LinkedIn is arguably the premier social media channel for professionals and businesses. Worldwide there are over 830 million users, over 90 million of these users are senior-level employees and executives, with 63 million in decision-making positions.
Any B2B business would be missing out on a huge opportunity to reach their target market if they didn't have a brand presence on LinkedIn. In fact, our team at The Entourage are also all on LinkedIn. We post about what we’re doing in the business community and how we help business owners make it happen, speaking with our target market directly.
While it can be expensive, can you afford not to be on LinkedIn with a marketing strategy? If you’re in sales, you want to be talking to the decision-makers. If you’re in marketing, you want to speak to the influencers. You want to be on LinkedIn, sharing professional updates, articles on how you can help businesses, and more.
This article will go a long way to help you decide that. Our marketing training can give you the skills and knowledge to make use of LinkedIn as a powerful marketing platform too.
What can LinkedIn marketing achieve for B2B businesses?
Including LinkedIn marketing as part of your B2B marketing mix is an effective way to find some quality clients. You are marketing directly to the people who are the key individuals and the decision-makers at other companies. This direct focus can be extremely beneficial to you.
Lead generation
The power of LinkedIn is in lead generation to exactly who you're looking for in the decision makers of the businesses you target. On other social media channels, your marketing might be trying to draw customers in and drive them to your website to buy, which can become expensive. With LinkedIn, you’re targeting individuals, trying to create a relationship and a lead that will prove strong going forwards.
Hubspot says LinkedIn is 277% more effective in lead generation than Facebook or Twitter.
The Content Marketing Institute says that nearly all B2B marketers use LinkedIn for lead generations.
Why is this? It's because LinkedIn is the social media channel for professionals. For B2B marketing, these are the individuals you want to reach. These are the decision-makers you want to build relationships with.
You can search for people by industry, geographic location, job position, and sometimes even salary scale. You can target your marketing very specifically to the type of professional you want to be talking to.
Building brand awareness
LinkedIn is also the perfect platform to build brand awareness for your company for prospects as well as potential employees. You can set up a company page to showcase your products and services as well as your team and what you do. Include your business logo, and when you put this as your place of employment in your profile, the logo automatically fills, reinforcing the brand.
A branded business page connects to all of your employees on LinkedIn. Any articles they write will be previewed on your business page as well. It's a place where you can tell your company story, on a platform that already has many millions of users.
A study conducted in 2019 showed LinkedIn was ranked first amongst social media channels for legitimacy. If your brand is on LinkedIn, it raises your image and trust amongst potential customers.
Provides insights of the industry
You could personally become a thought leader for your industry. You, and your team, can all write articles and publish them on LinkedIn, and have them shared amongst your network and beyond. If you’ve tagged your profile as being an employee of your business, then this article will appear on your LinkedIn company page as well.
You can connect with other thought leaders by following them and commenting on their articles, and by joining discussions in groups with a like-minded community.
Share your ideas, provide awesome advice, show that you’re willing to help everyone, and you’ll begin to build a robust lead generation platform.
Traffic building
Hootsuite shares some statistics for you to consider:
- 810 million members
- 77% of these users are outside the US
- The average age is 25-34 years of age
- Your marketing on LinkedIn could potentially reach 14.6% of the world’s population
- Brands advertising on LinkedIn see a 33% increase in purchase intent from traffic and 2x higher conversion rates from LinkedIn users
- 40% of B2B marketers agree that LinkedIn drives the highest quality leads
- 77% of content marketers say LinkedIn delivers the best organic results, and that same number say LinkedIn ads produce the best results
Your brand can gain so much by having a well-considered marketing plan for LinkedIn across paid ads, articles and content, a company page, as well as through engaging with people directly on the site.
Find specialised marketing training online at The Entourage today
LinkedIn needs to be an integral part of your overall marketing mix, especially if you’re in the B2B marketing space. Our entourage of business coaches, advisors and experts help our B2B Members improve their LinkedIn and overall marketing strategy to help them find qualified leads and better sales.
Discover how our marketing training and business coaching programs could change you and your business forever.
