If you are a start-up B2B business, then you’re probably no stranger to the struggles of making a name for yourself. Standing out from the competition is not always easy because your brand and messages need to be everywhere your customers are.
Smart business owners quickly discover that what works well for B2C businesses doesn’t apply to B2B. For instance, if you’re a B2C that sells pet food, positioning your ad next to cute cat videos will provide the context that you need to make a sale. But if you are selling SaaS (software as a service) alongside cat videos, it probably won’t have the same effect.
B2B businesses need to be able to reach their ideal customers when they are in a “business” frame of mind. The social media platform, LinkedIn is perfect for this. It’s a platform where professional people sign up to network, do research and grow their businesses and careers.
LinkedIn is the platform to be on if your goal is to build B2B brand awareness, grow your reach, gain more followers or increase engagement and conversions. Below are 4 ways businesses can use LinkedIn to build B2B brand awareness online.
1. Make sure that your LinkedIn Company page is set up correctly
Before you begin spreading the word about your brand, it’s best to make sure your LinkedIn Company Page is optimised for organic growth. Pages that are completed and optimised receive up to five times the page views and up to seven times the impressions per follower. To complete your page make sure that it includes a logo and that all profile information has been correctly filled out.
It’s also important that you keep your page active by posting helpful content regularly. Thought leadership is considered the most effective type of content on LinkedIn because it offers valuable education and insights as well as practical takeaways for followers. This type of content can go a long way in creating trust among potential B2B customers. Businesses that post once a week on their LinkedIn Company pages typically see double the engagement.
2. Reach the right audience
As a B2B business owner, you want to deliver content that’s relevant to the right audience at the right time. That’s where audience targeting is useful. You can target messages to a specific audience using profile-based attributes like job experience, company, demographics and more.
When engaging professionals, LinkedIn ads are a lot more effective than traditional email marketing, getting twice the open rates and double the engagement. In fact, brands have seen as much as a 33% increase in intent to purchase as a result of posting a LinkedIn ad. The secret is to avoid targeting an audience that is too narrow. LinkedIn recommends only choosing two or three relevant targeting options to see successful results.
3. Different strategies for different goals
Casting a wide net, in the beginning, is great for generating B2B brand awareness. At some point though, you will need to drill down and get more specific using LinkedIn’s targeting features to start converting customers. LinkedIn’s account-based marketing (ABM) strategy identifies and engages accounts with high buying intention and will help with this. The strategy involves marketing to accounts that have reached the bottom of the funnel as opposed to marketing to individual contacts.
When creating an ad on LinkedIn, it should contain content that provides a unique value proposition to each department that influences buying decisions within the organization.
Click here if you would like to view the guide to start and run a successful LinkedIn ABM strategy.
4. Measure performance and adjust content for best results
When your ad goes live, be sure to monitor short-term performance indicators like impressions, reach, engagement and website visitors. You will also want to measure long term indicators such as total revenue versus cost and level of customer satisfaction. LinkedIn recommends that you run your campaign for at least seven days before checking performance.
After that, LinkedIn’s campaign manager will determine which audiences are likely to respond best to your ads and will either get to work creating new target audiences or direct the ad spend towards better performing areas.
If you need help with creating engaging LinkedIn content and successful ads for your B2B business, get in touch with us today!
