Complete LinkedIn marketing guide for businesses

We’re all aware of social media marketing benefits but it is crucial to choose the most suitable social media channels for your business marketing and today we’re going to discuss how LinkedIn marketing can help your business in many marketing goals and how to start your LinkedIn marketing and advertising campaigns from A-Z.

LinkedIn marketing is an effective solution for business marketing especially that proved efficiency in achieving many goals including:

• Build business awareness through increasing follower base of the targeted audience (related professional individuals and decision-makers)
• Generate profitable leads from content marketing & advertising campaigns
• Establish long-run business relationships with active professionals on LinkedIn (more than 630 million users with 50% of them are decision-makers)
• Reach more audience when your employees complete their profiles, add your company to current positions and share published content to their network of connections

Your business followers’ base includes the followers of your business page and connection of your employees which provide an initial opportunity to your business marketing campaigns on LinkedIn.

The first step of LinkedIn marketing is to encourage your employees to complete their profiles by adding short descriptions, skills, work experience, achievement and your company to their current position with the assigned responsibilities to provide a positive professional impression for whoever may deal with your business in the future.

A LinkedIn business page is the hub for your business LinkedIn marketing activates and that requires to create and complete your business LinkedIn company page first then start your content marketing and advertising campaigns.

Creating & Completing LinkedIn business page steps

To create a professional business page, you should follow these steps in order:

• Visit the “LinkedIn Marketing Solutions” portal and choose “Create a LinkedIn Page” from “LinkedIn Pages” section
• Choose your business page type by choosing your business type (small – medium to large – showcase page – educational institute)
• Add your company official name and choose the URL that can’t be changed later (use the same URL in your other business social media accounts)
• Add your company official business website URL
• Define your business industry, size (number of employees) and business type
• Upload your business Logo as The account profile picture with size 300 * 300 in pixels
• Add your business tagline (short minified description for business nature)
• Upload a professional cover image with size 1536 * 768 in pixels
• From the about section when you choose Editing your page, add your business description about your business main products or services with 2000 character limits but only 156 characters viewable on search engine results
• Add your business current contact information (Website URL – Phone number – Main and branches locations)
• List your business specialists (up to 20) using targeted search keywords and main services and solutions offered
• Add up to 3 community hashtags related to your business services
• Add up to 10 groups joined related to your business to be featured on your business page
• Add custom buttons to drive desired actions (ex “Visit Website”) to drive traffic to your website
• Optimize your business page for search results (use targeted keywords – increase links for your page by adding the page link in your website, other social media account & email newsletters)
• Check the page using “View as member” option to examine everything before saving
• Add page admins from the company marketing team specialized in social media marketing
• Publish and share interest useful content for your targeted audience
• Encourage employees to engage with and share your page published content as
• Promote your company page through LinkedIn advertising campaigns & email newsletters
• Publish available job vacancies reach professionals suitable for the job among page followers and joined groups
• Create Showcase pages for your business main products or services pages

One of the common social media marketing mistakes on any platform including LinkedIn marketing campaigns is to start without a detailed marketing strategy that covers desired goals, marketing plan, execution steps, chosen content types, suitable advertising solutions, and valid analytics metrics to evaluate performance.

Your business LinkedIn marketing strategy should answer all of the following questions to be a valid suitable strategy:

• Who are the target audiences for your LinkedIn marketing campaigns?
• What are your desired business goals of LinkedIn marketing & advertising activities?
• Are LinkedIn marketing solutions effective for your business needs?
• Will your business achieve the desired ROI from LinkedIn marketing?
• What are the types of engaging content on LinkedIn?
• What are the suitable metrics for performance evaluation?
• Are you skilled enough or need professional help in social media marketing?

Once you craft details-oriented strategy for your business presence on LinkedIn, you’re no ready to create & publish engaging content, launch paid advertising campaigns and perform social media monitoring activities to drive desired goals from LinkedIn for business marketing campaigns.

Content is the engine of inbound marketing campaigns as it’s vital in increasing engagement with your brand, build brand awareness through increased reach and encourage followers, viewers, and visitors to drive desired conversions (fill information forms – visit your business website – complete a purchase – becoming a loyal customer).

To optimize your LinkedIn marketing and advertising campaigns, we will list some effective content marketing tips suitable for the LinkedIn platform:

• Help the audience by publishing content related to their jobs & how to perform them better
• Answer questions related to your business industry & potential clients' needs
• publish content related to trending events in your industry that adds value to viewers
• Mix content formats using visual media types in your content including (Graphic Designs – Infographics – Videos up to 10 minutes – Slides Presentation) as they drive higher engagement by 600%
• Try to publish or share content daily in the early morning, launch time or early evening as these are the periods of increased activity on LinkedIn
• Share related useful content for your audiences from other pages, accounts, website or other digital platforms
• Upload PowerPoint, PDF files to support your content and add more value to your audience
• Target specific segment of your page audience with customized content based on (Profile language – Location – Job Function – School or University – Company Size – Industry – Seniority Level)
• Try to upload videos which are shorter than 10 minutes directly to LinkedIn to get priority over externally shared content and access post analytics data
• Focus on publishing posts directly on LinkedIn than sharing from other platforms
• Use the “Content Suggestions” tool to find what your audience is engaging with to share or to come up with ideas for future published content
• Add related hashtags to your published content to increase visibility & reach
• Monitor brand mentions from the “Activity” section to engage in conversations with your potential leads
• Use “multi-languages” option to publish content and business page description in 20 different languages
• Align your business content marketing campaigns on LinkedIn with other marketing campaigns on other marketing channels
• Avoid focusing on promotional “Hard Selling” content

Your content marketing campaigns on LinkedIn will play a vital role in achieving desired goals if your content is optimized to add value and increase engagement from the targeted audience.

Facebook ads are popular because of diversified effective advertising solutions that are suitable for different objectives of advertising campaigns but the LinkedIn platform had made a great progress on offering customized advertising solutions to promote your business including:

Reach the desired audience with sponsored content ads that are shown in LinkedIn feed for desktop and mobile users plus generating more leads and build business awareness with detailed targeting options based on (company name – job title – job functions – skills – schools – groups joined).

Using this advertising solution will allow your business to promote chosen published content or using “Direct Sponsored Content” to customize and test ads for a specific audience without publishing content on your Business LinkedIn Page.

You’ll also be able to track and evaluate advertising campaigns performance through LinkedIn Campaign Manager Analytics and insights (engagement metrics – demographics reports) and track leads and conversions using LinkedIn insight tag on your business website.

With sponsored InMail ads, you’ll be able to send personalized messages to decision-makers and potential leads for your business on LinkedIn messages to promote your business products or services or build business relationships after finding them using search filters (location – profile language – past and current company – industry) to introduce your business to potential clients with 3x response rate higher than regular emails.

InMail ads are responsive for desktop and mobile users and only delivered when users are active on LinkedIn.

Videos are the most engaging format of content and the same is for video ads on LinkedIn as you can increase engagement with your business, generate more leads with prefilled forms, drive traffic to your website from prospects through video ads displayed on desktop and mobile users feed.

Showcase your business products, business environment, tell your business success story, and establish thought leadership and attract potential leads through engaging video ads that require skills and experience in creating motion graphics videos or Ultra Quality video content.

Drive more conversions to your website and reach more audience with easily-prepared text ads that are only charged per clicks (PPC) or per thousand impressions (CPM) within your allocated advertising budget and track leads using “Conversion Tracking” tool.

Personalized ads are more effective than one format ads especially with dynamic ads solution provided on LinkedIn as personal data of targeted audience like the profile photo, company name or job title is displayed on the ad seen on the desktop home page for users to drive desired actions from users including:

• Increasing followers count
• Increasing engagement with published content
• Drive more conversion and traffic to your business website

Showcase your business main products or services or tell your business story through a series of swappable visual cards on one ad using Carousel ads solution on LinkedIn that achieve desired engagement from targeted audience (Decision-Makers) and generate more leads with prefilled forms or drive profitable traffic to your website.

The LinkedIn platform has made it easier for businesses to achieve desired advertising goals by launching advertising campaigns based on specific objectives chosen including:

• Brand Awareness (increase reach through impression-based campaigns)
• Website Visits (drive more profitable traffic to your website)
• Engagement (increase engagement with content published and followers base)
• Video Views (promote your video content to increase reach and engagement)
• Leads Generation (generate more leads with prefilled users' information forms)
• Website Conversion (drive more desired conversions on your website)
• Job Applicants (reach more suitable applicant for available job vacancies)

LinkedIn advertising solutions are diversified and customized to meet all of your different business needs and goals with the ability to retarget (website visitors – leads generated – email & contacts lists) with advertising campaigns to achieve better results measured conversion tracking and LinkedIn Campaign Manager analytics reports.

Use LinkedIn Groups to reach more professionals of your business audience either through joining professional groups related to your business industry using “Groups Discover” option to search and find desired groups or create a group for your business and stay active by publishing and sharing useful relevant content and monitor what audiences are talking about to customize content and business solutions.

To create and Setup your business LinkedIn Group you should follow the listed steps:

• Visit “Groups” from your homepage and click “create a new group”
• Add group name, logo and interesting description to motivate others to join your business community
• Add the group main rules
• Define whether the group is a standard visible group or unlisted hidden one
• Invite related professional through using the search option and filters
• Publish and share engaging useful content for the group members

LinkedIn marketing is a journey filled with many potential business opportunities generated from content marketing campaigns, advertising campaigns, LinkedIn groups & communities, and LinkedIn listening and monitoring activities that require commitment and experience from your in-house marketing team or chosen external professional marketing agency specialized in providing customized social media marketing & advertising solutions.

Contact us today to start your business LinkedIn marketing campaign

[kc_single_image image="25299" img_size="large"][kc_custom_heading text="How to set up your LinkedIn business page? " font_container="tag:h2|font_size:30px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" use_theme_fonts="yes"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="Defining your LinkedIn marketing strategy " font_container="tag:h2|font_size:30px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" use_theme_fonts="yes"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_video link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCKtfcAGUTE"][kc_custom_heading text="Tips for creating engaging content on LinkedIn " font_container="tag:h2|font_size:30px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" use_theme_fonts="yes"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_video link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rdz1XNIOphc"][kc_custom_heading text="LinkedIn paid advertising solutions " font_container="tag:h2|font_size:30px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" use_theme_fonts="yes"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="Sponsored Content Ads " font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" google_fonts="font_family:Allerta%3Aregular|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="Sponsored InMail Ads " font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" google_fonts="font_family:Allerta%3Aregular|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_single_image image="25308" img_size="large"][kc_custom_heading text="Video Ads " font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" google_fonts="font_family:Allerta%3Aregular|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="Text Ads" font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" google_fonts="font_family:Allerta%3Aregular|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="Dynamic Ads " font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" google_fonts="font_family:Allerta%3Aregular|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_single_image image="25303" img_size="large"][kc_custom_heading text="Carousel Ads " font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" google_fonts="font_family:Allerta%3Aregular|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="Objective-Based Ads " font_container="tag:h3|font_size:20px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" google_fonts="font_family:Allerta%3Aregular|font_style:400%20regular%3A400%3Anormal"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="Take advantage of LinkedIn Groups" font_container="tag:h3|font_size:30px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" use_theme_fonts="yes"][kc_empty_space height="20px"][kc_custom_heading text="Conclusion" font_container="tag:h3|font_size:30px|text_align:left|color:%23000000" use_theme_fonts="yes"][kc_empty_space height="20px"]