Ross Crawford
Joshua Kennedy
Are you a marketer wondering how to use LinkedIn to promote your product or service? Do you want to attract ideal prospects, so you can increase the number of leads and ultimately more revenue? If this sounds like you, tune in because, in this guide, you’ll learn from a professional LinkedIn Ads agency how to use LinkedIn to reach your clients and customers so you can better market your products and services.
Being the most professional of the major social networking websites, over 760 million members are using this B2B marketing landscape to network, connect, and sell. The platform gives businesses direct access to their prospects, customers, competitors, investors and potential hires. Both marketing and sales professionals can use it to attract and convert new business.
LinkedIn provides a key platform for businesses and individuals to develop meaningful connections, discuss their industries, collaborate on ideas, and progress in their careers. As such, it is an invaluable tool that should be part of your marketing strategy. In this guide, we will walk you through crafting the perfect plan so that you can take advantage of all that LinkedIn offers and make it work towards growing a successful business.
LinkedIn offers endless benefits to your business. Here are just a few reasons why you should include LinkedIn in your marketing strategy going forward if you haven't already:
Gaining brand recognition is one of the most important marketing goals of any business. Implementing a LinkedIn marketing strategy will greatly increase your brand recognition since you will be engaging with a broad audience of potential customers. Simply having an audience interact with your content will increase brand awareness and begin building your reputation as a business. A LinkedIn company page allows marketers to promote your brand’s core values, nurture leads, and of course, improve the ROI of your business.
Success for any brand depends on the customer base and potential prospects base. With LinkedIn, you can network with qualified prospects anytime and anywhere from the convenience of your laptop or mobile phone. Using the search feature, you can find people in your industry and cultivate meaningful interactions.
Speaking of the ability to connect with prospects, it should be noted that LinkedIn offers powerful targeting capabilities that help marketers precisely reach their intended group of prospects or customers. This targeting takes into account job title, industry, seniority level and other factors which help maximise marketing efforts.
Top Tip: The best way to expand your network on LinkedIn is to focus on creating meaningful connections with people who share similar interests and values. This can be done by joining relevant groups and taking part in discussions, attending events related to your field, and connecting with influencers or industry experts. Additionally, through features such as the Connections Hub and Conversation Ads, you can easily find and reach out to potential prospects that could benefit from your products or services. You can also use targeted ads and sponsored content to drive more leads and build relationships with newer members of your network.
Arguably, LinkedIn is the No.1 social media marketing platform for B2B marketers to increase credibility. A LinkedIn page that features the company’s product or service will increase the exposure of your product or service. On LinkedIn, recommendations allow you to showcase your values through a third party instead of doing it yourself. Request recommendations from those who have done business with you and worked or partnered with you.
Think of it like getting reviews on Google or a customer product review on Amazon. It's kind of the same principle, but in this case, it's an endorsement of your brand as a service/product provider. However, you look at it, it's a great way to gain traction and boost industry credibility.
Point to Ponder: Don’t ask 10 people at once. Make your recommendations appear genuine rather than forcibly asking.
LinkedIn, more than any of the other social media platforms, is built for sharing research-based case studies, reports, and whitepapers. Business or industry content has a better chance of being seen on LinkedIn. Considering the majority of your connections are like-minded professionals, it’s easy to publish and share your expertise and experience and strengthen relationships.
With the platform's Insights, you can gain an in-depth understanding of what topics and conversations are taking place among your target audience; this will help you create content that sparks better responses and interaction from potential customers. Moreover, its analytics allow for precise visibility into ROI analysis related to marketing campaigns on the platform to easily review them and refine strategies for optimal results.
Automated campaigns such as Sponsored InMail messages and Dynamic Ads make scaling and managing marketing efforts much easier while at the same time reducing costs associated with manually managing each post or campaign separately.
A custom profile URL helps you stand out from other LinkedIn users. When you first sign up for LinkedIn, the platform will assign a generic URL consisting of first and last names followed by numbers, letters, and dashes. Luckily, you can change it to your name or something easy to remember. Doing this will make your profile appear more professional and easier to share.If you look at this URL you’ll notice that it doesn’t have numbers, letters and dashes:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosscrawford/
To do this, simply click on the “Edit public profile” button on the right sidebar > click the pencil icon, find and edit your URL as you like.
As the saying goes, a picture is worth 1000 words, and a good profile picture is worth far more. Having a professional, approachable, and friendly headshot gets you more profile views and connection requests.
The ideal size for your LinkedIn profile picture is 400 x 400 pixels and under 8MB in size. A simple background is enough with 60% of the space filled with your face works well. Larger file sizes are also fine but try to avoid small, low-resolution images.
Think of it as your first step to building your personal brand on LinkedIn and making yourself stand out from others. Now that’s worth investing in.
Along with your profile picture, the LinkedIn background image is the first thing people see when they visit your profile. This is your chance to create a positive first impression that adds to the credibility of your brand.
The standard size of the LinkedIn background photo is 1584×396 pixels and the image file size can be up to 8MB. Before uploading your LinkedIn cover image, think about what purpose you want your LinkedIn cover photo to serve.
For example, it could be an extension of your company or personal branding, like Neil Patel’s background photo.
Top Tips: Showcase your achievements and accomplishments in the Summary section, and include relevant keywords to help people searching find you.
For Example: If you are a software engineer, you might want to showcase your experience developing successful projects and provide details on the technologies used. You can also include keywords such as "software engineering" or "web development" to increase visibility.
You might define yourself and your profile as that of a digital marketing expert, SEO specialist, programmer, fitness trainer, entrepreneur, network marketer, or nutritionist. Unfortunately, that’s the quickest way to bury yourself among millions of users. Here comes the importance of a compelling headline. With a customised headline, you could set apart yourself, give prospects a reason to view your profile and start building the connection. Your headline is what appears right under your name. Users can go up to 120 characters while writing headlines.
For example, A customised headline for your LinkedIn Profile could be: “John Smith, Software Engineer Crafting High-Performance Solutions". You could also try something like "John Smith - Experienced Web Developer Delivering Quality Results".
Top Tips: Write your profile description in a way people could easily recognise the role (such as “Sales Representative” or “Sales Associate”) followed by describing how you can contribute to the customers’ lives. Keep the language easy to read and understand across any and all audiences.
Think of the LinkedIn profile summary as your business card. Unfortunately, most users consider this section only as an afterthought. Speaking frankly, nobody wants to read your entire work history. Apply some creative elements while describing what you are known for. What’s your identity? And how does your work help other people?
Simply let your prospective customers know why you’re distinctive from your competitors and the benefits of working with you.
Most people don’t even realise the importance of LinkedIn skills and endorsements. Endorsements are an excellent way to get appreciated for your skills and help build your professional reputation. With endorsements, you can let other connections verify your top skills too with a single click. You can have up to 50 skills listed, so definitely make use of this by putting in all 50 skills.
To see or manage skills and endorsements, scroll down to the ‘Skills & Endorsements’ section of your profile.
The top three skills here are Digital marketing, Online marketing and Social Media. The more endorsements you have, the more established you appear, and the more accurately listed your skills are, the easier it is for people to find your profile.
When connecting with people you meet at a conference, people in your industry who share articles and resources, and those who are working at a company you’re interested in, send a customised connection request. Letting others know why you would like to connect will definitely increase your chances of someone accepting the request.
While scrolling through, you will see a LinkedIn list of “people you may know”, don’t blindly click the “connect” button. Because a generic connection request will most often not work when trying to connect with prospects.
Instead, go to the person’s profile page and click the “connect” button there. Doing so will bring up the box allowing you to add a personal note with your connection request, such as “It was great meeting you at the conference last week. Let me know how your project goes!”
If you are a business professional looking to network, obtain leads, and increase sales, then you should consider going for a paid version often referred to as a premium account.
The premium business account has InMail messaging, advanced search capabilities, the ability to see who viewed your profile, and unlimited profile searches. When you use LinkedIn Search with the free version, a maximum of 100 results per search or only 10 pages of search results will appear, but on the premium, there are no restrictions.
The good news is that LinkedIn now provides everyone with a free one-month trial. Once the trial is over you’ll pay a subscription per month if you don’t cancel.
Create, curate, and share content with the intent of making yourself more visible to potential prospects, recruiters, or customers. You need to have a strong understanding of your target audience and what makes them tick.
Before you post something, just ask two questions:
Try publishing industry-relevant, thought-provoking content that creates awareness and prods readers into asking questions and engaging with the post.
That said, you should be wary so as to not come off as self-obsessed – that’s for Instagram and Facebook! Post engaging, reputable content from other relevant sources such as Forbes or TechCrunch. LinkedIn as a platform is for you to showcase brand authority and industry knowledge. That doesn't necessarily play out well when all you do is post content about your brand, your products and services, and just turn the whole thing into a self-promotion campaign. Let the attention and audience build organically, don't force it.
Monitoring LinkedIn's analytics is vital when determining what content resonates with your target audience. Using the data from these matrices, users can analyse the content that you publish on the platform, ads that you run and people who visit your company page.
Like any other social media platform, you can measure metrics such as likes, shares, comments, mentions, followers, engagement, impressions and more. We will discuss LinkedIn analytics in detail in Chapter 5.
Today, a company page is not an option but a must-have! Why? Because there is no better way to attract new prospects, followers, customers and more. That’s not all! You can share industry updates and news, post job openings and connect with potential employees and thus build a community.
Aside from that, a LinkedIn company page allows you to do the following:
So this begs the question: how do you create a LinkedIn company page?
Go to the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions page and hover over the 'LinkedIn Pages' option in the top menu and click 'Create a LinkedIn Page'.
Log in to your personal LinkedIn account and click the 'Work' icon in the top right corner.
Then you need to click on the 'Create a Company Page +' button at the bottom of the window. You have the following choices for the business type you want to create:
For this guide, we are using the 'small business' option.
Add all of your company information such as company name, website, industry, company size, and company type.
Now check the verification box to confirm and select “Create Page.” Your LinkedIn page is now ready.
Take your LinkedIn Page from basic to the next level by filling in additional information. Click the pencil icon on your profile under your company name.
The ‘About’ section is where you tell a compelling summary of your brand or business, so use this as an opportunity to promote your product or service.
Here are the elements should pay attention to when crafting your company profile:
Values – Who are we? How do we work?
Products/Services – Here’s what we provide.
Positioning – What makes our brand different?
Vision – What future do we want to help create?
Mission – How do we create that future?
Tagline – The brand is summed up in one line.
Take time to fill out every page in detail as fully completed LinkedIn Company Pages get 30% more views. The more information you provide about your company, the better it will be for potential prospects to identify and connect with you. Additionally, remember to keep the page’s logo up-to-date with your latest branding and marketing strategies. Doing so will make your page relevant to the website, blog and other digital marketing efforts.
Before launching your Company Page, it is important to develop a plan for what content will be included and how often it will be updated. Once you have the plan in place, start sharing content regularly. This could include a variety of topics such as job openings, marketing tips, company news and updates, customer stories and industry insights.
These posts should be engaging and relevant to your target audience so they can consider your brand or product when making a purchase decision. When creating it, focus on providing value for your audience and the rest should fall into place.
In terms of format, you could play with:
Use relevant keywords in your profile description to ensure your Company Page ranks higher in search results when potential customers are looking for businesses like yours.
Additionally, once your content is created, you should consider tagging other users, businesses and organisations related to the topic. This encourages interaction between people and consequently increases engagement on your page.
Use LinkedIn analytics to help you track the activity on your page, measure the engagement, and analyse performance so you can adjust your strategy as needed.
A LinkedIn group allows you to connect with a like-minded set of people. As your network grows exponentially with a group, your business is more likely seen by the target market. This will position you as an authority in your industry or niche.
Step 1: Navigate to your Groups homepage, and click on “Create Group”. Once you do, a pop up window will appear, where you will have to fill in the necessary details about the group you want to create.
Step 2: Fill in all details about your group. The name of your LinkedIn group should be short, recognisable, relevant and direct. Don’t attempt to act as mysterious here – the name should communicate the content and purpose of your group.
If the goal of your group is to attract professionals in a particular industry, include that in your group's description. It also helps to mention what your group is about and what is the main intention behind creating the group. This step arouses the interest of LinkedIn users to join your group to learn and share values.
You'll also want to add other details like industries, and locations and enter group rules where you can set the tone and expectations of your group.
Step 4: Upload the group logo and cover picture. Adding a professionally designed cover image or logo is one of the best practices for completing your group information. It adds credibility and authority to your brand and entices new potential customers. The logo for a LinkedIn group is square and should be at least 60 x 60 pixels while the recommended size for the cover image is 1776 x 444 pixels.
If you want to add (or edit) a logo or cover image for an existing group, click on the pencil icon located just under the cover photo on the right side.
Make sure you have an updated logo and cover image that is relevant to your brand, product or service.
Step 5: You should also plan out how you want to monitor and manage engagement within the group. Set ground rules for how members can interact within the group, keep an eye out for any inappropriate content, and moderate conversations to ensure they stay on track. If you don't have the time, assign another moderator to keep an eye on things.
Step 6: Once everything is in place, the only thing left to do is promote! Generate buzz around your new group by announcing it on other social media channels and utilising email marketing campaigns if possible.
Though LinkedIn opens a doorway to reaching millions of users, marketing your business cannot be effective on its own. From tools for managing your LinkedIn profile or page more effectively, to tools that help you find and generate quality leads in less time, there are a bunch of specialised LinkedIn marketing tools that help you target the right audience.
As LinkedIn marketers, there are two indispensable tools that we must be equipped with - and today, we'll show you what those are.
If you are on a mission to connect leads and prospects in a unique way, the Sales Navigator tool is a great place to start. This tool makes you a prospecting superstar by helping you find relevant leads for your business – you just need to make use of its features to target the right prospect.
The LinkedIn Sales Navigator is the best way to filter the right decision makers thanks to its collection of search capabilities, enhanced visibility into expanded networks, and personalised algorithms.
Before you do anything, you will need to define your target audience, what group they are in, which influencers they follow, and what type of content they consume. Once you have this information on hand you’re all set to use Sales Navigator.
The very first thing you should do is set your sales preference. By setting sales preference, you let your Sales Navigator filter your leads based on region, industry, function, and seniority level. You can select multiple preferences and Sales Navigator will use saved preferences to surface lead recommendations based on your interests.
Step 1: In Sales Navigator, you will see two options on the top of the page in the search bar area called “Lead Filters+” and “Account Filters+”.
Step 2: If you click on “Lead Filters+” you will see a board with many different categories to choose from. This is where you will set your filter preferences for your leads.
At this stage you will see the categories:
Each of these will have their own sub categories that will help you narrow your search and filter out leads in a highly targeted way.
Step 3: While creating your preference, you will see relevant results populating below the textbox. Click the '+ Add' icon to add the selection to your preferences. A checkmark icon will appear next to the preferences you set.
Step 4: Click “Done” to save. If one of your selections no longer applies, uncheck and click “Done”.
Once you fill everything out, you can start prospecting like a lead generation expert.
You can define and refine your LinkedIn search using Advanced search functionality thanks to the platform’s many search filters. Some of the best filters for lead generation include:
Keywords – look for specific keywords or phrases found in your prospect’s profile.
Geography – where do you want to sell your product? Which location are you focusing on?
Job Title – specify who you are looking for like dentists, fitness trainers or network marketers.
Company size – is it a small business, startup or corporate company?
For a simple search like this one, there are over 100K+ results found on LinkedIn.
Once your search results are ready, you can start connecting with them from LinkedIn. Try sending out custom invites, connection requests, and messages to your prospects-- maybe something like this:
Hey,
I hope you are doing well. I wanted to reach out because [explain how you got their contact information and how you relate to them]. How did you come up with the idea of doing [name of business]?
InMail is a credible, private, and customised messaging tool helping you contact any LinkedIn user, including 2nd and 3rd-degree connections.
It’s one of the best advantages LinkedIn Sales Navigator users could ask for.
If you want to send private messages to your prospects or any other LinkedIn users, even if you aren’t connected with them, the InMail feature is the best.
To send an InMail:
Step 1: Navigate to the profile of the member you’d like to send an InMail to
Step 2: Click the More… button on their introduction card.
Step 3: Select Message from the dropdown.
Step 4: Type the Subject field (optional).
Step 5: Type the message in the text box
Step 6: Click Send.
On Sales Navigator, 'Job Changes' identifies prospects who have changed jobs within the last 90 days. This scenario is the perfect 'foot-in-the-door' conversation starter whether you know the prospect or not.
For Example: “Hello {first_name}, congratulations on the new position as ABC! I’d love to continue the discussion about “XYZ” which might be relevant to your business. Let me know what time works for you best.”
This is an extremely simple way to discover the content posted by your potential prospects. For instance, our target audience is digital marketing professionals who work in the dental industry. We can use these filters in the advanced LinkedIn Sales Navigator search.
This search filter will give you a group of people who have posted or engaged with content related to health. Then, you just write up a simple and personalised message for them.
“Hi {first_name},
I’ve been following your content and I’m so impressed with all you’ve accomplished. I recently saw a blog post of you on {describe}, I’d love to discover more about your work and support you! ….
You can run a Boolean search on Sales Navigator by combining keywords with operators like "AND", "NOT", and "OR" during your search. Check out the screenshots below:
If you are into LinkedIn lead generation, you will end up doing a lot of LinkedIn Sales Navigator searches. Entering the same search terms for your different campaigns is time consuming and boring. Saved searches let you save your search criteria, including keyword strings and filter refinements, so you can easily run that search again at any time. Once you save a search, you’ll receive email alerts when new LinkedIn members match your saved search criteria.
This is another powerful tool for those wanting to gain a deeper understanding of people who connect and engage with your company on Linkedin. All these metrics can be used to make strategic business decisions online and offline.
Let’s categorise analytics into three main sections:
What do these sections mean for us?
This section gives you metrics regarding the traffic for your LinkedIn page. The visitor analytics page is divided into three individual sections:
Users get an overview of your page in the last 30 days. You can track the following matrices in this section:
The ‘Visitor Metrics’ section is actually a detailed analysis of ‘Visitor Highlights’. Just decide on the time range, page, metric and device.
This section gives the demographic details of users on your page in a chosen time range. The demographic information identified can be job function, location, seniority, industry, or company size. You will get a wider overview of the people visiting your page.
Top Tip: Make use of this data while creating and sharing content for your audience.
The follower section of LinkedIn Analytics provides insight into your audience on the platform. It includes four divisions:
The Follower highlights section displays the number of members who have followed your Page since it was created. The section also indicates the number of followers your Page has gained and the percent of change from the previous 30 days. The total number of followers is updated once a day.
Like the previous metrics graph, this gives you an overview of new follower activity over a chosen time frame. Unlike visitor, your options are only limited to a time range, aggregate organic and sponsored.
This is where you will understand who your audience is, where they are from, and what they are doing so that you can create relevant and engaging content.
Here are the demographics you can discover about your followers:
Content analytics in Sales Navigator works by tracking user engagement with your content on LinkedIn. This includes metrics such as views, likes, comments, and shares, allowing you to see which pieces of content are resonating with your target audience and driving the most engagement. With this information, you can tailor your content to specific audiences, improve engagement rates, and increase conversions.
Sales Navigator's content analytics also provides data on who is engaging with your content, allowing you to identify potential leads. For example, you can see which companies or industries are showing the most interest in your content, which can help you prioritise your outreach efforts. You can also identify individuals who have engaged with your content, giving you the opportunity to reach out and start building a relationship.
One of the major benefits of using Sales Navigator's content analytics is that it allows you to measure the ROI of your social selling efforts. By tracking engagement and conversions, you can see the impact that your content is having on your bottom line.
The companies to track section lets you see how your follower gains and losses, number of updates, and engagement rates compared to organisations like yours.
You can view metrics for:
If your brand is not present on the world’s largest professional networking platform, you’re seriously missing out on engaging with your customers and target audience and generating business.
By following the best practices outlined in this article, such as optimising your LinkedIn profile, leveraging the power of business pages and groups, sharing captivating content, and using marketing and analytics tools, you’ll be well on your way to boosting outreach and revenue.
How do you envision the future of LinkedIn marketing? What trends do you anticipate for 2023 and beyond? Let us know what you think!
If you need any help in making your brand more likeable and profitable via LinkedIn, contact our LinkedIn marketing experts.
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Are you a marketer wondering how to use LinkedIn to promote your product or service? Do you want to attract ideal prospects, so you can increase the number of leads and ultimately more revenue? If this sounds like you, tune in because in this guide, you’ll learn how to use LinkedIn to reach your clients and customers so you can better market your products and services.
