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B2B Marketing

It’s no secret that LinkedIn has become one of the most potent marketing tools for B2B marketers. There are a number of reasons which contribute towards this but none as important as the ability to produce highly targeted, quality leads.

In fact, if your organisation is not utilising the power of LinkedIn then it really does beg the question – WHY NOT?

You may already be harnessing this powerhouse of a tool and reaping the rewards. Or you may be wondering whether this should be a channel to focus your time and money on?

This blog aims to highlight some features and statistics to help you with that decision.

The Audience

Let’s take a brief look at LinkedIn demographics.

According to LinkedIn, the site has 500 million members, 61 million senior-level influencers, and 40 million decision-makers. So these are not low-level users – these are influential decision-makers and the exact type of decision-maker that you would want to reach with your B2B marketing campaigns. More often than not LinkedIn users are highly educated and their higher incomes reflect this.

‘Of those using the platform monthly, up to 40% are accessing it on a daily basis. That’s over 100 million professionals you could be targeting every day.’

Not only that but LinkedIn itself has said it’s the most used social media site amongst Fortune 500 companies. Proving that, unlike some other social media platforms, this is a serious tool for business.

LinkedIn Lead Generation

According to some recent Hubspot statistics, LinkedIn is 227% more effective at B2B lead generation than Facebook or Twitter.

As already mentioned above when looking at the demographics of the LinkedIn database, it’s pretty obvious why – LinkedIn users are high-level decision-makers.

• 91% of executives rated LinkedIn as their number one choice for professionally relevant content.
• 49% of B2B buyers research vendors by looking at their LinkedIn profiles and 44% have actually found potential vendors by looking at shared connections on LinkedIn.
• 59% of B2B marketers say LinkedIn generates leads for their business, and 38% of B2B marketers say LinkedIn is generating revenue for them.

(*LinkedIn study and Demand Wave).

Campaign Manager

LinkedIn has just announced three new objectives which are the latest features to join the redesigned Campaign Manager which first launched back in October.

• Brand awareness
• Website conversions
• Job applicants

These features are designed to make it easier to improve key results and better align with your campaign objectives.

The latest version of Campaign Manager allows you to not only create campaigns but to also measure their impact. These new objectives include:

Brand awareness: You can now increase share-of-voice for your products or services through top of funnel campaigns that charge by impressions (e.g. cost per thousand or CPM)
Website conversions: Tighter integration with their conversion tracking tool so you can create campaigns that are optimised for specific goals on your website, like purchases, downloads or event registrations

Conclusion

What B2B marketers need to remember is that LinkedIn should be used for networking and connecting with professionals who are relevant to your business and campaigns, not for spamming or sending out too many InMails. It’s important to take the time to develop a LinkedIn marketing strategy that makes sense for your business before steaming ahead. When done properly, LinkedIn can produce great results.

For any help or advice with your LinkedIn campaign strategy, feel free to contact the Digital Clarity team, we would be delighted to help.

(*Amita Paul – LinkedIn Marketing Solutions Blog)

(*Manan Vatsyayana/AFP/Getty Images)

(*Hubspot)