LinkedIn is a B2B lead generation magnet.
Some companies produce products and services for the consumer, while others sell their products and services to other businesses.
If you sell to the other businesses, then LinkedIn is the best social media platform for your digital marketing efforts. The goal of B2B marketing is to reach out to decision-makers that control the businesses you want to sell to and those people are on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn doesn’t have the billions of members that are on Facebook but the over 500million professionals on LinkedIn are more important to your objectives.
According to LinkedIn, 61million of those 500million members are senior-level executives and 40million of them are the decision-makers in their companies.
If you own a B2B company, then LinkedIn is the place to be. Other marketers also feel this way. 93% of B2B marketers consider LinkedIn to be the best platform for generating leads. LinkedIn is also the source of 64% of visits to company websites from social media.
However, advertising to business executives is different from promoting your products and services to consumers and this is why we have this step by step guide to help you master B2B marketing on LinkedIn.
Step 1: Understand The Advertising Options Available On LinkedIn
The benefits of LinkedIn ads for your B2B marketing efforts are not limited to the professional audience. LinkedIn gives you features to target your ideal customer with an impressive level of accuracy.
People see their LinkedIn profile as a professional resume, so they provide as much relevant information about themselves as possible.
This means you can target people by geography, industry, job function, position in the company, group membership, skills, educational qualification, company name, and much more.
This will give you a degree of confidence that when you are advertising on LinkedIn, you will reach the intended audience. The people who read your ads are the type of people that are interested in your products and services
Also, LinkedIn updated its advertising platform recently and added new tools that enable you to further define your targeting imperatives. You can know the state of your marketing objectives such as customer engagement, lead generation, sales, and brand awareness.
There are up to six types of ads on LinkedIn and you should be able to find the right ad format that will be ideal for your marketing strategy.
Below is a list of these ads and what they do:
LinkedIn Sponsored Content
If your objective is to attain thought leadership in your niche, generate leads, and create awareness about company events, then this may be the best type of ad for you.
It is essentially a normal LinkedIn post that you pay LinkedIn to promote to other professionals on the platform that you can’t reach with your limited immediate network of connections.
The type of sponsored content that succeeds is usually short and straight to the point. You also need a catchy headline, a quality image that gives clues as to what lies within the main body of the content.
LinkedIn Sponsored InMail
If you have a premium membership, you can already send an InMail to anyone on the platform. But a sponsored InMail will take it a step further.
It will address your target by name, an image, text, a subject line, and a CTA button.
This type of ad is ideal for sending mass invitations to your online events and webinars along with a personalized touch. It also a great way to connect with a potential customer that you have already identified but can’t connect with using the standard LinkedIn invitation to connect.
Your message must be short and relevant. Your messaging should not be formal, instead, it should be conversational and you should include a CTA that will direct the reader to the relevant webpage.
LinkedIn Text Ads
This ad gives you a limited number of characters to work with, so you need to get your message across in a few words. It is effective for attracting attention to your brand and luring curious potential customers to your website.
The ad is limited to a small image, a headline, and a 75 character body of text. To maximize text ads, include a CTA that leads to your website and on your website, have a landing page that is created specifically for that type of customer.
The role of the text ad is to get the attention of your target customer, it is the content of the landing page that will convert the potential buyer into a customer.
LinkedIn Video Ads
Video ads on social platforms are on the rise and you can also create video ads on LinkedIn. This type of ads are possibly the best for generating brand awareness and telling your brand story visually.
People respond better to visual content than text, this is why attention-grabbing videos can easily go viral. These ads will appear in the feeds of your target audience but they will remain mute by default until the user chooses to unmute the video.
This makes video ads more challenging than other advertising options on LinkedIn. The content of your video needs to silently communicate enough relevant and compelling information that will convince your target audience to unmute the video and listen to your message.
To be effective, your video ads should contain a mixture of motion, graphics, and text that will work without sound and they need to be brief.
Many people have short attention spans, so you need to pass across the core message of your video in the first few seconds of the ad.
LinkedIn Dynamic Ads
Dynamic ads are like chameleons. They will morph into the most suitable format for each individual that views your ad. It will change the content of the ad and the attached image according to the profile of the user viewing the ad.
This type of ad is useful when you are trying to grow your audience and you want to attract a wide spectrum of people.
Lead Gen Forms
These ads are forms that usually accompany LinkedIn sponsored content and sponsored InMail and they allow the user to fill forms directly on the platform.
Step 2: Create A LinkedIn B2B Marketing Strategy
Before you start advertising on LinkedIn, you need a LinkedIn marketing strategy. To advertise your brand effectively on LinkedIn and generate leads, you need a holistic plan that outlines your objectives and the tactics you will use to achieve them.
A well-defined strategy will help you promote your brand to the right audience and forge lasting bonds with your target customers.
So how can you create a LinkedIn marketing strategy?
Identify The Goals Of Your Marketing Campaign
A scattergun approach to LinkedIn marketing will not get you anywhere. You need to define what you hope to achieve with your marketing efforts.
These objectives can be narrowed down to the following:
- To generate brand awareness: this should be the number one objective of any marketing campaign. As a B2B business, your customers are on LinkedIn, so your strategy should include the right combination of ads that will bring your brand to the consciousness of potential customers
- To attain thought leadership in your niche: if people trust your content and they find it useful, they will trust your products and services. When you regularly publish useful content that resonates with your audience, they start to see you as an expert in your niche and it will become easier to convert your prospects into leads
- To drive more traffic to your website: social media traffic boosts the ranking of a website on search engines. So if that is your objective, then use the right type of ads.
- To generate leads: LinkedIn members are professionals, if they are interested in your content, it is because it addresses a relevant need. LinkedIn is the best platform to generate B2B leads.
- To recruit quality talent: the best talents on the planet are on LinkedIn. You can reach out to them with sponsored InMails and Text Ads.
Define Your Ideal Customer
You can’t have a marketing strategy if you don’t know the profile of your ideal customer. After defining your marketing objectives, the next is to figure out who will be interested in your products and services.
You need to know who they are, what they do, their pain points, the type of content that will appeal to them, and the crucial factor that will convince them to engage with your business.
Establish Your Brand Voice
By law, a company is a legal entity. If a company exists, then it should have a brand personality that is unique to the company and that will be attractive to its target customers.
After you have defined your goals and you have figured out who will be interested in buying your products and services, then you need to define your brand voice.
It is safe to assume that your business already has a brand identity. You have your company colors and a logo. But marketing on LinkedIn is all about content. When you are publishing content for an audience that is bombarded by a variety of content and ads daily, you need to stand out.
You need a unique approach, a voice that reflects the spirit of your brand, an approach your customers can relate to.
Settle On The Ideal Ad Type For Your Business
There are six ad types on LinkedIn and the type of ad or combination of ads you choose will be crucial to the success of your marketing efforts.
This is why it is very important to know your audience. When you know your audience, you will know the ad format that will appeal to them.
If you're uncertain, you can test the different ad formats at intervals and evaluate the success of each type of ad.
Step 3: Track The Success Of Your LinkedIn Marketing Campaign
Having a sound B2B marketing strategy and implementing it is only one half of the process. You analyze the performance of your ads and your other marketing efforts.
LinkedIn makes it easy with LinkedIn Analytics that lets you track the effectiveness of your marketing campaign. It offers an impressive level of detail.
You can view detailed information on the audience of your ads, identify your most effective ads, review what works and what doesn’t, and use the information to refine your marketing strategy.
It's also a boon for your content marketing efforts. You can view click-through rates (CTR), engagement, impressions, and more. This will not only aid your current marketing efforts, but it provides useful information that will be used in future marketing campaigns.
