Linkedin is a very unique social media platform, Unlike other platforms LinkedIn is exclusively used by business owners and other professionals. People use this platform exclusively to talk bout their professional journey and businesses. Linkedin is by far the most useful platform to get potential clients, talk about your businesses, and improve your professional network.
With more than 90 lack active users in more than 200 counties, your chances of getting the word out about your business through LinkedIn marketing are much higher.
LinkedIn is a powerful tool and it can immensely help founders, sales executives, marketers, and even developers. You can build connections and grow your business efficiently with LinkedIn marketing.
Building your brand using LinkedIn marketing is very simple and effective. In the following article, we will be talking in depth about how your business can use LinkedIn marketing to effectively establish your brand identity.
Here is a step-by-step guide to using LinkedIn for business growth!
Compared to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn may appear boring but the moment you cross the 15-minute mark on this website, you begin to realize that it is Narnia. In simple words, its much more exciting than you can ever imagine. You only need some time to leverage the power of this network to full effect.
LinkedIn is the best place for building connections with professionals. Linkedin since its launch in 2002 till now has been a unique social media platform, whose purpose is not only to share content (like most social media platforms) but to create spaces for business owners, freelancers, and enterprises, alike.
LinkedIn classification of contacts into first-degree, second-degree, and third-degree contacts is a feature that few social networks offer. You can get to know how you are related to someone who is an opinion maker or influencer in your society and thereafter you can demand an introduction through the Get an introduction feature.
Empirical evidence has shown that most companies have begun to hire aggressively through LinkedIn as it helps them save costs and get verified resources. Instead of paying a bomb to recruiters, they can hire easily through references in the early stage of their growth.
Recruiters or placement consultants have also embraced LinkedIn and its 400 million user base for talent hunting. They purchase premium plans and tell human resource managers to save costs by outsourcing talent hunting to them. Most recruiters now focus on two domains through LinkedIn: either they scour for top management talent or they seek front-line staff for customer-facing operations where low revenue per hire is offset by the huge volumes in which transnational companies hire.
In this article, I’m going to talk specifically about how to generate leads using LinkedIn.
Using Linkedin For Business Marketing – 12 Actionable Tips
1) Get the basics right
This means that you need to put up an appealing display picture that is recent and makes your look a thorough professional. The title of your role plays a strong role in deciding the popularity of your LinkedIn profile. Even if you are a man of many talents, you still need to be focused and describe one aspect of your personality through which you want to get work.
As an entrepreneur, you need to pick one skill and highlight it. Sell yourself aggressively and add your portfolio to strengthen your case. Having a website of your own is a great professional branding tool. LinkedIn will ensure that your website address is visible to everyone as also your blog URL, Twitter handle, and Facebook profile along with your email and contact number to those who are visiting your profile. With such information, your customers can call you directly and email you to inquire about your services.
The difference between successful and not-so-successful digital marketers is that they put up the maximum amount of information in the public domain. Filling out your profile takes time but this one-time investment with honest answers offers dividends for a lifetime.
Recommendations from professional references whom you interacted with at each stage of your business career will help potential customers to trust you and the higher the references, the higher the chances of you being selected for an important task.
2) Leverage your feed!
Linkedin feed unlike other social media platforms is very different, it pushes all types of content. Long-form written content, videos, posts, and well as video content.
Just make sure that the content is relevant, engaging content as well as quality content.
This will not only increase your engagement rate but it will also help you create your personalized branding.
The best example of this is how the actor Suniel Shetty brands himself as an actor and an entrepreneur.
3) Never underestimates the power of premium search filters
In most other advertising networks, marketers use a spray approach while disseminating advertising containing information about their product, service, or brand to a very wide audience that may or may not always fetch the right results. But by applying filters, you can narrow down your marketing funnel to just the right kind of segments based on function, years of experience, and seniority level.
The higher up the ladder you target; the more will be the chances of your request being acted upon. You can identify these premium search filters with a gold LinkedIn icon on the left side of the search results.
- Function-based filters, and sieve profiles based on what members put in their current job titles. In case a professional performs two roles, one operational and the other entrepreneurial, then linked in categorizes them into its standard category as predefined in the system.
- Age: Here only the total years of experience are counted and not the name of the company or the industry.
- Seniority: Classification of professionals based on the positions held by them in a company can be done through this filter.
4) Create groups to sell better
This is perhaps the most underutilized feature of LinkedIn. Most users do not even know about it. By putting all your professional contacts in separate groups, you can address them better and generate more leads.
Initiate discussions from your end and write posts so that the group acquires a lively character. Once users see your activity in these groups, they will begin to respond and ask more about the repertoire of services being offered.
Never assume that the silent spectators in your group are not reading your stuff. They are reading it and some people are shy about coming on public forums and prefer to observe things and learn from them. Even these people can source leads for you if they see your dedication to your business.
5) Status updates: The real goldmine
This is the area where you will make a huge impact and that too better than others, if you know how to do it right. Status updates are short, swift 300-character messages that help LinkedIn users to describe any event, concept, or preview of an article that they are going to share. These status updates should ideally be restricted to two per day.
The first one should be around 10 am and the second one should be around 7 pm. The reason is that most users log into websites to see their emails and LinkedIn messages in the morning and the rest of the messages are checked while commuting back home or after dinner. Doing more than two updates will irritate your audience.
A better strategy will be to post twice a week but the content should outstanding to elicit a response from the users and help you command non-verbal respect through likes, shares, and referrals. Avoid posting personal or family pictures.
6) Advanced LinkedIn features that you should not miss
These three small but powerful functionalities will help you develop a hit list of sales prospects and each time to view the profile. You will be reminded of the jewel point in his profile or any appointment with said person.
- Note: Simply write a oneliner describing the unique aspect of the person whose profile you have just read. This note is visible to you only.
- Tag: In case you want to share someones profile whom you find interesting with your friends, colleagues, and business associates, then this will be very useful
- Reminder: As it is obvious, you can easily set reminders as to when you have to mail or call the person concerned.
7) Whos viewed your profile: Sure-fire way to catch leads
This is the most mysterious and exciting functionality of linked which users can access. Free users can get to know how many people viewed their profile in the past ninety days but not their identities. Only their work profile is displayed but premium users get to see their identity and can contact them instantly through In-mail.
8) Follow industry trends
Being up to date with industry trends will not only tell you about executive movement but also get a sharp insight into what the markets want. New technologies and best human resource practices are being ushered into the industry and new markets are opening up. You will also know about the amendments in the regulation being made by the legislature.
Moreover, some industries have a method of self-regulation in the form of a guild that issues guidelines for businesses operating in the industry. These guilds can be informal or may have official sanctions and funding from the government. You can reach out to the members of the guild through LinkedIn to express your viewpoint.
For Example, ChatGPT is a hot topic all around the world right now You can use LinkedIn to search for posts related to this topic. This offers a great way to generate leads using the LinkedIn platform.
9) People you may know
Just like any other social platform, LinkedIn also gives you suggestions of other people’s profiles who are in your field of similar. For eg. If you are following any accounting software like ProfitBooks on LinkedIn. You will get suggestions for other accounting software as well as for the employees who work at Profitbooks.
Similarly, if you have your phonebooks connected to your Linked you can get suggestions from your phonebook or from different LinkedIn groups or different LinkedIn marketing campaigns that companies are running.
10) Explore referral opportunities
Getting in touch with senior alumni of your school, university or professional college is easy. Most of your alumni in your field may have already gone through the struggle that you are facing in building a business from scratch.
Alumni get together can be arranged and there is a certain degree of trust before any business transactions take place since both parties know the school of thought they have been brought up in. Communication in this case is more personal and it is a strong source of referral business.
Similarly, you can get connected with your existing customers and ask them for a referral.
11) LinkedIn ads: the most powerful tool in your arsenal
Undoubtedly, LinkedIn ads can elicit just the right kind of response you are looking for for your digital marketing campaigns. Both self-service and managed campaigns are offered through the Campaign Manager utility. Perfect for both small and medium-sized businesses, just a LinkedIn account and a credit card are required to get started. You can define the start date of the campaign, the end date of the campaign and how much money are you willing to spend on pay-per-click advertising.
Heres what you get in your campaign
- Account Targeting
- Display ad
- Dynamic ad
- Managed sponsored content campaigns
- Sponsored In-mail
When it comes to writing the text of the ads, keep in mind that brevity is the soul of wit. The shorter, the message with hard-hitting copy, the more the chances of it being responded to with a call to action. It could be a phone call or filling up a customer information form; in both cases, your lead pipeline will become strong and topline growth will be assured.
Always have a dedicated landing page for each campaign that you run using LinkedIn ads.
12) Interests
This is the area where you will find like-minded people who might respect your point of view and give you the kind of market-sensitive information that you need to tweak your products and services.
- Companies: Information shared by companies to be released in the public domain in the form of articles, press releases, and blogs are posted here. most of these releases carry the contact information of the public relation team and you can send them an email about your product and service and they will be glad to connect with you if it is in sync with their budget and preferences.
- Groups: When faced with real-life challenges, most professionals prefer to put their dilemmas here and wait for answers in the comments section. More like a discussion group the higher you post, the higher visibility and inquiries about your services will come.
- Slide share: Witness the best slide share presentations of the day and you will get phenomenal insights about your industry. A PowerPoint presentation is the fastest way to disseminate information and one can easily learn innovative ways to present a specific concept that otherwise may be very hard to understand.
Final Thoughts
Linkedin is a very powerful tool, which will help you in branding, marketing as well as selling your unique goods and services.
There is no other platform like linking for your business, this platform will take care of the majority of branding, and hiring needs of your business.
Linkedin is a paid platform, but even in its free version, you get to do a lot of things you won’t be able to do on their platforms.
We here at ProfitBooks also believe in providing a free version which will be very helpful for businesses, Hence we have a “forever free” plan for start-ups. Our software is easy to use and made with business owners in mind. So even without extensive accounting knowledge, you can take care of all your accounting needs.
visit our website to sign in to your business as well as follow us on Linkedin.
FAQs
how good is LinkedIn for marketing?
LinkedIn is a valuable platform for marketing due to its professional user base and targeting options. It allows businesses to create and share content, build relationships with potential customers, and advertise to a specific audience. Additionally, LinkedIn offers powerful analytics tools to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.
How to promote your business on LinkedIn for free?
To promote your business on LinkedIn for free, you can optimize your profile, create and share valuable content, join and participate in relevant groups, engage with your network, and use LinkedIn analytics to track your performance.
how much do LinkedIn ads cost?
The cost of LinkedIn ads can vary depending on factors such as targeting options, bidding strategy, ad format, and campaign objectives. However, according to LinkedIn, the minimum daily budget for sponsored content ads is $10 per day, while the minimum cost per click (CPC) bid for sponsored InMail and dynamic ads is $2.00. It’s important to note that ad costs can quickly add up, so it’s essential to set a budget and monitor ad performance regularly.
How to find B2B customers on LinkedIn?
To find B2B customers on LinkedIn, you can use the search bar to find potential leads based on job title, industry, company size, and location. Additionally, you can join and participate in relevant groups, create and share valuable content that appeals to your target audience, and utilize LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator tool for more advanced lead generation and sales prospecting. Finally, it’s important to engage with potential customers by commenting on their posts and messaging them directly to build relationships and establish trust.
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