LinkedIn is a great place to make connections and promote your business, provided you do it the right way. Unlike other social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook, you’re not necessarily marketing to the general public. You’re dealing with decision-makers on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is a great place to make connections and promote your business, provided you do it the right way. Unlike other social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook, you’re not necessarily marketing to the general public. You’re dealing with decision-makers on LinkedIn. It’s a platform that works well for B2B selling for this very reason.
The idea behind LinkedIn is to make genuine, valuable connections, rather than just one point of contact that results in a sale. That’s why LinkedIn can feel like hard work, but when done properly, the results can be amazing.
Here are some valuable tips for making connections and promoting your business on LinkedIn.
Forget about spam
One of the best tips we can give for using LinkedIn is to forget about spam techniques. While these may work on other platforms, LinkedIn users have a low tolerance for spam. It’s a place they visit to read quality content, have meaningful business discussions and make serious connections.
That’s not to say you can’t take a cold-call approach by messaging people directly, but make it personal. The majority of LinkedIn users can identify a spam message and will delete it straight away.
Use customer and connection targeting
LinkedIn has some amazing targeting available. When using LinkedIn’s marketing features, it’s simply a matter of searching for a particular audience and applying appropriate filters to the search. This is how you target decision-makers. For example, if you want to sell products purely to hotel owners, you can narrow your targeting by industry, location, company size and even job role.
Create quality content
LinkedIn users are always looking for great content. They don’t want pointless status updates, or even to hear about your daily specials. They’re hungry for informative, useful content that inspires them. If you’re not a great writer, it’s worth finding a copywriter to produce written content for you.
The whole idea is to establish yourself or your brand as a thought leader in your industry. If your content answers questions or solves problems for your readers, you can open up some terrific lines of communication. Plus, the more that people comment and share, the more exposure your content gets.
Join LinkedIn groups
Find some groups that your target audience is likely to be a part of, and join in the fun. This gives you a double benefit. Firstly, it’s an opportunity to gather intel on your audience – what do they like, what don’t they like, what do they need. You’ll find out what sort of content they engage with, and even find some avenues to solve their issues.
Secondly, you can join in the discussions and again, establish yourself as a thought leader. In these situations, you don’t want to be pushy in offering your products and services. Simply gain a reputation for quality advice, and people develop trust in your brand.
Grow your email marketing list
One of the best strategies for LinkedIn is to take your marketing away from the platform. We’ve mentioned that people don’t necessarily go to LinkedIn to be sold something. But that doesn’t mean you should waste all those connections.
When someone connects with you personally, or through your business page, why not send them a message asking them to join your email list? It’s completely optional, and it’s their choice. That way, when you’ve got valuable deals to offer or even just monthly newsletters to send out, you’ve got a whole host of people who are keen to read. But the best thing is, you don’t seem like a pest on LinkedIn.
Ultimately, it takes some time to make connections and grow your audience on LinkedIn, but due to the audience on the platform, it’s well worth the effort. Develop a LinkedIn marketing strategy and stick to it. Be selective with the content you post, follow the right people for inspiration, and get yourself involved in conversations that establish you as a trusted professional or brand. Even without using LinkedIn’s paid advertising services, you can still make an impact.
