Tag: business
LinkedIn Marketing: Guide To Using LinkedIn for Business
LinkedIn is an incredibly popular professional networking platform with 571 million users around the world — and it’s still growing! In addition to peer-to-peer connections, brands can use LinkedIn marketing to drive awareness, sales, and growth.
Ad spend on LinkedIn is projected to reach $6.79 billion in 2024, demonstrating the importance for competitive brands to establish a presence on the platform and make the most of this fast-growing marketing niche.
Here, we’ll take a look at LinkedIn marketing, why it’s important, and how your brand can get started.
What Is LinkedIn Marketing?
Much like advertising on other social media platforms, LinkedIn marketing allows you to connect with the platform’s users. You can take advantage of several different marketing opportunities, from paid ads and sponsored thought leader posts to more organic methods of engaging LinkedIn users, such as posting original research and insights about your field.
Why Is Marketing on LinkedIn Important?
Marketing on LinkedIn is useful for businesses in a variety of industries, but it’s especially important for brands looking to reach other businesses and high-level professionals. Since most users self-report their industry, professional status, and level of experience when they sign up, you also get the benefit of highly specific audience targeting.
Optimizing Your LinkedIn Business Page
Whether your goal is to drive users to your LinkedIn profile or not, you’ll need to ensure your business page is optimized. This page is the face of your business on the platform, so it’s critical to make a good first impression.
Like other social media platforms, you’ll need to maximize your messaging within the parameters of the platform’s layout. Here are a few ways to make sure your brand can stand out on LinkedIn:
Complete Company Profile
A complete and informative company profile is an essential part of setting up your LinkedIn presence. If you leave out important details or information, it can send a negative message to potential customers, causing them to explore other options.
Engaging Banner Image
Social media is a visual medium, so use an engaging banner image to provide a strong first impression for your company. That could mean working with a graphic designer or finding a striking photograph to license that sums up the work you do.
Concise and Informative Description
A concise and informative description of what your brand does will help you stand out. Distill your brand’s story into as few words as possible. LinkedIn users are likely to compare your brand against others, so projecting confidence through your brand’s messaging is key.
Showcase Products and Services
The more specific information you can provide about your products and services, the more likely you are to make a positive impression. Use your page to showcase your best sellers, highlight seasonal offerings, and otherwise promote your products.
Make Your Contact Information Visible
Your potential LinkedIn page followers and viewers will no doubt have questions for you. Make it easy for them to reach out to you by providing contact information, be it an email, phone number, or direct message. Whatever the best way to reach your brand is — even if it’s a combination of these — that information should be readily available.
LinkedIn Marketing Best Practices
LinkedIn provides many helpful hints and pathways to help you start marketing on the platform. But there are many other steps you can take to optimize your campaign and help you stand out from the competition.
Know Your Target Audience
Once you’re on the platform, use LinkedIn’s built-in metrics to track who engages with your posts and ads and adjust future advertising efforts to match these insights. You’ll want to collect data about geographic location and industry to determine the best time to post on LinkedIn. Other information about demographics and interests can also be useful for engaging your audiences.
You’ll also need to identify the ad types your audience prefers. Whatever direction you choose, you’ll want to know the LinkedIn video ad specs for each format, too, so your advertising looks and feels seamless.
Use Hashtags
Using hashtags can help contextualize your content and make it searchable, broadening the reach of an organic post. They can also help users more easily find your brand and increase your chances of reaching a wider audience.
LinkedIn hashtags can help your brand contribute to existing trends and engage in larger conversations. This engagement with the platform shows your audience that your brand is tapped into the industry and essential conversations happening within it.
Use a Variety of Post Types
Despite having a more professional user base than most, LinkedIn remains a social media platform. This means your marketing needs to be engaging and informative to make an impact.
Ad fatigue — which is exactly what it sounds like, a phenomenon wherein viewers get sick of ads and begin responding negatively to them — is also a concern for both advertisers and viewers. You can avoid it by changing up your post format and consistently sharing fresh ad creative.
Video marketing, in particular, offers a variety of genres and tones to experiment with, so your content never feels stale. Some types of videos you might want to try include:
- Explainer videos to help your brand break down complex ideas or products relevant to your business.
- Culture videos to spotlight the company’s values (diversity, sustainability, etc).
- Mini-documentaries to share details on the company, its products, and its employees.
You can ensure your company remains relevant on LinkedIn by refreshing your ad creative by a consistent calendar. Many brands find that creating new ads every three months is a great way to keep their audience engaged. But, like other elements of marketing, it’s essential to test and find what works best for your specific audience.
Share External Content
Sharing external content allows you to grow your brand’s reputation and show engagement with larger conversations. If an article or video from a publication touches on your industry or why your product is important, make a point of sharing it with a little explanation of how your brand addresses the issues it raises. On LinkedIn, being considered a thought leader and being in (virtual) conversation with great minds are powerful and worthwhile.
Publish Content Consistently
Consistently sharing content on your LinkedIn page allows your brand to establish credibility as a market leader. This consistency leads to a sense of reliability in the eyes of your followers — that your brand sets expectations and then follows through on them. Plus, the LinkedIn algorithm prioritizes posts from brands that have already sustained some kind of engagement. By creating (and sticking to) a content calendar, you’ll be able to consistently reach your audience.
The Power of Video Marketing on LinkedIn
Video marketing on LinkedIn is a powerful way to grow your brand. It allows you to expand your reach and engage a growing pool of potential customers. The right video content can help keep your audience engaged longer while providing them with information about your company and solutions. Plus, you can tell a story, build a sense of authority, and grow your digital presence.
Enhanced Brand Visibility and Awareness
Video enhances your brand visibility and consumer awareness for your brand, in a way that still imagery and text alone can’t.
Large-scale campaigns may seem beyond your capabilities (not to mention your budget), but new digital tools and data analysis systems make it possible to give your brand a larger digital footprint than might have previously been possible — at a more affordable price tag. By streamlining your video production flow, you can put your brand on a footing with much larger enterprises and continue refining your campaign until it gets the results you’re looking for.
Humanizing Your Brand
By including people in your videos — employees, people who enjoy your products or services, and so on — you can make your brand feel relatable and human. Simply reciting your brand’s advantages is not as emotional as forging a sense of connection to the people who make your product shine. And even on a site like LinkedIn, emotion remains a critical factor in driving sales. (Just don’t go overboard and get yourself cross-posted on Reddit.)
Improved Message Retention
Telling your story through video is a great way to improve your message’s retention among viewers. Studies show users retain more of what they see in a video than static or text posts. So with the right video marketing strategy, you’ll be able to share your message in a way that promotes brand recognition.
Increased Conversion Rates
If you’re looking for thought leaders or industry professionals with expertise, LinkedIn is the place to go. LinkedIn itself says its users have two times the buying power of the average online audience, creating a significant difference in intent and ability to make purchasing decisions.
Making LinkedIn Videos at Scale
As a LinkedIn partner, QuickFrame knows how to help your brand stand out on the platform, grow your audience, and increase your sales. QuickFrame’s end-to-end video creation platform streamlines the video production timeline by connecting your brand with leading video makers around the globe.
Ready to optimize your LinkedIn video marketing strategy? Contact us today to get started with LinkedIn video production.
LinkedIn Marketing: Final Thoughts
With professional connections and eager, high-intent users, LinkedIn marketing is a particularly impactful environment for connecting with audiences. The platform provides several advantages for advertisers, including greater brand visibility, improved information retention, and increased conversion rates.
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