LinkedIn is a powerful tool in your inbound marketing strategy box - especially if you're a B2B marketer (80% of marketing leads for B2B companies are generated by LinkedIn, and it's used as the primary social media platform for 92% of B2B companies). As the name implies, however, LinkedIn is only as fruitful as the strength of the "links" you create.
Your LinkedIn account is just as likely to sit there, generating nada, if you aren't thoughtful about how it's used. Like Facebook, LinkedIn can make you feel real great about yourself and all of your hundreds - or even thousands - of contacts, but it's meaningless if contacts aren't converting into qualified leads and sales.
Generating content and messages that resonate with your audience really are the - THE! - only way your campaigns will gain any traction or generate responses on LinkedIn. Paid advertising is certainly one way to do it, but that's tough for small and medium business owners - especially when your existing inbound marketing strategies already have you cash-strapped. Plus, even paid advertisements have to be crafted in a way that gets you noticed and keeps lead interests piqued, or else they will fall flat too.
Here are no-cost ways to get noticed - and resonate - with your LinkedIn audience.
If you've been adding LinkedIn contacts willy-nilly, without conscientious attention to who your best prospects and connections really are, it's time to hone your current LinkedIn network.
If you want to benefit from the aforementioned 80% qualified B2B lead statistics LinkedIn boasts about, LinkedIn groups must be aligned with your specific buyer personas - plain and simple. The good news is that LinkedIn has all of the information you need - via member bios and profiles - to suss out the ones that make the best sense for you to align yourself with.
Spending quality time building a solid LinkedIn network, populated with the right individuals and divided into the right groups (the data base building phase), takes your list of a couple hundred meh connections and transforms it into a list of one- to two-thousand high-quality prospects.
There is a relentlessness involved in successful sales, but it needs to be handled with gentleness and finesse. With so many people out there trying to capture "the sale," the best inbound marketing strategy is one that keeps you in forefront of prospects' minds, without causing annoyance or unnecessary interference.
On LinkedIn, this is done via drip messaging. Like the sustainable drips of a water-conserving irrigation system, drip messaging delivers a little bit of awesome content on a regular basis. If this approach is difficult for you at first, try using LinkedIn's underused "Network Status Update" to deliver short, sweet and powerful informational tips, referrals, relevant social shares from your own network, etc. You can send them out to the entire group or pick and choose from update to update. You can even attach additional documents or resources when applicable.
Theoretically, LinkedIn buyers react more positively to relevant sales content because they're already networked with the seller and, ideally, have an innate interest in the product or service. Even so, you need to be savvy about what you say and how you say it.
We recommend reading, The Anatomy of a Great LinkedIn Sales Message, to get started. Key takeaways include your curiosity about the prospect and where they're coming from, as well as your desire to engage via conversation and dialogue, rather than scoring an immediate sale.
The combination of the right LinkedIn group(s) plus regular messages and shares that resonate with audience members will automatically boost your brand recognition in the eyes of those who matter most.
