In your industry, you are the expert. You have spent years honing your craft and building your expertise, and you are now at the top of your game. But there are certain aspects that you might know little to nothing about, and this includes digital marketing.
LinkedIn is paying attention to what users are looking for, by improving InMail analytics reports, leveraging user data for more targeted advertisements, and even providing new features such as reactions for posts.
So, the question you are probably asking right now is: how can I improve my B2B marketing strategies on LinkedIn and harness its lead generation power?
The starting point for any B2B marketing ideas you have, should always be with your audience. This idea should be applied to using LinkedIn as a marketing channel. Luckily the platform provides an analytics tool known as Website Demographics, which will provide you with vital information on the important aspects of your audience.
By inserting its Insight’s tag (which is a piece of code that you can insert into your page) you will find out the most important traits of your audience.
Knowing who your audience is will allow you to create customised, relevant content that will engage them and encourage them to interact with your brand. |
Social media platforms are updating their algorithms on a near-weekly basis, and LinkedIn is no exception. It is important to always keep up-to-date with these changes so that you are not missing out. For example, in 2019, LinkedIn changed its algorithm in order to help the posts of private users to be seen over the posts of popular influencers.
LinkedIn prioritises content that users will find relevant and valuable, rather than showing the most recent content on a user’s homepage. However, this setting can be changed if users prefer. Content is also displayed based on the reputation of your account, which is a blind spot that some people miss, meaning that they tend to post based on quantity, not quality.
You might know already that LinkedIn offers a search feature for individuals and companies, but you can also search for groups. Groups can provide you with a decent amount of leads that will be relevant to your brand, business, or company. In order to use these groups to your advantage, you need to join them and become an active member by engaging others and maintaining activity.
The groups you join or search for should be highly specific, almost an exact match to what you are looking for in a target audience. They also need to be active, but this is easy to ascertain because LinkedIn ranks groups according to how active they are.
By using group search, you will better be able to find what your target audience is reading about and can use this to create customised and valuable content. |
Not many people consider using search engine optimisation (SEO) when it comes to social media profiles, but it can work well when used on a LinkedIn profile. For example, you can use keywords in your summary that will help you to show up in search engine results pages. The keywords will need to be related to your position and industry in order for your profile to remain relevant.
In order to attract the right audience and gain new connections, be sure that you have a complete profile that includes a well-written, keyword-rich summary as well as a profile photograph and employment details. With B2B marketing, appearing professional as well as passionate is vital, and a profile that has SEO optimisation, as well as all necessary aspects filled in, will show your audience and possible connections that you take your role seriously.
Creating, sharing, and curating content on LinkedIn can help to improve your visibility, but to truly create engagement, generate interest, and bring about brand exposure, the content should have value to your audience. It should also be relevant to your industry and your brand. Anything that is not valuable and does not fit with your brand will likely be skimmed over by your connections and audience.
The content you share or create does not always need to be lengthy, but it should always have a clear CTA (call to action) or a reason for being posted. Start by thinking about why you are posting something. Is it going to answer a question or provide a solution to a pain point in your industry? Once you know exactly why you are creating or curating the content, you will be better equipped to put together a plan.
B2B marketing can sometimes be complicated, and reaching the right audience and making connections is not always easy. But if you start out by identifying who your audience is and keep up with the LinkedIn trends, you will soon have a good working plan in place.
If you need assistance with your engagement strategy and reaching the right audience, contact Shapeshift today to find out what we can do for you.
