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Introduction to B2B LinkedIn marketing

LinkedIn is the business social network, and while more mainstream social networks like Instagram have gained a strong footing among businesses, there’s no doubt that LinkedIn still reigns supreme.

It’s a trusted name, having been around since 2002, and it is treated as a regular part of doing business. Potential B2B customers may not be browsing Instagram or TikTok daily with work in mind – or even have a company account on these platforms – but they’re almost certainly checking in on LinkedIn. LinkedIn also has significant reach at 875 million users, rivalling Instagram’s 1.2 billion.

The difference, of course, is that every LinkedIn user is there for work, while only some of Instagram’s users are. This isn’t to suggest that Instagram isn’t a good platform for B2B marketing – it absolutely is (check out our B2B Instagram guide here) – but rather that if you only have the resources to manage one, it should probably be LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is ideal for B2B marketing because, across industries, business decision makers love the platform. According to Hootsuite, four in five LinkedIn users report that they “drive business decisions,” and 77% of content marketers say that the platform produces the best organic results of any social network.

In addition to organic reach, LinkedIn offers powerful targeting tools for its paid ads, enabling marketers to precisely target their ideal clients. Hootsuite’s data shows that three in four B2B content marketers use LinkedIn ads.

There’s also an SEO case for using LinkedIn as a marketing tool. While Google doesn’t directly use LinkedIn in its ranking algorithm, it is a great way to generate expertise, authority and trust signals, and Google does pay attention to these.

For businesses looking to generate results with B2B social media marketing, LinkedIn is the network to focus on and this guide will cover everything you need to know to get started.

Talk to our social media team to discuss a B2B LinkedIn strategy for your business or click here to get back to the top of the page.

B2B LinkedIn strategy

The first step to B2B LinkedIn strategy success is determining what you hope to get from the platform. Are you there to generate leads? Build the business’s profile with a specific demographic? Promote a new product or service? Shares, follows and reacts are all great, but they’re not an end unto themselves: a successful social strategy needs to be connected to the business’s bottom line.

The more clearly the business can set these goals, the better chance it has of meeting them. This is where ‘SMART’ objectives come in. The SMART framework is intended to help businesses create specific, actionable objectives.

It calls for them to be:

  • Specific – exact and straightforward.
  • Measurable – in one or more qualitative or quantitative metric.
  • Achievable – ambitious but possible with your current resources.
  • Relevant – it should be possible to draw a clear line from the objective itself to the business’s success.
  • Timely – taking place within a defined timeframe.

LinkedIn’s dashboard makes the measurable part straightforward. It offers stats on visitors to your Company Page, new followers, competitor activity, leads generated through the Company Page, employee advocacy (more on this later), and even insights on how different updates performed.

On LinkedIn, the key to your success is leveraging your network of people. A like or comment from someone outside of your usual network on your content pushes that content to their network too, so the opportunity to get more eyes on your stuff is enormous. Employees, business advocates, influencers in your space – it’s those active users that are super important to engage with what you’re doing.

Don’t get lost in the data, though; it’s important to remember that your LinkedIn strategy is part of a larger effort to achieve specific goals. An increase in followers or engagement is great but remember to keep things ‘relevant’ by relating your efforts back to a metric that matters to the business, like sales or new business.

Talk to our social media team to discuss a B2B LinkedIn strategy for your business or click here to get back to the top of the page.

LinkedIn statistics

As a bit of further context before we dive any deeper into creating a winning B2B LinkedIn strategy, it’s worth getting a big picture view of the platform, who uses it, and how. Here are some LinkedIn statistics you need to know to shape your strategy:

  • Globally, the average LinkedIn user is in the ‘25-34’ age bracket. Almost six in ten users fall within this age group (source)
  • More men use LinkedIn than women: 57.2% vs 42.8%
  • Over 34 million people in the UK use LinkedIn – more than any other country in Europe, but far fewer than the 191 million US users (source)
  • More than 58 million businesses are listed on LinkedIn (source)
  • Our own research of B2B CMOs and marketers revealed that, surprisingly, only 52% say their business has an active business profile on LinkedIn (posting more than once a month)
  • LinkedIn’s internal statistics show that over 65 million decision makers use the platform. In the world of B2B LinkedIn marketing, these are the people you’re trying to reach – so it’s good news that there are so many of them! (source)
  • LinkedIn data shows that more than half of all decision makers (55%) read thought leadership from a company before choosing whether to work with them. This is why content is so important (we’ll have ) (source)
  • The average amount of time that users spend on the site is just under eight minutes. That’s not a lot of time, even compared with other social channels, so capturing their attention quickly and engaging them with impactful content is key (source)
  • According to the Content Marketing Institute’s survey of B2B marketers, LinkedIn is both the best platform for organic content and the one that delivers the best results (source)
  • An incredible 93% of marketers surveyed by the CMI have used the platform in the past year, though, so the competition is hot. This beats out Facebook, which 80% of marketers have used, and Twitter (71%) (source)
  • CMI data also shows that LinkedIn was the top platform for paid campaigns, with three in four marketers (75%) buying LinkedIn ads in the past year (source)
  • However, it is more expensive than other advertising platforms. The average cost per click (CPC) on Google Ads is around US$0.67, while LinkedIn ads average US$5.26 (source)
  • LinkedIn data shows that the platform is the best rated in terms of high-quality lead generation (source)
  • Over half of sponsored InMail (Message Ads) sent to users are opened (source)
  • LinkedIn says that Message Ads get the best results when they’re sent on a Tuesday or Wednesday (source)

LinkedIn content strategy

A social platform is all about content, and each platform demands a unique approach. You shouldn’t be posting the same kind of content on LinkedIn that you are on Instagram, for example.

That said, there are some considerations that remain relevant across all social channels. For one, mobile usage continues to dominate, including among employees. To cater to these people, your content strategy can’t cant solely consist of thousand word thought leadership pieces.

Your LinkedIn content strategy needs to feature more mobile-friendly formats like images and videos. Videos in particular play an important role in the B2B sales funnel with 70% of buyers reporting that they watch at least one video on their path to purchasing a product or service. This logic also applies to text posts, as studies have found that lower character lengths are associated with an 18% boost in organic engagement.

This isn’t to suggest that there isn’t a place for longform content – a significant portion of LinkedIn users are likely to visit the site from their work computers – but rather that variety is key. A feed needs both lengthy articles and quick, ‘snackable’ videos to serve a broad audience.

Here are four pillars that businesses should build on when executing a LinkedIn strategy:

  • Long newsfeed lifespans. Unlike the Twitter and Facebook algorithms, which focus primarily on recency in filling the newsfeed, LinkedIn focuses on engagement. That means that to make your posts more visible, you should prioritise creating interesting, shareable, valuable content to drive awareness of important campaigns, events and news. Posts with more likes, comments, and shares will continue to live in the newsfeed for days, sometimes weeks.
  • Community mentality. Other social platforms can be prone to unfavourable comments and replies, but LinkedIn has a far stronger community – we’re all looking for business or networking opportunities, and while some users may be competitors, everyone is keen to keep things professional. Question posts can be an effective means of leveraging this community to promote knowledge sharing and relationship building.
  • Audience insights. LinkedIn enables all business accounts to define their target audience and then access content suggestions based on that audience. This can highlight trending topics in particular areas, and where resource is available, supporting an agile approach to gaining share of voice and brand awareness by creating posts on the same topics.
  • Engage with the larger conversation. According to LinkedIn’s own resources, inwardly focused content is likely to perform less well than content that has broad appeal to others in the sector. As a result, they suggest that directly promotional content makes up, at most, 25% of all the content that a business posts.

In terms of a content plan, reaction and participation are key. While a business could certainly plan out every piece of content for the year, LinkedIn’s algorithm rewards active engagement with others on the platform. Rather than planning the specific posts, businesses can plan the types of posts and who will be responsible for them, and then leave the specifics to be decided closer to the posting date.

It’s also important to note what you shouldn’t post. In May 2022 LinkedIn started giving users the option to see less political content for example (so avoid this) and also highlighted low quality content it was looking to reduce on the network. This included posts that encourage users to engage via the like/reaction button (these posts use this engagement tactic to boost reach) and excessive use of polls (LinkedIn isn’t removing polls altogether but is rather trying to focus the ones users are exposed to, in an effort to make them more relevant).

In addition to regular posts, LinkedIn also offers another valuable content opportunity: the LinkedIn newsletter. Many businesses miss out on this channel, but it’s one of the most direct and consistent ways to reach potential customers – and it doesn’t cost a penny.

Much like a traditional newsletter, a LinkedIn newsletter goes directly to a list of subscribers. They can opt to receive it in their email inbox or on LinkedIn directly – but unlike a traditional newsletter, it’s also visible to people who don’t subscribe. This is great news for shareability and discoverability, as it eliminates some of the obstacles faced by the conventional approach.

The most effective LinkedIn newsletters address a specific, business-focused topic on a regular basis. Almost every business already has this expertise (and opinion) in-house, so it’s just a matter of setting time aside for your specialists to type their thoughts out.

This ties in with another core element of LinkedIn newsletters: a predictable schedule. Reading a newsletter can become a part of a potential customer’s weekly or monthly routine – an incredibly valuable opportunity – but only if they are released consistently. Thought leaders may find it useful to create a recurring event in their schedule for writing to ensure that they have the time needed to produce content regularly.

When the newsletter goes live, it will alert subscribers. To reach a broader audience, it’s worth linking to each edition of the newsletter with a post – LinkedIn recommends a few lines of commentary or a stimulating question. This helps people to discover the newsletter and keeps your company’s feed fresh. LinkedIn also encourages sharing newsletters more broadly, such as by linking to it from other social platforms.

To get started, check out LinkedIn’s guide to using the newsletter feature.

Talk to our social media team to discuss a B2B LinkedIn strategy for your business or click here to get back to the top of the page.

The LinkedIn company page (aka your LinkedIn business page)

A company’s home on LinkedIn is called, appropriately enough, the Company Page. This page will be visible to everyone from employees and prospective employees to suppliers, competitors, and members of the public, acting in many ways as the company’s online storefront. It’s an organisation’s public face, a valuable chance to make a first impression, and an important marketing tool – so it’s important to make the most of it.

For a start, it’s important to properly populate it. Although it costs nothing to do, many businesses leave an opportunity on the table by failing to provide enough detail on their LinkedIn Company Page. Hootsuite finds that businesses with a fully completed Company Page receive five times more pageviews, seven times more impressions per follower, and a jaw dropping 11 times more clicks per follower.

Next, the images and copy need to be tailored for the type of audience you hope to reach. The page is designed so that the company’s banner image, name and logo are front and centre, and the ‘headline’ is a close second. This is a chance to introduce the organisation in its own words – but creating a compelling description with just 120 characters, is a challenge.

An ideal headline explains the business’s focus and its unique selling point and conveys something about how it presents itself. In many instances, a fun adjective is all that it takes to turn a cold, legal-sounding description into an eye-catching headline. Check out the examples later in this guide for some headline inspiration.

Other key features at the top of the Company Page include location, which is a must have for businesses that serve a local market, and up to three hashtags. These plug directly into LinkedIn’s search, and they’re a complete freebie for marketing. Consider what your prospective clients would be searching for and make these your hashtags. For important things that don’t fit in the hashtags, there’s also a ‘specialities’ field.

Perhaps the most useful feature on the Company Page is the customisable button selection. This is the page’s call to action, and LinkedIn will format it in their on-site design. For instance, businesses making use of LinkedIn newsletters may choose to use it as a “subscribe” button. Consider what action most visitors to the page will want to do and use the button for that, whether it’s directing them to your site, a sign-up page, or something else.

There is also a customisable LinkedIn lead generation form, a recent addition which takes the button a step further. It enables people to submit their details directly, acting as a contact form built directly into the Company Page. For a step-by-step guide to creating one, check out LinkedIn’s guide.

Talk to our social media team to discuss a B2B LinkedIn strategy for your business or click here to get back to the top of the page.

What to post on your Company Page

Posting regularly boosts a company’s engagement rate. Hootsuite has found that businesses that post weekly have double the engagement rate of those posting less frequently. Weekdays are the best time to post – fewer people check LinkedIn on the weekend – and research has suggested Wednesday may be the best day for B2B content.

Coming up with a continuous stream of things to post can feel daunting. However, every business has at least one interesting thing to say each week – and even if the management doesn’t, the employees certainly will. Here are some ideas for posts to keep people coming back to the Company Page.

News about the company: even businesses that have yet to realise the true potential of a coordinated B2B LinkedIn strategy often create this type of post. The Company Page is a great platform to celebrate the company’s achievements, both large and small, and share updates. Announcing new products or services, funding rounds, expansion to a new location, pivoting, and more – essentially anything noteworthy going on in the business – is great fodder. Just remember to keep explicit promotion to around one in every four posts.

Industry news and analysis: every good business has opinions about trends and developments in its industry. What does the latest news mean for the sector? There are few people better placed to comment than those who live it every day and engaging with these topics shows that the business is part of the broader conversation. These thoughts may even attract the attention of sector journalists, potentially forming the foundation for a broader thought leadership campaign.

Hooking readers with an eye-catching photo or graphic has been a core part of the media since photo printing was invented. LinkedIn is no different: a colourful graphic that summarises an argument can be worth a thousand words, and an on-topic photo is a great way to differentiate a post on a text-heavy feed.

Hiring updates: open positions are an excellent opportunity to say something about the business. Why is your company a great place to work? Why should potential candidates be excited? What cutting-edge projects will they be working on? LinkedIn has a strong focus on recruiting, but beyond just the potential hires, a hiring-focused post is an excellent chance to share information about the company with a broader audience.

LinkedIn also has a page format designed specifically for recruiting, the Career Page, but there’s no reason that broadly relevant content can’t be used on the Company Page too. Learn how to make the most of Career Pages with LinkedIn’s guide.

Content from other platforms: perhaps you’re celebrating an all-company meetup on Instagram or posting a blog with your MD’s thoughts on the latest industry trend. These can easily be reformatted for use on LinkedIn, and they’ll reach an entirely different audience – just be sure to choose business-focused content. Anecdotally we’re seeing TikTok videos do very well from an engagement perspective on LinkedIn: hijacking TikTok trends and repurposing them with an appropriate message for a business audience, is a great way to generate more engagement with your content and give your brand a ‘face’.

Engage with the community: no Company Page is an island, and the most successful ones are those that connect with others. If a supplier has a major update, consider reposting it to your page with some supportive commentary. If an employee writes an insightful post, give it a repost (more on this later).

Showcase your people: create short video profiles of your team and what they do and use the tagging function to share their LinkedIn profiles, providing added value to both them and you. This is also great for recruitment, as it gives prospective employees a glimpse at what life is really like within the business.

Ask interesting questions with polls: within the post interface is a feature that many businesses completely overlook, the poll. This option creates an interactive poll with between two and four options, and choices for when to share the results. Asking a question can even start a conversation in the comments, further boosting engagement.

Break down a thought leadership or advice piece: LinkedIn users love actionable bite-sized business insights. Why read a whole business book when you can get the tips you need from others in the industry in just a few lines? Carousel posts are great for this, and if you’re summarising the key points from a longer piece of writing, you can always include a link to the original for people who want more detail – a great way to drive referral traffic.

Share customer testimonials: people buy based on trust, so build it by showing how you delivered a great experience for others. This is a great sales tool, since it benefits both the company and its clients, greatly extending the post’s reach.

Talk to our social media team to discuss a B2B LinkedIn strategy for your business or click here to get back to the top of the page.

LinkedIn company page examples

This is all good in theory, but what does it look like in practice? To show you what a great Company Page and impactful content look like, we’ve collected some outstanding LinkedIn Company Page examples. Here’s what each of these big B2B companies are doing right.

Hootsuite: we’ve already used some of Hootsuite’s research on LinkedIn in this guide, and their team has clearly mastered the platform. Everything from their punchy headline (“Too many brands suck at social. Yours doesn’t have to”) to their effective use of video and the full range of post formats, should act as an inspiration for your B2B LinkedIn page.

HubSpot: the company’s LinkedIn presence is great at stimulating conversations with posts in a variety of formats. In part this is because they take on the big issues rather than focusing on the niche, techy details (they have other platforms, like their blog, for that).

Templafy: this is a content enablement platform that aligns workforces and enables employees to effortlessly create on-brand, high-performing business content faster. If you’re in the industry, that may mean a lot to you, but if it doesn’t, their headline will clear things up: “Enabling content for the future of work.”

Templafy takes a similar approach to HubSpot, but with longer text posts. They use these to share tips, facts, and questions to engage their audience. This even includes mini courses in productivity, or short videos. The content appeals to the target audience (business and marketing managers) by providing insight and maintaining a human touch.

Affirm: this financial services provider focuses on improving the lives of consumers by delivering simple, honest and transparent financial products, so the Company Page strikes a careful balance between professionalism and making the business understandable and relatable.

Many of the posts literally put a face to the announcements or comments by including a photo and a slick-looking graphic. They further make the brand relatable by incorporating humour, sharing customer testimonials, and showcasing the people behind the technology.

GE: The company’s headline is “Building A World That Works,” and they produce a range of content with shareability as a high priority. In addition to short, informative posts, they also post a great mix of content – polls, video, short animations, reports and more.

Deloitte: despite its huge size – over 400,000 employees worldwide, according to LinkedIn – this multinational puts forward a very human face on the platform. Content covers broad business topics which appeal to readers in many sectors, and the extensive “life at Deloitte” feature is a powerful recruiting tool that gives candidates a glimpse of what their future workday may look like.

LinkedIn Marketing Solutions: it should come as no surprise that LinkedIn’s internal teams are experts at using the platform effectively. They create shareable content that engages their audience, start discussions in the comments section, and regularly share tips. The Marketing Solutions team also promotes their other B2B channels, including a podcast, blog, and more.

When it comes to LinkedIn Company Page examples, there are as many potential approaches as there are businesses. To find what works, try looking at other businesses in your sector or businesses of a similar size. You don’t need to copy them, just consider what works well and how these elements could translate to your business.

Making the most of your people

A company is nothing without its employees, and the same is true for a Company Page. Engaging with employees is a core part of the platform, and encouraging ’employee advocacy,’ as LinkedIn describes it, is one of the most effective organic ways to boost a company’s reach.

As an absolute minimum, employees need to link their accounts to the Company Page. This means they’ll be listed as employees, and that a link to the Company Page will have a prominent place on their personal profiles. A LinkedIn Company Page without any employees rightly raises suspicion, as anybody could have set it up for any reason.

To really have an impact, employees and the company need to interact. The LinkedIn Company Page is a sort of virtual storefront, and activity here is the difference between a silent, empty store and an energetic, bustling one. There are plenty of reasons to encourage employees to interact with the Company Page. For one, LinkedIn says that the average person on LinkedIn has ten times more connections than the average company has followers.

When a person directs traffic, it has a far greater impact than when the company does. LinkedIn data shows that the click-through rate on content shared by employees is twice as high than when it is just shared by the company. Employee posts are also a powerful recruiting tool. According to LinkedIn, “for every piece of content an employee shares on LinkedIn, at least one person will view your job postings.”

There are also benefits to authenticity when employees share company content. LinkedIn points to the Edelman Trust Barometer, which shows that people are three times more likely to trust information about a company from an employee than from a CEO.

So, we’ve established that it’s great for employees to engage with the company, but what actionable items are there in terms of B2B LinkedIn strategy?

Encourage employees to interact on LinkedIn: let employees know that the company is working to raise its profile on LinkedIn and ask employees to do their part. Ensure that they have time every week to post some thoughts, share content from colleagues, and make new connections.

In a busy company, updating LinkedIn can feel like a low priority for employees. However, if they understand that their posts are part of a company-wide effort, they’ll be more likely to take the time. LinkedIn doesn’t need to be time consuming – a few minutes a week from each employee is enough to make a huge difference.

Highlight that interacting is mutually beneficial: interacting on LinkedIn isn’t just good for the business, it’s good for the employee. Employees that regularly interact on LinkedIn will be contributing to their personal page while boosting the business. Over time, their posts will form the foundation for their personal brand as an industry expert. At the same time, participating in the larger discussion within their sector is a great way to network.

The benefits of interacting on LinkedIn are especially clear for salespeople. LinkedIn finds that sales reps who share content on LinkedIn are 45% more likely than their colleagues to exceed their quota. If a company has a referral bonus for new business, there’s also a benefit to using LinkedIn, as companies actively using the platform are 57% more likely to see increased sales leads.

Frame it positively: making posting to LinkedIn a checklist activity is a guaranteed way to discourage engagement. Instead, suggest it as a great way to get to know others in the sector and to promote the business – something that all employees stand to benefit from.

Remind employees that LinkedIn isn’t a sales venue. In fact, the algorithm actively discourages aggressive selling. Instead, it’s a chance to catch up on the news and participate in the larger discussions going on in the sector.

Offer training: while most employees are familiar with posting to social media from their personal lives, it can be intimidating to move to a slightly more formal platform filled with high-powered businesspeople throwing jargon around. Here, a little bit of training can make all the difference, giving employees the confidence that they need to bring their personal style to LinkedIn.

Decision makers need to remember that employee advocates are a part of the marketing strategy, so directing some marketing spend to training is a worthwhile investment. Effective training should cover how to make the most of the platform’s many unique features and what to post (and what not to) based on what gets the best results

Talk to our social media team to discuss a B2B LinkedIn strategy for your business or click here to get back to the top of the page.

LinkedIn lead generation

LinkedIn is a powerful lead generator. According to the platform’s internal stats, four out of every five users are involved in making business decisions and they have two times the buying power of audiences on other platforms.

Those stats tell an impressive story, but it’s easy to feel daunted by LinkedIn’s huge lead gen toolkit, so let’s start from the beginning. Lead generation is the process of attracting and nurturing potential customers through your sales funnel. The good news is that if you’re following along with this guide, you’ve already taken some major steps to building a powerful LinkedIn lead generation strategy, including:

  1. Developing an attention-grabbing Company Page for your business.
  2. Implementing a well thought out content strategy, including posting relevant and timely updates for your ideal customer or desired candidates.
  3. Ensuring that your employees have properly populated their LinkedIn profiles, and are engaging with Groups and topics.

This is a great foundation, and it’s possible to carry on with this organic activity without spending anything – but it’s just the beginning of the story if you’re willing to invest a little bit. LinkedIn’s paid tools enable you to boost your content and really skyrocket your reach. LinkedIn’s advertising features include:

  • Advanced targeting options. LinkedIn advertising enables businesses to narrow their approach using in-depth variables like location, job function, seniority, company name, company size, industry, degree, skills, professional interests, and more. This ensures that content reaches a highly relevant and engaged audience.
  • Personalisation. Sponsored InMail delivers customised messages directly to a specific target audience. This can be effective for inviting users to download gated content or inviting users to an event or webinar.
  • Ad variety. LinkedIn offers multiple ad formats, including some that are unique to the platform. The primary offerings include sponsored content, sponsored InMail, video ads, dynamic ads, carousel ads and display ads. You can test which format works best for your audience and adjust your approach accordingly.
  • The Lead Accelerator. LinkedIn goes beyond the first touchpoint by enabling users to track high-value prospects and deliver additional customised ads. It also has remarketing features that can be activated based on recent website visits and account lists, providing yet another digital touchpoint to nurture leads.
  • Industry-leading conversion rates. A yearlong study by HubSpot found that LinkedIn ads enjoy more than triple the conversion rate of Google Ads. With Google Ads customers can expect a conversion rate in the ballpark of 2.58 percent, HubSpot users experienced an average conversion rate of 9% over time on LinkedIn.

However, there are other considerations. For one, access to LinkedIn’s audience of engaged decision makers comes at a price: LinkedIn ads are substantially more expensive than other social ad platforms. Despite this, our survey of 500 CMOs and marketing managers in B2B organisations told us they’re spending around £13,000 a year advertising on the platform – surprisingly no more than Facebook or Instagram.

LinkedIn also offers more limited analytics than competing social ad platforms. LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager certainly provides adequate information, but it’s just a fraction of the detail provided by the industry leader, Facebook Ads Manager. On the one hand, you could argue that much of Facebook’s data is extraneous – but on the other, you could say that it’s better to have and not need than to need and not have.

Using LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager is also a bumpy experience. It’s getting better with every update, but the user experience is far from polished. Be prepared to run into some confusing screens (and even bugs) as you create your ads.

The final point to consider is that, in the B2B landscape, prospects are unlikely to engage with your brand at the first touch point. This can skew your results if you don’t consider the big picture. For example, your B2B LinkedIn lead generation strategy may drive more qualified leads to give you a call after seeing an ad. This isn’t a conversion on LinkedIn, but there’s no doubt that it’s a lead from LinkedIn.

To ramp up your LinkedIn lead generation strategy with ads, start by setting up a LinkedIn Campaign Manager account. Then, follow the platform’s guide to create your first ad. Getting things right will involve trial and error, so be prepared to adjust your approach based on the data, and always refer back to your objectives to drive your decision making.

Talk to our social media team to discuss a B2B LinkedIn strategy for your business or click here to get back to the top of the page.

LinkedIn InMail strategy

Just like any other social media advertising campaign, your efforts will deliver the best ROI when you have a well thought out strategy behind you. LinkedIn InMail or Message Ads are no different. These ads arrive directly in the inbox of your desired audience, addressed from a real person and they deliver strong results (LinkedIn says that

There is no character limit to LinkedIn InMail, but it makes sense to keep them short and focus on a single call to action. Consider the persona of the decision maker you’re trying to reach and tailor your tone and the content to suit them – the best LinkedIn InMail strategy is bespoke and designed specifically for your target audience.

There are lots of different things you might want to offer a new connection made through InMail ads: a product demo, a free resource (like an in-depth guide), or get even more personal and offer a meeting or phone call (though you’ll need to be explicit as to why this would benefit the recipient).

There’s no one-size-fits-all here, but it can help to see an example, so here’s a sample LinkedIn InMail template for a recruiting business. This InMail asks for your new connection’s insight on your industry or product to help refine your positioning.

LinekdIn InMail templates

Subject: Have your say: the future of workforce planning

As a talent acquisition leader, you will be the instigator in shifting to skills-based workforce planning for your organisation, and we’d like to hear from you.

We’ve created a brief survey to explore the most pertinent challenges that organisations are facing in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This survey will capture feedback from HR, talent acquisition and business leaders like you, across multiple industries, to create an accurate view of the most significant challenges to talent acquisition.

Once the report is completed you will be amongst the first to receive a copy and will be entered into our prize draw to win a £150 retail voucher, as a thank you for your participation in the survey.

Will you help us by completing our survey? [insert survey link]

This message is just 130 words, but it has a clear focus and call to action. The subject line is clear and gives the reader a reason to click (“have your say”).

InMail can also dynamically insert details, such as the person’s name, for a personal touch. To do so, you could add something like the following to this LinkedIn InMail template:

“Hi %FIRSTNAME%” or “Dear %FIRSTNAME% %LASTNAME%”

The system then sees who the InMail is being sent to and automatically replaces these with the right names (in my case, these would read “Hi Louise” or “Dear Louise Watson-Dowell”).

LinkedIn also lets you send a test message first, so you can see how everything will look once it goes through the system. Check out LinkedIn’s guides on creating and testing and Message Ads.

Measure, review, refine

Even if you’re not yet paying for advertising on LinkedIn, the site still provides a rich selection of analytics. Careful examination of these and a trial-and-error approach are all that are needed to produce remarkable results.

Begin by using the data to review the posts that land (and those that don’t), at least once a month. Try to identify the variables like type of information, format, time of day, and day of the week that get the most engagement on your Company Page. This regular review will be the drumbeat of your B2B LinkedIn strategy.

The more frequently you review your approach, the more quickly you can react when things change. There are all sorts of reasons that engagement rates may change, from algorithm updates to market trends, but any time they move up or down, it’s up to you to determine why that is and use it to your advantage.

Some of the useful LinkedIn stats to look at are average post engagement (reactions, shares and comments) and the number of site and direction clicks. You can also do some detective work to identify which sales qualified leads can be directly traced back to your organic social efforts.

Bear in mind that this is an ongoing process. Don’t expect results overnight, it takes time to build up momentum on social media. Maintain a focus on the end goals you established earlier in this process, and it shouldn’t be too long before you begin to see results.

Bring in the experts

Creating a social presence that drives business results is tough, so for many businesses it makes sense to bring in the experts.

As a B2B social media agency, our team can deliver a bespoke solution for your business tailored to your objectives and budget. Whether it’s a strategy your team can execute themselves, LinkedIn content production, an advertising programme designed to drive prospects through the sales funnel or complete page/profile management on an ongoing basis, we can help!

Talk to our social media team to discuss a B2B LinkedIn strategy for your business or click here to get back to the top of the page.

Written by: Lou Watson-Dowell, PR & Digital Strategy Director at Definition.