How to Use LinkedIn for B2B Marketing

Let’s put this out there straight away, we love LinkedIn. Once upon a time, the domain of professional networking and job hunting, it’s evolved into a potent platform for B2B marketing with its suite of organic and paid features. Get it right and it’s a genuine goldmine for B2B marketers.

If you're steering the B2B marketing ship or are a small business looking to catch the wave of digital engagement, here's how you can turn the helm towards LinkedIn and set a course for success. We explore lots of organic opportunities here, but also many of the lesser known paid features of LinkedIn’s ad platform that you can get going with today.

STRENGTHEN YOUR ORGANIC PRESENCE ON LINKEDIN

Building a strong organic presence on LinkedIn is the first step in creating a robust B2B Marketing strategy. Unlike other platforms, LinkedIn's professional community values content that is insightful, educational, and valuable, making it an organic marketer’s paradise.

There’s a variety of ways to get noticed:

Create a Compelling Company Page

Your company page is your LinkedIn flagship. Optimize it for search by using relevant keywords. Make sure your page is compelling, with a clear description of your business and a high-quality banner image that represents your brand.

Top tip: LinkedIn offers a feature on your company page where you can add showcase pages. Showcase pages are designed to highlight key offerings and give a deeper insight into various segments of your business. So, you can keep your company page consistent but rotate content through showcase pages. You might want to feature a new solution you’re bringing to market, perhaps do something for potential employees you want to attract or set up showcase pages for different business units.

Share Insightful Content Regularly

Post content that educates and entertains your audience. Share articles, infographics, and videos that highlight industry expertise or solve problems for your target audience. Insight, company news, industry research and thought leadership pieces provide value to your network. Likewise, engaging content encourages shares, comments, and likes, increasing your brand's reach organically.

Top tip: don’t settle for just sharing content. Engage with your network and followers to further your organic personal and brand reach. When you receive comments and likes, respond in kind and add to the conversation. Likewise, respond to other interesting posts that covers the topics you’re interested in and want to be known for.

Utilize LinkedIn's Publishing Platform

The LinkedIn publishing platform is a hidden gem for thought leadership. Crafting long-form posts that address common pain points or industry trends can help position you and your company as a knowledgeable leader in the space.

Top tip: LinkedIn provides analytics to help you understand the performance of your posts. But the best performing content you can provide is the stuff you’re really into. You’ll get the best engagement when you’re passionate about a topic. From there, you’ll meet other, like-minded, engaged people who’ll inspire you to get involved, get known and create more.

Encourage Employee Advocacy

Your employees are your best advocates. Encourage them to share company content and to create and share their own content that supports the company’s goals. This personal touch can significantly expand the reach of your brand's message.

Top tip: Use tools that make it easy for employees to get involved. There are some well-established apps out there that make social content sharing simple for employees, allowing them to straight up share or add their own voice. Hootsuite, GaggleAMP, Sprout, EveryoneSocial and Oktopost are just a few worth mentioning.

AMPLIFY YOUR REACH THROUGH LINKEDIN ADVERTISING

LinkedIn's professional environment is perfect for targeted B2B advertising. Its advanced targeting options and various ad formats make it a powerful space to get your message in front of the right people.

Ad costs are determined using the LinkedIn ad auction, where the platform suggests the dynamic range you should price your bidding at. It allows you to place competitive bids to show your brand’s ads to LinkedIn members when they visit the platform. It is a competitive space though and what you’re prepared to pay will have an impact on your ad reach. If your competitor has a good quality ad and is prepared to pay more to reach the same audience, you might find your ads don’t perform as you expect.

The LinkedIn Campaign Manager tool is useful in the bidding tips and suggestions it provides. When you set up a campaign and build an audience, it suggests how many people you’re likely to reach, the bidding price range you should aim for and the likely click-through rate for your ads (and therefore the number of clicks it’s estimating you will get over a period of time).

There are a variety of ad options, as follows:

LinkedIn Text Ads

LinkedIn Text Ads are the platform's pay-per-click ads. You can use these to drive traffic to your website or company page. With the ability to customize the ad headline, description, and more, focus on creating ads that are clear, concise, and compelling.

Top tip: think of these a little like Google PPC ads – short, text-based (tiny image too) and sitting on the side of someone’s desktop feed. In all honesty, our experience is that they don’t get great volumes of clicks but if you’ve set them up on a pay per click basis, it’s not a bad thing to add into your marketing mix that keeps your brand present on your target audience’s feed without costing you the earth.

LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms

These are the workhorse of LinkedIn’s ad inventory. They appear in a user’s regular feed but come with a striking difference. Once a user clicks on the ad, they are presented with a form as part of the call to action. The form is pre-populated with the user’s data, extracted from LinkedIn automatically, so all they have to do is click ‘submit’. Lead Gen Forms are a powerful way to elicit action from your target audience by creating an easy solution. You can use them to promote webinar sign-ups, download a solution guide, an event attendance. All the user has to do is click submit and they’re taken through to a thank you page (that you pre-create). Job done.

Top tip: the set-up process is really simple. The form you create for that’s pre-populated for the user can contain up to 12 fields, but best practice is to keep it shorter (usually 3 – 4 fields). While the ad format allows you to instantly collect leads in a really simple, seamless way, it can mean the prospect user isn’t quite so invested in your campaign as you might think so be careful with next steps and don’t assume people are ready to buy just yet. For instance, you might use them to drive webinar sign-ups but be careful, the drop-out rate can be higher because, well, easy come, easy go…

LinkedIn Sponsored InMail

LinkedIn Sponsored InMail allows you to send personalized messages directly to people’s inboxes on LinkedIn. Use Sponsored InMail to deliver personalized content or promotional material.

Top tip: Sponsored InMail tends to be very targeted and therefore quite expensive on a cost per click basis so ensure you’re crafting a really compelling offer with it. If you’re taking someone out to your own website, for example to sign up for an event, you won’t see who’s clicked through, even with the LinkedIn tracking pixel installed. Open rates for Sponsored Inmail do outperform regular B2B email marketing though but it’s better to send from a real person rather than from your company as open rates tend to be higher.

Dynamic Ads

Dynamic Ads generate leads on autopilot. They can be targeted at users for various reasons, like acquiring more followers for your company page, retargeting audiences who have visited your website or show interest in your products but haven't made a purchase yet. With the ability to customize messaging and creative, Dynamic Ads help in lead generation and nurturing. Crucially, they capture attention by including personal information in the ad format, like a person’s name and LinkedIn profile image. It helps to uplift the impact of the ad.

Top tip: There are several ad formats here:

Follower ads: acquire more followers for your company or showcase page
Spotlight ads: share thought leadership, best practices, insights and valuable content
Job ads: get more applicants for your job postings

Be sure to:

Check the box to enable your target audience’s profile photo to appear in the ad. Remember, this is unique to each prospect.
For follower ads, exclude existing followers from seeing your ad to ensure you’re gaining net new prospects. You can do this on the targeting page.
For spotlight ads, try uploading a custom background image to add more visuals to your ad.

UTILISE LINKEDIN GROUPS FOR COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

LinkedIn Groups can be a treasure trove for building a community around your brand. Engage with relevance, provide value, and build a rapport with potential clients or collaborators.

Join Relevant Groups

Find and join groups that are relevant to your industry or target audience. Don't just join and drop your content, though. Spend time engaging with the community, answering questions, and providing value.

Create Your Own Group

If you can't find a group that suits your needs, consider creating one. Here, you will have the opportunity to start conversations, shape the narrative, and build a community that can connect over the value your brand offers.

MEASURE AND OPTIMISE YOUR LINKEDIN EFFORTS

An often-overlooked aspect of LinkedIn marketing is the need to measure and optimize. LinkedIn analytics offer robust insights into the performance of your content and ads, allowing you to refine your approach continually.

Regularly Review Your Analytics

Take the time to review the engagement on your posts and ads. Look at the clicks, shares, and comments to understand what your audience finds most compelling.

A/B Test Your Ads

Use A/B testing on your ad creative and messaging to understand what resonates with your audience best. Test variations on images, headlines, and call-to-actions to improve your ad performance.

Pivot Your Strategy

Use the data from your analytics to pivot your strategy. If certain types of posts or content are performing well, do more of that. If a particular demographic is engaging with your content, consider focusing more on that audience.

In conclusion, LinkedIn is not just a platform for connecting with colleagues and looking for job opportunities. It's a dynamic space where businesses can grow their brand, establish thought leadership, and connect with the decision-makers of the digital world.

By using the organic tools available and layering in a strategic paid approach, LinkedIn can become an important aspect of your B2B marketing strategy but be aware of ways you can reduce your costs and increase your effectiveness by talking to a specialist B2B agency with oodles of LinkedIn experience.