LinkedIn Marketing Strategies and Key Steps to Success

LinkedIn is the social media of the business world. If you’re a B2B marketer, it absolutely needs to be a part of your overall marketing strategy. That’s because social media lets you connect with other people in the world of business — giving you access to decision-makers and decision influencers in your target market. With the right strategy, your LinkedIn content can lead these decision-makers to your website and convert them into leads.

LinkedIn marketing takes many forms: you might be posting case studies, advertising new services, or educating potential clients. Since it’s business-focused, it’s more important than ever for your marketing materials to reflect the best aspects of your brand by using engaging, effective design.

We'll be talking about:

Finding Your LinkedIn Audience

Defining Your LinkedIn Marketing Goals

3 LinkedIn Marketing Tactics You Need to Know

Develop Your LinkedIn Marketing Strategy

Maximize Your LinkedIn B2B Marketing Efforts

Finding Your LinkedIn Audience

Marketing on LinkedIn is different from other social media sites because the focus is on business, with a lot less flash and distraction than other channels. Given the professional setting, it’s more important than ever to use professional marketing materials.

Take a moment to compare what you see on Instagram or Twitter to what you see on LinkedIn — the tone of the platforms is profoundly different. Where other social media like TikTok are focused on entertainment, friendship, and leisure, LinkedIn acts as the professional wateringhole, where networks are built, connections maintained, and career (or business) opportunities are born. It’s value to B2B marketers cannot be overstated.

To get an idea of who’s on LinkedIn, and what they’re doing there, check out these stats from Hootsuite:

57% identify as men, and more than half are between 25 and 34
Over three-quarters of users are outside the US
49 million people weekly use the site to help with a job search

Those stats show a remarkably diverse audience to tap into. And LinkedIn offers some advice on how to do just that: According to LinkedIn, “If there’s one thing LinkedIn members find engaging, it’s a fresh idea.” LinkedIn users might be looking for new job opportunities, researching clients, trends, and industries, or simply networking with other people in their field.

But they’re not the only people on LinkedIn. You’ll also find industry thought leaders, CEOs, and high-up decision-makers. If you’re a B2B brand, LinkedIn is a great way to get your content in front of executives and corporate leadership — exactly the kind of decision makers you're going to want to impress.

Defining Your LinkedIn Marketing Goals

The specific audience you’re after will depend on your marketing goals, which will in turn shape your marketing materials and tactics. Here are some common goals for B2B marketing:

Build brand awareness. Someone can’t buy your product or service if they’ve never heard of you.
Establish yourself as an industry leader. Your content doesn’t have to be all about your brand — you can also use LinkedIn to share ideas and show off your expertise.
Drive traffic to your website. Get your audience to click through to your website where they can join your mailing list, request a quote, learn more about your organization, or hire you for a project.
Attract talent and encourage partnerships. When looking for new opportunities, it’s common for professionals to check out your LinkedIn page to get an idea of the company culture, offerings, and opportunities.

Ready to crush those goals? Then it’s time for a strategy.

3 LinkedIn Marketing Tactics You Need to Know

Your marketing tactics will depend on who you’re trying to reach. At Superside we offer a Video Productions Solution for enterprises who are ready to take their business to the next level by adding video content to their site and socials — so that’s something we post about on LinkedIn.

Think about what you have to offer and who you want to interact with your content. This will form the basis of your custom B2B marketing strategy.

Here are the three main marketing techniques that B2B Marketers use on LinkedIn.

1. Content Marketing: Most marketing that you see on LinkedIn is content marketing. This simply means that the person or organization who posts the content is sharing media — such as a video, image, or just text — that grabs people’s interest. It isn’t an explicit advertisement, but it works to build interest in the brand and what they have to offer. For example, Superside recently posted a video on LinkedIn about how to give designers feedback — it’s useful (and amusing!) for anyone in the industry, but also has some helpful tips and information about our offerings.

2. Account-Based Marketing: ABM is more targeted and personalized than general content marketing. Since LinkedIn lets you make connections with decision-makers and influencers in your target field, you can simplify the process by using LinkedIn message templates and focus your marketing resources on getting their attention. For example, if you’re a PR consultant who wants to reach out to potential clients on LinkedIn, you might have used Superside to create an explainer video about your firm’s offering. Send a link via InMail to connections who might be interested in working with you. Don’t be shy — according to a 2021 report, 73% of buyers are more likely to consider a brand if its salesperson reaches out on LinkedIn. It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution to marketing, but the effort often pays off since you’re chasing more qualified leads. Consider creating a list of qualified leads and utilising an email scraping tool in order to leverage multi-channel sales outreach.

3. Influencer Marketing: When you think about social media influencers, LinkedIn might not be the first platform that comes to mind. But they’re definitely there–much like their counterparts on Instagram and YouTube, LinkedIn influencers are popular content producers who have a substantial following and authority in their field. Influencer marketing is a way of pairing up with these professionals to tap into their audience and use their credibility to your advantage. Influencers aren’t just the biggest names in the business — don’t forget about micro-influencers who have a niche following. Try searching hashtags related to your target market (like #animation or #experientialmarketing) to see who’s posting popular and engaging content on a particular topic.

Develop Your LinkedIn Marketing Strategy

When developing your brand’s B2B Strategy, you may choose just one of these tactics or go for a combination of one or more. It helps to think about the sales funnel when developing your strategy. You can reach ToFu (top-of-funnel) leads with more wide-reaching tactics like content marketing or influencer marketing. Once you’ve captured someone’s interest and are moving down the funnel, MoFu (middle-of-funnel) marketing tactics like ABM might be more appropriate. Then, once they’re ready to start a working relationship with you, get them to the BoFu (bottom of the funnel) with a presentation.

To streamline and automate your LinkedIn outreach efforts, Linked Helper is an excellent tool. It allows you to efficiently manage connection requests, messaging sequences, and follow-ups, ensuring that you maintain engagement with potential leads throughout the funnel. This can be particularly effective in the MoFu and BoFu stages, where personalized and timely communication is crucial.

As with any marketing efforts, be sure to track the ROI — you can use analytics tools on LinkedIn to help determine which strategies have had the biggest return. A platform like Superside is great for creating multiple design iterations and then A/B testing them to see which is most effective for a particular group or platform.

Maximize Your LinkedIn B2B Marketing Efforts

Now that you know who you’re marketing to and how you’ll go about it, it’s time to hone in your B2B marketing strategy itself. If you’re relatively new to marketing on the platform, LinkedIn offers free resources about marketing on their platform.

1. Build a brand identity

Just like on other social media platforms, your identity or presence on LinkedIn is an important part of getting your message across. When creating your business page on LinkedIn, stick to a consistent aesthetic and branding. You don’t have to have your own design team to create a brand identity — you can hire Superside to do the heavy lifting!

Here are some things to consider when building your profile on LinkedIn:

Use profile and header images that are friendly and approachable, but still professional. That might be a picture of your team on a team-building hike in branded shirts or a photo of you at your desk instead of a formal headshot.
Don’t neglect your bio — sum up what your company is all about and what kind of work you do. Try to tell a story about your organization rather than just listing off facts, and include examples that potential customers will connect with.
If you have employees with personal profiles who will also help market your brand, help them stick to the aesthetic as well with consistent headshots or banners.

2. Create engaging content

No matter who you’re targeting or what your goals are, it’s essential to have engaging content to keep your audience’s attention. On Instagram or Facebook, you might make your posts stand out with a flashy picture or funny video. But on LinkedIn, most people are looking for professional content, so try to grab their attention with a thought-provoking question or statistic, then encourage conversation in the comments that leads back to your business. For example, our recent LinkedIn poll asked marketers how they learn about new trends.

Here are some tips to make it happen:

Include graphics with your posts. Posts with images get twice the engagement of text posts, so it definitely pays off. Multimedia is also an extremely effective tool for grabbing and holding attention. Consider using Superside’s dedicated video production team to create off-the-charts amazing visual content that entices your target audience from the get-go.
Dazzle with your words. If you want people to read your posts, then make sure your writing is top-notch. It’s essential you hire a professional copywriter or editor, or invest in high-caliber freelance talent.
Make your content skimmable. If you’re trying to reach high-level execs or decision-makers with your content, chances are they’re pretty busy. Keep your content short and to the point, or include a summary at the top. In longer posts, use headers or a listicle format to make the content easy to navigate.
Encourage interaction through comments and polls, too. This helps your posts perform better and gets people talking about your content.
Your ad design itself should be attractive, engaging, and professional (something we'd be happy to help you out with).

Make Sure Your Content Is Shareable

When you make shareable content, your audience does half your marketing work for you. By having your post shared on LinkedIn, it’ll make its way onto the feeds of a wider network. It can also get more favorable treatment from LinkedIn’s algorithm — when determining what to show in users’ feeds, the algorithm prioritizes content with more engagement, such as likes, shares, and comments.

The number one way to get people to share your B2B marketing content is to create engaging and beautiful content that people want to share. According to LinkedIn, the most shareable content is relatable, emotional, current, and beneficial. For example, a cybersecurity company might use Superside to create a graphic showing common threats that businesses face, alongside solutions and a plug for their security services. This might be shared by IT professionals who want to raise awareness about online security.

Besides that, here are some tips to get more people clicking the share button:

Be a thought leader by saying something from your unique experience, like presenting original research, case studies, or a thought-provoking opinion piece. Your followers may want to share new ideas or information with their own connections.
Ask people to share. Whether it’s your followers or your employees, there’s nothing wrong with a little self-promotion. Encourage sharing to boost your message. For example, the cybersecurity company we mentioned above might do this by saying “Share this and let us know your company’s biggest security concern — maybe we can help.”
Invite discussion. Get your audience to join in on the conversation by sharing your post and adding their own thoughts. If appropriate, you can spark a dialogue about trends or current events that relate to your content and your brand. For example, an infographic about good motion design practices might ask people to comment with a GIF from their favorite animated film.

See how we combined cute visuals with a conversation-starter question?

Encourage Interaction and Conversion

If one of your B2B marketing goals is to drive traffic to your website, then posting content on LinkedIn is a great way to do that. It works the other way around too — you can post your LinkedIn content on your website or install a widget that pulls in your latest posts or allows you to embed LinkedIn posts so that your visitors can connect with you via LinkedIn.

Offer a teaser. If you want to attract readers to your blog or encourage them to download a gated resource from your website, consider just posting a snippet on LinkedIn. This can build interest without giving away the whole post, which encourages readers to click through to your site and finish reading.
Link to related articles. Having a robust content strategy helps drive engagement because you can interlink your content. Add links to related blogs, graphics, or reports to your social posts to drive more traffic.
Make sure your web design is top-notch too. Readers are more likely to interact with your website if it’s engaging, easy to read, and attractive.

Post Consistently

Consistency is key to building your brand awareness and authority. Once you have your brand identity nailed down, put it into practice by posting consistently. That doesn’t have to mean every day — Influencer Marketing tested different recommendations from marketing gurus and found that most suggest posting three to five times a week.

Consider when your readers are online (and in what time zone) — Influencer Marketing’s report found that most people use LinkedIn during the week, often on their lunch break or commute. Use LinkedIn Analytics to study which of your posts do the best, and when you posted them. You might want to test different post times to see what works for your particular audience.
Add LinkedIn posts to your marketing schedule along with posts for other social platforms. You might not post as frequently as on Facebook or Twitter, but you can’t let LinkedIn fall by the wayside.
Not every post has to be an in-depth blog or report. A simple status update — ideally with a link to your website or a snippet of one of your blogs — will keep your followers engaged with your content and keep your brand top-of-mind.

Make LinkedIn a Key Part of Your Marketing Strategy

With it's ability to connect with the exact B2B decision-makers that your business wants to get in front of, LinkedIn is arguably the most important social media channels for B2B businesses.

Making the most of it, and getting your brand and content in front of people who matter is key. Ready to get started? Chat with us today, and we'll help you take your LinkedIn strategy to the next level.