LinkedIn has become an invaluable platform for B2B marketers looking to generate leads, build brand awareness, and connect with professionals in their industry. With over 722 million users worldwide, it’s the world’s largest professional social network and support services to other businesses and even networks with one another.
But with so many options and tools available, it can be overwhelming to know where to start. In this post, we’ll explore the top LinkedIn marketing tools you need to be leveraging today to grow your brand and get results. From content creation to campaign management, we’ve got you covered with actionable tips to maximize your LinkedIn marketing efforts.
Is LinkedIn Worthwhile for Marketing?
In short – yes, absolutely! With so many active users spanning countless industries and job functions, LinkedIn offers unparalleled access to your target B2B audience. Unlike other social platforms, the majority of LinkedIn users are there specifically for business and career-related purposes.
This means they’re primed and ready to engage with relevant content, products, and services. In fact, 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn, making it a marketing channel you simply can’t afford to ignore.
LinkedIn also offers robust analytics through the marketing section, allowing you to monitor engagement and optimize your efforts. When used strategically, it can help you:
- Generate and nurture leads through organic content and paid campaigns
- Recruit top talent by leveraging your employer brand
- Conduct market research by analyzing competitors and industry trends
- Build partnerships and relationships with influencers
- Establish thought leadership and credibility
With the right tools and strategy, LinkedIn marketing can become an invaluable part of your digital marketing arsenal. Keep reading to discover the must-have tools for LinkedIn success.
Top 10 LinkedIn Marketing Tools to Use
1. LinkedIn Pages
Like Facebook business pages, LinkedIn pages allow you to establish an official presence for your brand or business on LinkedIn. This provides a home base to house all your content while enabling users to follow your page for updates.
Customize your page to properly represent your brand, fill out key details like contact info, and use the about section to share your story and objectives. Try adding a lead generation form to capture visitor info as well.
2. LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn groups operate like mini forums focused on certain topics and industries. Joining and actively participating in relevant groups is a great way to connect with highly-targeted audiences and get your brand in front of the right people.
You can share content, answer questions, offer expertise, and be part of the conversation. But quality over quantity is key – provide value to stand out.
3. LinkedIn Content Creation Tools
Creating and sharing high-value content on LinkedIn is essential for fueling the rest of your efforts. Luckily, LinkedIn provides built-in tools to make it easier.
With LinkedIn Publisher, you can publish long-form posts. The integrated image creator helps craft visually compelling graphics. You can also create short-form written, video or audio posts using LinkedIn Feed. Publish content regularly to stay top of mind.
4. LinkedIn Sponsored Content
Once you have stellar content, you can boost its reach and exposure with LinkedIn’s native advertising options like sponsored content. This allows you to target certain demographics with your organic content and appear directly in their feed.
This enhances engagement with your content while positioning your brand as a thought leader. Use relevant targeting criteria and compelling ad creative to maximize results.
5. LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms
An easy way to generate leads from your content is by adding LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms. These contact form-style CTAs can be added to your posts and pages, allowing visitors to submit their details right within LinkedIn.
This provides direct access to their name, email, phone number and more – no need for exporting and importing leads.
6. LinkedIn Campaign Manager
LinkedIn Campaign Manager provides a central dashboard for managing all your LinkedIn marketing campaigns and assets in one place. Here you can create, schedule and track the performance of your LinkedIn content and ads.
Utilize its robust targeting and reporting functionality to glean key insights and optimize your efforts for better ROI.
7. LinkedIn Ad Targeting
Speaking of targeting, LinkedIn advertising provides powerful options to zero in on your ideal audience. You can target by location, company, job title, interests, groups, and more.
Leverage their data and member demographics to ensure your ads and content are being delivered to the right people. Highly targeted ads lead to better engagement and conversion rates.
8. LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn Sales Navigator makes the platform even more powerful for generating leads and building critical connections. With Sales Navigator, you gain additional search filters, lead recommendations, conversation insights and more.
Use it to identify key decision makers, pinpoint accounts, research contacts and integrate LinkedIn data into your CRM or marketing automation workflows.
9. LinkedIn Elevate
For building authority and exposure as an industry thought leader, check out LinkedIn Elevate. This service curates and shares your content to expand your reach.
It provides suggestions for engaging with the right audiences, while tracking the performance of your posts. Put your best content in front of more of your target audience across LinkedIn.
10. LinkedIn Analytics
Finally, be sure to consistently analyze your LinkedIn efforts and presence using LinkedIn Analytics. Here you can assess traffic to your profile and page, post reach and engagement, follower growth, lead generation and more.
These insights allow you to double down on what’s working well while refining areas that need improvement. Data-driven optimization is key for LinkedIn marketing success.
Conclusion
As you can see, LinkedIn provides a versatile suite of marketing tools to help businesses of all sizes boost brand awareness, connect with prospects, generate leads and demonstrate thought leadership.
By regularly creating and sharing valuable content, engaging in industry groups, leveraging lead generation forms and ads, and analyzing your performance, you can maximize your LinkedIn presence and strategy.
Focus on providing value, building relationships and being helpful above all – the results will follow. Consistency and experimentation are key.
Which LinkedIn marketing tactics are you finding most effective? What tools are helping take your efforts to the next level? Share your top tips and advice in the comments below!
Frequently Asked Questions
What types of content perform best on LinkedIn?
Thought leadership articles, industry trends reports, how-to guides, SlideShare presentations, and short engaging videos tend to resonate well with LinkedIn audiences. Ensure your content provides value and insight.
What are LinkedIn’s audience demographics?
LinkedIn users are typically 25-34 years old with an income over $75K, and the platform skews slightly more male than female. Most members are college educated professionals seeking business networking and career development opportunities.
How is LinkedIn Lead Gen different than other lead capture forms?
LinkedIn Lead Gen seamlessly captures leads without requiring users to leave LinkedIn, increasing opt-in rates. The leads integrate directly with your CRM too, saving you time.
Can I use the same content across multiple LinkedIn tools?
Absolutely! Repurpose your blog posts as long or short LinkedIn posts, reuse webinars as video content, and convert Slideshares into articles. Adapt and optimize for each format.
How often should I post on LinkedIn?
1-2 times per week is ideal. Post consistently while monitoring engagement. More frequent posting can result in lower engagement rates. Use LinkedIn Analytics to track your results.
How do I advertise on LinkedIn effectively?
Target your ads very precisely using their robust demographics, job roles and interests data. A/B test different content and calls to action. Align your ads with stages of the buyer journey for best results. Track and optimize performance.
Disclosure: The articles, guides and reviews on BlowSEO covering topics like SEO, digital marketing, technology, business, finance, streaming sites, travel and more are created by experienced professionals, marketers, developers and finance experts. Our goal is to provide helpful, in-depth, and well-researched content to our readers. You can learn more about our writers and the process we follow to create quality content by visiting our About Us and Content Creation Methodology pages.
