While LinkedIn shouldn’t be viewed exclusively as a B2B lead generation tool, the platform is ideal for getting conversations started—and quality conversations can quickly convert into qualified leads.
Understanding the Potential of LinkedIn for B2B Marketing
If you’re already on LinkedIn, you may have tried to use the platform to find new growth opportunities, but either aren’t sure where to begin or have seen limited success until now. Don’t worry—neither situation is rare. That’s because the way you market your business on LinkedIn has to be different from any of the other B2B lead generation strategies you’re currently using, but for many companies, it isn’t.
The first thing you have to realize is that people on LinkedIn aren’t looking to be marketed to. About 60% of LinkedIn users are between the ages of 25 to 34—a demographic that prefers engaging, informational content over targeted ads. Many users glance over sponsored and promoted posts, instead of keeping an eye out for interesting organic content that presents new opportunities, ideas, or insights for their business.
If you’re primarily focusing your LinkedIn strategies on selling your services the way you would on your website or in an advertisement, you probably won’t see much of an uptick in sales simply because that’s not what users are looking for when they log into LinkedIn.
In place of conventional marketing tactics, explore these three strategies, and you’ll have a better shot at qualified leads coming to you. Just remember that each of these strategies takes time, and you shouldn’t expect to see success overnight.
Strategy 1: Create Thought Leadership Content
The number one thing you can be doing to drive qualified leads on LinkedIn is to publish regular content that’s a step ahead of anything anyone else in your industry is talking about. When you’re sharing information that’s leading the way and setting the pace for the rest of the industry, we call that thought leadership. You don’t need to give away all your secrets, but when you can get a reader on LinkedIn to recognize that you offer an innovative approach to common problems, they’ll naturally think more highly of you than your competitors.
People want to work with the best, and if you can position yourself as the most forward-thinking, innovative company in your industry, people will want to work with you. Your company’s name will be the first that comes to mind if they have a question or problem related to what you do. LinkedIn provides an ideal platform for achieving this because, again, people aren’t logging into LinkedIn to be sold to—they’re on LinkedIn to learn and find new opportunities.
If your new ideas provide insight and ideas for new opportunities for your audience, it won’t be long before qualified leads come knocking.
Strategy 2: Build, Grow, and Engage With an Audience
Thought leadership content also offers an opportunity to supplement and branch off from SEO content. To be successful with SEO, you need to align your content with keywords people are already searching for. With thought leadership content, on the other hand, you don’t necessarily need to match your content to user search queries. If you want to share something that people aren’t necessarily searching for or even know about but is still relevant to their business, LinkedIn provides the opportunity to do so while making sure people actually see it.
If you consider yourself an expert at what you do, LinkedIn provides the ideal platform to leverage your expertise to build, grow, and engage an audience. When people notice that you regularly share helpful information, they’ll follow your profile for more and recognize you as an expert at what you do. But it shouldn’t stop there. You should also engage with those followers to reach even more people. When you react to, comment on, or share content posted by others, you significantly increase your company’s reach—and it all happens organically!
When someone discovers your brand indirectly through a shared post or threaded comment, they’ll be curious to learn more about your company, encouraging them to visit your website, view your profile, and ultimately send a message if they think you can help.
Strategy 3: Show (Instead of Tell) People Why They Should Work With You
If you’ve focused your LinkedIn efforts on telling people why they should work with you instead of showing them, you may have seen limited success until now. You can tell people why they should work with you all day, but until they think they need you, they aren’t going to convert into a lead—let alone a customer. On LinkedIn, people are far more likely to read and engage with content that focuses on bettering them or their business over a long-form sales pitch.
How can you show people they should work with you? The first two strategies offer an excellent place to start, but on top of that, you can also refocus your LinkedIn content strategy around treating your target audience like readers instead of prospective customers. Embrace a narrative instead of just describing a service, product, or process you offer. When you tell a story that other people can look to, identify with, or become interested in, they’re much more likely to engage with you and eventually convert into customers.
Another excellent way to show people why they should work with you is by highlighting your customers’ success stories on LinkedIn. Grounding success stories in a case study format with references to specific numbers and problems only makes them more concrete in the reader’s mind. When people recognize that you’ve already helped businesses like theirs achieve success, it won’t take much imagination for them to visualize the success you can help them succeed, and they’ll be eager to reach out.
Need Help Taking Your LinkedIn Presence to the Next Level?
Not sure where to start with thought leadership? Having a hard time building an audience? Need to show people why they should work with you? Abstrakt is here to help. We’re experts at leveraging LinkedIn as a platform to grow your business. Get in touch when you’re ready to get started.
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