B2B Marketing Made Easy Through LinkedIn

LinkedIn used to be just a small professional networking site, but it quickly morphed into a force to be reckoned with. Worldwide, people are connecting and endorsing each other all from this one place. One can say that it is a B2B marketer’s heaven!

Business 2 Business Marketing has never been easier. LinkedIn has opened a metaphorical floodgate that could lead to inevitable success. People didn’t realise the potential LinkedIn had for this kind of business, but it’s simple, really…

All you need to do is to find an effective way to filter through the masses of job seekers in order to find the qualified business people.

Granted, there are other ways of finding these people, like making sure your website is Search Engine Optimized. Companies like Wiki SEO specializes in getting your website to rank on the first page of Google, making it easy for B2B marketers to find you, but sometimes you need help from social media platforms.

I want to give you 7 great tips on how to use LinkedIn to your advantage and become a successful B2B marketer!

LinkedIn really does give you legitimate leads of businessmen and women that participate in forward-thinking B2B marketing. Other social platforms like Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and even Facebook just don’t reap results on a professional level like LinkedIn does.

InsideSales predicts that these platforms are used extensively to the point where it is overused considering how little leads they deliver in the end.It is true that B2B marketers use social media platforms regularly to get legitimate leads, but you have to wonder whether all these leads are effective…

Despite the fact that the said platforms aren’t scoring very high when it comes to delivering legitimate leads, LinkedIn managed to top the rest due to how effective it is for B2B marketers trying to find leads, as seen on Mediabistro:

To be precise, LinkedIn can give a business up to 80% of media leads; the rest only give about 19.67% – combined! Business2Community broke it down nicely:

Do you see now why LinkedIn is your best bet when it comes to B2B leads?

The following 7 Full-Proof tips will help you to use this to your advantage:

1.    Firstly, you need to make your company page a lead generator

Getting leads from LinkedIn means that you need to be intentional! They don’t grow on trees, so you’ll have to make a constant effort to get them…

This effort has to include turning your company profile into an interesting and intriguing place that will lead to conversions – where people will be effectively redirected to your website – so skip all the mumbo jumbo about company facts and information.

 Let me give you some advice on how to do this:

A Striking Image – Draw attention to your profile with a really interesting picture or adverts of your services like HubSpot uses as their header image:

This serves as a gateway to your website for anyone who wants to know more about your company, so if your image grabs attention, your readers will keep reading, which is exactly what you want to happen.

A great pitch – You need to have a really compelling description of your company, not just a few facts and information; make it sound interesting and help your readers feel invited to convert to your website.

The introduction or first couple of lines of your company description is integral to conversion, because LinkedIn only displays them, and if it doesn’t interest the readers, they won’t click “see more” and keep reading.

Look at StrideApp as an example…

Do you see what they did there? No boring info about their location or contact details that you can find on their website, no… They immediately drew the attention of their target audience in the first sentence; “for small businesses and agencies”, then they submitted a value proposition; “refreshingly simple and efficient”, and made apparent what service they provide; “Sales tracking application / CRM”…

This serves as a gateway to your website for anyone who wants to know more about your company, so if your image grabs attention, your readers will keep reading, which is exactly what you want to happen.After that, readers click on “see more” for a short description and immediately after, “Specialties” & “Website”, so they effectively lead you to their URL.

Focus on Conversions – You have to, have to, have to make sure that the section for your Recent Updates is as clickable as possible. If possible clients haven’t gone to your website at your company information yet, you want to convince them to do so in your updates section.

Be vigilant with your updates and post your website links regularly; it’ll ensure an engaging and active feed, and it helps if you do updates that are aimed directly at your target audience. Blogs, infographics and shareable information is all good and well, as long as they get information seekers to clickthrough!

So there you have it; three basic steps to optimize your business’ page. Large industries benefit from doing just that, but smaller companies should consider the below tips as well…

2.    Creating a showcase page

You might not have heard about this before, but Showcase Pages have been created by LinkedIn especially for companies to promote some of their brands which are company extensions.

You can segment the inbound traffic on LinkedIn by creating a separate business unit specifically for a set target audience and then to create a Showcase Page for that unit.

It’s simple, really; you just click on the “Edit” dropdown while on your company’s page and then “Create A Showcase Page ”.

This function was basically custom made especially for B2B marketers to assist with generating better leads. That’s right – LinkedIn recognized the potential it had to generate leads for B2B marketers and improved the user experience this way.

Creating a showcase page will enable you to develop better and long term relationships with designated audiences; it makes complete sense if you want to represent a business unit, brand or company initiative…

You should give your showcase page a larger and more detailed header image, more updates above-the-fold, and plenty of links back to your company. It’s B2B marketing in a simplified form, basically.

Just have a look at the example of a Showcase Page…

You can imagine that the amount of Showcase pages will increase along with the size of the company. Let me give you some pointers on how to boost your Showcase pages and to make them as effective as possible for B2B marketing.

i. As mentioned earlier, you have to make the page conversion primed.

ii. Create a short page name to avoid truncating, and

iii. use a relatable and easily understood page name.

In essence, a Showcase page is just a different way of spreading your reach a bit wider and to retrieve additional leads which were specifically targeted to an audience that has a shared interest in your services or products.

3.    Advanced Searches will get results

Optimizing your LinkedIn page like I’ve explained in the previous two points is focused techniques for generation inbound leads. This point focuses more going out and finding potential leads, because sometimes, you need to find them first.

Using LinkedIn’s advanced searches, you’re unlocking a full-proof way of finding the people you want to target directly. How do you do it?

On the header menu for LinkedIn, there is a “search people” icon with an ‘advanced’ option. It’s is a magnificent filter 

Make sure you use the column that filters your search by nonprofit interests, profile language, school, past company, industry, current company and – probably the most important filter – location.for B2B marketers to zoom in on your searches for prospective leads.

Need an example? Look at this snippet: 

Using these search filters helps to give you an idea whether certain companies are worth prospecting or not. The sidebar on the left: 

This is surely the most powerful way of finding targets, so utilize it!

If your personal network is of such a nature that you constantly grow and maintain it, you stand a better chance at acquiring the best prospects you possibly could on LinkedIn. The advanced search option allows you to troll this network in entirety, and you’ll be surprised that the more promising leads will be derived from the people who you’ve initially connected with, or on a secondary and tertiary level.

You might be wondering what else I could possibly discuss in points 4 -7 that could increase your chances of finding prospective leads on LinkedIn for B2B marketing, but I assure you, there’s more…

 4.    Save your Searches!

If you’ve spent the time to create a specified search that targets your desired audience, why not save it? It’ll assist you in staying active with prospection. Gaining B2B leads means constantly maintaining a pipeline for your sales.

You can save your search in the upper right corner of your Advanced Search: 

And when you save your searches, they are not only instantly available when you need them, but you can set alerts for your convenience… The only limitation to this is if you don’t have the upgraded subscription of LinkedIn, you can only save three searches.

5.    Search Groups

So this is probably pretty obvious, but when you search for people, it should be a thorough and detailed method of finding leads. Another way of doing this is by finding a group related to your niche in the industry.

There are millions of groups on LinkedIn and you can easily join them to nurture leads by being fairly active in these groups. Keywords are integral when searching for relevant groups, so be diligent:

There might not pinpoint individuals or companies the same way normal searches do, but group searches narrow it down to languages, categories and even relationship levels.

You should be looking for the following features in groups:

High Relevancy – It should correlate directly with the target audience you desire.

Profile Activity – You need to pay close attention to the level of activity on the groups you want to select.

Reasonable Sized Groups – You’re not looking to get lost in the abyss of a group so big that will render your presence irrelevant. Only select medium sized groups that will benefit you. You’re allowed membership of 50 groups, so choose wisely.

6.    Start your own Groups

The networking opportunities on LinkedIn are almost limitless and in order for you to take full advantage of this, you should really take the time to create your own group to siphon as much power from it as you can.

Joining and interacting with groups helps to identify opportunities for more groups to be formed and being a moderator or owner of a groups lends you leadership qualities and recognition in your industry. Be an authoritative leader and not a salesperson.; this way, your audience will be more motivated to interact.

7.    Publish, Publish, Publish

As far as publishing goes, LinkedIn is a powerful platform that you can and must utilize. It has not quite yet rolled out to all the users, but if you have publishing access, it is an excellent platform for exposure that demonstrates your success.

In short, this article is a broad-leveled strategy that gives you plenty of wiggle room to find the best ways of tracking down leads for B2B marketing. All you need is the right tips and to utilize the tools to your advantage, otherwise you are just wasting your time.

Try these fail-proof tips and let me know how many leads you gain…

If you want to know more about Finding the Best Keywords for SEO purposes, read this article.