LinkedIn For Effective B2B Marketing
Ali Zeeshan Khan
"Crafting Success Stories: Director of Digital Marketing & Business Development | Formerly with CareCloud & Informa"
Many B2B marketers think that LinkedIn and other social media platforms are an ineffective tool for lead generation, opting instead to spend all their time and money at trade shows and advertising in trade publications. But LinkedIn, especially for B2B companies, can be a very effective tool to get new people to your website and drive awareness of your company.
Using LinkedIn as a marketing tool is a way to help your company attract new people to your website where you can pique their interest with great content and generate the sales lead. Using LinkedIn as an effective B2B lead generation tool is not as difficult as you might think. Here’s what you need to know.
According to a survey conducted by ROI Research, Inc., in which 2,997 social media users were polled:
- 59% of them said that it is more important to have a LinkedIn account than an account on any other social media.
- 50% of those polled said that they visit LinkedIn at least weekly, while 20% said they visit the site at least daily.
- In 2012, LinkedIn was the 23rd most visited website on the Internet, ahead of Craigslist, The Weather Channel website and Walmart’s website.
LinkedIn is the largest professional social network online today, with over 135 million users. Your customers are there, too.
So, how can you tap this inbound marketing opportunity? Here are a few ideas:
- Use it – Sounds simple, but you have to use your LinkedIn account for it to be effective. Log in often. Connect to your colleagues and your customers. Connect to your qualified prospects. Post updates.
- Upgrade – For a small fee, you get upgraded features like InMail that allows you to send messages directly to anyone with a LinkedIn account, whether or not they are in your network.
- Complete your profile – Did you know that LinkedIn says that you’re 40% more likely to have networking success when you have a complete profile? Being thorough with your profile will position you for networking success because you’ll have a better chance of showing up in a search.
- Make your profile visible to everyone – There’s no need to have a LinkedIn profile if no one can see it!
Empowering Marketing Performance | Agile Marketing Leader, Coach and Mentor | MHFA
8 年Not sure the comparison to Trade shows is that helpful? I'm personally quite pleased B2B marketers invest in trade show attendance.But i know many excellent B2B marketers who both utilize the benefits of LinkedIn for lead gen and invest in offline channels too. I'm not sure the two are mutually exclusive..... you can do both, surely? In fact, I believe they work better when integrated.... not 'instead of spending all their time and money at trade shows and advertising in trade publications.' but alongside?