Did you know that 90% of users struggle with LinkedIn marketing for businesses? but with the proper guidance, you will grow your businesses on LinkedIn.
In this article, we are going to discuss what is LinkedIn marketing and its importance? How to use LinkedIn for business marketing? and so on.
LinkedIn was launched on May 5, 2003, by Reid Hoffman, but in 2016, Microsoft finalized its acquisition of LinkedIn.
It was initially perceived as a traditional online networking platform. As time passed, LinkedIn became the biggest marketing tool for businesses of all sizes.
Today, LinkedIn is beneficial for various reasons, such as networking, job searching, B2B business activities, brand building, sales, and marketing.
It is the most trusted social media platform of any other. Currently, more than 930 million users are available in more than 200 countries on LinkedIn.
It offers different features such as profile optimization, skills, endorsements, recommendations, education, job search, groups, company pages, analytics, and a sales navigator.
So, without further ado, let’s understand LinkedIn marketing step-by-step.
What is LinkedIn Marketing strategy?
LinkedIn is a professional social media platform for promoting your products or services, building personal brand, networking, and generating leads.
It is a very powerful platform for job searching and especially for B2B business marketing.
Additionally, it typically includes creating and optimizing your LinkedIn profile, sharing content, engaging with your network, and running targeted advertising campaigns.
LinkedIn marketing strategy requires consistency and patience. If you want to succeed on this platform, you need to invest time and effort.
Furthermore, LinkedIn offers a range of tools and features for tracking and improving your marketing results.
Is LinkedIn marketing effective?
Yes, LinkedIn is the most effective professional marketing platform. You will be successful only when you plan and execute your marketing strategies.
If you want to maximize the effectiveness of LinkedIn marketing, consider elements such as content quality, networking, analytics, and setting clear objectives.
What are the biggest mistakes in LinkedIn marketing?
The most common mistakes in LinkedIn marketing include:
- No proper profile optimization –
Your LinkedIn profile is your digital first impression—don’t ignore profile optimization.
- Overly promotional content –
Focus on adding values and solving problems of your customers instead of creating overly promotional content.
Overly promotional content disrupts your first impression.
- Not engaging with your network –
Networking doesn’t mean just pressing the follow button. No, that’s not enough.
Engage with people who commented on your posts. Answer the DMs. Attend audio events and ask questions.
- Inconsistent posting –
Inconsistently posting content doesn’t always reach your intended customers. If you want to hit the algorithm, post your content when your audience is available.
Schedule your posts a week ahead to help you maintain consistency.
- Failing to target the right audience –
All your hard work is waste if you fail to find the right audience. Firstly, conduct the market research and then implement the findings to refine your business strategies.
- Ignoring analytics and performance tracking –
Analytics tells you how your LinkedIn posts are performing, including metrics such as views, impressions and engagement rate.
Therefore, do not underestimate the potential of analytics.
Why LinkedIn marketing is important?
LinkedIn marketing is beneficial for all levels of business, whether they’re small or big.
Here’s why it’s important:
- Brand awareness –
Brand building is completely different from marketing. It’s about creating a unique identity, trust, and emotional connection with your audience.
It not only for companies; it’s also for individuals like you.
- Lead generation –
LinkedIn provides features for lead generation such as ad campaigns, sales navigator, InMail feature, and lead generation forms.
- Networking –
Connect with fellow writers, editors, and professionals in your industry. You can join LinkedIn groups and participate in discussions.
Additionally, join or host audio events.
- Job searching –
LinkedIn’s user-friendly search options simplify finding what you need.
You can easily narrow down your search results using filters such as posting date, experience level, company name, and job function.
- Thought leadership –
Consistently, sharing valuable content in a specific niche will position you as a thought leader. People start to recognize you, trust you, and start to follow you for your expertise and knowledge.
- Recruitment –
If your business is hiring, LinkedIn is a prime platform to find top talent.
Additionally, for more advanced recruiting needs, LinkedIn offers a premium service called LinkedIn Recruiter.
- Targeted advertising –
Select your specific target audience on LinkedIn and expand your business internationally.
You can select your target audience based on gender, location, age, and various others demographic factors.
- Learning –
LinkedIn learning is paid, but worth every penny.
It covers a wide range of courses such as professional development, technical skills, entrepreneurship, creativity and design, data science and analytics, and soft skills.
How to use LinkedIn for business marketing?
Accessing LinkedIn marketing for businesses follow these following steps:
1.Profile optimization:
Your LinkedIn profile is the first impression potential customers will have of your business, so make it count.
- Professional photo –
Keep a high-quality profile photo, where you look professional and approachable. Resize your photo up to 400×400 pixels.
Make sure there is no loss of image quality and avoid distracting backgrounds.
- Cover photo –
Use high-resolution images that reflect your brand.
Add a touch of professionalism to your cover pages with your logo, tagline, call to action, favorite quotes, award winning photos or products photos.
- Headline –
Write clear headlines that mention your expertise, location, and contact details, including your contact number, website address, and email address.
- About –
Start writing about sections with greetings such as hey, hi there, hello everyone, and so on.
Just tell a little bit about yourself, initially like your name and the expertise you bring to the table.
Then mention your professional background, contact details and lastly, add a call to action. A call to action is a must because it can lead to increased conversions.
- Experience –
LinkedIn provides an experience section where you can add your position, company name, employment type, start date, end date, profile headline, and job description.
- Education –
Fill in all the details in the education section. Enter the degree you obtained, field of study, start date, end date, grade, activities, description, skills, and media.
Additionally, make sure to add your higher education at the top of the section for better visibility.
- License and certification –
If you have earned any certification courses, don’t forget to add them because they will impact your profile.
Mention the name of the course, organization name, issue date, expiration date, credential ID, credential URL, and skills you acquired.
- Skills –
Add your top skills and request your colleagues, LinkedIn connections, or clients for endorsements. It adds valuable credibility to your profile.
- Volunteering –
Include volunteer experience that shows your commitment to the community and highlights your extraordinary talent.
- Recommendation –
After offering services to clients, request them for recommendations.
Recommendations are nothing but feedback that adds value to your business.
While requesting recommendations from your clients, guide them on what they might include in the recommendation. Once you receive recommendations, appreciate their support.
Above all, regularly update your profile with new recommendations.
- Publication –
If you publish any research, review, or blog article on any other platform, add it to LinkedIn.
Mention the title of the article, publisher, publication date, publication URL, and description.
- Languages –
Languages is the last section of profile optimization.
Add the languages you can speak and also specify your proficiency level.
In the proficiency section, select one of the following levels: elementary proficiency, limited working proficiency, professional working proficiency, full proficiency, and lastly native or bilingual proficiency.
- URL –
Edit your custom URL on your profile e.g., linkedin.com/in/yourname.
LinkedIn will let you know if the URL is available, and if it’s available, save it. Consequently, this will make it easier for people to find your LinkedIn profile.
2. Target audience:
For marketing your business on LinkedIn, you must know who your ideal audience is.
First define your ideal audience before start searching. List down the company’s name, location, job title, and interests.
Go to the search bar and then use the proper keywords.
You can use various filters to refine your search, such as industry name, location, job title, service categories, past company, language, or current company.
LinkedIn groups are another option to connect with the target audience. Send them a connection request with a personalized message.
Regularly interact with your audience, understand their problems and then give them a solution.
Build genuine relationships for the long-term marketing game.
3. Create content strategy:
Create a content strategy that addresses customer pain points, interests, and challenges.
Select a topic and write content that adds value and solves problems in your audience’s lives.
Start writing with attention-grabbing hooks, such as Did you know 99% of people fail in LinkedIn marketing? Add numbers that raise people’s interest.
Write content in storytelling format. Storytelling is the best way to attract clients.
Lastly, add relevant hashtags to increase the visibility of your content. Two to three hashtags are enough.
After that, analyze which strategies are working best for reaching your target audience and adjust accordingly.
4. Build network:
Today, online networking has grown in importance as a result of the popularity of social media in recent years.
To leverage your network, be active on platforms like LinkedIn. Interact with other experts in your industry and offer your own knowledge and services there.
Networking is not about sharing business cards to people. It’s about building long-term genuine relationships.
Connect with fellow writers, editors, and professionals in your industry. Send them a connection request with a personalized message explaining why they want to connect with you.
Similarly, accept only those connection requests that send you a personalized message explaining why they want to connect with you.
This will help you build more meaningful, productive, and professional relationships on LinkedIn.
5. Use LinkedIn Ads:
LinkedIn ads is the great way to reach out to the targeted audience. There are three different types of LinkedIn Ads which are listed below.
- Sponsored content –
Sponsored ads appear in the newsfeeds of users. These ads promote your organic posts to a specific audience beyond your existing connections.
First step is to create campaign manager account and define your campaign objective such as website visits, leads generation, or boost brand awareness.
Next, define your target audience by considering factors such as job title, company size, industry, location, and more.
Select ad formats suitable for your campaign’s objective image or video.
Set your daily or total campaign budget and choose your bidding strategy. You can bid for clicks (CPC) or impressions (CPM), depending on your goals.
Lastly, select the time duration for how long you want to run the ads.
- Sponsored messaging –
Sponsored messaging allows you to send personalized messages.
This ad format is one-on-one conversations, effective for promoting content and inviting people to webinars or events.
In this ad, you have to create an ad-campaign objective such as brand awareness, website visits, website conversion, lead generation, and engagement.
Focus on how you can add value to your audience’s lives. Start by introducing yourself and being clear about your purpose.
Moreover, make sure your content is short and concise, up to 500 characteristics. Within the message, you can add a Lead Gen Form to collect leads.
Lastly, measure campaign performance, including open rate and click-through rate, directly in Campaign Manager.
- Dynamic ads –
Dynamic ads are run based on objectives.
For instance, to build a brand, run a LinkedIn follower ad; to drive conversions, use LinkedIn spotlight ads; and to generate leads, use content ads.
If you want to know how to run dynamic ads step-by-step, click here.
- Text ads –
HubSpot Academy uses text ads to drive leads. These ads are easy and simple to create.
They appear in the right-hand column or on the top of the LinkedIn homepage.
Text ads need the following requirements:
Logo file type: JPG or PNG
Logo file size: 2MB
Logo image dimensions: 100×100 pixels
Headline: 25 characters
Description: 75 characters
Landing page URL: Required
URL prefix: http:// or https://
URL characters: 2000 characters for destination field URL
Lastly, add call-to-action options such as apply now, download, join now, learn more, attend, subscribe, demo, and so on.
6. Analyze and refine your strategy:
On a weekly basis, analyze content performance by evaluating engagement and top demographic factors.
This includes metrics like likes, shares, comments, clicks, and overall reach. Refine existing content and create new pieces based on what’s working and what’s not.
Don’t be afraid to experiment. Post content in different formats, such as texts, videos, carousals, or polls.
What is the best LinkedIn marketing course?
Actually, LinkedIn offers their own learning platform where you can learn about LinkedIn marketing for businesses.
Furthermore, there are some other platforms available for learning about LinkedIn marketing for businesses based on different preferences and choices.
Udemy offers courses such as LinkedIn marketing for beginners, LinkedIn marketing for lead generation, and personal branding.
While Coursera offers LinkedIn marketing for small businesses and HubSpot offers courses for LinkedIn marketing for all sizes of businesses.
HubSpot and Coursera offers free courses, whereas others are all paid courses, such as LinkedIn Learning, and Udemy.
Who to follow on LinkedIn marketing?
LinkedIn is the best platform for influential marketing experts and thought leaders.
Following is a list of some founders, freelance writers, and thought leaders:
Neil Patel – Co-Founder at Neil Patel Digital
Lara Acosta – Founder at LA Digital speaker and consultant.
Ann Handley – Digital marketing & content expert.
Ankur Warikoo – Founder @WebVeda, Content creator @wariCrew, Speaker, Author
Saheli Chatterjee – Founder of freelance 101 academy
Jon Brosio – Freelance writer
Shweta Kukreja – Personal branding strategist
Anubhav Dubey – Founder of Chai Sutta Bar
Conclusion:
LinkedIn, launched in 2003 and acquired by Microsoft in 2016. It’s a great tool for networking, job searching, B2B activities, brand building, sales, and marketing.
It possesses over 930 million users in more than 200 countries worldwide.
LinkedIn offers various features like profile optimization, endorsements, recommendations, job search, groups, company pages, analytics, and a sales navigator.
Here’s a step-by-step guide on LinkedIn marketing businesses:
- Profile optimization – Your LinkedIn profile serves as the first impression for potential customers. Ensure its professional and engaging.
- Target audience – Define your ideal target audience by listing company names, locations, job titles, and interests.
- Content strategy – Create a content strategy that addresses your audience’s pain points, interests, and challenges.
- Build your network – Focus on building long-term, genuine relationships rather than just sharing business cards.
- LinkedIn ads – Set up campaigns with clear objectives and define your target audience.
- Analyze and refine – Regularly assess content performance using metrics like likes, shares, comments, clicks, and reach.
There are various courses available for learning LinkedIn marketing for businesses on platforms like LinkedIn Learning, Udemy, Coursera, and HubSpot.
All marketers, job professionals and thought leaders are available on LinkedIn you can follow them for valuable insights and inspiration.