LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network has been gaining immense popularity these days. According to latest stats, LinkedIn has touched a new milestone of 590 million users in 200 countries; (update 875 million users, 2022). It just has 22 million users five years ago. In fact, LinkedIn is one of the oldest social platforms that has stood the test of times and has emerged as a winner.
B2B marketers are not only using LinkedIn to network but also to share content. According to a LinkedIn study, there are around 9 billion impressions on LinkedIn feeds every week. It’s a B2B gold mine where most of the decision-makers and executives like to spend their spare time. More often than not, they’re scrolling through their feed to look for valuable content to read. They’re in search of content that can transform the way they do business.
Content posted on LinkedIn has a high chance of attracting the eyes of your target audience or decision-makers, so it needs to be well-written providing value to the readers. It’s not just short content that gets more reads. The long-form of content gets most shares, specially the how-to and list posts.
Using LinkedIn As B2B Marketing Tool
LinkedIn is a powerful platform to nurture professional relationships. Whether it’s about finding a new business opportunity or a job, LinkedIn helps you connect to the right audience. Sharing latest industry news, exploring new trends and communicating your ideas is all possible with your LinkedIn profile. Here are some useful tips for marketers to use LinkedIn as a B2B marketing tool.
Update Your Profile
Your profile embraces the first impression and you need to make it appealing. If you are a marketer, CEO, business development professional or anybody in search of a powerful platform to develop your business, then LinkedIn is the perfect place to present yourself.
Your skill-sets, awards, achievements, scholastics and all other professional details can be added to your profile to impress your target audience. Maintaining your company profiles while updating the pages with relevant information and updates will help you connect with more professionals and attract more followers.
Use Advance Search To Its Best
It is essential to connect with right set of audience to devise an effective marketing strategy. Use ‘Advanced Search’ functionality to explore and connect with target audience. You should have better understanding about relevant keywords and search terms to retrieve perfect results. Make sure to save the search, once you have narrowed down the expected outcomes.
Connect Request
You must draft a customized message for the obtained leads and send them a connection request. If you’ve a new account, it would be better to send a few requests in the beginning. As first step, start adding your colleagues instead of going with template messaging. Once you have enough connections, start sending personalized messages to the leads obtained.
Pitch Message
When you’ve established connection, you can start sending out the pitch messages. The language of the pitch must be simple and clear. Keep yourself in the shoes of your prospected customers and think how you would like to be pitched by others. Your prospects can easily spot the hype and fake messages, so keep it as real as you can. And the most important part is to answer the key questions regarding your business through this pitch.
A/B Testing
Using A/B testing, you can derive the best way to attract more people towards your business. Draft different connection messages and pitch messages. Send them to different people and find out which message is bringing more reach. Those messages bringing more reach can be used for business purposes in future.
Leveraging The Power Of LinkedIn Groups
It’s easy to reach out more people using a single platform. Search for groups related to your business. Join them and stay active on those group either by sharing some relevant stuff for taking part in ongoing conversations through comments.
Select groups with higher number of members and ensure that those people are your target audience. As soon as you join the group, you can start communicating your ideas and suggestions to the members while you can send private messages to them after 15 days of joining. Thus, without much effort, you can reach out to more people who are not connected to you but can be your future customers.
Analyze Your Performance
You can easily analyze your performance on LinkedIn. The dashboard displays user’s performance graph, number of likes he/she has received for the shares, profile viewers, rank among connections and other critical stats. This gives you a better idea regarding your profile status and performance over the time.
File Export And Synchronization
Once you’ve established your business and connections on LinkedIn, you can upload your LinkedIn contacts to your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software or any other data management software with CSV file. This will help you synchronize the LinkedIn profiles with your contacts and accounts. This will help you maintain a healthy clientele.
The Bottom Line
LinkedIn opens up endless opportunities for businesses, provided they use them in the most systematic manner. The professional network also offers some valuable resources to its users including Pulse, SlideShare, Online classes and more. Start exploring LinkedIn to explore new opportunities and see what works the best for you.
[See related post: How Can Millennials Use LinkedIn As A Marketing Tool To Advance Their Careers?]
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Deepak Sachdeva is an Internet Marketer and Digital consultant working at Design A Website.
Loves exploring new online marketing techniques and helping businesses build online brands. He likes writing on topics like Digital Marketing and Education.