LinkedIn marketing: The complete guide to boost your strategy

What is LinkedIn marketing?

LinkedIn marketing is the process of promoting your brand through LinkedIn. It involves using the platform to share valuable content and expand your network. It helps to build brand awareness and establish trust for businesses and individuals alike. This makes it an important part of your wider social media marketing efforts.

Benefits of LinkedIn marketing

With LinkedIn’s growing user base and rising engagement rates, it can be a powerful B2B marketing platform. By 2022, the platform’s ad revenue had already reached a whopping $5.91 billion, this number is expected to grow to $10.35 billion by 2027. This speaks volumes about the potential value you can get from marketing on LinkedIn.

Let’s break down some of the main ways your business can benefit from LinkedIn marketing.

Increased brand awareness

There are 900+ million members on LinkedIn. That’s millions of people you could potentially reach with the right LinkedIn marketing strategy.

Moreover, a user’s interactions with public profiles are visible to their connections. That means when someone likes a post or comments on it, the post will show up in the feeds of their connections. So there’s a good chance that your content will show up in the feeds of people who aren’t even following you.

This makes LinkedIn an ideal platform to boost brand awareness and get your brand in front of the right audience.

Authority building

LinkedIn has exploded as a distribution platform for B2B content. Specifically, content that helps brands position themselves as industry authorities. A strong LinkedIn strategy can help you establish your brand as industry thought leaders.

Networking opportunities

Being the world’s largest professional network, LinkedIn allows you to build valuable connections. It creates opportunities to grow your network and foster mutually beneficial relationships. The platform connects you with prospective clients, industry leaders and potential hires alike.

Lead generation

LinkedIn is a leading platform for B2B lead generation. 89% of B2B marketers use the platform to generate leads. Moreover, 40% of B2B marketers consider it the most effective channel for attracting high-quality leads.

On top of this, the cost of LinkedIn lead generation is comparatively low. It boasts a 28% lower cost per lead compared to Google AdWords.

How to build a LinkedIn marketing strategy

First things first: there’s no “right” way to use LinkedIn for business.

Some companies see the platform as a branding tool. Others use it as a hiring hub.

That said, there are a few essential steps that will set you up for success on the platform. Follow the steps below to build a successful LinkedIn marketing strategy.

1. Define your objectives

Start with a clear definition of the objectives you want to achieve through LinkedIn. These objectives could align with your other social media goals such as boosting brand awareness or generating leads.

When you have your objectives firmly laid out, you have a solid foundation to build the rest of your LinkedIn strategy. For instance, if your goal is to generate leads, your strategy will comprise tools like lead ads, lead magnets and lead forms.

The following ad from Pcloudy promotes the company’s trends report as a lead magnet. This ad could contribute to the company’s lead generation goals.

2. Optimize your LinkedIn business page

A well-optimized LinkedIn business page sets you up for LinkedIn marketing success. It positively represents your brand and enhances your credibility.

This is where people will go when they want to learn more about your business. So you should optimize it with all the relevant information that they’ll need.

Go beyond providing the basic organizational information. Make sure to showcase what life is like at your organization and the people behind your brand. This will give people a deeper understanding of your brand’s values and identity.

You can even make use of the “Product” tab to highlight key details about your product such as the pricing and top features. That way, prospects can learn more about your product offering without having to leave LinkedIn.

3. Develop a content strategy

Anything B2B brands can do to squeeze more out of their content strategies is a plus.

And with the type of engagement LinkedIn generates, it’s a great addition to your social media content strategy. Have a solid strategy in place for the types of content to create and how to distribute them on the platform.

Like it or not, “thought leadership” content is a staple of B2B social media and marketing on LinkedIn. This includes:

• Storytelling posts
• Firsthand tips and experiences
• Discussions and threads

Ever notice how pretty much every viral LinkedIn post comes from a personal account? 

That’s no coincidence. Personal stories and anecdotes are among the platform’s most compelling content. So make sure this type of content is a staple to your LinkedIn strategy.

But that doesn’t mean thought leadership content is all you should post. Keep it diverse with blog posts, infographics, original reports, case studies and testimonials.

Besides these, native documents typically see higher impression rates compared with other post types. Sprout Social regularly shares original reports and trend predictions as native documents.

Formats and content types aside, make sure to create content that addresses your audience’s needs and pain points. Answer their questions, teach them how to do something and share insights that could inform their strategies.

4. Use employee advocacy

Although the platform is all about business, personal accounts are even more valuable on LinkedIn. This rings true whether you’re an employee, solo business owner or someone at the C-level.

Beyond that, personal accounts can act as an extension of business accounts for the sake of promotion.

That’s why employee advocacy is such a critical element of LinkedIn marketing.

For starters, have your employees share your brand’s content to give it a boost. Doing so means that exponentially more people see your content. Also, this means that employees can spice up their posts and give their captions a personal touch.

At Sprout, our internal team regularly shares new content and product updates via LinkedIn.

Additionally, employee content can support your hiring and recruiting efforts on LinkedIn. Consider how employees can serve as any given company’s biggest cheerleaders. Empowering workers to highlight the benefits of working for a brand is an awesome way to attract top-tier talent.

Use Sprout’s employee advocacy solutions to simplify the process of curating brand content for your employees to share. You can even include pre-approved message ideas so your team can stay on-brand.

5. Continuously measure and improve

Your LinkedIn strategy isn’t going to be perfect the first time around. The content you share and the way you speak to your audience need constant adjustment.

So make sure to closely track your efforts and measure your performance. See how your page is growing and how certain posts are performing. Understand how people are engaging with certain posts and what your top-performing posts have in common.

This will help you uncover insights to continuously improve your strategy.

5 LinkedIn marketing tips to strengthen your strategy

LinkedIn is apples and oranges versus other social platforms.

And so finding your footing on the platform might require some trial and error.

Now that you've learned the steps to building a LinkedIn marketing strategy, let's walk through some tips for putting that strategy into action.

1. Know your target audience

If you’re going to stand out on LinkedIn, you need content that resonates with your audience. This requires having a solid understanding of your target audience and the types of content they want to see.

You need to understand their needs and pain points to develop content that’s relevant to them.

The first thing you can do is look at the profiles of your current customers to identify common characteristics. Look for patterns in their job roles and industries as well as the solutions they’re seeking.

You can even join relevant LinkedIn Groups to see what types of conversations they’re having. Discussions within these groups will help you understand the needs and preferences of your target audience.

Polling your audience is another way to understand them better. This is particularly effective as you get to ask them questions directly instead of making assumptions. You could ask them about the types of content they want to see and the challenges they face.

2. Use a social media marketing tool

The right social media marketing tools help you do your job more efficiently. From bulk scheduling hundreds of posts at a time to organizing your tasks–these tools help you save time.

At the bare minimum, you’ll need a tool to help with scheduling and publishing. A powerful analytics tool is essential to unlock insights that go beyond what native analytics tools provide.

Additionally, look for a tool that organizes all your incoming messages in one place. This will make it easier to manage your LinkedIn interactions.

Sprout’s social media marketing suite comes with all of the tools you need to manage your LinkedIn marketing. You can even access premium features to help you with social listening and influencer marketing.

3. Learn the best times to post on LinkedIn

Frequency and consistency matter on LinkedIn just as they do on any other platform.

For brand accounts, we don’t typically see multiple posts per day (or even daily). Those that do post regularly tend to see the most engagement during the weekday mornings and early afternoons.

Getting those times right will help you engage your audience when they’re most active. The best times to post on LinkedIn for businesses are Tuesdays and Wednesdays between 10 a.m. and noon.

However, posting multiple times per day is totally fair game for personal accounts. Figuring out what’s “optimal” is going to require some testing.

4. Measure your progress with LinkedIn analytics

Because LinkedIn offers so much creative freedom, you’re spoiled for choice in terms of what you can post.

But this also highlights the importance of regularly assessing your content performance. Looking at your LinkedIn analytics, you can understand by the numbers:

• Which types of posts earn the most engagement
• Whether there’s a time or frequency that impacts performance
• How your employees and personals impact your company’s reach
• Whether your LinkedIn content is generating traffic and leads

Beyond the platform’s native analytics, LinkedIn marketing tools like Sprout Social can help in a big way when it comes to answering all of the above.

5. Use LinkedIn hashtags

The right LinkedIn hashtags add visibility to your posts and profile. This makes them a great addition to your LinkedIn marketing strategy. Make sure to optimize your posts with hashtags relevant to the topic. This will improve the chances of getting your content in front of people who are interested in the topic.

Use your analytics data to see how posts with specific hashtags are performing. Then build a list of top-performing hashtags to use consistently in your LinkedIn strategy. You can even add relevant industry hashtags to your page to improve its visibility in relevant searches.

Additionally, get inspiration from trending hashtags to identify popular topics on the platform. Then use those to come up with in-the-moment content ideas to engage your audience.

Get ready to win at LinkedIn marketing

Growing on LinkedIn doesn’t happen through random comments and replies. Posting great-quality content consistently and nurturing meaningful engagements are vital for success.

With the right tools, you can build a solid, data-led strategy that drives results.

Sign up for a free 30-day trial to see how Sprout’s LinkedIn marketing tools can power your strategy.