Observing the world today, we can notice that social media has taken off and become more and more popular both among the younger generations and the older ones.
What has become very important is that Linkedln is becoming more and more popular among business people from year to year, that it has simply become an unavoidable question in a job interview whether you have a LinkedIn profile. Klean Leads is a complete email scraper and outreach automation tool that will move the needle for your business.
With almost 700 million members, more and more companies, as well as business people, use Linkedln for networking and sales.
And what is marketing?
So as the name suggests, it focuses on reaching a business client. It can be applied to both products and services.
Certainly, marketing for a business client must contain slightly different content than that intended for the private consumer, although it depends to some extent on the channel through which the business is conducted.
Whether you are a large or small business, sales tools are available from B2B to B2C, which you can use successfully if you have a LinkedIn profile. Positioning is one of the marketing activities that work well in B2B but also in B2C. It will only differ in the choice of keywords, the other steps are the same. LinkedIn automation tools are also very helpful for marketing.
However, if campaigns are prepared in channels where they can be personalized, the offer of companies is often much more focused on specific products and services.
As in life, in business, it is important to take the first step.
The first step in creating your image, for the purpose of presenting (yourself or the company) is to create a profile on Linkedin.
If you have decided to present yourself on LinkedIn, you need to leave your exact biography, with a high school or college degree.
If you have completed an additional course, it would be desirable to write it, as well as work experience and your talent.
In the case of a company, it would be desirable to write in more detail what the company does, as well as daily updates of information, publishing texts related to the work of the company, as well as the services offered by the company.
This guide will show you how to use LinkedIn for business (whether it is your company or you are an employee), will equip you with the best tools, and will help you to make the most of the marketing strategy that LinkedIn offers you.
How to make a good marketing plan using LinkedIn? Basic B2B marketing strategies.
Sales and marketing need to be linked and complementary. Marketing and market research, regardless of the type of activity, should ensure that the offer reaches as wide a group of customers as possible.
B2B marketing content is mainly used to create and distribute professionally oriented content for the same purposes. Companies using this method must develop brand awareness, trust, and affinity with potential customers they want to reach.
The first phase in B2B is reaching the offer, followed by negotiations and a conversation with the client.
A well-designed marketing strategy can ensure sales in B2B.
Regardless of the end effect of marketing activities, their primary goal should be to reach as many potential customers as possible.
Therefore, it is worth focusing on acting in as many channels as possible, of course not forgetting the quality of the implemented activities.
How to start B2B marketing on LinkedIn?
First and more important, you need to analyze your own offer, get to know it well. B2B marketing can relate to many things.
Distribution of large construction machinery, sale of sand or groceries to stores, construction, translation,consulting services, or even the services of a property lawyer. All this will require B2B marketing.
However, each of these services will better reach customers through other channels, and the offer must be different. Therefore, it is first worth considering which channels will work for this particular job.
One of them could be LinkedIn.
You will need to develop a target group for this.
Thanks to its development, it will be possible to check which channels this group will use and we should try to reach them.
When developing a target group, it is best to accurately describe examples of people who may belong to it. Indicate their education, what positions they are in, where they live, how old they are, what gender they are.
All this will make it easier for you to plan your marketing activities. Such customer profiling will allow you to create a very specific offer, which will have a much better chance of reaching the customer and attracting his interest.
Competitive analysis is extremely important in conducting marketing activities.
By checking the activities carried out by the competitors, many mistakes can be avoided, as well as wasting time and financial resources.
When you check a business, you certainly know your competition.
Therefore, it is worth checking which marketing activities it carries out.
Of course, it will be difficult to see how effective they are, but at least you will be able to see which ideas the company will compete with.
However, it will be possible to check how people react to marketing campaigns, on LinkedIn, and you can already derive a conclusion about their future activities.
In the past, B2B sales were mostly done by cold calling software or face-to-face meetings. Of course, big contracts or business talks are still done this way, but just reaching out to the customer is a really wide field to show.
They may work differently for each service and item, so you should consider this when choosing them. LinkedIn is used mainly by business people who have their own company, directors, managers, assistants, consultants, etc.
Sometimes work requires more than 8 hours of sitting in the office because the rest from 16 to 20 hours is spent on social networks.
So, even if someone sees an offer sent in the form of a message in private, that does not mean that they will not be willing to use it as a company. Of course, you can’t be too intrusive as a company, but above all, you should give advice to other users.
Seeing the professionalism of such a person greatly increases the chance that if they need a certain good or service, they turn to the person who gave them advice.
LinkedIn is a typical business tool and should work a little differently than on Facebook or Instagram. The content should be more professional, although you can’t overdo it with too much “rigidity”, the internet is still a place where it’s always worth keeping a little freedom.
However, it is good to be a professional in your field, which will significantly increase the chances of attracting clients to your person. Your person, because LinkedIn is primarily a channel for creating your own brand and through it, you can sell your company’s products.
General, the last ten months have been a period of a breakthrough in the form of B2B communication, which has completely switched from a hybrid form of combining traditional channels (meetings, fairs, conferences, etc.) with internet channels to online.
Valuable users, unique tools for achieving different goals, and significant organic potential – these are the factors that make LinkedIn increasingly the first choice of marketing experts when it comes to B2B communication channels, both in terms of organic and paid reach.
LinkedIn users are a unique audience. There are more and more of them, so the scope here is not insignificant, but they are even more important than quantitative issues “qualitatively”.
LinkedIn users distinguish them, among others, professional status, wallet thickness above average, professional activity, and openness – they come to the platform to develop their professional and business career, seek valuable and strategic relationships, share industry knowledge, and build their personal brand.
Moreover – the pandemic situation has undoubtedly increased the importance and scope of using this type of communication – confirmed by LinkedIn statistics: site users now have more than half conversations than in the time before the pandemic period, the number of content created, and shared on the website since brand side.
How to start B2C marketing on LinkedIn?
Understanding the life situation of the recipient through getting to know the sources of his current needs and expectations. Possessing this knowledge, we are able to adopt the right rhetoric (the form of language used) of communication between the brand and the recipient.
In other words, explain what “dry” data in the form of statistics or graphs mean in practice and how they translate, for example, into an effective solution to an urgent problem.
It can be assumed (although it should not be generalized) that B2C communication is unofficial, quite free. Which, of course, doesn’t stop you from talking about the details.
More and more customers are looking for detailed information about a product or service. Especially when it costs a lot. The solution here is empathy. Understanding the life situation of the recipient through getting to know the sources of his current needs and expectations.
Possessing this knowledge, we are able to adopt the right rhetoric (the form of language used) of communication between the brand and the recipient. It is also worth adding that in the case of B2C marketing, the goal can be varied – primarily in terms of knowledge levels.
This should be kept in mind and pay attention to the language of expression used in the prepared content (whether it is a blog article, a post on LinkedIn, or a product description in an online store). In any case, it must be equally accessible and easily understood by all audiences.
Social selling LinkedIn
Thanks to the ability to build your own portfolio of experiences, personal brand, or company websites, LinkedIn stands out from other social media platforms mainly by the professional aspirations of its users.
They come especially to connect with people from the industry, brands that deal with high quality content.
Over 130,000 articles are created on LinkedIn every week. Experts share their experiences, share problems in the industry, and encourage constructive discussions.
LinkedIn is also a place where we can find a job or hire someone and through social sales, activities attract new customers who are increasingly looking for opinions and mentions about us.
To equal the growing marketing trends, Linkedin has created the Sales Navigator tool, the purpose of which is to support, among other things, social sales and sales activities (directly).
Sales Navigator is a paid solution to support sales on LinkedIn. The tool allows you to search and track the activities of users and organizations on LinkedIn based on precise criteria such as:
Keywords:
-industry,
-positions,
-company size,
-internship,
-technologies,
-employment development in the company,
-belonging to industrial interest groups,
-location,
activity on LinkedIn.
There are many more criteria, you can combine them, save them, create search lists. Users/organizations can be added to their own lists, so-called potential customers, which we can then invite to friends, follow or send a message.
The key functionality of Sales Navigator is a special “field news” in which we have access to all leading activities.
The news feed allows you to react to actions on an ongoing basis, thanks to which we can create offers tailored, for example, to the topic or problem of our potential customers.
It is a full-fledged tool that supports both social sales activities and the Linkedin sales process.
LinkedIn Social Selling Index
Along with the growing recognition of the platform among retailers, Linkedin has developed the “Social Sales Index”. It is an indicator that determines our effectiveness and efficiency on the platform.
According to Linkedin: SSI was created on the basis of research and conducting about 5,000 surveys among the best sellers, the purpose of which was to list the most efficient social sales activities.
Based on them, the Social Sales Index is based on four pillars:
-Our brand image
-Our database of network contacts
-Engagement
-Connections
Remember that SSI is an algorithm that takes into account how we use the platform.
What is he paying attention to?
For our profile:
1. It should be filled in as soon as the available options allow it.
Database of online contacts should grow.
2. Pillar, therefore, includes activities related to finding contacts and reviewing the profiles of people we are interested in. This criterion encourages the use of Sales Navigator where we do not have limited access to a comprehensive search engine.
The commitment includes all activities, including:
-publishing and sharing announcements;
-reactions (likes, sharing comments) of us and recipients;
-sending a message;
-activity in groups;
Connections in this case, what is important for achieving results in SSI is how we expand our network of contacts. Are they 2nd or 3rd-degree contacts, how often do we enter into relationships with them, at what levels in the company hierarchy are these people.
Keep in mind that SSI is just an indicator and should be considered more of a curiosity.
What counts in social sales is a well-chosen and consistently applied strategy.
Wrapping up
In theory, both buyers from the b2b and b2c sectors are already present on the Internet, and this is already a mandatory phase on the path of every consumer on the way to making a final purchase decision.
This means that absolutely everyone involved in sales should be active in the field of social sales. In practice, however, it is intended only for those who really want to use its potential and have time to take action in this regard.
There is no clear answer to the question: “where is it worthwhile to conduct social sales activities?”. For some, LinkedIn will be a suitable medium, where we mainly deal with business representatives, and for others, Facebook or Instagram, where a widely understood way of life dominates.
Others, on the other hand, can be extremely effective on internet forums and topic groups. Knowing the target group, with the support of media monitoring, can, however, give us a hint from which channels to start.
Author Bio:
Andrej Fedek is the creator and the one-person owner of the InterCool Studio. As an experienced marketer, he is driven by turning leads into customers. His goals always include White Hat SEO. Except for being a boss, he is a real team player with a great sense of equality.
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