LinkedIn has long become one of the most extensive social networks in the world.
It may not seem as influential as Facebook or Instagram in specific areas, but you're missing a golden opportunity if you’re not employing LinkedIn in your marketing strategy because they are 875 million users on the platform.
Using the LinkedIn marketing strategies outlined in this article will teach you how to better connect with your potential customers, create engaging content, and grow your business.
It’s the perfect audience that’s ready to engage. Most importantly, LinkedIn members search for work-related content like professional development, industry news, job opportunities, and relevant business services.
Top 3 Reasons to Include LinkedIn in Your Marketing Strategy
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Better and more relevant content
People use LinkedIn to search for information and guidance related to their industry. You can often find pertinent blogs, infographics, discussions, explainer videos, eBooks, and more.
You can also share expert insights about your industry as a supplement. It’ll enable you to reach a more targeted audience, and customers will see you as a trustworthy source.
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Generate more quality leads
LinkedIn outperforms other social media sites when it comes to generating leads. As it is a booming cluster of professionals with strong purchasing power, it is one of the top places for leads.
LinkedIn Search lets you locate and engage with your potential customers through precise targeting and detailed analytics.
Source: LinkedIn
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A B2B marketing essential
B2B marketing and sales can be challenging for small businesses. Every year, LinkedIn is in the #1 spot for B2B outreach, lead generation, and conversion.
Your business can reach influential decision-makers who use this platform for fresh insights, consulting, trends, and new products and services.
Furthermore, as a small business, you can leverage social networking to connect with other companies, thereby expanding your audience and enhancing your B2B prospecting efforts.
10 Best LinkedIn Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses
- Track your competitors
- Create an optimize your company page
- Keep your content relevant and consistent
- Engage with your audience
- Join relevant LinkedIn groups
- Create your own LinkedIn group
- Make use of hashtags
- Employ LinkedIn ads and sponsored marketing
- Expand your LinkedIn network
- Leverage LinkedIn analytics
Let’s see how you can win new business with clever LinkedIn marketing solutions for small businesses. We have highlighted ten tactics that prove to be effective.
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Track your competitors
To dominate in your industry, you must first understand how others managed to stay on top of the field. Investigating what your competitors are doing is an essential tactic. Follow their pages on LinkedIn.
Check out and evaluate how they engage with their customers, what content they post, and which topics are trending.
You will have an advantage in understanding your industry better and gaining insights into what you need to do to stand out.
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Create and optimize your company page
LinkedIn marketing strategy for small businesses starts with overcoming your fears or overthinking and creating your company page. As you have scrutinized your competitors, you have a picture of how your page should or shouldn’t look.
Pay attention to the ‘About us’ section that will speak directly to your target audience. Check if it’s clear from this section what your company is, what you offer, and why your customers will benefit from working with you.
Make sure you include eye-catching and relevant photos and banners.
Finally, remember SEO (search engine optimization). By choosing the right category and relevant keywords, your page will rank higher, making it easier for potential customers to find you.
Source: Freepik
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Keep your content relevant and consistent
If you want to use LinkedIn for small business growth, regularly being present there is the next step.
Just creating a page and waiting for customers to find and see how excellent your service or product is won’t work.
You need to introduce what you offer through good messaging and designs, like laptop mockups to your potential customers.
It’s challenging, demanding, and time-consuming work of continuous and chronic posting. In other words, it includes writing relevant blog posts, sharing valuable articles, and creating informative videos.
Video content has long become one of the best ways to let your audience learn about your product or service.
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Engage with your audience
If you’re just starting to employ LinkedIn marketing for small businesses, there’s one crucial thing to remember. LinkedIn is a platform for socializing. That is to say; your audience expects communication, engagement, and connection.
So if you create a truly engaging blog post, and then some fiery discussion starts in the comments, don’t hesitate to participate. Show that you care about your customers' struggles. Ask questions and create polls to show that you’re interested.
This strategy will work for B2C and B2B, as it will help you build strong relationships based on trust and credibility.
In B2B marketing, engaging your customers with valuable tips is particularly important. It will then result in better retention and sales. You can schedule posts on LinkedIn to automate this entire process.
Source: Ironpaper
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Join relevant LinkedIn groups
Another LinkedIn marketing strategy for small businesses includes joining the LinkedIn community in your field.
For one thing, it will help you reach like-minded professionals who may inspire you to create practical cooperation with them.
For another, you will boost your brand awareness so more people will learn about your company’s area of expertise.
Additionally, through effective email outreach, you can export a list of LinkedIn group members to further engage and expand your professional network.
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Create your own LinkedIn group
If you can’t find a great group in your industry or want to create a better one, go for it. Starting your LinkedIn group is a fantastic opportunity to gather people and create an engaged community around your business.
Your expert opinion in the field may impact the decision to turn to your company, as loyal customers already have a bond with your company and know they can rely on your knowledge and skills.
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Make use of hashtags
When you use LinkedIn for marketing, hashtags do still work. Relevant and trending hashtags help you boost your posts and page visibility.
Small businesses usually benefit from using specific hashtags in their field, they may be low-frequency, but it’s easier to reach the target audience.
Plus, promoting your hashtags is good; this way, your expert opinion will be associated with particular hashtags.
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Employ LinkedIn ads and sponsored marketing
Using ads is another powerful strategy of LinkedIn marketing for small businesses. This platform offers a great algorithm to reach more target audience with:
- Personalized dynamic ads
- Native ads in the LinkedIn newsfeed
- Sponsored messages sent to your audience
- Click text ads that appear on the right side of LinkedIn pages
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Expand your LinkedIn network
A beneficial feature of LinkedIn for small businesses is growing your connections. It’s especially great for small B2B companies.
LinkedIn allows you to find contacts with mutual interests in your professional industry and foster social selling.
By expanding your reach, you can develop more connections with potential customers and turn them into your leads.
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Leverage LinkedIn analytics
An oft-overlooked LinkedIn marketing strategy for small businesses is using LinkedIn data. Say you’re already creating compelling content, engaging with your audience, and using ads, but you still feel something is missing.
Your gut isn’t lying. In 2023 it’s essential to use analytics. It will help if you see the insights behind the myriad of data. Why did one campaign work and the other didn’t? There’s no place for assumptions; you need figures.
Proper analytics will help you monitor content performance and make data-driven decisions about your future marketing campaigns.
You can export LinkedIn data to third party best SaaS tools to build advanced reports with visualized data and compare them with performance metrics from other marketing channels.
When it comes to ads, you can connect LinkedIn Ads to Google Sheets or Bigquery. This way, you can drive conclusions about what content is the most effective and what activities bring you the most leads.
Source: FinancesOnline
Final Thoughts
LinkedIn nowadays is more than just a social media platform. It’s a goldmine for B2B prospecting.
It is a powerful tool to reach more customers, earns a reputation as a leading expert in your industry, and boost your sales thanks to new trust-based relationships.
Take advantage of the ten strategies of LinkedIn marketing to help your small business grow.
