Did you know more than 30 million companies and 770 million people across the globe use LinkedIn? It is a result-oriented professional social media platform that serves B2B companies and marketers. But, if you don’t have the right knowledge and strategy, LinkedIn can become another time-consuming social network. Therefore, you must invest time in proper research to gain knowledge and seek the help of B2B marketing frameworks to craft an effective strategy.
LinkedIn helps businesses drive traffic, make connections, establish a partnership, boost brand awareness, and generate leads. So, if you have yet to plan a LinkedIn marketing strategy for your business, you have come to the right place. Here’s the ultimate guide to planning an effective LinkedIn marketing strategy.
Step-By-Step Guide to Craft a LinkedIn Marketing Plan for B2B Businesses
Step 1: Set Realistic Goals
The first step in crafting a LinkedIn marketing plan is to specify goals and objectives. When you take actions without direction, it’s a waste of time and energy. So, having effective marketing strategies for professional services is important. Set realistic goals and be clear about what you expect from LinkedIn marketing for your business. Remember, you are on a social media platform with millions of professional users who are clear about their objectives. Therefore, you can’t take the risk of sailing without radar.
Setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals are advised. Generally, businesses use LinkedIn marketing to achieve the following goals:
- Build brand awareness
- Generate qualified leads
- Bring high-quality traffic to the website
- Strengthen brand reputation
- Engage with the target audience
- Sell products or services
You can set two-three goals for a certain strategy and period and make efforts towards achieving them.
Step 2: Know Your Target Audience and Develop ICP
To achieve the goals established in step 1, you must direct your efforts toward the right people. Therefore, in step 2, you have to figure out ‘who.’ Know who you are marketing to. Developing an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) can help you understand the target audience. In B2B, marketing professionals holding different positions in a company make purchasing decisions for a B2B service or product. So, think carefully about whom you are targeting, what will be their concerns, and how you have to deal with them.
Step 3: Create Your Company Page
Here starts the execution stage. In the third step, you have to create a LinkedIn page for your business. Before that, you must learn the difference between LinkedIn profiles and LinkedIn pages. Profiles are for individuals, and pages are for the business. You should opt for a LinkedIn page to represent your business. Here’s how:
- Click the work icon in the top right corner of the LinkedIn homepage.
- Click create a company page.
- Select the page type according to your company. There are two options –
- Small Business (less than 200 employees)
- Medium to large business (more than 200 employees)
- Enter the company details and create a page.
Once the page is created, the next step is to optimize it to get the desired results.
Step 4: Optimize Your Company Page
The B2B LinkedIn marketing journey begins with creating a killer LinkedIn company page. Pages with complete information get 30% more weekly views. So, here are a few important tips to create a successful LinkedIn company page.
- The profile image is the first thing people notice when searching for a company page. You can take your company’s logo and resize it according to the platform’s requirements. You can also use your creativity in the profile banner above the company logo. If you think the picture doesn’t make a difference, you should know that company pages with profile pictures get six times more visitors than those without a picture.
- Write clear, compelling, and well-optimized content for the ‘about us’ section. It should tell visitors all they need to know about your company.
Step 5: Analyze Competitor’s LinkedIn Page
When setting up your LinkedIn company page, competition-motivated stalking is a must. Make a list of companies similar to you and analyze their LinkedIn page. Focus on the type of content they post, their followers, and engagement. You can also seek the help of a competitive analysis framework to understand your competitors better. If you want to get inspired by them, identify the most and least successful competitors and invest more time on their pages. It will help you understand what works on LinkedIn and what doesn’t.
Step 6: Grow a LinkedIn Following
Another factor that plays an important role in the success of B2B LinkedIn marketing is the number of followers. So, find your audience and connect with them in order to expand your company’s horizons. Everything you post on your LinkedIn page should reach the right people at the right time. The following tips can help you grow your LinkedIn following quickly.
- Encourage your employees to like and repost your content.
- If you have a good follower count on other social media platforms, promote your LinkedIn page on other channels too.
- You can run ads to reach a wider audience.
- There are several communities on LinkedIn. You can choose a few from them to communicate with your potential customers. In addition, you can also start your own groups.
Step 7: Plan a Content Strategy for LinkedIn
When crafting a LinkedIn content strategy, you can use playbook products and focus on activities like analysis, planning, and content development and dissemination. Publishing unique, valuable, and relevant content is important to keep the followers engaged and get the desired results. You can explore the various content formats for LinkedIn like articles, stories, status updates, videos, carousel posts, document posts, newsletters, and more. Choose what works best for your business.
However, you should not limit yourself to a particular content format. Instead, you can experiment and see what’s working best for you. For example, video format can drive the engagement rate by five times, and live videos can help you gain a 25X engagement rate. Another pro tip for marketers is focusing on three key factors while planning the content strategy – quality, quantity, and regularity. Develop a content calendar, stick to it and post relevant content frequently and regularly.
Step 8: Analyze LinkedIn Marketing Performance
The LinkedIn marketing strategy should be carefully tailored to your specific business needs. However, blindly following a strategy or expert’s advice is not the right approach. Instead, you must keep an eye on whether your B2B marketing strategies deliver the expected results. Thorough analyses of LinkedIn performance and tracking the key metrics can also help you understand the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
Why is LinkedIn Marketing Important for B2B Business
According to a study by Content Marketing Institute, 97% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for content marketing, and 38% of B2B marketers say LinkedIn is generating revenue for them. But, if you still want to know why your B2B brand should be on LinkedIn, here are the top reasons
- LinkedIn can help boost the online presence of a B2B brand. It is a powerful platform where businesses have an opportunity to network with interesting contacts.
- If you have the right LinkedIn marketing strategy and proper execution, you can position yourself as a leader in your niche.
- LinkedIn is one of the best social media platforms to identify potential leads, engage them, and turn them into customers.
- Most importantly, it is the right platform to ask questions and gain insights.
- LinkedIn has a social sharing button that enables people to share your content which ultimately helps in traffic building.
Partner with Company Expert for Successful LinkedIn Campaign Planning
When it comes to B2B marketing, there is no other social media platform as powerful as LinkedIn. Now that you know how your efforts can lead to greater results on LinkedIn, it’s time to boost the online presence of your B2B business.
Company Expert offers a solution set known as the definitive guide to LinkedIn marketing, which contains a combination of business playbook products and point solutions. In addition, another playbook product known as LinkedIn campaign planning can help save your time in crafting a creative marketing campaign. So, partner with us to utilize LinkedIn to its full capacity!