Using LinkedIn for B2B marketing

LinkedIn has been around for some time now and has proven itself to be a reliable and credible platform for professionals to network. Naturally, businesses are using LinkedIn for B2B marketing.

LinkedIn allows you to benefit from its professional setup and gives you a chance to connect with your audience and endorse your products and services. It also allows you to promote your business directly to the top administration of the companies you are targeting.

The lingering question is how businesses can leverage LinkedIn for gaining an edge in B2B marketing practices. Let us take a look.

Building a strategy

Like any other marketing step, having a clear strategy before your start is essential to keep up with the goals and objectives of your endeavor. You can come up with your own strategy or you can follow the following 2-step process that I have built for using LinkedIn for B2B Sales. 

The first step is to set up an optimal and ideal page for your company by utilizing the various tools that LinkedIn has to offer. 

The second step is to expand your connections and outreach of this page.

Part 1: Setting up a fine LinkedIn page

Give complete details of your business on your page

The initial step to using LinkedIn for B2B marketing is to fill out all information on your LinkedIn business page. Fill in details of your company, your company logo, tagline, everything. A complete page is more likely to get visits than an incomplete one.

Be genuine and honest

The idea of a LinkedIn page is to let people know more about your business and connect to it. Here, no one is looking forward to being hoodwinked. 

So you want to keep your details all honest and genuine. It adds to the credibility of your organization and builds trust which is crucial for the development of your business.

The little things do matter

It is easy to assume that little things like the picture you use or the hashtags you put in your description do not make a considerable difference to your brand. However, these little things can have a significant impact on your marketing. 

The right hashtags can make your company search-friendly and the right picture can instill an interest in your company. Using the right keywords and engaging the audience is an integral part of using LinkedIn for B2B sales.

Part 2: Expand your LinkedIn

Once you have set up your company page, the next step is to gain visibility in the active circles of LinkedIn and expand the reach of your page. Here are some fail-proof practices for you to leverage your business account on Linkedin for B2B sales and marketing:

Share your page

From your employees to your customers, get everybody to follow your new page on LinkedIn and spread the word. 

You can send out emails inviting people to connect, post about it on other social media platforms like Facebook and promote your page on your official website. You can also use your personal LinkedIn profile to spread the word about your page.

Posting on LinkedIn

Three simple things about posting on LinkedIn include:

• Posting often
• Posting strategically
• Posting right

To keep your page in the front line of feeds and discussions, you must post often. A page that posts once a month is as good as no page. Of course, this does not mean that you post too much and spam feeds. That will undo everything you have built until now.

This is where posting strategically comes in. You want to post at a time when there is maximum traffic on the website. Working hours on weekdays have been said to be the best time to post. Posting at prime hours ensures the visibility of your post.

The next thing is to post right. You want your posts to be engaging and interesting to your audience. The idea is to pave the way for discussions and deliberations. Encourage people to comment and share your posts to spread your reach.

Create rich and creative content

To leverage your LinkedIn Business profile for B2B marketing you can explore a plethora of ideas from using video editing tools to making captivating poster-making tools. Images are more likely to catch attention than words. 

Choose a catchy and strong heading for your posts that are clear and relevant to the content you are sharing. You can also tag your target audience to increase your reach.

Engage your page in different discussions

Another easy way to magnify your reach on LinkedIn is to engage in different discussions through your account. You can become part of groups and comment on relevant posts by professionals from your industry.

Conclusion

In all, LinkedIn is an excellent platform to build relationships for your business. You can leverage LinkedIn to showcase your business’ successes, praise the efforts of your team and employees, promote your product in your industry for boosting B2B sales and engage in meaningful conversations with your consumers all in one place.

Frequently asked questions

1. How effective is LinkedIn for B2B marketing?

• Around 60% of B2B marketers swear by using LinkedIn to boost sales as it helps generate more leads than other social media platforms such as Facebook.

2. Why is LinkedIn the best for B2B?

• LinkedIn is a global social media platform used by professionals from all fields and industries. The structure and fabric of the website are highly business-centric and thus it proves to be an effective marketing tool for B2B marketers.

3. What is a B2B strategy?

• A B2B strategy is a business-to-business marketing strategy where one business aims to sell its product to another business. For example, a manufacturer of tires will market his product to an automobile manufacturer and both are businesses, hence B2B.

4. Is LinkedIn good for small business owners?

• Small business owners can largely benefit from the wide user base and reach of LinkedIn. Moreover, using LinkedIn is free of cost which makes it accessible to everyone.

5. Is there a difference between a personal and business LinkedIn account?

• A personal page on LinkedIn represents an individual while a company page represents an organization or a business as a whole.