With over 756 million users in more than 200 countries, LinkedIn has outgrown itself as a website for job seekers and evolved into a social media platform that helps business professionals connect, grow their businesses, and even sell! It’s one of the most powerful platforms for business-to-business (B2B) marketers to advertise on and for small businesses to expand their reach. Thus, choosing the most appropriate LinkedIn marketing strategy for small businesses is relevant for the excellent spending of their limited resources.
LinkedIn marketing has become a growing source for businesses and brands to publish and share high-quality authoritative content.
With this expansive reach, you can make your content visible to users anywhere. But managing to fully leverage the resources of LinkedIn marketing for B2B requires a strategy. You need to approach LinkedIn business as a piece of multi-channel strategy with objectives and allocate appropriate resources while putting an emphasis on quality to be able to secure a significant advantage on this platform.
So, to be able to leverage all these benefits, here are the strategies that you must use:
LinkedIn Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses That Work
1. Create an Outstanding Business Profile
You must create a great first impression that’s going to drive traffic and reinforce your credibility. If you don’t have an account already, create one. If you have one, complete it fully. If you only have a personal account, then get to the next level and create a company profile. Here are a few main guidelines.
Profiles with great photos generate more views and matches and eventually better results. Use neutral backgrounds and soft lighting. Don’t use selfies or pictures where you’re in a group of people. While choosing outfits, consider background colors and pick the ones that match both your personality and your target roles. Keep it professional yet appealing enough for viewers to want to meet you.
b. Sound Approachable but Not Desperate
You may desperately be looking for a client or employment, but showing that you’re actively seeking these opportunities may not be a good thing. Human psychology always seeks to find what is in demand, so present yourself as someone or a brand that people want. It sounds like a cheat but it’s really about winning, and showing your value, not your needs.
Thus, use a first-person description of yourself and sound like someone clients or hiring managers would like to meet.
c. Use Keywords Skillfully and Make the Profile Readable
Your profile description must include the necessary keywords that match your target roles, use them artfully, and don’t overstuff them. Make your paragraphs short and easily digestible considering the fact that your viewers will use different screens or devices.
d. Highlight Your Accomplishments
You want the target audience to know the highlights of your business. Include anything that constitutes such information without seeming like you’re bragging. Just put it out in a way to show that you deliver great results.
e. Proofread and Proofread
Have you ever seen a renowned company with a typo in the title description and you cringed on their behalf? Yes, it’s easy even for the mighty to fail even by a punctuation error. But it’s more than just punctuation, the descriptions must be relevant to your activity.
Finally, avoid multiple entries and delete any irrelevant information from your company’s profile, such as social media accounts that are no longer in use.
Source: linkedin.com
Here is a step by step guide on how to create your LinkedIn business profile and page.
2. LinkedIn Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses: Define Your Audience and Goals
The second LinkedIn marketing strategy is identifying your goals and your audience. Peter Drucker said if you can’t measure it then you can’t improve it. What exactly do you want to achieve on LinkedIn and how do these goals tie in with your career, personal brand, or business?
So, the impetus is upon you to have a clear understanding of this in order to know the tactics, type of content, and manner in which you will pursue your LinkedIn marketing goals. Write down your objectives, specify how you can achieve them then track your progress.
With goals in place, the next thing is to identify who you want to appeal to be able to make relevant connections. Know their challenges and how you can help solve them. This is the only way you can create content that will resonate with them.
3. LinkedIn Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses: Create Helpful and Original Content
As you may know, LinkedIn is the social media for pros and experts, so you need to bring your A-game to play. One major purpose of being on LinkedIn is to establish your credibility and build your authority to boost your brand.
Creating valuable and relevant content is one sure way of accomplishing this while having in mind the goal and target audience identified above. So, in other words, your subject matter should resonate with your brand as well as your target network. It must address their pain points and other common challenges with a viable solution for them.
With this said, it’s always recommended that you also share relevant quality content created by other people, not just your own unique work time. Research has in fact found that you should try and strike a 40% balance in sharing other similar content on your LinkedIn page.
To make sure your LinkedIn content marketing stays in perspective, here are a few questions you can think about before creating your content:
Does it add value?
Does it help me portray myself as a thought leader?
Is it clear?
Does it solve their pain points?
Finally, it’s very important to be consistent with your content uploads. Create a schedule that you can stick to, without being very “spammy” or “salesy”.
4. Leverage on LinkedIn Groups
You could boost your LinkedIn business page by joining or creating your own group. This is a great way to build a buzz around your brand. LinkedIn has made it quite simple to do this, under the “interests” button on your homepage, click on groups then create a group, and finally proceed to fill it out.
With this done, you can get the word out to your target audience especially the thought leaders and influencers if possible. They work as great catalysts for your growth and over time you can build a sizeable community that will give leverage to your business.
Groups are a great place to have relevant conversations and this is a good way to keep your page active and engaged. Alternatively, you could discover new groups in your niche and request to follow them.
Groups help build new connections and create a nice environment to discuss relevant issues, share new ideas, or just learn new stuff. Here are a few more benefits of creating groups:
You become a thought leader especially if you back it up with stellar content.
It boosts connectivity especially when you bring like-minded people together
You develop personal networks so you can send weekly messages/updates.
5. Use LinkedIn’s Native Advertising to Sponsor Your Best Content
LinkedIn has a number of advertising options for marketers and one of the most popular options is LinkedIn Sponsored Content. This one allows you to distribute your content to professionals outside your visitors and followers.
For example, if you have content that has gained high engagement rates you can amplify the reach even further using this native advertising option. It’s interactive so this means likes, comments, and shares are there to help boost ad virality and engagement.
Another option is Direct Sponsored Content which is still a sponsored ad but does not appear on your company’s page because it’s created directly under the campaign manager. It’s specifically designed this way to be able to A/B test, personalize and improve your ads for optimal performance without cluttering your page.
It’s important to note that content here doesn’t only mean text format, rather it includes images, links, and videos too, so this content may appear on multiple locations including the newsfeed, the notifications page as well as the InMail, and the connections page. LinkedIn, in fact, favors native videos over links to external videos, this means you should upload your video file directly to the platform as opposed to just sharing a link to a video hosted elsewhere like let’s say YouTube.
Thus, you see you are spoilt with choices on how you may want to sponsor your best content. For best results, here are a few best practices for LinkedIn Advertising:
Know your target
Promote your best-performing content
Optimize your sponsored content
Have an effective bidding strategy
Link your ads to a post-click landing page
A/B test your campaigns
6. Promote Beyond LinkedIn
Yes, this is about LinkedIn marketing, but you still need to integrate your strategy beyond LinkedIn to gain substantial growth over time. LinkedIn allows several cross-promotion strategies to allow for this growth.
You can link your company’s page in your marketing communications, blogs, and email signatures as well. Another very simple way to cross-promote is to allow your readers to share your content at any point while they’re browsing through your website.
By adding a LinkedIn follow button on your landing page or through use of social media sharing buttons, you can gain greater outreach to a wider audience beyond your page.
7. Top LinkedIn Marketing Strategy for Small Businesses: Optimize for Search Engine Ranking
The world today is hyper-connected and the business world is highly competitive, so it’s crucial for any brand or business to reach its message to its target audience, and this is why SEO is very important. When done right and in combination with other marketing strategies, SEO can help your content get good rankings.
First page Google SERPs receive up to 95% of all web traffic, the lucky thing is that your LinkedIn page is already designed to be SEO friendly and all that’s left for you is to tailor your content to suit your audience to enhance your business’s chances of building referrals, generate leads and build traffic.
Use of relevant keywords, linking your company page to your website or blog, and sharing content, all lead to better SEO optimization.
8. Keep Up with LinkedIn Analytics and Changes
It’s easier to get through to people when you know what resonates with them. It’s even easier and better when you can segment them according to different needs and LinkedIn has made this easy through use of their LinkedIn Company Page analytics along with analytics for publishing on LinkedIn.
Both of these will help you with optimizing and monitoring your page. You can also leverage the LinkedIn Campaign Manager to track your campaign performance as well as conversions.
You can also take advantage of the LinkedIn Marketing Blog to keep up to date with any new changes and developments as they offer a curated selection specifically made to help you tweak your LinkedIn marketing.
Pro Tips on How to Boost Your LinkedIn Traffic
With millions of blogs producing more content than ever, the “if you build they’ll come” strategy no longer works and therefore you have to work a little bit smarter for your content and brand as a whole to cut through all the noise and arrive in front of your target audience.
These next pro tips will guide you on cutting through all the noise.
Content is king, create insatiable content that will keep them coming back for more.
Be active and consistent with your posts but don’t be spammy
Engage your audience and don’t fail to respond to their questions
Use rich media, i.e. video and images.
Create and share high-quality infographics in your niche
Engage influencers in your niche
Reach out to people who view your profile, they’re already interested, right?
Advertise and advertise.
LinkedIn Marketing Best Practices for Small Businesses
Create a strong and convincing LinkedIn landing page that’s streamlined with relevant information and that easily pushes forward the call to action.
Remember LinkedIn is the social media for pros and decision makers so be more about informing, offering solutions, educating, and more subtle about sales.
Always offer your audience only relevant content and address them directly, don’t be ambiguous with your offering.
Always present yourself as a brand to show professionalism and to create awareness. Include your company name in your offering too.
Including some rich media in your content, videos, and images will definitely get more clicks.
Conclusion
LinkedIn is so much more than just a digital resume, it’s the best free tool where execs and pros hang out. It’s a great platform where you can build useful connections with fellow professionals in your niche.
Thus, instead of letting your company’s profile collect dust, make use of the above LinkedIn marketing strategies to build intentional business connections. With the statistics shown above to prove its effectiveness, you only need to follow the strategies and all the tips and best practices and you’ll be on your way to a new business level.
Producing engaging, valuable, qualitative, and diverse content for your online business is an ever-challenging task. However, it is not enough if you aim to produce buzz among online users around the world. You must have in-depth knowledge of what engages your audience the most and what drives it away, which are the key performance areas of marketing activities in general and content strategy in particular. In other words, the relevant marketing and content strategy KPIs.
The key performance indicators will show you if your posts, articles, or videos are effective for your content marketing goals.
Let’s Make Your SEO & Content Work Better for Your Business
Any marketing book that respects itself reveals that companies follow metrics to make sure their business goals are reached and to track their progress. They adjust their marketing activity according to the data registered over a month, a quarter, or a year.
Experts and specialists put metrics in categories such as:
According to the partition based on the sales funnel, there are:
· Top of the funnel (TOFU)
· Middle of the funnel (MOFU)
· Bottom of the funnel indicators (BOFU)
It is of utmost importance to take into consideration the signals conveyed by the metrics.
Why Is It So Important to Focus on Content Strategy KPIs?
It is a no-brainer mistake not to measure your efforts. You will end up investing money in a piece of information that your customers and readers are not interested in.
At first, it may seem difficult to quantify the impact of words and images. But, as you gain experience, you will find this analysis less daunting.
What Can You Include on Your Marketing and Content Strategy KPIs List? What Are the KPIs for Content Strategy?
There are many methods to establish the success of your online marketing strategy. Some of them are widely used while others are applied only by connoisseurs.
The metrics out there give you a picture of the number of people who consume and share your work. You also have the possibility to find out how it influences your sales and business. Even the team’s effectiveness is easy to assess.
To perform a correct analysis, establish what you want to track and then find your suitable key performance indicators for content management.
Most Useful Metrics for Measuring Content Marketing Performance. Source: Feldmancreative
Here are examples of the most used marketing metrics worth considering:
1. Content Strategy KPI: Unique Visitors to Your Website
This indicator provides information on how many users have accessed your site within a certain time frame. Most marketers go for the thirty-day window. It does not mean you must do the same.
You can check the daily or weekly visits. What matters is to identify the elements which have driven these individuals to your page.
2. Content Strategy KPI: Bounce Rates and Time Spent on the Website
It is one thing to generate traffic and another issue to retain your viewers’ attention. A high bounce rate indicates that you failed to fulfill the visitors’ expectations. It means that the clicking promise is not correlated with the texts and the images.
When people spend only a few seconds studying your work, it is an obvious sign you need to improve the approach.
Hundreds of visitors per day mean nothing unless they take a look at your offer or skim through your five thousand-word articles.
Craft your Content Marketing Strategy in no-time!
Spear your efforts and grab my Simplified Template to transform your content planning and creation into a breeze.
You have Successfully Subscribed!
3. Content Strategy KPIs: Exit Pages
These are the ones that visitors explore before dropping off from a website. Digital marketing beginners tend to confuse this metric with the bounce rate.
Its values are more important for online shops as customers have to navigate through several pages before making the final acquisition.
A significant exit rate on a page that was not designed for this purpose denotes problems such as:
· too much data presented in an impersonal voice
· jumbled information
· no call to action
Google Analytics provides you a useful insight into your top exit pages.
4. Content Strategy KPIs: Page Views
Website owners are so focused on getting new visitors that they forget about page views. A high value of these indicators shows useful and meaningful content and a valid content creation process.
Users like it so much that they even return to the website to re-read the information or to check up on the updates, these are returning visitors. The percentage of those who come back to your site represents the return rate.
You need to consider it to understand your target audience’s needs and desires.
5. Scroll Depth
With its help, you detect the exact point on the page where the audience drops off. Quick abandonment signals difficult-to-read or uninteresting texts.
Specialists measure this performance indicator with a plugin named Scroll Depth Google Analytics. You must install it because it is not an Analytics built-in feature.
6. Content Marketing KPIs: The Number of Downloads
When people make an additional effort to get your content, it means you have stirred their interest.
Modern individuals are always in a hurry. Plus, they have countless opportunities to choose from. Determining them to fill out a form or answer additional questions is proof of your marketing skills.
7. Visitors’ Location
It is helpful for your budget to identify the regions where your creations are most popular.
Let’s imagine your target audience comprises women who live in the USA. However, Google Analytics shows you that women in Western Europe engage more often with your business. You have two alternatives:
· tailor your content to suit the US readers
or
· concentrate a part of your efforts on the Europe-based visitors
Every aspect matters if you want to thrive in the nowadays competitive environment.
8. Devices Used by the Audience
Statistics point out that more and more individuals are using mobile gadgets to access the internet. Therefore, all your content has to run smoothly on all.
Users abandon websites when they encounter navigation problems. Plus, nobody likes struggling with tiny pictures while trying to buy something online.
9. Marketing KPIs: The Website’s Traffic Sources
The traffic you get may come from:
· organic search
· paid search
· direct traffic – people use the name of your website to reach it
· social media platforms
· referrals – links on other websites
· email marketing activities
· others
If you analyze them, you will understand which are the most and the least performing sources for you. You may opt for improving your search engine optimization strategy or starting a new ads campaign.
Do not forget that Google Analytics allows you to set up traffic codes. They are helpful to quantify the traffic that arrives from different channels.
Always check the number of links that lead to your website. Most individuals will refer to your site when they consider you an authority in the niche or industry.
This will bring you search engine optimization benefits. Plus, you will gain additional visibility.
10. Marketing KPIs: Shares on Social Media Platforms
Social Media Platforms have proved how powerful they are when it comes to getting a reaction from their users. Thus, it is not advisable to ignore the type of content people enjoy sharing with others.
Keep in mind that each platform has its own characteristics. Thus, long texts might not be effective on one designed for visuals and vice versa.
There is a huge variety of tools you can employ to assess your social media posts impact. Lots of them are free and intuitive. Marketers appreciate:
· Hootsuite, which comes in handy when you own accounts on different platforms.
· Buzzsumo, perfect for keeping an eye on your Facebook pages.
· Twazzup in case you are a beginner and want to monitor your Twitter activity.
· HowSociable which allows you to quantify your competitors’ visibility.
Despite the numerous tools, you cannot identify the exact number of users who saw your posts. Unfortunately, lots of them are not observed by account holders.
To get a clearer picture, include links in posts. The total sum of clicks may serve as an indicator of your social media consumption.
11. Appreciations from the Social Media Environment
Although likes are less influential than shares, they possess a certain amount of power. Appreciations boost organic increase and show that your texts, pictures, and videos are captivating and original.
12. Visitors’ Comments
This is one of the most significant marketing KPIs for 2018. People who write in the comments section are engaged. Your content has triggered a reaction, a desire to take part in a conversation, or to ask more questions.
Of course, not everybody will leave positive feedback. The negative ones are constructive because they enable you to adjust errors and design a better promotion plan.
Do not ignore, delete or hide opinions that are different from yours. Be professional and find a diplomatic answer. Acknowledge mistakes and do your best to fix them.
You should not underestimate their convincing power. Studies revealed that 50+ positive opinions per product can increase the conversion rate by almost 5%.
The most effective tools to track reviews include TrustPilot and BirdEye.
14. The Number of Followers
You will know that you have valuable content when individuals start following your activity on a regular basis.
15. Email Metrics
Email marketing is not obsolete as many are tempted to consider it. In fact, it establishes a more personal relationship with your customers or readers. Not to mention that “the money is on the list”. People registered on your mailing list have the highest chance to become your customers.
In addition, you send your offer to targeted persons who agreed to receive more data about your business.
Setting up and launching a campaign is not enough. To scale its success, you should follow metrics like:
· the opening ratio – it reveals the attractiveness of the email subject
· click-through rate values – it shows how many individuals browsed the email and considered it pertinent to their needs
· the number of forwarding actions – people distribute captivating content which resonates with their interests
No matter how small or large your company is, you ought to be alert about media mentions. Praise may bring new business opportunities while negative feedback helps you correct strategy slips.
Brand awareness is paramount for brands and individuals alike. Gaining the customers’ trust is a tough process. On the other hand, a minor inadvertence may shatter your credibility.
17. Heat Maps to Depict Users’ Preferences
Their function is to indicate the areas of a page that are the most attractive for the viewers. This is very useful when you decide to change the aspect of your website or online shop.
18. Click Patterns
They show you what is relevant to your target audience. Thus, you can adjust your work based on these content marketing data points.
Google Analytics offers you the necessary tools to perform this research.
19. Marketing KPIs: Conversion Rate
This performance indicator sums up the number of visitors who have taken and finished an action on your website.
It is not complicated to calculate it. You need the following easy-to-apply formula.
CV = (conversions/total website visitors) * 100%
Example:
Rebecca sells her handmade bags via an online shop. Let us assume that it was reached by 2000 visitors last month. Out of these, 100 purchased one of her products. Thus, her conversion rate is equal to 5%.
When the conversation rate is low, you’d better start to enhance it.
Social platforms have their own tools which you can use to monitor conversions. Google Analytics delivers data for websites.
Craft your Content Marketing Strategy in no-time!
Spear your efforts and grab my Simplified Template to transform your content planning and creation into a breeze.
You have Successfully Subscribed!
20. Soft Conversions
These occur when people give you their contact details but do not purchase your products. They may turn them from potential to real customers as long as your content is enticing.
21. Marketing KPIs: The Number of Leads, CPL, and ACV
One of your marketing goals might be to attract more leads. In this case, you ought to know how many potential customers value your activity.
It is not rocket science to measure the number of leads. A count of the individuals who offered their contact details in exchange for an eBook is enough.
To make sure you invest your resources wisely, use your marketing KPI dashboard to establish the correlation between your cost per lead and return on investment.
Another element that reveals the success of your online content marketing campaign is the ACV or the annual contract value. It points out the number of finished actions because of your crafted content.
22. ROI and ROAS
Return on Investment is useful to identify the key performance areas of marketing. Thus, you get a better understanding of where to place your money.
ROAS is the abbreviation for Return on Ad Spend. It gives you a hint of how much you must spend on advertising to get a profit.
23. CPC or Cost per Click
This indicator enters the scene when you spread the word about your offer through online paid advertising. Careful monitoring is necessary to detect the ads which generate the highest ROI and to continuously improve the output of your ads campaigns.
Google Adwords Average Cost per Click per Industry. Source: WordStream
24. CPA or Cost per Acquisition
Bringing in new customers requires additional funds. These are mirrored by CPA. Lots of businesses use this KPI to establish the plan for their advertising campaigns.
To calculate it, you must divide the total marketing costs by the total number of acquired customers.
25. The Average Order Value
You cannot determine people to buy from you unless you are ready to flow in some cash.
AOV shows you the funds you consume whenever a person purchases something from you.
Businesses prefer to boost the average order value rather than the conversion rate. They adopt this approach because drawing in other clients is quite a laborious task. On the other hand, convincing loyal customers to buy is less difficult.
26. Lifetime Value
According to the marketing dictionary, lifetime value represents the profit you get from one customer.
Companies use it to forecast their future revenue. It is helpful to estimate how much profit you need to make to cover the advertising costs.
27. Customer Retention
It reflects a company’s ability to hold its profitable clients for months or years. Loyal buyers are more likely to accept new services or a range of goods. Consequently, you should dedicate some of your efforts to tailoring loyalty programs.
The churn rate indicates how satisfied customers are. In this case, a high value hints at troubles.
Check here some tips from a renowned expert in customer retention:
28. Search Engines Ranking
Several years ago, everybody was going through lots of pain to get a top-ranking position. Nowadays, marketers focus less on this aim. There are other aspects to consider such as ad space or personalized search.
29. Organic Website Traffic
This is one of the key content marketing metrics for any online business. Organic traffic is earned not paid for and therefore is more precious. Pages, which attract users naturally, are a real asset to your business.
You may always rely on Google Analytics to do the tracking job well.
30. Organic Click Through Rate
CTR points out the frequency with which people who see your content click on it. It has low values when there are lots of impressions but only a few clicks. A high CTR correlated with poor impressions alerts you that it is about time to get involved in optimization activities.
Once you understand the visitors’ behavior on your website and what attracts them to it, you are ready to build up a precise content marketing strategy. Armed with a marketing KPIs list you will know where to focus your efforts to get maximum exposure and increase conversions.
Content marketing funnel! Voila, some other fancy name, and apparently a Gordian knot that you need to solve. But wait, that doesn’t need to be overwhelming, if you approach the notion step by step, you will see it is achievable. Content marketing funnel explained for complete beginners.
What Is a Content Marketing Funnel and Why Do You Need It?
A content marketing funnel is a way of creating your content based on the phases of the buyer journey. Meaning following the steps that a prospect/visitor is following through the content of your site to purchase a good or service. In essence, users arrive on a landing page – from ads, emails, or organic search, and all the additional pages they are visiting until they buy is a content marketing funnel.
Along this path, a large part of the traffic that arrives on your site will drop off at different points, and in the final stage – the purchase stage – will arrive just a small part. This explains the form of the funnel, with a larger top and a smaller bottom.
Why does this happen?
There are a plethora of reasons – a bunch of them on your side like technical dysfunctions, incoherence between your ads and your landing pages, or reasons related to the customer. These could be: the visitor is just looking for information, he is not looking to buy; the visitor is not aware he has a problem that your product/service could solve.
That just means the visitor is not ready to buy yet. So, pushing him in a funnel to buy right away is simply not appropriate and will not bring the results you want.
The content marketing funnels should be constructed as client centric.
Their mission is to align customers’ needs with your business needs, in a win-win manner. You need to polish continuously your lead generation funnels, to identify where the “breaches” are in these paths. To fix them and anticipate the questions of a potential client and answer them even before he asks.
From your business point of view, the main purpose of a content marketing funnel is to translate as many as possible visitors into paying customers.
Let’s Make Your SEO & Content Work Better for Your Business
The number one question is how you attract a larger part of these visitors to become customers.
Through lead nurturing. Meaning answering all the questions, doubts, and concerns a potential client might have.
Why do nurturing leads count?
Research by Marketo confirms that 96% of visitors arriving on your site are not prepared to buy at that moment.
That’s more than huge, it’s enormous!
The reality is that leads that don’t convert at all are a burden on your marketing expenses, a fact that propels leading nurturing among the top priorities of any business.
48% of businesses confirm that a great part of their leads is involved in “long cycle” nurturing.
Businesses that best employ lead nurturing observe a 50% increase in sales and a reduction of 33% in costs.
Based on these numbers, the conclusion is obvious: users will trust and buy from you, only after you prove you pay great attention to and anticipate their needs.
Content Marketing Funnel Explained: How to Build an Effective Content Funnel?
In order to simplify the process of creating your content marketing funnel you need to clearly establish some details like what you want to sell through the funnel. How do you want to sell the product? Where do you find the qualified traffic?
What product will your funnel sell?
If you have just one product/service, the answer is obvious.
If you have more, you should make a decision. Aim to build a funnel for a specific service/product, not a general one. For instance, a writer should not consider building a funnel for “writing services”, but for “content marketing writing services for the real estate industry”.
Being specific will facilitate your efforts in defining the stages of the funnel.
Take into consideration several criteria:
· Popularity of a product/service
· Potential of that product/service to drive sales (a product that can lead to selling other products, or services that involve more work)
· Ease to sell
As a general rule, a sales funnel should sell one product/service.
How do you sell the product/service? From where?
Depending on the specificity of your business the place where you place your pitch is different:
· Long-form sales pages – for courses, conferences
· Pricing pages – for books, software applications, consulting services
· Product pages – for online stores
Where do you find the qualified traffic?
Firstly, you can count on the traffic you have on your site or your email list (if you have one). Your existing visitors already know about you and are already positioned somewhere inside the stages of the funnel.
· Partnerships with influencers and other specialists in your industry
Now that you have clarified the funnel basics, start with defining the content marketing stages:
The genuine art of converting means a flow and a funnel that doesn’t simply end with a sale. It’s a perpetual mission of reaching, keeping, and increasing your buyer persona base, using technology, content marketing, social media, email automation, etc. to satisfy better their needs.
It’s part of a broader marketing strategy that mixes lead nurturing, targets behavior uses retention tactics, and in the end, obtains referrals.
If you do research, you will obtain various good-looking versions like these:
Source: Google
The content marketing funnel has a logical flow — it starts with generating awareness for your brand and problems it solves. Then Captures the interest of those users searching for a solution to such a problem. Attentively guides the flow to a purchasing decision. And arrives in the final stage of taking action and buying.
To each of these stages of the marketing funnel, you have to assign corresponding messages, that are buyer centric:
Content Marketing Funnel Stage 1: TOFU
The question is: which is the awareness level of my prospect?
This stage is the first contact point, you have to present your business, your mission, and your offer. You need to inform the users that you exist.
Most often this happens when:
* Traffic is redirected to your site from an advertising campaign
* Backlinks link to your site
* Your business is mentioned in a video, webinar, or podcast
* Word of mouth is spreading – happy clients make advocacy for your business
* Search engines pop your business within organic search
The essential is that awareness emerges when your activity appears in front of potential leads in places where they spend time.
On his side the customer may find himself in the so-called various stages of awareness, depending on the acknowledgment he has of his problem, existing solutions, and the role of your brand.
The famous copywriter Eugene Schwartz pinpointed several stages of awareness:
Not aware: the user doesn’t consider he has a problem, nor is looking for a solution, and knows nothing about your brand
Problem aware: the user suspects he has an issue, but no clue about a possible solution
Solution aware: the user knows his purpose but does not know your brand can be a solution.
Product aware: the user is familiar with your business and brand, and knows that you can offer a solution, but hasn’t decided that your product is his best option. The user is considering various options.
Most aware: the user had decided in favor of your product and just needs to take action and buy.
How long is the funnel and how much you have to work to convince the potential client, depends highly on which level of the above spectrum he is. This refers to individual parts of the buyers’ journey and also to the whole funnel.
If the client is in the “totally unaware” position of course the funnel will be longer and more convincing elements will be needed. The best case, from the sales point of view, is the most aware position when the prospect is prepared to become paying client.
Depicting where the potential client is on his journey, will help you identify elements that the client responds favorably to and moves him a step further in the funnel.
From the very beginning is vital to know exactly (research is important) which are the pain points and desires of your audience.
At this point, you have to indicate how your solution is a benefit for clients from various perspectives. Potential customers are in different stages of the content marketing funnel and a multi-direction approach can help generate more qualified leads.
Top of the funnel content: – land on the funnel from a Facebook ad:
Source: Facebook
Or from an affiliate email:
You have to show a potential client which is the value you deliver and how are you going to do it. You need to put in front something that clients value, not what you consider they judge as valuable.
Content Marketing Funnel Stage 2: MOFU
The question is: which problem fixes my product?
As a general idea, what you sell is not the product/service itself, but its benefits, and the improvements that it can bring into your client’s life.
Thus, it is compulsory to clearly depict the problems and issues that your product solves for your client and how it will impact his life after such problems are eliminated. And create the corresponding content to provide answers.
Consequently, you have to do your homework and search in detail which are the pain points, desires, and needs of your prospects, how they see your product, which issues appear while using it, which are their exact requirements, which are the messages that resonate better with your target audience.
Ask your clients, listen to them, and also check on forums or question-and-answer sites like Quora to get some answers. A keen understanding of your prospects’ needs and behavioral targeting will support you in your endeavors.
Remember: you encourage action to help your prospects solve their problems and in exchange, you endorse your brand awareness.
Using the exact words that clients use to describe their situation proved to be the most reliable option, as it helps improve conversions.
Speak to your audience in their language with their own words about your offer, why is it valuable, how is it different from your competition, and why is it a better alternative. Identify and answer all objections and fears your buyer persona might have even before their questions pop up.
To generate a high-converting funnel, you need to educate your audience concerning the benefits of your offer.
Craft informative articles on your blog, and make video demonstrations, tutorials, or testimonials to emphasize the value you offer. Open up the conversation, show your potential clients you are always open to discussing and listening to their problems and that you are easy to reach, that you actually care. Ask for feedback. Gain their trust.
Most often a clear sign of interest is subscribing to your email list. If a visitor of your site gives you his email, in exchange for a freebie, for example, this is clear proof of interest.
Sparkling interest is crucial for migration to the next level of the conversion funnel.
The question is: What’s the leading need/desire that will make my prospect decide?
This stage relates to presenting prospects with your offer in a persuasive manner to make them decide if they buy or not.
The decision process is a function of your prospects’ purposes and desires. Even if their problems and struggles are the ones that are requiring a solution, their emotional needs are the real trigger of the decision.
Your message, to be effective should appeal to these deep emotional needs, the benefits of your offer should deliver at this level. Something like “we are the best in the world” or “we save you money” is not relevant enough.
You have to dig deeper to find meaningful answers. A way to discover this is to ask why until there are no questions left.
Practically this is a sales process. There are infinite options to arrive at this stage. Some ways are:
* Registering for a webinar
* A long-form sales page displaying the benefits of your offer, touching emotional needs, showing social trust, and testimonials
* Scheduling a free consultation where you speak about your offer
* An email series to warm the lead-up for the sale
Your Prospects Need to Take Action
Question is: why is my prospect still hesitating? Are there still unsolved concerns?
This is the purchasing stage. Prospects arriving at this stage will split into two categories:
· Those that are ready to buy, act and become customers
· Those that are not ready to buy, and you need to nurture them further
Not all prospects who arrived at this stage will buy, most of them will not, and that’s the reality. They will still have hesitations, for various reasons ranging from not trusting you to not being really convinced they need your product. Whether you like it or not, your visitors will have hesitations about buying from you.
It will be your task to minimize these hesitations by displaying the expected information in the right phase of the funnel. And how do you find that? What to say in which stage? Well, customer research is here to help you discover what to say, when, and also what makes your visitors stop and not act.
After passing through the above-mentioned sales funnel stages, from informing clients about your business, to rising their interest to having them engage in some form with your brand, it’s the moment to ask for the sale.
Now, your prospects should be prepared to trust you and your business. Use powerful attention-grabbing calls to action in emails, ads, and sales pages. Offer incentives to urge the need of buying, like limited discounts (20% discount if your buy in the next 15 minutes) or free bonuses.
The client bought it, end of story! Right?!
Wrong!! You should continue to engage your clients and transform them into evangelists of your offer.
And for those that finally didn’t buy, you have to continue your efforts by putting in place a marketing sequence. Send them a series of emails offering valuable information and propose another item from your sales funnels. Don’t waste such an opportunity!
The sales conversion funnels are in a continuous modifying cycle as clients modify their expectations and you should adapt your funnel to the new changing conditions. Improving user experience should be a top priority for you.
What will make your copy more compelling?
· Avoid ambiguity be clear and concise, people react better when they face known and calculated risks.
· Clear and common language is better than complex, people trust what they can understand quickly.
· Short and sweet, stay focused on the object.
Craft your Content Marketing Strategy in no-time!
Spear your efforts and grab my Simplified Template to transform your content planning and creation into a breeze.
You have Successfully Subscribed!
Further Explanation for Your Content Marketing Funnel: Test It
After putting in place a coherent content funnel strategy, creating and settling in your funnel, you should always be looking for ways to improve it. And testing is the best method to do that. Be aware that you should focus on each stage of the sales funnel, not just on the awareness one. The final buying stage is more than important also.
Since you may have multiple pages that need testing, you need to filter and prioritize them. Start with the best performing and improve them if possible. Take a look at the implementation necessities: Are they easy to do or challenging from a technical point of view and require lots of time? Which is the conversion value brought by these modifications? How likely is it to have more prospects that convert?
Provided that you choose which pages are to be tested, they should go live and the results to be tracked.
Firstly, you have to set some realistic conversion goals and pick a tracking system, like Google Analytics. Analytics tracks the users on your site and provides a series of information like sources of visitors, how long they spend on your site, which country are they from, and which device and browser they use to connect.
Tools like Google Analytics support you in testing, refining, and optimizing your funnel.
Here you have it – a detailed content marketing funnel explanation and a game plan to convert your next funnel into a journey that inspires your customers and multiplies your sales.
Frequent Asked Questions
What is full-funnel content strategy?
A full-funnel content strategy is a strategy that takes into consideration also the stages of the buyer journey and plans adequate content for each step of the content funnel (top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel).
What are the four stages of marketing funnel?
The four stages of the marketing funnel are awareness, interest, decision, and action.
What is an example of a marketing funnel?
An example of a marketing funnel could be the series of steps that a potential client takes when he finds out about a brand via organic search, goes to the brand’s website, reads some articles and case studies, subscribes to the newsletter, and after a while buys the products/services that the brand provides.
A marketing bundle or product bundling simply refers to combining products that sell separately into one bundle and selling it at a special price, while allowing the buyer the option of choosing the products individually or together as a bundle. You have probably purchased a bundle before; an excellent example is when your local fast food outlet offers you a “mega meal deal”, where you’re offered a burger, fries, and a coke for a fairly cheaper price as compared to when you purchase these items separately.
Types of Marketing Bundles
Even though as described above, the buyer gets an option of purchasing the product as a bundle or as an item; in the markets, there are still some products that do not offer this option. This breaks it down to two more kinds of bundling.
a. Pure Bundling
Adobe Photoshop is an excellent example. You only have the option of buying the entire marketing tools bundle and not just one tool. Microsoft Office Suit is another similar example; you can’t buy Word and leave out Spreadsheets. Simply put, there’s no option of purchasing a single item.
b. Mixed Bundling
This is the more successful type of bundling; it gives the buyer the option of purchasing an individual item or the entire bundle.
Let’s Make Your SEO & Content Work Better for Your Business
What Makes a Good Marketing Bundle? – Main Qualities
In order to convince the customer that the bundle is indeed worth the effort, it should offer:
i. Monetary value – The buyer must see the value for his money, and the benefit of buying the bundle rather than single items.
ii. Functional – It must offer value to the customer as a combined set as opposed to individual items. It must meet a common need as a bundle.
So, What Makes Product Bundling a Brilliant Strategy?
Bundling always comes out as a win-win scenario for both the seller and the buyer, when done right, here are some benefits:
For the Seller:
i. It’s a Chance to Up-Sell
As a seller, you get to prompt the buyer to consider purchasing more products; this is especially interesting when you’re offering complementary products.
ii. Boost Your Average Order Value
This is a KPI that shows the average total of the orders placed over a specified period of time. When a buyer opts for the bundle instead of the stand-alone product, their overall order value goes up, meaning higher revenues for you.
Therefore when you’re able to convince the buyer to purchase more than one product, you increase your average order value.
iii. Inventory Management
This works in two ways, first, you can leverage bundling to raise the profile of a less popular or new product, this offers you a chance to have the product tested and you’re able to get feedback. Secondly, this would give you a great opportunity to clear slow-moving or old stock.
For the Buyer:
i. What a Bargain!
Buyers always like when they feel like they’re getting a good deal and saving money. Like a reward of some sort, and when this happens, they tend to associate your store with good deals. So, they become regular happy shoppers.
ii. Convenient!
What’s more frustrating than having to go through an entire aisle or list of complimentary products in order to choose the ones that make a perfect combo? This is how the majority of customers feel, but when you save them time by putting together such complimentary products or services, the versatility that comes with an easy purchase is not only convenient, but it feels good too.
iii. Time-Saving
This really is a no-brainer.
So, having understood the benefits and qualities of a good marketing resources bundle, how then can you go about making one that works?
Just like any other marketing strategy, you can employ, having a clear understanding of your customers is important. Before building your marketing bundle, get up-to-date data about their preferences on different demographics. This includes:
· The kind of advice or information that would be useful to your customers as to what to buy
· The kind of deals they’re looking for
· The amount of money that they would be willing to spend
· What products do they purchase simultaneously
· Which products would they be willing to spend a little more money for
· What products would give them value for money when included in the marketing bundle
For the market, find out the:
· Competing bundle offers and their pricing
· The estimated demand plus the marginal cost
· The supply-chain structure
· Possible risks.
With this data coupled with your own goals, you can make the offer as beneficial for both the buyer and the seller as possible.
b. Know How to Offer the Discounts
Make the benefit of this marketing bundle as obvious as possible to the buyer, this can be done by justifying the need to buy the bundle instead of the individual items. Remember the buyer may not necessarily require all the items in the bundle, but your discount may encourage them to pick the bundle anyway, this goes alongside the complimenting products, they really must be a great combo.
If this is not done carefully, you may risk not being able to sell anything.
c. Psychological Aspect in Pricing
Bundling your slow-moving or less popular products with the best-sellers is a smart strategy for both the seller and the buyer. The trick is in ensuring that the offer is irresistible and that it satisfies the customer’s needs. And as they say, a satisfied shopper is a happy shopper, they will spread the word.
Take Away
For a successful marketing bundle campaign, the seller must have up-to-date data on their potential customers’ needs as well as market dynamics. There are several types of bundling, pure and mixed bundling. Research has shown that mixed bundling performs better.
Bundling saves buyers time and offers them convenience while boosting the seller’s sales. So, go ahead and try bundling up, as a seller or buyer.
There’s no secret that the power of social media is incredible. Everyone knows about Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Instagram. However, when it comes to LinkedIn, we are talking about a special case. This social and professional network is a powerhouse, ready to unleash its benefits to your business’s advantage.
LinkedIn is a great tool to help you strengthen your presence on the market and expand your network. There are various LinkedIn best practices you can use to increase your business development. Some of them can be implemented right away while others will take a bit of time to show their efficiency.
The way you build your personal brand tells a lot about yourself.
The events of 2020 have seen many people out of work. But as the world economies struggle to get back to normalcy, LinkedIn being the existing top platform for professional connections continues to see a remarkable increase, especially among job seekers. And other professionals trying to channel the next career move. LinkedIn has put more weight and relevance on its digital training tools to help job seekers and other professionals better align themselves with emerging trends and opportunities.
So, with all things going virtual, what are LinkedIn’s best practices to help you connect better?
Let’s Make Your SEO & Content Work Better for Your Business
Have you ever wondered why is LinkedIn so powerful for B2B businesses? First, according to the latest estimations, there are approximately almost a billion people using this network. Therefore, it is easy to imagine that there are over 830 million people with whom you can connect and share your ideas. Part of them is your future clients and partners. Plus, over 55 million companies have Linkedin profiles.
It is worth mentioning that 61 million LinkedIn users are considered to be senior-level influencers and over 40 million LinkedIn users are in key decision-making positions.
Moreover, LinkedIn is appreciated as a high-quality source of content. This makes users become very engaged when using it and count on it in their business decisions. Even though it is a valuable resource for any type of business, this doesn’t mean that success is guaranteed.
If you really want to have a competitive advantage when using LinkedIn, you need a forthright strategy. Since it is a marketing channel that can change the face of your business, it should be granted special attention.
Before we dig more in-depth, here is a short list of LinkedIn best practices for business that you can implement today:
· Develop SMART goals for your LinkedIn marketing strategy. Just like in any marketing strategy, your goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based.
· Reach the right target audience. LinkedIn offers you various demographic data which can help you develop specific audience segmentation. Therefore, it will become very easy for you to personalize your messages and grow your audience.
· Create the right messages. Your messages should give answers to your client’s questions and provide solutions to their problems.
Now that you got yourself familiar with what LinkedIn means and how it can help you, let’s dive into more details. Use the strategies below and get ready to revamp your business.
LinkedIn Best Practices 1: Strengthen Your LinkedIn Profile
The first thing your clients and business partners see when they want to know more about you on LinkedIn is your profile. It is your business card and it should show you in the best light possible.
So, you need to pay close attention to the way you present your business, your story, and your services. Your LinkedIn profile logo and background photo are extremely important for the first impression. LinkedIn best practices for profiles encourage you to use recent photos, not exaggerate with powerful colors and use symbols that represent you. As long as you don’t complicate things too much, there’s nothing that could go wrong.
Other useful tips when it comes to your company’s profile are the following:
· Your LinkedIn company page should be always up-to-date;
· Your summary section should talk about your fascinating story. People like to read about others. They feel immediately when you are telling the truth, or you are just writing nice words. So, be real and speak from your own experience;
· Use your company logo and keywords to help clients identify your LinkedIn company page faster;
· Optimize your profile for search on LinkedIn by using your main keywords;
· Highlight your most important products and services and rearrange sections to align with your strategy.If you really want to stand out, try a high-quality video or explainer video to present your products/services.
· Ask your clients to share their experience with your products and services by writing reviews and testimonials. This is how you show your future clients that you are reliable, and your products are exactly how you present them to be;
· Attach a ProFinder Badge to your LinkedIn profile if you are a solopreneur or just starting up.
LinkedIn Best Practices 2: Use LinkedIn’s Educational Nature
Another remarkable thing about LinkedIn is that it makes it very easy for its users to publish articles. However, if you think that you will write some promotional content that will sell your products immediately, you are totally wrong. The people who are using LinkedIn are not interested in just another promotional post that encourages them to spend their money on a specific product.
LinkedIn users are rather more interested in how your products will help them solve their problems. They have several questions for which they hope to find the right answers by reading your articles. So, you should focus on educating your customers and giving them practical solutions to their problems. This is how you build your brand’s credibility and show that you are an expert in your field.
Best Practice 3: Conceive LinkedIn Showcase Pages That Target a Certain Buyer Persona
You have the possibility to create niche pages related to your main Company Page via LinkedIn Showcase Pages, highlighting specific products or a targeting specific audience. This helps you personalize user experience and communicate more effectively, as users have the possibility to follow just a showcase page, not the main company page or other showcase pages that your company might have installed.
Best Practice 4: Optimize Your LinkedIn Page for Search
Optimizing your LinkedIn Company page enables you to target your audience better and thereby gain better visibility among relevant audiences. You can optimize your LinkedIn page by using keywords though the whole profile and mainly through the company description.
Keywords – You can incorporate specific keywords and phrases that your target audience is likely to use when searching for your product or services. Ensure to insert them in your “About” overview. This will better describe what your business is all about.
Link it to your page – another way to optimize is to link your LinkedIn page to your website. Clean up all your team member profiles often to ensure they’re always up to date.
Post relevant content – this cannot be emphasized enough. When you share relevant content using all the relevant keywords and key phrases, you boost your chances for your LinkedIn page to appear on search results.
There have been many studies revealing that humans react better to visual context. We are visual creatures which make us understand visuals a lot faster than any text. Thus, if we apply these findings to the internet world, it is already a fact that visuals get more views than content. So, this is one point you should focus on in your LinkedIn strategy.
One of the LinkedIn best practices in 2023 which will continue to be successful in the following years too, is using infographics and charts in your articles. Your readers will find it easier to understand the information and remember it when they need it in the future. So, if you already applied this strategy last year, you should continue using as many visuals as possible in your content.
LinkedIn Best Practices 6: List Your Relevant Skills/Business Offer
This sets you up for quick wins, there are many life skills/benefits, scroll down and identify the ones most relevant to you. This is the best way to validate your description under your Headline Summary.
It also gives an extra nudge to others to endorse you since you come out as a professional and an expert. Therefore keep relevance by listing only your most relevant skills, and this is one of the continuous LinkedIn profile best practices that you have to refresh every now and then.
LinkedIn Best Practices 7: Tell Your Story Using Videos
Keeping your audience engaged and enticing her curiosity concerning your products is a tough job. Taking into consideration the soaring popularity of videos, you can use them to convince your prospects to return. Furthermore, it’s easier day passing for your clients to be able to watch videos from their desktop or mobile devices, no matter their location across the globe.
Here are some ideas you can use to create new videos:
· Create a demo on how to use your products;
· Interview an influencer in your industry/niche who is open to sharing his/her opinion on your products or services;
· Interview customers and publish their video testimonials;
· Create a video story of your brand.
Craft your Content Marketing Strategy in no-time!
Spear your efforts and grab my Simplified Template to transform your content planning and creation into a breeze.
You have Successfully Subscribed!
LinkedIn Best Practices 8: Leverage on LinkedIn Live
As statistics reveal, video performed so well that LinkedIn has recently rolled out LinkedIn live. It has 24 times more engagement than regularly pre-recorded videos. The main difference between LinkedIn live and other social media live events is that the audiences on this platform are part of a professional network. Thus, their main goal is to network further, learn and discover more in their related fields.
The LinkedIn best practices for live include:
Be prepped – ensure you’re well-versed on your subject matter to be able to give a sufficient response. Also, prepare well for the whole show ensuring quality sound, light, and stable connectivity.
Be authentic – be as genuine and real as you possibly can. Offer your audiences relatable and fresh content.
Consistent – Once you pick this new format, ensure to be consistent. Pick an ideal time when most of your audiences are online and let them know of a regular specific time that you will be going live. Whether you choose to do it weekly or monthly, let them know when to expect new content.
Be interactive – engage your audience as if you were all in a real room. Moderate the whole session in a lively and engaging manner and respond to them as much as you can.
When these LinkedIn best practices are followed well, you can utilize this format as a unique and interactive way to directly show your services and products in a better way.
LinkedIn Best Practices 9: Be Consistent
No one sustains that LinkedIn is going to bring incredible results overnight. It takes a lot of consistency and hard work to show your clients that you are a reliable business owner who puts them on top of his priority list.Therefore, you should pay attention to keeping your content fresh.
The publishing frequency is also important. So, if you post a new article at least once per week, then you are on the right track. In addition, try to always be the first who announces your loyal customers when something new appears in your niche. You will see that all these efforts will pay off in the end.
LinkedIn Best Practices 10: Share Thought Leadership Content
You can consider it authority marketing or thought leadership, but this is one of the most important LinkedIn best practices for business in 2023. It’s the kind of content that you need to create in order to build credibility, impress hiring managers, or reinforce your brand.
It’s about leveraging your best knowledge and expertise and offering solutions and answers even to questions your audience is yet to ask. Here is a quick guide on how to approach thought leadership content:
Product – You know your products best; you can therefore show this product expertise in a context that offers help and solutions to your audiences’ problems.
Industry – Share expert knowledge about your organization or industry, and give your connoisseur a take on new trends and technologies making news.
Organizational – Create content about your organizational stand or approach on various business aspects. Talk about employees and how to treat them, talk about your shareholders or other stakeholders in your business.
LinkedIn encourages users to use thought leadership content on their LinkedIn company page because it’s a powerful way to grow your audience.
LinkedIn Best Practices 11: Know The Best Time to Post
Unlike the rest of the social media platforms, LinkedIn does not have a specified time that can be considered the best time. With this said, there are certain times of the week that are definitely better than others.
Posting your content between Tuesday and Thursday is considered ideal. The ideal hours in these 3 preferred days fall between 8:00 am to 2:00 pm in your time zone. While the less recommended time to post would be on weekends or outside working hours. This is typically 9:00 am to 5:00 pm.
To narrow it down a little further, depending on your business, the best time to post for B2C businesses is between 11 am to 2 pm. For B2Bs and most tech and software businesses should be mostly between 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., obviously. For education and health care, the best times are between 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
But all the above suggested times are quite general, to really get that perfect time for your LinkedIn profile, use your personal data found in LinkedIn analytics. They will give you more detailed insights about your profile and how to best optimize it for excellent results.
Best Practice 12: Don’t Underestimate the Power of Your Employees
Your employees can become your strongest partners in promoting your business. Who else can better promote your products than your employees who know all details about them? LinkedIn best practices encourage entrepreneurs to listen to their colleagues’ ideas and publish them. Sharing your LinkedIn strategy with your employees will help you grow your business presence in your industry.
This is a good approach if you want to show your employees that you care about what they think, and you want to make them part of your business. They will become more loyal to the brand and be more open to contributing to your business’ growth.
So, adopt a smart strategy and accomplish a double goal: grow your employees’ productivity by listening to their ideas and strengthen your presence on the market.
Best Practice 13: Use LinkedIn Analytics to Measure Results
Even though you think you are doing things right, this doesn’t mean that you are really successful. You need clear data to show you how many people viewed your LinkedIn page, which were your most popular LinkedIn posts, etc. LinkedIn metrics will tell you everything you need to know when you analyze your LinkedIn marketing efforts, like:
· Your visitor’s demographics. You will know everything about the people who visit your LinkedIn page: where they live, which are their jobs, how old are they, etc.
· The number of page views during a specific period.
· How many unique visitors you had during the analyzed period?
· Identify what your competitors are doing and what their metrics look like.
· Engagement statistics.
· The number of new followers acquired.
If you belong to the LinkedIn Business Solutions category of clients you benefit from Content Marketing Score and Trending Content resources. The Content Marketing Score provides you with insights related to user engagement on your sponsored LinkedIn posts, LinkedIn pages, Linkedin groups, or Influencer posts if the case. And also showcase recommendation to implement in order to improve your numbers and the results of your LinkedIn content.
LinkedIn Best Practices 14: Study Other LinkedIn Company Pages
LinkedIn has a tool called Companies to Track. And no, this isn’t about snooping. This useful tool found at the bottom of the followers’ tab is great for helping you with your LinkedIn marketing strategy.
It shows you other businesses that are similar to yours and metrics such as their social engagement, number of followers, and follower growth. You can use this information as a yardstick for the performance of your LinkedIn company page. It can help you tell whether your company page growth is steady compared to other similar LinkedIn company pages with a similar average number of followers or if it needs tweaking.
You can use it to measure how well your content drives social engagement and the type of content that performs the best.
LinkedIn Best Practices 15: LinkedIn Ads and Sponsored Updates
In case your budget allows it and you want faster results, then you can use LinkedIn ads to amplify the power of your content. LinkedIn offers you a bunch of features allowing you to target and refine the target audience you want to communicate your message to. For instance, you can target specific job titles or industries. Therefore, your messages reach exactly the type of people you need in order to grow your business.
You can find out in the video below more details why LinkedIn is a prominent channel for B2B advertising:
Best Practice 16: Create Your Own Group
Creating a group can be a smart decision only if you have a strong number of followers who will form a solid foundation. People look for evidence before they join a group. Therefore, you need to count on your connections who can convince new followers to become active in your group.
And of course, you need to be aware of your competition. There are many groups on LinkedIn, in fact too many, especially promotional ones. This means that you have a mighty competition. If you want your group to be successful you need to bring a new and interesting idea to the table. Moreover, apart from promoting your products, you need to create discussion topics and encourage people to share their ideas.
NowLinkedIn Groups integrate into the main site and mobile apps, they are more user-friendly, more engaging, and integral part of the prime LinkedIn experience. Groups benefit from an admin functionality and have the capabilities of being managed via Android or iOS apps.
So, if you are planning to have a group on LinkedIn this is a great moment to start.
Best Practice 17: Nurture Your Connections
If persons from your connections list take some minutes to say something positive about your business, then you should show them how much you appreciate it. Always leave a comment when you receive feedback from one of your connections. If the person who commented is not on your connections list, then this is a fantastic opportunity to connect with them. You can also stand out by replying to the people who send you a connection invite. People are so busy with their activities that they don’t pay so much attention to the power of these small actions.
There is no doubt that LinkedIn is a powerful tool that can boost your business. These best practices will help you use your talent to its fullest potential and show your clients that you have something to say in your niche.
If you use this platform for your personal profile, you can also apply the tactics listed above. LinkedIn is great when you want to stay updated with the latest trends in your industry.
Conclusion
Implementing a LinkedIn strategy is definitely not as difficult as it might seem at a first glance. It is a powerful tool for those who want to leverage their business. These practices show you that this is an achievable goal. The above-mentioned LinkedIn best practices for business in 2020 will help you build a stronger profile and reach more customers than ever before.
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept All”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
Cookie
Duration
Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional
11 months
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
