Mastering LinkedIn Marketing: Proven Strategies to Boost Your Business Presence & ROI
November 27, 2023
Sarvesh Bagla
What has changed from the original post:
1. Edits to the article headings and sub-heading
2. Additions to the intro
3. Additions to the ‘What is LinkedIn marketing’ section content
4. Keyword integration and overall content additions/edits
5. Added ‘importance of LinkedIn marketing’
Summary: A guide to LinkedIn marketing strategy for brands and individuals who wish to leverage the same for increased ROI and brand promotion.
Unlike other social media platforms, LinkedIn is a place for the ones who wish to build connections in the professional world and not just share kitty pictures. It’s a serious world of professionals, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and the who’s who of the corporate world.
LinkedIn is one of the foremost professional networking and B2B marketing tools, serving as a hub for professionals to interact with other professionals and brands and seek job opportunities.
The perfect place to showcase and promote your brand, LinkedIn can help you reach the right audience, thus leading to greater conversions. Creating a successful LinkedIn marketing is key to achieving the same and leading to the establishment of a strong presence, connecting with your audience, and utilizing the platform’s numerous capabilities.
In this blog, we cover some easily actionable and effective LinkedIn marketing tips to help you make the most of LinkedIn for your marketing initiatives.
What is LinkedIn Marketing
LinkedIn marketing entails using LinkedIn’s features and resources to connect with a target audience, create connections, and achieve certain marketing goals. An effective LinkedIn marketing plan does not require a magic trick or keeping your fingers crossed.
All it needs is a well-planned LinkedIn marketing strategy to achieve your goals, as no other social media site rewards content creators with as many leads and conversions as LinkedIn.
Here’s why LinkedIn is one of the most promising social networking sites to give visibility to your brand it deserves and gain more conversions than any other social platform.
- 80% of all leads via social media generated via LinkedIn
- Greater revenue generation to 38% of B2B marketers
- 46% of all social media traffic for B2B websites
In a nutshell, LinkedIn Marketing is defined as the strategies devised and executed by marketers to achieve unique objectives – scaling website traffic, enhancing brand visibility, generating sales queries, forging business partnerships, acquiring customers, etc.
Don’t be Shy About LinkedIn Marketing. Here’s Why!
LinkedIn has over 950 million users, making it the world’s largest professional networking site.
In addition, LinkedIn is regarded as having a more active and sophisticated user base than other social networking networks. As a result, it’s an excellent platform for companies and people trying to promote their brands, generate leads, and create thought leadership in their sector.
How to Create an Effective LinkedIn Marketing Strategy
Now that we’ve touched base with the ‘what’ and the ‘importance’ of LinkedIn marketing strategy, it’s time to delve into some of the most effective steps for a robust and effective LinkedIn marketing strategy. So, let’s begin!
Define your goals and audience
Now that you have set up and optimized your company page on LinkedIn, you need to define your LinkedIn campaign objectives and define your target audience on LinkedIn based on demographics, industry, job titles, and interests.
As displayed in the image above, the objectives can be grouped into three categories: awareness, consideration, and conversions. It is equally important to identify the target audience. Like any other marketing campaign, you need to appeal to the target audience; otherwise, your message will get lost amid the noise. Fortunately, LinkedIn allows various targeting possibilities.
Your brand’s LinkedIn presence, like any other marketing plan, should have a defined aim. Don’t just shoot in the dark and pray to hit the mark. A clearly defined set of objectives for your LinkedIn marketing strategy ensures that your efforts are aligned with your goals, thus making it easier for you to achieve them. Your goals can be anything ranging from:
- Enhancing brand awareness
- Lead generation
- Thought leadership promotion
Source: https://business.linkedin.com
It’s critical to establish who your target audience is and what information they want from your LinkedIn Page. LinkedIn analytics is the best place to identify demographics particular to your target audience. You can view what industries your followers are in, their job titles, and their location on your Visitor and Follower dashboards. Use this data to shape your future content, but also to determine whether your current one is reaching the desired audience.
Optimize your LinkedIn company page
If you do not have a company page, one of the first things you should do is create one. Fortunately, creating a company page is incredibly easy.
Once you’re on the ‘create a company page’ choose an option that best describes your brand or venture.
Add all the basic information about your company related to brand identity, summary, business email, website, etc. Also, make sure your company page has a captivating logo, a banner picture, and a clear company description with relevant keywords to ensure improved searchability.
Adding relevant information to your page is key to the visibility of your brand as pages with complete information get 30% more weekly views.
Showcase Pages can also be used as an add-on to your main LinkedIn business page, as it is a great tool for enterprise-level organizations to promote unique business divisions, sub-brands, products/services, or even initiatives. For example, if your brand has achieved a significant achievement or has reached a milestone, which warrants a ‘shout-out’, Showcase Pages is the best way to bring it to the LinkedIn community. (We’ll talk about this in detail later in the article. Just ride with us!)
Upon completion of this step, your company page will act as the foundation of your brand’s presence on LinkedIn.
Update LinkedIn Profile & Banner Images
For a LinkedIn page, a profile and banner image are great for communicating your identity and sharing the USPs of your brand. It is best to use your logo as the company’s profile image and make a banner that conveys the unique objective of your company. Follow LinkedIn’s Page Best Practices to make the most of your company page.
Write a stand-out bio for your company page
Writing a compelling LinkedIn bio for your company page is crucial for making a positive impression on visitors. Here are some tips to help you craft an effective LinkedIn bio for your company:
- Concise overview
Start with a brief and concise overview of your company. Clearly communicate what your company does and its primary mission or goals.
- Highlight unique selling points
Emphasize what sets your company apart from others. Highlight key strengths, unique selling points, or any awards or recognitions.
- Engaging storytelling
Share a brief, engaging story about the founding of your company or a key milestone. This humanizes the brand and can resonate with your audience.
- Mission and values
Clearly state your company’s mission and values. This helps align your brand with like-minded professionals and organizations.
- Industry keywords
Include relevant industry keywords to optimize your company page for search. This helps your page appear in relevant searches on LinkedIn.
- Accomplishments and milestones
Showcase significant accomplishments and milestones. This could include product launches, successful projects, or any notable achievements.
- Target audience
Identify your target audience and speak directly to their needs and interests. Explain how your products or services provide value to them.
- Visual content
Include visually appealing elements such as a high-quality company logo, a cover photo, and any multimedia content that represents your brand effectively.
- Call to action
End your bio with a clear call to action. This could be an invitation to visit your website, contact your team, or explore your latest offerings.
Optimize your company page for more traffic and leads
Google processes nearly 99,000 search queries every second or 8.5 billion searches per day and is widely considered to be the behemoth of inbound traffic. Optimizing your company’s LinkedIn business page for search engines can expand your page’s footprint and will help you meet your target audience’s search intent, directly making your content more relevant to the users.
To achieve this, a tactical approach to this goal is the need of the hour. For example, on our LinkedIn business page, we’ve kept the tagline concise yet conveying our business’s unique offering upfront. We have added “Digital Excellence” to the tagline of our LinkedIn page, conveying our USP of delivering Transformational Growth to brands with Digital Excellence. Similarly, you can identify your own USPs as per the business and target audience.
After optimizing the tagline/title, you can direct your attention to the “About” section, which is an ideal place to add keywords for SEO purposes. Here, you get a chance to talk about your brand in detail and tell the world about what your brand is all about, what it offers, and what makes it different from the competition. Share your brand’s values, mission, and vision, and engage your targeted audience by addressing their pain points with the solutions to address them.
Since it just isn’t about getting more inbound traffic, you need to direct your optimization strategy to boost the conversion rate as well. Having a proper vision and mission statement, value proposition, and CTAs is crucial.
Create showcase pages to endorse your products/services
As promised, we are back to the topic of ‘Showcase Pages’ to help you take your brand to the promised land. The beauty of having a company page is that you can make small subpages called Showcase Pages. You can make a showcase page(s) to promote different products and services or make the experience personalized.
For instance, if you have multiple buyer personas, the showcase page can direct the prospects to products and services that are relevant to them.
| Page Type |
Page URL |
| Parent Page |
linkedin.com/company/cisco/ |
| Showcase Page |
linkedin.com/showcase/cisco-data-center-and-cloud/ |
Moreover, LinkedIn provides businesses with valuable analytics for each showcase page, from which you can gain insights and optimize them.
Unlock success with a great content strategy
Remember, LinkedIn is not Twitter or Instagram but a virtual land of professions, where engagement and activity are the keys to being visible and noticed. In fact, companies that post weekly see a 2X boost in engagement.
To drive this, you need a viable LinkedIn content strategy as an integral part of your LinkedIn marketing strategy to achieve quantifiable objectives. As part of your content strategy, the following are some of the most effective steps you can take to reach out to the target audience and engage them in productive conversations.
- Share long-form LinkedIn articles to build authority
- Devise engaging posts using quotes from experts and designing carousels
- Share blog posts you’ve published on your website
- Include a mix of blog posts, articles, infographics, videos, and other media formats
- Use storytelling to make your content more relatable
- Create and publish native LinkedIn videos
- Share hiring posts & people activities to boost employee engagement
- Bolster reach with LinkedIn ads and sponsored posts
A key point to keep in mind is that your LinkedIn content strategy does not have to be rigid. You can always use and review LinkedIn analytics to adjust your plans and improve your content accordingly.
Use LinkedIn Ads for your revenue goals
Targeted advertising is crucial to reach a larger audience on LinkedIn. The social network has over 200 targeting attributes that allow you to target users based on their name, region, industry, job title, and more. LinkedIn has different ad types, such as:
- Sponsored Content
- Sponsored InMail
- Dynamic Ads
- Text Ads.
| Ad Type |
Overview |
Content Format |
Device Availability |
| Sponsored Ads |
These ads appear in the professional feed of your target audience. LinkedIn labels these posts as “promoted” to distinguish them from organic posts. Sponsored ads allow you to share your brand’s message with more people on LinkedIn. For these ads, you can go with a carousel, single image, and video post. |
1. Single image ads
2. Carousel ads
3. Video ads
4. Single job ads
5. Event ads
6. Document ads |
All |
| Text Ads |
Text Ads appear on the right side of the screen (LinkedIn’s desktop screen). These ads consist of a headline, brief text, and an image. Text Ads are great for building strong leads within the professional demographic. |
Single Format: Compelling headlines, description, and strong CTA. |
Desktop |
| Sponsored InMails |
Sponsored InMail or Messages enable you to directly advertise into the inbox of LinkedIn members. |
InMail Copy: It should be concise, personalized, and relevant. |
All |
| Dynamic Ads |
Dynamic ads are small, personalized and visible to the audience on the right side of the feed.
There are two types of Dynamic Ads: Follower Ads and Sponsored Ads. |
Automated |
Desktop |
While paid campaigns are always money-intensive and many users tend to avoid them, yet don’t lose sight of the bigger picture. Here are just a few of the upsides of advertising on LinkedIn and making this practice an indispensable part of your LinkedIn marketing strategy.
- Brand awareness
- Website visits
- Engagement
- Video views
- Lead generation
- Website conversions
- Job applicants
Additional Read: Social Media Marketing: A Step by Step Guide
Want your brand out there? Build connections!
Just as in the physical realm, building and nurturing connections is integral to a brand’s growth in the digital world. A social network for professionals, LinkedIn serves as the ideal platform for you to connect with not just clients but with peers, users in your niche, and even champions of the industry.
Start a conversation or get into an existing one with meaningful insights. Showcase your niche expertise, impress the audience, and watch your brand grow as more and more people start talking about you and your brand, what it has to offer, and how it can impact those looking for products or services that are right up your alley.
LinkedIn marketing can be tricky and needs to evolve as per trends, audience needs, and what works, like any other marketing strategy. However, by combining these elements into a cohesive LinkedIn marketing strategy, you can enhance your brand presence on LinkedIn and effectively reach and engage with your target audience.
We hope this blog bridges the gap between these things and helps you with the right LinkedIn marketing strategy. You can also connect with our LinkedIn marketing services experts for expert insights.