LinkedIn for B2B Marketing: Does it Work?
The LinkedIn platform has been around for a while and it’s been well-established as a tool for professional networking. But does it do more than just keeping people in touch with their colleagues at work? As someone who’s used LinkedIn for marketing purposes, I can tell you that it does! It’s genuinely one of the most powerful tools you can have when growing a business or promoting your website. In this article, I will answer whether or not LinkedIn is a valuable tool for B2B marketing and provide you with valuable techniques you can utilize. So let’s have a look at how to use LinkedIn for B2B marketing, shall we? What is LinkedIn B2B marketing? LinkedIn B2B marketing is a marketing strategy that uses LinkedIn to generate leads for B2B companies and sales professionals. It involves developing, deploying, and scaling an integrated sales and marketing strategy. The strategy drives revenue growth by attracting buyers across the entire buyer journey and delivering content via owned, earned, and paid media channels while integrating insights from LinkedIn ads with other CRM data sources. The relationship marketing approach on LinkedIn is about audience targeting and finding your target audience. It’s like advertising, but it’s through a more personal level of contact. A benefit of this approach is in how it increases the number of leads you generate. The first step is to create your profile and promote it. Then, you can get recommendations from your colleagues, adding them as connections, and sending messages with effective content to attract the right audience. In this way, you will reach more people and convert them into customers for your products or services. But why LinkedIn? Why LinkedIn? LinkedIn is a social networking service with more than 700 million members. A vast majority of these members are active users. LinkedIn has always been fantastic for career development, even before Facebook was around. The increased use of other social media has not diminished the importance of LinkedIn as a tool in job-hunting and for maintaining contacts with someone you meet once but might later need to connect with again. A few reasons to use LinkedIn for B2B marketing include: #1 LinkedIn will feature your LinkedIn page in their search engine This feature is powerful and can significantly increase your company’s website traffic. When people search on LinkedIn, they will see any member’s LinkedIn Business page as part of the “Featured Results.” Thus, if you are active on LinkedIn and have a strong presence there, people will easily find your company’s website and blog posts. #2 You have the opportunity to connect with potential customers on LinkedIn directly There is almost no other social media platform that offers this kind of opportunity. Twitter is one, and Facebook is another. But within the context of B2B marketing, LinkedIn is an ideal platform for such activity. You can directly connect with individuals that you want to be in business with, develop a relationship with them, and as a result, make it easier to convert leads into customers or clients later on. #3 High-value connections are more likely to message you on LinkedIn [to send you a message, they have to be very interested in you] It’s easy for someone on LinkedIn to message you if they are interested in your company, product, service, or what you do. As a result, more people can contact you with a request or question about your company than other social media channels. #4 LinkedIn users are more likely to engage with your content than on other platforms LinkedIn gives better reach for the content you post. Therefore, your LinkedIn updates will reach a much larger audience than if you just posted to Twitter, Facebook, or Google Plus. #5 LinkedIn users are also more engaged with the platform than on other content-sharing media. Their intent is clear, and their expectations are higher. With a solid profile and consistent content creation, you’ll find that more LinkedIn members will discover and engage more with your content and are more likely to respond with comments and additional content of their own. #6 LinkedIn users are more interested in B2B content than other platforms LinkedIn users are interested in business information, leads for their own business, and connections with other business people. If your goal is to connect with other companies or individuals representing businesses (even if they use LinkedIn for personal purposes), you can find success with LinkedIn. Simply put, LinkedIn is the most important social platform for B2B marketers. It’s the only social platform that focuses solely on professional contacts. Is it effective? Is LinkedIn effective for B2B marketing? According to a Content Marketing Institute study, over 90% of B2B marketers have LinkedIn as an important way to generate leads. However, some B2B marketers and business owners question if LinkedIn is effective for generating leads in any significant way. I’ve heard both sides of the argument. But having been a part of hundreds of LinkedIn groups, I’ve concluded that people who don’t get value out of it don’t know how to use it to its full potential. More on how to use Linkedin for B2B marketing later. Let’s look at some data to determine the effectiveness of the platform for B2B: HubSpot reports that LinkedIn is 277% more effective for lead generation than both Facebook and Twitter. More than 90% of business executives rated LinkedIn #1 for professional and relevant content. Linkedin states that over 40% of marketers have said that they have found a customer from the platform. According to Demand Wave, almost 60% of B2B marketers say LinkedIn generates leads for their business. And over 30% of these can confirm that these leads have generated revenue for their business. The data is clear. LinkedIn is very effective when used correctly. Many people have found success on the platform, and you can experience success too. B2B marketers who have excellent profiles, those who are active on the platform to speak with others with similar interests, and those
