LinkedIn Marketing Strategies: The Ultimate Guide

With over 660 million active users across the globe, LinkedIn is among the top and widely used social networks. So, is your business using LinkedIn to the complete potential? Are you using LinkedIn to improve brand awareness, grow your network, generate leads, conversions, and so much more?

With a plethora of social media platforms, at times, LinkedIn as a platform is underutilized by businesses. But in reality, LinkedIn, when used right, can be extremely powerful.

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This Guide on LinkedIn marketing will help you understand the various features and how to use it to improve brand awareness, share your marketing content, and scale your business. So, let’s get started!

What is LinkedIn Marketing?

LinkedIn marketing is essentially the process of using LinkedIn to create connections, generate leads, foster business relations, share content, drive traffic to your website, and create brand awareness. For many successful businesses, LinkedIn is an important part of their marketing strategies as it can be quite effective in expanding your professional networks.

So, when you use LinkedIn for marketing your business, you gain access to features related to analytics, connections, brand-building, etc. To go back to the basics, LinkedIn was launched in 2003 and is centered around career networking, sharing, and building.

The platform lets you share content with professionals across the globe, like potential employers, collaborators, competitors, etc. So, let’s dive into the steps to use LinkedIn marketing.

Steps to use LinkedIn Marketing

Don’t underestimate LinkedIn as marketing and networking social platform. LinkedIn might not be as popular to the younger generation compared to Facebook and Twitter but it is certainly the go to place for professionals.

Step 1: Create a Business LinkedIn Page

Establishing your LinkedIn Company page is very crucial. A LinkedIn company page is required to build brand awareness and promote your products or services to potential customers and other prospects.

To create your LinkedIn company page, click on the ‘Create’ button in the ‘Create a Company Page’ box on the upper right of the screen. From the screen that appears, you need to fill out your company name and email address of the company or your work email address.

Once done, click on ‘Continue.’ Now, you can type an overview and a detailed description of your company. Ensure that you mention all the specialties, key products, and services that your business offers, include a few sentences on what makes your company unique.

Step 2: Add a LinkedIn banner and logo to your Company page

Your LinkedIn company page is an asset to your brand. And so, you need to make the most of it. You can start by uploading your company logo and banner image to make your page stand out.

Your logo is the first thing your visitors and other LinkedIn users will see when they search for your company. Your brand logo will also appear on staff profiles. So, you must also ensure that all of your employees add the company page to their profile. This indirectly helps your business reach out to a wider audience of LinkedIn users.

We highly recommend that you crop and resize your logo before uploading it. You should ideally resize it to the standard logo dimensions of 100 x 60 pixels. Or you can also upload a logo that is square and around 50 x 50 pixels. This square logo will appear on your status updates in your follower’s feeds.

Now that your logo is ready, you need to also create eye-catching background images that feature key messages about your business. There are many online designing tools to help you create the best banners.

Step 3: Share content on your LinkedIn company page

Sharing organic and recycled content is the best way to reach out to your audience. And if done correctly, you can build brand awareness and relationships with each content that you post. Though it might be easy to post casual and personal content, LinkedIn content should be focused on your business, what you do, and your professional development.

In fact, you can even target the exact type and size of clients you wish to attract. For instance, if you are providing customer support systems to small businesses in India, then you can set your advertising campaigns only to be shown to businesses in India that are under 100 employees.

Is there a right time to post on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn’s algorithms rank posts based on personal connections, interests, relevance, and the probability of their engagement. In simple words, it aims to show people that will be interested and engage with them. So, it is important that you regularly build an audience on LinkedIn. Studies have found that the best times to post on LinkedIn are 7.45 am, 10.45 am, 12.45 pm, and 5.45 pm EST and for B2C brands, Mondays and Wednesdays are the best.

Step 4: Choose LinkedIn Advertising solutions

LinkedIn offers a great variety of customized advertising solutions to promote your business. Let’s look into each of these.

Step 5: Connect with LinkedIn Groups

If you want to reach out to audiences in the same niche or increase your network in the same industry, then you must leverage using LinkedIn groups. LinkedIn groups help you reach more professionals through joining professional groups related to your business industry using the ‘groups discover’ option to search and find the desired groups. Another great way to connect with the right professionals is by creating a group for your business and staying active by publishing and sharing useful content. You must then monitor which audiences are talking about your content and to what extent your content should be customized.

If you wish to create and set up your business LinkedIn group, you can follow these easy steps –

Go to ‘Groups’ from your homepage and click on ‘create a new group.’
Then add the group name, logo, and add an interesting description to motivate others to be a part of your business community.
Once done, you can add the main rules to your groups or even gain information from those who wish to join the group.
Once your group is ready, you can now invite professionals in the same niche using the search option and filters.
You must then make the group active and engage with your members by publishing content.

Step 6: Engage with LinkedIn Live

Another highly engaging format of content other than videos is LinkedIn Live. Studies have shown that live videos have 24X the engagement than pre-recorded video. Many successful brands look for great reasons to go live, whether only to chat and engage with their users, host interviews, or even webinars. Some brands also host virtual events. LinkedIn live gives you a great opportunity for an instant connecting with the audience members, especially if you respond to the comments. However, before you host a LinkedIn live, you must ensure that what you are promoting is not just on LinkedIn but also across all social media and audience touchpoints.

Step 7: Analyze LinkedIn Metrics

LinkedIn has its own set of metrics that help you measure your performance. Let’s look at each of these and understand their purpose.

Conversion

LinkedIn conversion measures the key event that you desire your audience to perform. This can range from making a purchase to signing up for a newsletter or even a webinar. If you are using LinkedIn ads, then conversion should be the topmost metric that you should monitor. This data can help you optimize your ads and use targeted strategies to deliver the best results.

Leads generated

Leads generated are essentially the number of prospects like the potential customers that you have acquired via LinkedIn. Leads can be generated by posting content organically or even through paid campaigns like lead generation forms and sponsored InMail.

Demographics

LinkedIn demographics track the characteristics of the people who are following your page, liking your content, and interacting with your ads on LinkedIn. These include country, region, industry, company size, etc. This metric is a gold mine that helps you understand your audience.

Followers

This metric tracks the number of users who follow your LinkedIn company page. In other words, your followers have a high chance of viewing your content in their feeds. This plays an essential role in B2B as well as B2C companies as they now have a greater chance of achieving their goal.

Types of Linkedin Ads

Video Ads

Video ads are a highly engaging form of content on LinkedIn. It helps increase engagement with your business, generates more leads with prefilled forms, drives traffic to your website, and so much more through video ads displayed on LinkedIn feed. You can make the most of LinkedIn video ads by showcasing your business products, environment, sharing success stories, and establishing thought leadership, thereby attracting potential leads through engaging video ads.

Text Ads

If you wish to drive more conversions to your website and reach more audiences with easy content, then text ads are the perfect choice for you. Text ads are charged on a PPC or per thousand impression bases within your allocated advertising budget. You can track these leads by heading over to LinkedIn’s conversion tracking tool.

Dynamic Ads

Personalized ads are far more effective than format-based ads. The dynamic ads solution provided by LinkedIn can be used as a source of personal data of targeted audiences. This includes the profile photo, company name, or job title that is displayed on the ad seen on the desktop home page of users. The ad drives them to make desired actions that help to –

Increase follower count
Increase engagement with published content
Drive higher conversion and traffic to your business website

Carousel Ads

With carousel ads, you can showcase your brand’s products and services or even showcase your brand’s story through a series of visual cards. The carousel ad solution on LinkedIn helps drive desired engagement from your target audience or decision-makers, thereby generating more leads with prefilled forms or directly drive profitable traffic to your website.

Objective-based Ads

LinkedIn as a platform makes it easy for businesses to achieve the desired advertising goals by launching advertising campaigns that are based on specific objectives. These include –

Brand awareness – increasing the reach through impression-based campaigns.
Website visits – drive more profitable traffic to your website.
Engagement – increases engagement with published content and follower base.
Video views – increase reach and engagement by promoting your video content.
Leads generation – generate more leads with prefilled user’s information forms.
Website conversion – drive highly desired conversions on your website.
Job Applications – reach out to suitable applicants for available job vacancies.

LinkedIn advertising solutions are diversified and highly customized to meet all your different business needs and goals. It has the ability to retarget page visitors, leads generated, email, and contact lists through advertising campaigns. LinkedIn advertising solutions help achieve better results through measured conversion tracking and LinkedIn Campaign manager analytics reports.

How to Structure a Perfect LinkedIn Profile? [Infographic]

LinkedIn is the only social media platform dedicated for professionals. LinkedIn is where professionals hang out, look for and hire skilled individuals.

Google your name, yes do it now…

Most likely your LinkedIn profile will come up first in Google.

LinkedIn is one of the first places a potential employer, recruiter or business partner will do their research on.

LinkedIn users have a higher buying power compared to other social network users like Facebook and Twitter.

LinkedIn groups are an underutilized source for idea generation and marketing

according to Rob Cubbon.

What’s the difference between Facebook and LinkedIn? Let’s just say you won’t see 100 pictures of your friend’s kid making pizza on LinkedIn. LinkedIn provides career related professional information.

This infographic will show you how to crush your competition and stand out with your LinkedIn profile.

Infographic source: Quicksprout.com

Lessons from this Infographic:

Use a premium LinkedIn account, if possible. Often LinkedIn provides 1 month free access to premium features – try it out.
A premium feature is seeing ‘who viewed your profile’ which was ranked number 1 feature by 76% of participants.
Upgrading to a premium account increases your profile visibility.
Use introductions to build your referral network.
Use a recent professional profile image.
Write a short and punchy description about yourself.
Connect any gaps in your experience.
Ensure you are using a customised profile URL not the default URL.
Provide complete contact information.
Make sure your profile is public and not private.
Link to your blog/website from your LinkedIn profile. Average sales per LinkedIn referral is $44.24
Ask for and provide recommendations and endorsements.
Update projects you have worked on a continuous basis.
Join relevant LinkedIn groups that have a decent following.
Add publications to improve your credibility.
Be active on LinkedIn on a daily basis.
Best date and time to post on LinkedIn for engagement is Tuesday, 10am – 11am EST.
Best sharing time is between 10am and 2pm EST.

Wrapping it up!

LinkedIn marketing is filled with so many business opportunities that are generated from content marketing campaigns, advertising campaigns, LinkedIn groups, and communities. With so many additions to LinkedIn since it’s inception, many updates continue to happen quite frequently.

This is what makes LinkedIn a great resource and platform for marketers. LinkedIn marketing requires commitment and experience. So be patient and keep your LinkedIn business page and groups active!

Are you ready to get started with LinkedIn marketing? Have you scaled your business yet with LinkedIn Marketing? Let us know in the comments below!