Everyone Wants to BeReal, But You Just Need to be LinkedIn
Why LinkedIn is the Best Business Opportunity for B2C Brands, and How You Can Use it to Gain a Competitive Edge
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While all the fashion, makeup and fast food brands race to be the realest, you could be on LinkedIn generating leads. And you don’t have to be B2B.
No, I’m not referring to paying for LinkedIn Premium and ‘cold-calling’ all your contacts; I’m talking about the very thing that makes the leading professional networking and career development platform just like all the other social media apps: “the central endless-scroll structure.”
LinkedIn users scroll their TL, just like Twitter, Instagram and TikTok users do. The only difference is what they’re looking for. Are they looking for you?
Here’s how to find out — and how to optimize your LinkedIn marketing and LinkedIn advertising to demonstrate your expertise, expand brand awareness and generate sales leads that convert.
(Also, bonus, LinkedIn’s the best social media platform for employee engagement and employee experience, too.)
Who is on LinkedIn?
Globally, LinkedIn has more than 850-million members in 200 countries and regions; more than 191 million of them are in the United States. Fifty-eight million-plus companies have listings on LinkedIn, and there are more than 10,000 software product pages on the platform, as well.
Among LinkedIn’s users, nearly six in 10 are between the ages of 25 and 34, the tech-savvy, decision-making, mid-career demographic most commonly targeted by brands. Additionally, 20.4% of the world’s 1.8-million millennials — the largest generation, of avid online shoppers and (future) decision makers — use the platform.
Across age groups and geographies, the average income stands at close to $50,000 per year, or nearly 300% more than the global average, with the highest number of users earning $75,000 or more. There are more than 61-million senior-level influencers and 65-million-plus decision makers on LinkedIn; in fact, four out of five LinkedIn members can make rulings on behalf of their business.
In other words, your audience on LinkedIn, however small or big, comprises professionals with the money and the freedom to deliver unparalleled ROI.
And that’s not all:
- 6 in 10 LinkedIn users are actively looking for insights
- 70+% of consumers say they’re more likely to consider a new brand if they first hear about it first on LinkedIn
Why? Even though, like all social media platforms, LinkedIn is susceptible to security breaches, it's repeatedly named the most trusted — and more than nine in 10 C-suite executives, specifically, rate it their favorite app for relevant content.
That’s why so many brands are already using LinkedIn for much more than recruiting — and why you need to join them, yesterday.
Marketing and Advertising on LinkedIn
LinkedIn Marketing and Advertising Statistics
Including brands and consumers, there are two-million active publishers on LinkedIn — dropping more than 200-billion articles, posts, videos, surveys and other feed updates annually.
Among the listed businesses, 97% of B2Bs use LinkedIn for their content marketing.
As for LinkedIn readers, 45% are CEOs, VPs, managers and other senior executives, and they:
- Review an average of 6 pages per visit, or 231% more than average
- Spend approximately 7 minutes on the platform per visit, or between 233% and 350% more than average
- Use the platform on their mobile devices 57% of the time — and review platform content on their mobile devices 80% of the time
That’s serious competition for eyes and sales, but if you’re a B2C company there’s also serious opportunity. In fact, there's more ROI on the table on LinkedIn than on any other social media platform, with only 4% of all B2C marketers rating LinkedIn their go-to site.
For all content, LinkedIn leads in lead generation: at 2.74%, the not-just-for-biz platform’s visitor-to-lead conversion rate is almost 300% higher than Facebook and Twitter. (And, from a UI and UX perspective, LinkedIn looks and feels a lot like Facebook.)
And that’s not all. Paid social works on LinkedIn, too.
With a LinkedIn ad, you can reach more than one-billion people — at a cost 28% lower than advertising on Google. In fact, brands see a 200% to 300% increase in brand attributions when advertising on LinkedIn and experience a 33% increase in purchase intent due to LinkedIn ad exposure.
How to Demonstrate Your Expertise, Expand Brand Awareness and Generate Hot Leads with LinkedIn
Needless to say, LinkedIn is more than a job site; there are 15 times more content impressions than job postings.
The duty of your digital marketing team is to determine how to use LinkedIn to outperform all the other brands also marketing and advertising on the app.
Since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, start by observing these 10 B2C brands doing big things with the supposedly business-only app:
Then, put my top tips to the test.
The Top 20 Tips for Optimizing Your LinkedIn Marketing and LinkedIn Advertising
01. Create a brand page, and use it as a hub for all potential customers and employees.
02. Post at least three times a week, and no more than twice a day.
(Fewer times per week or more times per day will decrease engagement/conversions.)
03. Don’t schedule posts.
(There’s no reason not to be as timely as possible, when you’re only posting a few times a week.)
04. Do use your social media management software for its advanced real-time and historical analytics.
05. Do use your CDP to ensure all LinkedIn user/lead data is properly collected, standardized and validated.
06. Create a newsletter, and publish one value-add (non-promotional) article per week.
(Articles are posted in the feed and are also emailed to subscribers.)
07. Run regular polls to increase engagement, demonstrate your brand values, and collect valuable user information.
08. Celebrate occasions — recognizing employees, welcoming new team members, and announcing new product launches and brand initiatives — to enhance and showcase your employee experience, increase brand awareness, and generate more leads.
09. Post images and videos.
(Posts with images generate 200% more engagement; users are 2,000% more likely to share a post with a video.)
10. Post long-form content (e.g., your weekly article).
(Posts with 1,900 or more words perform best.)
11. Capitalize on trending topics to stay up to date on developing stories, access diverse perspectives, and join the conversation, demonstrating your expertise.
12. Host events to further demonstrate your expertise, increase engagement, generate leads, and deepen your relationships; i.e.:
- When scheduling your event, select the “with registration” option to generate leads from the form signups
- Promote the event with the optional free and paid tools (a basic LinkedIn event post is designed to stand out from the rest of the user feed)
- Post on the event page with increasing frequency — incorporating gamification elements (or at least surveys or questions) whenever possible — to increase anticipation and buzz leading up to the event
- Use the post-event polling option to deliver and demonstrate customer centricity and gather valuable user/lead data
13. Go live to create excitement, announcing new products and special deals, and promote the exclusivity of these (rare) occurrences.
14. Leverage your personal profile to amplify the reach of brand content and improve B2B networking, by:
- Sharing brand content via post and in groups (a fashion brand CEO might join the LUXURY, FASHION & LIFESTYLE EXECUTIVES group, for instance)
- Writing and distributing op-eds as articles (if necessary, task your best writer to ghostwrite for your most public figure)
- Publishing daily image-based inspirational posts (people love this, for some reason)
- Messaging potential partners to brainstorm cross-promotional campaigns
15. Assign a social media marketing manager from your digital marketing team to:
- Develop your LinkedIn marketing strategy
- Coordinate with a digital advertising specialist to develop your LinkedIn advertising strategy
- Create and manage the LinkedIn editorial calendar for production and publication
- Coordinate with your content creators to produce custom content for LinkedIn ads, organic posts, event banners, etc.
- Coordinate with your events marketing manager to develop and implement event concepts
- Coordinate with your marketing data analyst to collect, analyze and report on LinkedIn performance
16. Assign a social media coordinator to:
- Publish brand content
- Create and manage event listings
- Engage with competitors and other brands (like fast food brands on Twitter)
- Communicate trending topics to the content team
17. Assign a community manager to:
- Respond to comments
- Answer tech and support questions
- Escalate problems and opportunities as necessary
- Coordinate with the customer support team to manage customer relationships
18. Share on other social networks your newsletter articles, polls, events and any other exclusive content to grow your total social media audience and improve the customer experience.
(According to Google, 98% of Americans switch between platforms and devices in the same day, and 90% of all consumers expect cohesiveness in their interactions no matter where they are.)
19. Commit to LinkedIn advertising:
- Dedicating between $2,000 and $5,000 to your first ad campaigns (determine your max monthly spend based on your total digital ad budget and how your LinkedIn advertising performance compares to your performance advertising on other apps and/or via Google, Taboola and AdRoll)
- Using the LinkedIn Audience Network to calculate your potential reach and determine who from your target audience is on the app
- Split testing the same content across the various ad types and objectives
- Continuing to run, monitor, analyze, iterate and optimize your ads to achieve your specific objectives, split testing different variations on your written and visual content and then iterating and optimizing to maximize ad performance
20. Gamify LinkedIn across your organization by offering incentives to employees for reposting brand content and, perhaps even more importantly, sharing their work experiences and glowing reviews of your brand and products, in turn engaging more and more of your staff, exponentially amplifying the reach of your content and enhancing your reputation among the platform’s top talent.
Need Help Creating for LinkedIn?
At Customer Engagement Insider, we specialize in event planning and hosting, as well as content creation, for the world’s most distinguished digital brands and online advertisers.
Download our media kit today >>>
Image Credits (in order of appearance)
- Photo by JOHN TOWNER on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/p-rN-n6Miag
- Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/LPRrEJU2GbQ
- Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/YbscRIDdimg
- Photo by KAL VISUALS on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/cYbd7k7VCpI
- Photo by Marc Rafanell López on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/PMwu9gfCSbw
