If you’re still mentally relegating LinkedIn users to job seekers and hiring managers, you’re missing out on more than you realize. While those have been the LinkedIn users of the past, the now nearly 500 million current LinkedIn users have created a bigger and brighter future for the platform. And that future includes B2B marketing opportunities. In fact, 80 percent of B2B leads come from LinkedIn and 94 percent of marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content. Almost half of all social media traffic coming to a B2B company site is coming from LinkedIn. If you don’t have one already, read on to learn why you need a LinkedIn strategy so you can start generating quality B2B leads and grow your business.
Leverage User Data
LinkedIn’s 500 million members are engaging on the platform at record rates. In fact, two new members join the platform every second. With this increase in user engagement, LinkedIn is really starting to leverage user data. LinkedIn indexes, sorts, and organizes each piece of content that is shared on the platform. This makes things shared on the website easily searchable and allows for LinkedIn ads to be very targeted. It also positions LinkedIn as the professional version of Google for its users, finding answers to questions in blog posts, status updates, company pages, and other content created or shared on the platform. All combined there are about 9 billion content impressions on LinkedIn each week. Your B2B buyers are on LinkedIn looking for the content that they need to move forward in their journey, make sure you are there to provide it.
Sales Leads
By using LinkedIn’s search bar you can easily create a list of prospects. Target your ideal customers by industry type, location, job title, and more. Once you’ve compiled your list, you can quickly and easily scale up a one-to-one personalized marketing strategy built around the data you already know about your prospects. Looking to connect with window installation companies in Dallas? Filter your prospect list for that job and location, then send a LinkedIn invite including details specific to them. Not only will your LinkedIn invite break the ice but it will stand out from the other generic messages and make you memorable.
Warm Leads
While you are out searching for new leads, don’t forget about the ones who have already taken the first step. These warm leads are not people you’re already connected to you, you’re 1st Level Connections, but these are people who have found you on LinkedIn and chosen to follow you. Thanks to LinkedIn’s “Follow” feature you might already have a list of warm leads just waiting for you. To find these leads you simply need to take a look at your list of LinkedIn followers. LinkedIn sorts this list with your most recent followers at the top, meaning your warmest leads are the ones you will see first. From this list, you can click on an individuals name to see their profile and see if they are a great lead for your target. As you connect more on LinkedIn and additional people view your profile or engage with your content you’ll develop even more warm leads.
InMail
LinkedIn’s InMail is another way to use the platform for sales and lead generation. The LinkedIn Marketing Solutions team reported that InMail has a two times better message open click-through rates compared to email. Instead of worrying about your email being sent to spam folders or getting bounced messaged, marketers also get the benefit of knowing that recipients will actually get the message since sponsored InMail messages are only sent to active and verified users.
Sponsored InMail is a direct and personal way to target your B2B audience at a low cost through targeting, segmenting, messaging, and the right call to action. You might ask your InMail recipients to take a top-of-the-funnel action like requesting No BS website analysis from your website. LinkedIn messages are done in a back-and-forth style similar to text messages. You don’t even have to navigate to a different screen for them anymore. And you can see the entire history on any messages you’ve exchanged with a person. If you’re looking to leverage this tool, check out the InMail best practices before you get started. LinkedIn has even added information letting you know when a person was last active on the platform, or if they are currently live on LinkedIn and available to message with.
LinkedIn is doing more than ever to leverage its wealth of user data, which is why marketers need to start using LinkedIn. And it looks like things will only get better for lead generation abilities. Between improved LinkedIn search filters, deeper insights, and InMail enhancements, you will need a LinkedIn strategy to grow your B2B business.
