You’ve gotta love a pinchable marketing strategy on LinkedIn. Or in this case, three such marketing strategies on LinkedIn. You can use each of these on their own or put them together for a bigger LinkedIn strategy.
Of course, there is a lot more you can do with LinkedIn and I cannot guarantee the results of these strategies. To do that, you need to look at your wider goals and your audience. Not every strategy works for every business. But as a quick template for a B2B campaign, you’ve got a great starting point here.
Direct messaging strategy
The real magic of linkedIn happens behind the scenes. While you might want to chuck out a load of content and hope that your dream customer magically sees it and gets in touch (see personal posting strategy below), the chances are that’s not going to happen on a regular enough basis to make it worth your time.
Instead, you need to get to know your connections and followers. You do this by having a direct messaging strategy.
LinkedIn is essentially a giant online networking room. You want to approach people, find the common ground and create a geniune connection with them. This means you need a reason to message someone that isn’t about you selling your services.
People see through the whole “I’m looking for 3 people to help” rubbish. Instead, find the one thing that connects you both in the first place.
Once you have a reason for your initial message, you then need a reason to continue the conversation. It’s a balance here between nice chit-chat and getting to the point so you don’t waste anyone’s time.
Also, the room is split on whether voice notes are appropriate.
Having something of value to send to them is the first start. It could be a freebie or a link that you definitely know will help them.
One of the best DM conversations I’ve had is with a writing coach. She’d done her research well, sent me a nice DM about the mutual people we knew and then asked me if I’d ever considered writing a book. Her understanding of her target audience was spot on. I happily downloaded the freebie and love reading her regular emails. It didn’t feel like selling because it wasn’t. It was recognising a need, giving me something to help and taking the conversation forwards from there.
Sometimes, this will take building up a strong relationship before you get the sale. I’ve sent DMs that have become clients a couple of years later. We laugh about it now how if they’d worked with me sooner they’d have got more done.
But B2B sales and marketing is about building up those long-term relationships, so it makes sense that you’d build that through DMs rather than posting.
Event strategy
I love a good event strategy on LinkedIn. This means leveraging their event functionality to drive people to your email marketing list and online (or live) events. For the purpose of this blog, I’m going to be talking about online events because a. they carry less risk and b. they take a whole lot less work.
But by all means, repeat this for your live events if you’re heading down that route.
Now, I’m going to use the example of a masterclass event for this strategy. You teach a small thing, make them an offer, and let people get to know your face a bit more. It can be delivered over Teams, Zoom, or whatever you use.
The idea is that you set up the masterclass as a LinkedIn event first. This allows you to invite all of your contacts and followers. It’s a good idea to have a hitlist of those you’d love to attend and send them a personal note alongside the generic “you’ve been invited” alert.
Now, most people chuck out the invites and that’s it, job done. Let’s wait for 33% of the people who said they’ll show to actually rock up at the live event.
If you want to increase your bums on seats live then you need a bit more work put into this.
Here’s how to do it
Firstly, send a personal thanks to everyone who signs up either on the LinkedIn event or through your official landing page. Ideally, you want to get their email addresses by having them officially sign up but some people are a bit wise to this and if someone you really want to attend is only RSVP’ing on the LinkedIn event, don’t push them to share their email.
Next, you want to make sure you’re sending out reminders through DMs. This is easily done with cutting and pasting, then adding the right name. Do this manually and do not be tempted to try some tech on this. Even if you’re in the hundreds of attendees. The more you can personalise this, the more chance that person will show up.
On the actual day, tell them how much you’re looking forward to seeing them. Check they have the link and know how to access the masterclass. Make sure you have a workbook to deliver to them and something to give away. I find checklists related to the class are useful.
Of course, you’re delivering a masterclass so you know how to naturally weave in your offer. If not, come and speak to me.
Then afterwards, take time to thank the people who showed up. Message those who didn’t and offer them the recording. Then follow up with the ones who are interested. Everyone else, keep the conversation going. You never know when someone might need you.
There is an art to running an event strategy and you will need to get a lot wrong before it all starts running smoothly but this is one of the few B2B marketing strategies on LinkedIn that is worth a bit more effort.
Personal posting strategy
My best tip for having a personal posting strategy on LinkedIn is to set some clear content pillars. This might be areas around your service or the problems your ideal customer faces. But you don’t want to make it all about work.
You also need to talk about you, your interests and show a bit of personal flair. Having this scattered throughout your posting will help people get to know you. And that’s half the battle with B2B marketing strategies on LinkedIn.
I’ve got more than one lead from someone who has chuckled at my posts.
It’s all about positioning on outward posts. You want to position yourself as a leader within your business and the industry.
As I said before, getting people to approach you from what you post on LinkedIn isn’t guaranteed but do a strong enough strategy, and this will support all your other efforts on both the channel and your wider content marketing.
Oh but I hate showing myself online, it feels like showing off.
Yeah, you’re not alone. I know and work with plenty of founders who hate the whole putting themselves forward on LinkedIn. There are two ways to look at this: take the emotion out and get over it or don’t do it.
The more you post of yourself the easier it gets. I’m still not a fan of the selfie but the more I do it, the less I care. You’ll rarely get negative comments on LinkedIn. Most people do act professionally on the platform and that’s one of the reasons why it’s such a great place to market a B2B business.
How do I target my B2B audience on LinkedIn?
So, all of the above will only work if you know who your audience is in the first instance. To understand them fully, you need to niche and make sure you’re only talking to that one type of customer.
Like the writing coach who messaged me. She was targeting copywriters, who worked for ethical businesses and wanted to break into the leadership space. She did her research and I will have come up in a list of many.
Use the LinkedIn search function well and create a hit list of the kind of businesses you want to work with, then get the right people in those businesses. It takes a bit of care and research for this but is definitely worth the time and effort.
Then make sure that what you are posting publically is relevant to your ideal customer. Don’t forget about your brand voice and sharing some of yourself in there.
How do I increase my B2B engagement on LinkedIn?
If you want to increase your B2B engagement on LinkedIn you can start by trying one of these B2B marketing strategies on LinkedIn. Combined, you should see an improvement of your engagement.
There are also some other tricks you can use like commenting and interacting with posts by others (your target audience is a good place to start here), using hashtags, getting involved in groups, posting a variety of content types and checking out the advice on your SSI score.
Mostly, you need to remember that LinkedIn is a conversation, not a broadcast. It’s about making and nurturing connections. Do this and you can’t go far wrong.
Need help with your LinkedIn?
I offer Content Clinics that can help give you a clear and targetted LinkedIn strategy. Maybe check out the Content Clinic here?