audience to thrive in their life!
After that, if I will feel like it is the right time, I will pitch them my services!
Now, you must be thinking – How to create LinkedIn Strategy that helps you generate ROI for your business? Well, I will explain this too further in this article. I hope you are enjoying reading – I have invested a complete night creating this just for you!
Let us proceed further with baby steps to understand how LinkedIn marketing can actually grow your business!
What is LinkedIn Marketing?
As you might have already known so far that LinkedIn is a social media platform meant for professionals, entrepreneurs, and people who are constantly looking out for work.
People make connections over it and try expanding their network. But the majority of people don’t initiate conversations and refrain from posting content on LinkedIn and even if they do it is just not enough.
But then, there are few people who initiate conversations with each of their LinkedIn connections, frequently post relevant content, and drive engagement in form of likes, comments, and shares. And trust me, LinkedIn loves and promotes such people on the platform.
Likewise, when a company does everything that a LinkedIn creator does, LinkedIn loves it too! The business page of the company attracts impressions on the published content followed by likes, comments, and shares.
If you will stick to your plan of creating valuable content for your target audience, engagement will keep flowing to your business page. People will know you and eventually start liking you because you are making content that they want to consume.
Incentives that come your way beyond that are due to LinkedIn marketing.
To Sum Up:
Using LinkedIn for marketing is a process that should have content creation and adequate distribution at the top of the funnel. Once you succeed at it, then you will taste the fruits!
Why is Marketing on LinkedIn Important in 2022?
If you are not living in the now, you are either living in the past or the future. And living in any of those two tenses, and not giving attention to your present is a fallacy.
Although LinkedIn is already a strong networking stage, it has plans to dominate other social media platforms that prevail on the market. Hence, if you are missing it in your marketing strategy, you are simply missing its potential that can help you make money.
Mostly, there are individual creators who publish content on the platform and drive engagement and business. But more companies are joining the bandwagon now. Well, who doesn’t need business?
It is seen that companies are more active on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter than on LinkedIn. They create content (written, image or video) for those platforms and repurpose it on LinkedIn. The Microsoft-owned platform just does not like it!
How would you feel when I will serve you a meal which I never cooked for you? If not bad, you won’t feel great about it! The same feeling LinkedIn’s algorithm goes through!
Marketing should never feel like marketing. The best way of marketing is to tell about you without directly telling what you sell. LinkedIn gives you that chance to tell about yourself, build relations with your audience, and finally hit the hammer on the red-hot iron.
To Sum Up:
Marketing was important for businesses when there was no LinkedIn. It is even more important now because there are hundreds of companies providing almost similar services like you. And, marketing on LinkedIn is necessary because the platform has a crowd who have money in their pockets!
How to Set Up a Business LinkedIn Page?
If you already have a business LinkedIn page, cheers! But if you are just starting I will guide you on how you can create an enticing LinkedIn page for your business from scratch.
To resonate with the emotions of your target audience and for promoting your brand’s name you need a business page. Without it, you can’t start building a LinkedIn marketing funnel.
Let us go through the complete process of creating a business page step-by-step:
- Open your LinkedIn account.
- Locate the WORK icon on the top-right corner of your screen.
- Click on it and a drop-down box will appear.
- Scroll down and you will see a Create a Company Page option right on the screen. Click on it!
- A few choices will appear to choose from. Choose any one according to the nature of your business.
- Fill out all the details (page identity, profile, and company details) LinkedIn is asking for.
- After completing the details, check the verification box to verify your authority.
- Click on Create Page option (You may get an error if your business page doesn’t meet LinkedIn guidelines like company information, business email, etc.)
- If you have entered everything right, no errors will pop-up. Your page is ready, start customizing your page as per your preference.
To Sum Up:
In order to create a LinkedIn Business Page – Click on the ‘Work’ icon. Then select Create a Company Page from the dropdown. Choose your business nature. Fill out the required information and finally click on Create Page to get started.
LinkedIn Marketing Tips You Need to Grow Your Business:
Marketing on any platform, especially, when you are a newbie is not a cakewalk. It takes time, effort, and something you call smart work. And if you already have some experience creating on LinkedIn, it could still challenge you.
Therefore, it is significant to have a strategy right from the beginning.
One thing that businesses don’t get right is that they take social media platforms as a medium to get a word out about their products and services. However, this should not be the case at all.
Yes, you have to market your business but not before winning the trust of your target audience. When they will trust you, you don’t have to knock on their face to buy from you. It is a process that happens automatically, later on!
I am sharing some proven LinkedIn marketing tips and strategies that I have used and got results for my own business are listed below. These tips will help you grow your business from scratch on LinkedIn if you are passionate enough like me.
Let us start from the top of the funnel and steadily move to the bottom.
Build Highly Targeted Audience
LinkedIn is a social media platform driven by connections. The more connections an individual profile will have the more reach its content gets. Similarly, the reach of your business page will depend upon the number of followers it has gathered.
Moreover, when it comes to a business page, it is more about how well targeted your audience is. Irrelevant followers won’t make any sense. Hence, your first step should include knowing who you want to serve and building an audience that will resonate with the content you will roll out on your page.
Initially, when you will have zero followers hardly anyone will visit your company page. So, there are two methods of bringing people to you – Organic and Paid.
Organic Method: Publish 20 odd pieces of engaging long-form content on your business page. The algorithm will push your content to people. However, this method is time-consuming and also a target audience is not guaranteed.
Paid Method: Publish 10 odd pieces of engaging content that hook the reader. Wait for a week, and analyze which of those pieces gets the most engagement organically. Pick that post and run a paid campaign to promote it to your target audience. This method is most rewarding for a business page. It will get you highly targeted followers within a few hours.
Get Noticed By Your Target Audience Everyday
Your company is not alone out there. Even ignorance of a single day can cost you hundreds of potential audiences. Therefore, you should prioritize creating posts every day.
Short form posts or any latest update about your industry along with a long-form article would be sufficient. Just to mention, creating content is the initial stage of lead generation.
When your audience will see you creating content that they like every single day. They will remember the name of your business page or company. At a certain point, it will spark word of mouth and organic engagement will start coming in.
Never Pitch Your Services on Your LinkedIn Page
“The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing.” — Tom Fishburne, Founder & CEO, Marketoonist.
Along with time, the channels and methods of doing marketing have changed. But the foundations of marketing are still the same. In the now, when you drive a marketing campaign (paid or organic), you don’t have to sound like a salesman.
Over the internet, providing value leads to marketing which further leads to lead generation and sales. It is a process that should be done the way it’s meant to be done.
It is better to skip talking about your products or services on LinkedIn or any other platform, for that matter as if you are selling them to your audience.
The best way to speak about your core business on LinkedIn is through a piece of content revolving around testimonials, how your services have solved your client’s troubles or how your industry is making an impact in society.
There are CEOs, CMOs, MDs, CTOs, and Directors on LinkedIn who basically are humans. Humans have desires and fears. If your content is targeting any of these two – leads will start flowing in, provided that top-executives trust resonates with you.
Create High-Quality Content to Drive Engagement
Content is everywhere online but if it lacks quality, it is of no use. There is a saying – Write for humans, not for Google bots. Likewise, when it comes to LinkedIn, you need to create content that your audience would love to read and share with their peers.
Never compromise with the quality of your content, is one of the thumb rules if you want to succeed at LinkedIn marketing. When you will have loads of relevant content on your page, it will drive engagement from professionals.
Get Yourself a Custom URL
A custom URL gives your LinkedIn profile a readable and unique identity. It is also viable if you want search engines to fetch your LinkedIn account without any hassle.
Whenever someone searches you or your company on Google, Bing or Yahoo a custom URL will have a major role to play. A custom URL should always contain your or your company’s name.
Join LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn groups are also a good way to market your business. Companies join various groups on the platform but soon they go into hibernation. They hardly show up there and there is no interaction with people at all. It is something you should strictly avoid.
I would suggest you join a few crowded groups related to your industry to see what’s going on in the market. You can join the conversations and help people there too who are constantly looking out for some value.
People will come to know about your company and there are higher chances that they will start following you. This won’t happen quickly, but it will surely add value to your page once it surfaces.
Avoid Selling, Focus on Building Relationships
It is said your network is your net worth. If you will try selling hard on LinkedIn, you will never be able to create a network that values you or your company. Therefore, it is important to keep the salesman inside you aside and let your compassion for people prevail over this amazingly rewarding platform. I always practice this!
When you will have a bunch of people coming back to you to see what you have posted new is when you will realize the power of the connections. Marketing with LinkedIn is in no way different from the traditional approach. Here also, you have to make your way to people’s consciousness, only the medium differs.
Discover Opportunities to Generate Leads
I mentioned above that content creation is the first step to generating leads. Now, this step is a level up from the bottom of the funnel (sales). To reach this point, you need to follow all the previous steps religiously. It makes lead generation much easy.
Finally, after months of content creation, engagement, and being active on LinkedIn. It is now time to discover people who are your loyal audience.
How to do that? Well, there might be other options too, but I am telling you the easiest one.
Open your latest ten posts that you created on the platform. Analyze and discover people who engaged with your content continuously. Over the internet, if someone consistently engages with your posts, the person is already halfway down the funnel. You just need to discover the prospects and spark a friendly conversation about what they do and how they do it.
When you know what your prospects do and how they do it. You can figure out the probable loopholes in their system and pitch your services or whatever you are selling more effectively. But remember, you don’t have to hop on the sales pitch directly. First, be comfortable and make them feel it too.
Now, they will fall to the bottom of your sales funnel or not will largely depend on how you approach their inbox.
To Conclude:
LinkedIn marketing is not rocket science if you know how to do it right. Your audience is not a dart board to throw sales pitches on. If you do it without nurturing and educating them for a few months, at least, you will end nowhere.
Hence, you have to be patient if you want to successfully grow your business through LinkedIn. I have shared all my experiences with you about marketing on LinkedIn. I hope it will make a difference in your life.
