B2B marketing or business-to-business marketing comprise marketing practices that help a business market to other businesses in the supply chain of a commodity. Working from consumer-oriented, B2B marketing is more informative, straightforward, market-oriented, and logical. For example, an online web hosting service will engage in B2B marketing for sites that offer online resume writing services and other web-based businesses.
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The marketers of the B2B camp engage with their target audience differently as such strategies possess some stark differences from their B2C counterparts.
- B2B marketing caters to a completely different audience. They need to convince purchase managers or CIOs for a successful contract.
- B2B focuses more on logic and less on emotion. B2B marketing professionals need to convince their buyers about the features and benefits of the product/service.
- Return of Investment (ROI) is a significant metric in B2B marketing. Business owners and executives need to know whether a product or a service will have any tangible contribution to their operations and help them turn a profit.
- Data and content-driven marketing lie at the heart of all B2B purchases. Marketers must be able to deliver adequate information and educate their buyers so that they can make the best decision.
- B2B marketing decisions involve the input and opinions of multiple people, and the processes are much more extensive & expensive.
- The B2B cycle is more complicated as it must take into consideration inputs from various other departments such as accounting, inventory, procurement, and more.
The above distinctive features of B2B marketing are the biggest reasons why it needs a different platform separate from the consumer-focused B2C platforms.
LinkedIn is the most popular social networking site amongst professionals and an excellent B2B marketing platform. Businesses can reach out to other vendors, wholesalers, and professionals from a myriad of domains. The platform connects to the largest number of professionals and companies across several disciplines. With more than 414 million professionals on LinkedIn, it is the ideal place to access a wide variety of informative content, learn & get in touch with different businesses, and build strong relationships.
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8 B2B LinkedIn Marketing Strategies
Table of Contents
- 1 8 B2B LinkedIn Marketing Strategies
- 1.1 1. Set up an effective ad campaign
- 1.2 2. Make your business or brand page generate leads
- 1.3 3. Use a mix of organic and paid B2B content
- 1.4 4. Optimize your company profile
- 1.5 5. Employ LinkedIn’s advanced search
- 1.6 6. Search in LinkedIn groups
- 1.7 7. Expand your network
- 1.8 8. Some Miscellaneous Tips
To that end, here are some excellent B2B strategies that can help marketers reach attain.
1. Set up an effective ad campaign
It is vital to have a strong foundation for your marketing campaign.
Setting up a LinkedIn company page is an easy way to initiate a marketing campaign for your brand. A LinkedIn page is essential to post sponsored content and messages. Post-high-quality content that gets engagement in the form of likes, comments, shares, and garners LinkedIn relevance scores.
But just creating a business page and posting some content for a few days is not going to cut it. It is a campaign, and you need to build your presence & expand your reach.
- LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager is an all-in-one advertising platform that allows businesses to launch their own personalized paid ad campaign. This option allows a business account owner to manage multiple B2B marketing accounts, bid for ads, and control their budget.
- The platform offers a wide variety of sponsored advertisements such as Conservation Ads, Text Ads, Image, Carousel & Video Ads to help businesses reach their target audience and drive more conversions.
- The LinkedIn Insight Tag offers vital performance metrics to gauge the success of a B2B marketing campaign. The metric helps B2B campaigners track leads and conversions.
2. Make your business or brand page generate leads
A sophisticated B2B marketer (or marketing person with common sense) knows that a stale, static, and monotonous marketing campaign is a dead marketing campaign.
The reality of today’s B2B purchasing process is that through 90% of the process, buyers are engaging with the posted content before making a purchase. Appealing and informative content is key to generating leads and carrying out the subsequent conversion.
- Utilize the true potential of a LinkedIn brand page by posting compelling images, useful information about your products & services, or posting a click-through to your website.
- Make an exciting pitch about your brand. Tell your audience why and how your business can add value to the other company in question.
- The company description is vital, but your leads need more specific information. Add hooks and conversion-focused content in your ‘Company Information’ & ‘Recent Updates’ sections to catch them live.
- Regular or frequent updates is a good thing as it makes your feed more active and engaging. Post informative and interesting stuff to get a click-through and a potential buyer.
LinkedIn’s analytics engine offers a rich assortment of data to help perfect any B2B marketing strategy. Use that data to connect to a wealthy demographic such as influencers and other marketing professionals & relevant groups.
3. Use a mix of organic and paid B2B content
Both organic and paid content can help you tap into the immense B2B marketing potential of LinkedIn.
- A brand or a company page is the first stage of a campaign. But Showcase pages on LinkedIn allow marketers to create dedicated pages, for their brand, businesses, services, etc., and help in expanding their presence.
- Deliver informative content through blogs via long-form posts.
- Upload content to SlideShare, a LinkedIn subsidiary to showcase information to others.
As you build your organic presence, start investing in the paid B2B marketing options offered by the platform.
- Add sponsored content directly into your company profile feed. Modify the sponsored content as required to get a direct response and lead generation.
- Use LinkedIn’s Sponsored InMail to deliver personalized, targeted emails right into the inbox of your prospective buyers and vendors. LinkedIn’s InMail is one of the most effective ways of email marketing today.
- Text and Dynamic Ads are potent ways of making a brand or a business known to its potential business. Both of these ad types leverage information to draw in buyers and drive traffic.
It is crucial to tell a story to your audience. B2B leads require useful information delivered in the right way for undergoing information.
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4. Optimize your company profile
An optimized profile is another must-have for any business looking to generate leads. Optimized profiles boost the visibility of the brand and business, both on and off the network.
SEO crawlers of search engines like Google scour through LinkedIn pages & profiles and show them in the search results. Embedding keywords in URLs, company information, and descriptions can help in acquiring leads from all over.
5. Employ LinkedIn’s advanced search
The search feature is an excellent tool to look for potential leads and implement potential leads. Use the advanced search filters and options to modify your search patterns and find out viable businesses & vendors in your network & beyond. The advanced search option helps one gain insightful information about a particular company and acquire better targets & prospects.
The bigger your network, the more prospective B2B clients you can find. Expand your network and find more targets at more levels.
6. Search in LinkedIn groups
Looking around for groups is an excellent way to find your target audience. Searching for groups can lead you to numerous leads all at once. Look for highly relevant and active groups for the best outcomes.
A typical B2B buying cycle involves the input of multiple stakeholders. When you are marketing to a group of potential clients, there’s a high chance that your content will be exposed to numerous external stakeholders. According to a business article on LinkedIn, more than 95% of buyers participating in a B2B process feel a connection with the brand, which influences their buying decisions.
7. Expand your network
From reaching potential buyers to getting to know the most powerful influencers, expanding your network on LinkedIn offers vast benefits. Get inspiration & information and customize your content better by building your network and following the brightest minds in your domain.
LinkedIn offers numerous ways to expose a brand to a larger audience like:
- Ad Targeting à Reach out to a massive audience with sponsored content.
- Lookalike Targeting à Connect with people who share lots of commonalities with your top customers.
- Audience Expansion à Deliver content amongst a similar circle of buyers & professionals as that of your intended target audience.
- Matched Audiences à Connect with the exact buyers whom you wanted to reach.
- LinkedIn Audience Network à Let your sponsored content reach out across multiple touchpoints of LinkedIn’s network subsidiaries.
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8. Some Miscellaneous Tips
As you may have inferred from the above points, quality content and an acute marketing strategy are vital for a successful B2B marketing campaign on LinkedIn. Evolve your delivery strategy and enhance your content often as the market demands.
- Context is vital. You need to deliver the right content to your targeted audience at the right place and the right time. Investigate their online behavior using LinkedIn’s analytics tools and design your campaign accordingly.
- Map out your B2B content marketing strategy for reference.
- Be consistent in your online activity.
- Texts, messages, and images are acceptable, but carousel & video ads can improve engagement and drive conversions much faster.
- Use LinkedIn’s free Content Suggestion Tools and Page Analytics tools to your advantage. Design appealing content and measure its success with ease.
B2B marketing is all about building trust and relationships. Any B2B marketer must design content that is appealing, informative, and credible. Showcase the benefits of your product/service & the capabilities of your business convincingly using the points above and always focus on building a long-term affinity with your client businesses.
That, dear reader, is the ultimate idea behind a successful LinkedIn B2B strategy!
All the best!
Author-Bio: Henry Howkins is a marketing professional and team leader in a leading marketing firm in Maine, the USA. The brains behind numerous successful online marketing campaigns, Henry also works as a part-time tutor at MyAssignmenthelp.com, World’s no.1 online assignment help service.