LinkedIn, the leading social platform for professionals, it has about 740 million members and over 55 million registered companies. If that’s not a good enough reason to focus B2B marketing efforts on this platform, we have listed the newest LinkedIn features and framework designed for successful B2B marketing in 2021.
Why Use LinkedIn for B2B Leads Generation?
The world is still facing post-pandemic consequences and many businesses are in struggling mode. To many the pandemic brought uncertainty, but LinkedIn’s earnings have increased during the second quarter of 2021 by 23% (based on Microsoft’s earnings report.) Paid ads were responsible for a third of the company’s income. LinkedIn saw a new record of engagement with nearly 740 million users looking to professionally connect, learn, and find new opportunities.
On LinkedIn, B2B companies can place marketing and sales conversations directly in front of decision-makers, including C-suite executives. No doubt, that’s where B2B brands should introduce products and services to target customers, recruit employees and connect to influencers.
The most important platform for B2B leads generation that marketers should take advantage of is LinkedIn. Many of your potential clients are on LinkedIn, but you should carefully plan the buyer’s journey. It is very important to start the conversation in a timely matter while providing content that helps them evaluate their options. During the LinkedIn strategy planning, take into consideration the timing of engagement, context of content and set up clear goals for the engagement phase.
Now, let’s take a look at the impressive new features that LinkedIn encourages B2B marketers to incorporate into their post-pandemic workspace.
Top 2021 LinkedIn Features and B2B Marketing Tips
New LinkedIn Company Page Features
New company page features are all about visibility, engagement control and conversation. Algorithm changes give users the ability to control who can see their posts. While other platforms have issues with professional engagement, LinkedIn makes an effort to control spammy engagement and keep the conversation legit. You can choose who can comment on your posts: anyone, just your connections or no one. You can also customize by excluding comments of specific followers – the ones that try to do damage rather than give positive feedback to your company’s posts.
Company page additions designed to strengthen the branded community among users. In addition, LinkedIn rewards conversations of users who tag other users, ask questions and give feedback with longer post appearance time. Users now can post not only on personal and company pages, but also directly in groups.
New Content Features
The content section has also additional features, including company milestones. This is especially beneficial for large companies, which are now able to see employee information such as anniversaries, promotions and new employees. In addition, company employees can now easily share the content providing a solid ground for content marketing distribution and engagement on the platform. LinkedIn also added feature stories expansion, company news, and new lead generation functionalities from company pages.
Video Marketing for B2B
Video continues to be the most powerful medium to grab the attention of your audience at any step of the conversion funnel. According to QuickFrame’s survey, in 2020, over 80% of marketers incorporated video into organic, non-paid advertising strategies, website, content, social media, PR, webinars, internal communications, and more.
Not only will video continue to be the most favorable form of content, but the quick download speed presented with the rise of 5G also makes it a top method to communicate business content and messages. Obviously, the pandemic encouraged video consumption, but also the utilization of LinkedIn Live video streaming increased video usability by 89% in March 2020. Due to LinkedIn’s report: Live videos get, on average 7x more reactions and 24x more comments than native video produced by the same broadcasters.
In-person video interactions enhance the morale of co-working teams, bring communities together and educate clients with an effective way to present case studies and demo company features. LinkedIn Live brought dynamism to content marketers with an impactful way to strengthen value proposition and nurture more B2B leads.
Build Meaningful Relationship with Influencers
Successfully, LinkedIn Live enabled many businesses to drive brand awareness and increase engagement. When the live-streaming case studies are presented to your audience by an industry expert or an influencer, this method highly increases engagement. Marketing studies have shown that partnering with trusted influencers and co-creating content enhance marketing performance, increase engagement and strengthen branded credibility.
Take Advantage of LinkedIn Data
Did you define the audience that you want to reach? Great, the next step that will connect you with your target audience is the Matched Audience setup of your campaign. Simply upload a file with emails, LinkedIn will take care of matching these emails to relevant profiles. You can also take advantage of Lookalike Audience targeting to find similar connections to your target list.
Another useful targeting method to leverage with your ads is Account-Based Marketing. This method designed to reach the goal is a list of company names. LinkedIn easily finds the company names and matches similar companies from the 30 million company pages on this platform.
Don’t forget to add LinkedIn tags to your website. The tag is highly important for remarketing and targeting website visitors with engaging content. Remember that the minimal audience size on LinkedIn must be above 1,000 users. With the help of LinkedIn Insights Tag, a higher number of users provides more accurate and actionable data, including job titles and ads that resulted in the highest CTR (click-through-rate.)
LinkedIn has the highest CPC (cost-per-click) in comparison to other social platforms due the advantage of professional connectivity. If you are not familiar with LinkedIn’s campaign and audience setup features, we recommend spending your budget wisely. Our team is here to help you manage your bulk messaging campaigns and set up the outreach platform for your sales and marketing teams.
Now you know all about LinkedIn B2B marketing capabilities. Are you ready to start with LinkedIn and generate B2B leads? Contact us to help you set up the most optimal LinkedIn marketing funnel.
