Customers no longer look for information on just one channel or even one device. The factors that influence their purchasing decisions are more abundant than ever. Because of this, the customer journey to a conversion has become more complex and fragmented, and there isn’t a single formula for how to reach them. Therefore, you must market to them in meaningful places.
A great place to reach customers in a professional context is LinkedIn. More than 645 million people worldwide gather on that professional social network to stay connected and informed, advance their careers, and work smarter. These are the decision-makers, influencers, and leaders who have 2x the buying power of the average web audience.
To get the most out of LinkedIn, marketers should take a three-step approach:
Step 1 - Grow Your Audience With Organic Content On LinkedIn Pages
Marketers can grow their organic presence on LinkedIn with Pages, the next generation of Company Pages. With LinkedIn Pages, businesses can attract followers and have an ongoing conversation with their target audiences on LinkedIn — all for free.
Creating organic, free content on Pages helps businesses reach a broad audience and get the word out about their products and services. When it comes to organic strategy, there are four key rules that should be followed:
Be consistent - LinkedIn customers gaining successful and consistent engagement when they post on their LinkedIn Pages at least once a day.
Repurpose where possible - Brands can share their story on their LinkedIn Pages by repurposing infographics, blog posts, videos, links to events, eBooks, and webinars.
Tap into industry trends and news - @mention people who are affiliated with a specific piece of content to gain exposure to their network.
Add hashtags to your post to join trending conversations - Keep an eye on the headlines on LinkedIn and Bing — those can be a great resource to see timely stories that are gaining momentum on LinkedIn.
Step 2 - Deliver Results With LinkedIn Paid Advertising
Drawing from data of its members, LinkedIn offers marketers data-driven targeting for use with a variety of formats to generate high quality leads. Here are two example formats:
Sponsored Content - Reach a highly engaged audience with native ads in a professional news feed across desktop and mobile.
Sponsored Messaging - Send direct, one-on-one messages to your audience where they increasingly spend most of their time and when they're most engaged and in the right mindset.
Businesses can target decision makers and other LinkedIn members based on their company, industry, job experience, education, and interests. Here's a snapshot of some of the specific ad targeting capabilities available:
Addiitonally, LinkedIn’s recently released interest targeting product now includes Bing search data. This combination enables marketers to combine professional demograph and user interest data to increase the scale of your marketing efforts, improve your targeting and boost ROI.
Step 3 - Measure And Optimize Via LinkedIn Advertising Tools
LinkedIn tools can help marketers quickly assess how their campaigns are performing and adjust accordingly. With LinkedIn Conversion Tracking, marketers can measure how their campaign is producing specific conversion events, such as members of the target audience registering for a webinar. Additionally, LinkedIn’s Website Demographics tools enable marketers to gauge whether the right audiences are visiting their entire website and even specific web pages.
Interested In Learning More?
Contact Funnel today to discuss how LinkedIn can specifically benefit your business and how you can understand how people interact with you online.