LinkedIn is a powerful social media channel with over 930 million users. So, it should be no surprise why so many companies want to be there. A thoroughly-crafted LinkedIn marketing strategy can help you grow your business and stand out in that crowd.
Keep reading to learn how to develop a solid LinkedIn strategy that will help you build a loyal community and effectively market your business on the platform.
10 tips for creating a LinkedIn Marketing strategy
1. Set clear LinkedIn marketing goals
Creating a LinkedIn marketing strategy doesn’t happen overnight. If you want to succeed, you need to set clear goals. If you don’t, you’ll lose direction and your strategy will stumble.
Here’s how to set LinkedIn goals 👇
Identify your LinkedIn target audience
Ask yourself who you want to reach and engage with on the platform. When thinking about your target audience, consider the following:
- Their demographics.
- Their location.
- Their job titles.
- Their industry.
Plus any other relevant factors that define your ideal customer. This information will significantly affect your overall approach and content, ensuring that you aim at the right people with your marketing efforts.
Define your key performance indicators (KPIs)
These B2B marketing metrics enable you to track and measure the success of your efforts.
Depending on what business objectives you have in mind, your KPIs may vary. For instance, if your goal is to grow your brand exposure on LinkedIn, your KPIs will revolve around metrics such as the number of followers, engagement rate, reach, and impressions on LinkedIn.
Then, you can easily track your KPIs to understand whether you’re getting closer to accomplishing your goals or remaining in the same place.
Align your LinkedIn goals with your overall marketing objectives
When building a presence on LinkedIn, make sure your efforts complement your overall B2B marketing strategy and contribute to your business goals.
Whether you want to increase brand visibility, generate more leads, or drive conversions, make sure your LinkedIn goals don’t contradict your marketing objectives.
2. Optimise your LinkedIn page
To make the most of your LinkedIn presence, you need to properly optimise your LinkedIn page. Especially when it comes to employee advocacy campaigns on LinkedIn, you need to ensure that your company profile is up to date. With a few magic clicks, your brand can reach the right audience and establish credibility.
First, add a headline and summary. Some businesses look through their fingers when it comes to this part. However, a headline and summary can make a huge difference in your LinkedIn marketing game.
So, write a headline that grabs attention and precisely reflects your expertise. Use the right keywords to allow more people to discover your brand.
As for the summary section, provide LinkedIn members with detailed information about your background, skills, and achievements. Demonstrate your value and the benefits your brand offers to potential connections.
But where to include this information?
Well, there are “Experience” and “Skills” sections where you can highlight your accomplishments. Don’t be afraid to go into details. The more people know about your previous roles and responsibilities, the better idea they will have about your brand.
Don’t neglect visual elements. You’re mistaken if you think using a selfie as a profile pic is a good idea! A profile picture should be professional and reflect your personal brand.
You can also customise your background banner with a visually compelling and relevant image representing your company.
3. Develop a solid content strategy
A well-defined content strategy is the cornerstone of successful LinkedIn marketing. Why do you need a content strategy, you may wonder?
You need it to ensure your content is relevant and meets your target audience’s needs!
If you create something that doesn’t resonate with your audience, they won’t be interested in your brand anymore.
To create a winning content strategy for LinkedIn, find out your audience’s needs and interests. Identify the topics, trends, and pain points that matter to them.
Then, define which content types will engage and educate your audience. Content can take different forms, including articles, images, videos, infographics, etc. Test out different content types to understand which one works best.
Here are some more tips:
- Plan a consistent content calendar outlining when and how often you’ll share content.
- Use social media scheduling tools; they will free up a lot of time and let you publish content ahead of time.
- Track your metrics to understand how your content performs and to refine your LinkedIn strategy.
4. Post relevant content
Quality content is vital to building a solid online presence, not only on LinkedIn but on other channels as well.
If you produce valuable content, you’ll attract the right audience and establish yourself as a thought leader in your niche.
But how to create content that resonates with your audience? Follow these steps 👇
Identify your audience’s pain points
When learning about your audience, try to figure out what challenges they face and what topics they’re interested in. This information will ease your LinkedIn marketing strategy and let you create content addressing their pain points and offering relevant solutions. Writing assistance tools like Grammarly can further enhance the quality of your content.
Experiment with content types
The format of your content matters too. To boost the productivity of their LinkedIn marketing efforts, users can play with various content types, such as articles, videos, images, and carousels. The format may vary depending on the message you want to convey.
So, choose your content format wisely to ensure you effectively communicate with your audience.
Stick to a content calendar
Apart from creating content, you should also stick to a content calendar to ensure regular posting on LinkedIn. Use productivity apps tailored for social media management; they will keep you organised, letting you plan your content in advance, set reminders, and track your posting schedule.
Content quality shouldn’t suffer with the increase in posts. Quality should always be a priority. Try repurposing or updating existing content to breathe new life into it.
Track analytics and review feedback
Last but not least, track your analytics, collect feedback and review the feedback in detail. Monitor how your content performs and pay attention to what resonates with your audience.
This information will serve you as a tool to improve your content strategy.
5. Be active in your LinkedIn community
Creating a LinkedIn account and posting content aren’t enough to achieve success.
If you want to enhance your LinkedIn marketing efforts, it’s crucial to build a loyal and highly engaged community around your business profile on LinkedIn. This way, you build brand credibility and unlock a great opportunity to connect with people who might be valuable to your business.
The good news is - building a community isn’t a difficult task!
In the beginning, check your LinkedIn feed and engage with posts that you find interesting. One meaningful comment under a post related to your niche can open up a discussion and help you connect with influential people.
LinkedIn groups can also be highly useful. By joining group discussions, sharing tips, and answering questions, you can build connections and position yourself as a useful source of information in your field.
Don’t shy away from starting conversations. Contact people who share similar interests or goals. Personalise your messages; this has a huge impact on whether they will read your messages or not.
Remember:
Networking is a two-way street, so give as much as you receive and nurture mutually beneficial relationships.
6. Make use of LinkedIn ads
Leveraging the power of LinkedIn ads can be a game-changer for your marketing strategy on the platform. LinkedIn provides a highly valuable advertising platform to reach your ideal audience.
There are several LinkedIn ad formats and targeting options suitable for different campaigns. They are:
- Sponsored Content enables you to promote your posts and reach a broader audience.
- Text Ads offer a budget-friendly way to generate leads. They also allow you to upload your logo and a limited number of characters for writing a headline and small description.
- InMail ads let you send personalised messages directly to those who matter the most to your business.
To make the most of LinkedIn ads, define your campaign objectives. Are you willing to increase brand awareness and generate website traffic or leads? Make sure your ad strategy aligns with these goals for better results.
Next, target by job title, industry, location, company size, and other criteria to reach the right professionals. Targeting is subject to change based on the data you gather from your campaigns.
Regularly monitor and optimise your LinkedIn ad campaigns. Track important metrics, such as click-through rates, conversions, and engagement.
This information can help you make better data-driven decisions and optimise your ad copy, visuals, and targeting parameters.
7. Assess and analyse your LinkedIn marketing efforts
Regularly assessing and analysing your LinkedIn marketing efforts is essential for optimising your strategy and achieving all your LinkedIn marketing goals. This will allow you to understand what works well and what should be improved.
First, define the metrics that match your marketing goals. Regardless of whether it’s lead generation on LinkedIn or website traffic, you need to select the indicators that best reflect your goals. Use LinkedIn’s built-in analytics tools or external platforms to track and assess your performance.
When monitoring your LinkedIn marketing, pay attention to your content strategy. With the help of analytics tools, you can identify which content resonates the most with your audience and the topics or formats that generate the highest engagement.
This is an important step, as boring content will only turn off your prospects and reduce your chances of building valuable partnerships with them.
Along with the content, it’s also advisable to learn who your connections are. Make sure they’re professionals who align with your target audience or industry.
If you run LinkedIn ads, make sure to assess their effectiveness. Review the click-through rates, conversion rates, and overall return on investment (ROI). If your ads don’t work as they should, you can refine your ad strategy or try other methods to reach your target audience.
8. Follow LinkedIn trends and best practices
Keeping up with the latest LinkedIn trends and best practices is necessary to achieve success. By keeping a finger on the pulse of what’s happening, you’ll be assured that your LinkedIn online presence is relevant, engaging, and effective.
LinkedIn regularly introduces new tools and functionalities that can maximise your marketing efforts. So, follow the news to discover these features. Consider how to incorporate them into your LinkedIn marketing strategy.
Monitor industry trends and topics that are gaining traction on LinkedIn. Pay attention to conversations, articles, and hashtags that are popular within your industry. Incorporate these trends into your content strategy to demonstrate your relevance and establish thought leadership.
Another powerful way to stay updated is to follow industry experts. Follow their posts, leave comments under their content, and share valuable insights. This allows you to stay connected with industry trends and helps you grow your network and enhance your brand visibility.
9. Work with subject matter experts
Speaking of industry experts, this tactic has been very successful for Cognism!
Consider partnering with subject matter experts to enhance your LinkedIn strategy. Who are subject matter experts?
These individuals possess in-depth knowledge and expertise in specific fields or industries. They deeply understand industry trends, market dynamics, and customer pain points, allowing them to create highly targeted and engaging content that resonates with a LinkedIn audience.
So - find your own subject matter expert! Collaborate with them to develop thought leadership content and establish your brand’s credibility.
These people bring valuable insights and perspectives that can genuinely elevate your company’s LinkedIn strategy.
10. Leverage your employees and internal influencers
Employees are powerful advocates who can significantly amplify a company’s reach and credibility on the platform.
By encouraging employees to optimise their LinkedIn profiles and actively engage with company content, B2B companies can tap into their networks and extend their brand’s visibility to a wider audience.
There are other benefits too:
- Employee advocacy humanises the brand, as prospects and customers are more likely to trust and engage with content shared by individuals rather than companies.
- Employees can also contribute to thought leadership initiatives, sharing industry insights and expertise that showcase the company’s knowledge and authority.
- Employee participation in LinkedIn groups, industry events, and networking activities helps foster connections and opportunities for collaboration, ultimately driving business growth.
In an era where personal connections matter more than ever, leveraging employees as brand ambassadors on LinkedIn is a powerful and cost-effective marketing strategy for B2B companies.
LinkedIn marketing strategy: the last word
Creating a solid LinkedIn marketing strategy can be challenging and time-consuming, but in the B2B space, it’s totally worth it. By following our tips, you will build an online presence on LinkedIn, engage with your audience, and attract more people to your business.
Our key takeaways are:
- Clearly identify your objectives and the metrics you want to track.
- Craft a compelling company page, using relevant keywords to enhance visibility.
- Tailor your content to your audience’s needs, interests, and pain points.
- Publish high-quality content that provides value to your audience.
- Join relevant LinkedIn groups in your industry or niche and engage with group members.
- Actively engage with your followers/connections by liking, commenting, and sharing their content.
- Consider using LinkedIn’s advertising features to amplify your reach.
- Encourage your employees to optimise their LinkedIn profiles and share company updates.
- Utilise LinkedIn’s analytics tools or third-party platforms to gain insights into your content’s performance.
- Work with subject matter experts to expand your content’s reach and enhance your LinkedIn marketing strategy.
