LinkedIn has evolved beyond a mere job board or professional network; it has increasingly proven a powerful marketing tool. However, when it comes to marketing, a well-thought-out strategy is crucial.
After all, this is where you can generate leads, build professional relationships, and create brand awareness. Here are ten tips for a successful and sustainable marketing strategy for your company on LinkedIn.
Define Clear Objectives
Only those who know their goal can plan the path to reach it. This applies to your plans on LinkedIn as well. The content you publish, whether graphic, text, or cross-reference, largely depends on the goal you are pursuing.
Therefore, establish the primary objectives right from formulating a LinkedIn marketing strategy. This way, you’ll always have a guide for preparing broader and more precise goals later.
Examples of these general objectives could be:
- Building brand awareness in the market.
- Strengthening the brand’s reputation.
- Generating leads.
- Boosting sales.
In addition to the primary objectives, clearly define the target audience. Simple definitions, as well as sociodemographic values, can be helpful. Access external evaluations of your website, for example, through Google Analytics, to identify potential target groups efficiently.
Strengthen Your LinkedIn Company Page
Your company’s business card on LinkedIn is the company page. This is where various interested parties first get to know you. All information about the company must be visible at first glance. Questions like “Where is the company located?” or “What is the provider’s expertise?” should be answered directly.
Additionally, linking your company’s website and presenting internal company information transparently, such as the number of employees, is worthwhile. LinkedIn asks the right questions when creating the company page, so you don’t have to worry about it.
In addition to an appropriate title and profile picture, a meaningful company description should be noted.
Regularly Optimize
Only those who consistently optimize their company page will end up at the top of search results within and outside LinkedIn, making them easier to find.
A clear recommendation in this regard is to put yourself in your target audience’s shoes. What terms would your target audience likely use to search for your company? Use these terms exactly in your company description.
Also, include a link to your company page in your profile. This will also boost your rankings in Google search results, as the position in search results depends on how often external websites (such as LinkedIn) link to your website.
Encourage your employees who already use LinkedIn to include you as their employer with the linked company profile. This approach generates reach. The more people follow your profile, the more relevant your shared content becomes.
Encourage external individuals to follow you on LinkedIn. A common practice for this is a link in your email signature or a button on your website.
What Are Others Doing?
With the “Companies to Follow” feature, LinkedIn allows you to observe your competitors. Here, you can watch the increase in followers after a post or another action on LinkedIn. It’s also worth looking at the best examples from other companies and, if necessary, incorporating them into your strategy.
Stay True to Yourself and Your Target Audience
Retaining followers is even more challenging than achieving the pre-established follower goal. A channel can quickly become irrelevant due to neglect. This is where consistency is crucial. Share content that is genuinely relevant to your target audience and aligns with your company’s brand.
There are two types of content you can share: on the one hand, there are current industry guides and trends. On the other hand, it’s also worth sharing so-called “thought leadership articles.” These articles help expand the audience and increase engagement with the LinkedIn target audience.
Thought leadership articles can be classified into three subtypes:
- Industry insights: perspectives on industry trends.
- Company information: get to know your company’s vision, values, and culture.
- Product information: potential solutions to your target audience’s problems.
Necessary: When formulating thought leadership articles, ensure they don’t sound too promotional. This can quickly lead to disinterest or even antipathy.
To position the company as open to industry news, you can also comment on and share the posts of other LinkedIn members. This is how relationships are built and the social spirit of the platform is maintained. However, don’t just post a link.
Briefly summarize the post for your target audience. For example, use a headline, key points, appropriate images, and relevant hashtags.
Illustrate Your Ideas
According to LinkedIn, images generate twice as much interaction within the target audience. In contrast, videos are five times more likely to prompt a conversation. PDFs (e.g., whitepapers) or presentations are also suitable in this case.
Of course, the above guideline applies here: videos and images must always support your company’s authenticity and align with your brand.
Good Planning Is Key
Regular content automatically provides a broader reach. LinkedIn recommends posting at least once a day. This also raises the target audience’s expectations. Nothing stands in the way of high reach if you discover the perfect time to post for your target audience.
Utilize Your Team
LinkedIn allows contacting all employees directly when new posts are published through the “Notify the Team” feature. In the best-case scenario, your employees share and like your posts, ensuring a larger audience. Therefore, you should always use this function.
Analyze the Statistics
LinkedIn offers an internal analytics tool to measure the success of your posts. The values can help you optimize future posts and get more out of them.
Additionally, you can see which form of content receives the most reach and interactions. From there, you can continue working on it.
Derive Goals from Website Statistics
LinkedIn offers an excellent way to learn more about your target audience with the Insight tag, which can be embedded on your website. The Insight tag is usually used for evaluating paid advertising campaigns on LinkedIn.
However, even without an ongoing campaign, it provides information about the demographic characteristics of visitors to your website who navigated from LinkedIn.
Conclusion on LinkedIn Marketing Strategy
Regardless of the scale, a company profile on LinkedIn helps you present yourself more professionally. This is due not only to the established network of potential new employees but also to the professional contacts and the resulting generation of opportunities.
LinkedIn has become an indispensable social network for professionals and businesses. With a structured and well-thought-out marketing strategy, you, too, can celebrate success with LinkedIn.
