The Small Business Owner’s Guide to LinkedIn Marketing in 2020

LinkedIn is fast becoming the social media for professionals and corporate conglomerates, climbing up the charts for being one of the most used social media platform channels starting from 2016 until 2019.

Would you believe that this platform gains two new professionals to sign-up every second? That’s a very impressive user growth rate, with 467 million users in 2016 to 590 million by the end of 2018, which means LinkedIn gained 123 million new users in just 2 years!

Aside from building connections and networks, another interesting thing about LinkedIn is that it offers a vast amount of opportunities for businesses of all scales and sizes, regardless of their marketing objectives as long as you know how to provide value to your existing network and connections. 

On LinkedIn, the possibilities are endless. From finding the most relevant content published by the most influential personalities across different sectors and industries up to participating in different discussions on the future of business, economy, and workforce, LinkedIn has got your back.

That’s why more and more business owners are heading over to LinkedIn to seize better marketing opportunities. If you’ve come across this article, perfect. Stay on, here’s Kinetic Social’s comprehensive marketing guide for small business owners like you.

How To Effectively Market on LinkedIn

LinkedIn will become one of the most advanced players when it comes to advertising in the coming years, that’s why more and more sectors are trying their hands on the different ways to market to their target audience on LinkedIn. Depending on your objective, there are several organic and paid solutions in order to market effectively on LinkedIn.

Make your content worthy enough to create a meaningful conversation. 

Ask any marketer or marketing agency if there’s anything that can top off creating relevant content to skyrocket your business’ growth. It’s hard finding something to replace the value of excellent content to any kind of business, that’s why it’s important to establish and maintain your brand by creating professional and creative content. 

But how? Write from the heart and don’t speak as if you’re selling a product or idea. Remember, you might be talking to renowned professionals and business giants, but you are talking to people who have emotions. Emotions have the power to evoke human weakness but at the same time, influence sharing a different perspective with the community and addressing what might become the future of the industry.

We all want to be understood, and what leaves more impact is something that resonates with a person’s feelings, no matter how formal or informal the tone of the conversation can begin with. 

Meanwhile, here are three short but proven tips from professionals on how to get your content amplified: Always prepare fresh content, make sure that you create several post formats which mean not limiting your posts to “text-only” post but also use video content or image content, post at least once or twice a day, don’t forget to put hashtags and get your content published on LinkedIn’s Pulse content platform.

Find out more about how to get featured here.  

Don’t forget to optimise your business page.

Here’s a piece of advice that can help you grow your business as much as 600% faster than other competitors: treat your LinkedIn business page as if it’s your own website. This is where the art of creative storytelling comes in.

Make sure that you tell a story about your company’s as creative and as human as possible. Keep things simple but appealing to your chosen market and don’t forget to keep your company information complete and constantly updated.

Create a strong call-to-action.

Conversion is essential to any small business owner, either it will bring countless opportunities or several missed shots. Every business, after all, has to acquire its target number of leads.

How do you create a strong call-to-action on your business page? Here are five, quick proven ways how: 

• Be straight to the point.
• Use quick action words.
• Publish a quick step-by-step guide.
• Talk about your services, but don’t sound like a salesman.
• Offer something irresistible, people won’t even hesitate to share it with people they know. 

Grow your business with LinkedIn Marketing Solutions.

Before, LinkedIn is not the ideal place for businesses to allocate their ad budgets on. Facebook and Instagram are the most common social platforms when we say social media ads. But today, LinkedIn is stepping up the ad game with its very own LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. 

Here’s some quick start guide on the 6 different types of LinkedIn ads that you can create under their new marketing solutions program. 

1. Sponsored Content – Best for promoting your company’s latest updates and promoting awareness about your business.
2. Sponsored InMail – If you prefer personalised messages, target your audience with a customised message. Best for driving more conversions since it uses a more direct approach.
3. Text Ads – Small ads that you see on the right panel on your LinkedIn newsfeed. Best for acquiring the audience reach faster since they’ll be able to see it frequently. 
4. Professional Targeting – Best solution if you want to target bigger and real professionals in the industry with real results. 
5. Conversion Tracking – If you’re all about acquiring and monitoring your lead growth, this type of ad campaign works best for you. 
6. Lead Gen Forms – When LinkedIn members click on your ad, their profile data automatically populates a form they can submit with one click. This type of marketing solution is effective if you want more detailed information and more specific audience targeting.

Never compromise your value. Ever.

Above all else, consistently having a sense of integrity plays the most important role in marketing your business on LinkedIn. One, a tried and tested study has been conducted by different agencies from time to time and they have therefore concluded — companies who lay their groundwork on delivering the best value they can offer to their clients is the key for them to prevail in their respective industries.

There are even five rules for integrity:

1. If you have a commitment with somebody else, stick to it. If you can’t deliver, inform the other party and apologise. They shouldn’t be chasing you. You chase them.
2. If you have a commitment for yourself, on the other hand, stick to it and remind yourself all the time why you’re sticking beside that commitment. 
3. Stop making commitments if you’re going to break it. Think before agreeing on something. 
4. Let people know about your commitments. That way, you’re aligned with your goals and won’t be held accountable in the future for something you haven’t committed to. 
5. Always reflect on your commitments and check if it still aligns with your value as a person.

Integrity is the key to making your business grow, to improve your brand, and to prove that behind a good business is a responsible leader who keeps up with the market’s demand and innovates for the sake of providing value to whoever they want to give it to.