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What is LinkedIn marketing?
I think first we need to determine, what is LinkedIn marketing in the first place as after speaking with so many clients I can see everyone has a slightly different idea, none of which are wrong, just descriptions of different aspects of Linkedin marketing.
LinkedIn marketing could be defined as the use of LinkedIn to generate leads, drive website traffic, and build brand awareness. How we do that using LinkedIn is another thing altogether.
How do we do Linkedin marketing?
Paid
5 different ways: Sponsored Content, Message Ads, Dynamic Ads, and Text Ads.
This is where you can pay LinkedIn and can choose from:
Sponsored content where it will show in your target audience news feed,
Message ads where they get a message in their inbox,
Dynamic ads personalize each advert seen by your audience by taking their profile information and actually inserting it into the advert for example their job title or current company
Text adverts are adverts the appear on the right side of the home screen.
Pro's
You can reach a wide audience
Builds brand awareness
Multiple forms of paid advertising available
Can segment your audience to a defined characteristic using their search filters for example:
Company size
Company name
Member schools
Member interests
Member groups
Skills
Job title
Job seniority
And more
Con's
Can be expensive to test
Potentially low conversion rates
Indirect unpaid
Content creation
This can be for your own profile or for a company profile and can take many forms:
Written posts - writing posts straight from the news feed, meaning anyone part of your network can see that content and is associated with your company or personal profile.
Memes - creating and uploading memes and infographics and posting from your home page
Video content - Uploading video content
Polls - Creating a poll which is a short questionnaire to get feedback from your current audience.
Articles - writing articles directly onto the news feed.
Events - creating and hosting events that are posted onto your companies page.
Pro's
Can be a great source of inbound leads
Build brand awareness
When you post content your audience is often notified
Can be done in house and can without cost
Con's
Time-consuming
New strategies often required
Content needs creating continuously
Groups
Posting your content groups can be a great way to get seen by more people, you can post all of the content from your news feed direct onto group networks you are connected to. This helps again build brand awareness and engagements and can be a source of inbound leads.
Pro's
Increased awareness
Larger audience
Source of new leads
Con's
Often little group participation
Direct
New connections
With LinkedIn's new limitations this is now restricted to just 400 new invitation connection requests per month. This is a big difference from what it used to be, 2000 monthly. The benefit however of using this approach is you can use all of the same search filters as you sore for paid advertising to home in on your ideal target marketing.
Create an engaging introduction message and then a follow-up series of messages to try get direct qualified leads.
Pros
Targeted audience
Can be a good source of lead generation
Con's
LinkedIn limitation
Direct messaging
This can be done to your current 1st tier connection and to group members. It is unclear to the exact limitations imposed by Linkedin but you are able to message group messages even if they are not their 1 connections which increases your scope for direct messaging.
Pros
Targeted audience
Can be a good source of lead generation
Con's
LinkedIn limitation
Benefits and conclusion
Linkedin is for B2B sales, which has the main advantage of being able to fine-tune your target audience giving you a great opportunity to connect with your ideal customer base.
The use of direct marketing on Linkedin can work with amazing results getting you highly targeted leads for a very low cost.
Using a combination of Linkedin direct and indirect adverting can consequentially then enormously increase your conversion rates.
I would advise that if you are on a low budget, start with Linkedin direct and unpaid indirect to start building an audience and generating leads. For those with larger budgets available you can then incorporate paid advertising across the different channels Linkedin has available to increase your conversion rates and your overall brand awareness.