When LinkedIn was launched in May 2003, it was mainly perceived as a professional networking site. However, in less than two decades, LinkedIn has attracted 660 million users spread across 200 countries.

Today, it is not just a platform that connects job seekers with prospective employers. Rather, it has transformed into an extremely useful marketing tool.

It has become important for every business to develop an effective LinkedIn marketing strategy. When executed properly, it can help you build brand awareness and forge long-term professional relationships. It can also be effective for lead generation.

The Importance of a LinkedIn Marketing Strategy

The biggest advantage of LinkedIn is that it is frequented by many senior-level influencers, decision-makers, and thought leaders. If you want to grab the attention of top-level executives, then you should work on your LinkedIn marketing strategy.

Unlike other social networking sites such as Facebook and Instagram, LinkedIn offers a goldmine of opportunities for B2B marketers.

Now, let’s now take a look at the steps for creating a successful LinkedIn marketing strategy.

1. Define Your Goals

The type of content you publish and the approach you use to distribute it on LinkedIn depends on your final objective. That is why it is crucial to outline your goals at the onset of your LinkedIn marketing strategy.

Typically, you may want to target one or more of the following goals:
o Build brand awareness
o Generate qualified leads
o Strengthen brand reputation
o Engage with your target audience
o Sell your product or service

2. Understand Your Audience
Once you have a clear idea of your marketing goals, it is time to define your target audience. That’s a prerequisite for developing a solid LinkedIn marketing strategy.
You can outline your audience on the basis of different parameters such as job title, geographic location, industry, etc.

3. Create a Captivating Company Page

Your LinkedIn Company Page is one of the biggest assets of your LinkedIn marketing strategy. It is one of the first interactions your target audience is going to have with your brand. As such, it should help them learn everything they want to know about your business. This includes your information about your products/services, employees, and headquarters etc.

Make sure you provide your company logo, website URL, industry, company size, and other details. Adding these details builds your company’s credibility and can indirectly help make your LinkedIn marketing strategy stronger.

4. Optimize Your Company Page

Just like your website, you should also optimize your LinkedIn Company Page for search. In fact, it is an integral part of your LinkedIn marketing strategy.

A well-optimized Company Page will help you gain increased visibility in search results, both on and off LinkedIn. This makes it easier for people to learn about your company using search engines as well as LinkedIn. You can optimize your Company Page for search with the following techniques:

Use Keywords
Link to Your Company Page
Publish Relevant Content

5. Analyze Competitors’ Company Pages

To amplify your LinkedIn marketing strategy, you need to know how you fare up against your competitors.
LinkedIn provides a feature called “Companies to track” that reveals a list of companies similar to yours. It also gives you access to a few key metrics. These include the total number of followers, follower growth, and social media engagement.
Evaluating these pages can help you understand how your own Company Page fares in comparison. You can identify what is working well for them and integrate those tactics into your own LinkedIn marketing strategy.

6. Promote Your Company Page

Creating a compelling Company Page is of no use unless you can attract followers and grow your audience. In addition to optimizing your Company Page for search, you should also encourage people to follow it. Increasing your visibility is crucial to creating a successful LinkedIn marketing strategy.

7. Create Relevant and Engaging Content

Attracting a significant number of followers to your Company Page is a difficult task. However, achieving a high follower count doesn’t mark the end of your LinkedIn marketing strategy.

8. Use Images and Videos

It’s crucial to maximize audience engagement on your LinkedIn updates for your LinkedIn marketing strategy to be successful.
One of the best ways to grab the attention of your audience is to use images and videos. This should be done in addition to text-based articles.

9. Create a Content Calendar

Consistency is the key to retain your audience and keep them hooked to your LinkedIn Company Page. It’s an essential element of any successful LinkedIn marketing strategy.
If you publish engaging content on a regular basis, it helps builds a sense of anticipation among your followers. It results in higher levels of engagement and further increases the reach of your content. This can help you attract more followers and grow your audience on LinkedIn.

10 Automate Your Outreach

To grow your LinkedIn account, you need to create more relevant connections during the initial stages. For this, you need to do a lot of outreach.
However, manual outreach can be challenging and time consuming. That’s why automating your outreach is a great idea.

11. Get Help from Your Workforce

Your employees and colleagues can be immensely helpful in growing your audience and increasing your reach on LinkedIn. Therefore, it is imperative that you make them an essential part of your LinkedIn marketing strategy.

In addition to following your Company Page, you can also encourage them to like and share your updates. Make sure you notify them whenever you post an important update on your Company Page.

You should also ask them to fill out all of the necessary details on their personal LinkedIn profiles. Make sure they mention your company as their employer and provide a link to your Company Page.

This will help your brand gain visibility in their networks. This, in turn, will boost brand awareness and help make your LinkedIn marketing strategy more successful.

Complete Your Own LinkedIn Profile

While you are at this, make sure you also have a complete and updated personal profile on LinkedIn. It may not have a direct impact on your LinkedIn marketing strategy. However, your personal LinkedIn profile showcases the human side of your brand.

Utilize LinkedIn Analytics

A crucial aspect of your LinkedIn marketing strategy is to evaluate it on a regular basis. We have already discussed how your Company Page analytics can help you learn useful insights about your audience.

12. Track Website Traffic
When you share content about your brand on LinkedIn, you might also add links to your website or blog. Many people might find your content interesting and may visit your website to check it out.

In order to learn more about Digital Marketing related stuffs then do check out the mentioned blogs-

Digital Deepak
 
Digitomine
 
digitaldesai.com
 
digitalfreaker.com