“LinkedIn? Are you sure?” Yes.
After Facebook, Twitter, and even Instagram, you need to give LinkedIn a try. Why? Because LinkedIn is now one of the top-rated marketing platforms where most decision-makers are active almost every day.
“How can you say this?”
Chew this
- 61 million LinkedIn users are C-level influencers, and 40 million are decision-makers (Source: LinkedIn)
- The professionals at Fortune 500 companies highly uses LinkedIn (Source: LinkedIn)- they might be your ideal customers, right?
While this is true, you will agree with below
- If you’re a Gen X or near millennial you sure have tasted the success of getting tons of likes with just posting regular updates on Facebook. Organic reach is hard to come by now.
- Organic is free and as a small business owner, you need to have an alley to anything that’s free!
- The complicating factor here is that the organic reach on social media is declining steadily. Organic reach on Facebook currently sits at 2% — or less, according to Hubspot. As against in 2012 when it was 15%
So as the tale goes….
If you are looking to target high-profile customers, LinkedIn is your next marketing platform.
High Profile customers….
“Now, what if we are selling customized commodity items? LinkedIn is for you. For you, LinkedIn Crowdfire app can be a great option to share relevant content and grab the engagement.
Just be mindful LinkedIn is not yet ready for memes, and random sharing of pictures.
“What’s a small-scale sustainable, ethical e-store with an inventory of less than 100 going to say on LinkedIn?” LinkedIn is for you too.
You have got a social cause to talk about. Likewise, Fashion jewelry owner can talk about custom-made, making personality-based choices.
And many more small and home run businesses will find a higher ground to talk about. That is thought leadership in corporate jargon
“But, what if we don’t have enough budget?” Well, you don’t need more.
LinkedIn is a perfect marketing platform to grab the attention of your stakeholders even with a limited or no budget. Stakeholders who are your believers will eventually get customers your way. It is free so goes without saying it will need perseverance
Let’s find out how.
5 Steps to Generate Leads Using LinkedIn with Little to No Budget
Following these steps, your prospects will notice your small business, interact with you and your business, find value within your business, and finally become your high-valued customers. Even if you are selling a commodity item.
1. Create an up-to-date LinkedIn company page
The way you have your company pages on Facebook and Instagram, get an up-to-date company page on LinkedIn as well.
Fill in all the following details carefully on your LinkedIn company page:
- Company name, address, phone number, and website
- Upload an appropriate company logo as the page picture and also upload a relevant cover photo
- Add the company information in detail so that your prospects can understand about your business offerings properly
An up-to-date company page is the first step to attract the interests of your customers. So make sure you have this before you move on to the next steps.
Check out an example of how you can design your LinkedIn company page-
2. Start being active on LinkedIn company page and personal profiles
Your next step is to start sharing your expertise on your company page as well as personal profiles.
You might wonder- “company page is understood, why personal profiles?” Use the basics of marketing here. First, let your network connections know about your business. Inspire them to follow your company page. This can happen when you share your company posts on your individual profile.
So, you need to be equally active on both- LinkedIn page and profiles.
Now, how to be active on LinkedIn? Here are a few highly-effective ways-
- Long-form posts
Long-form posts are quite trending these days on LinkedIn. See an example here https://www.linkedin.com/embed/feed/update/urn:li:share:6545905310043820032
Whether you are a small business owner or an owner of a Fortune 500 company, these long-form posts are the most engaging and influencing ones. Go for it.
- Videos
Well, videos are the highest engaging content on every social media marketing platform.
LinkedIn native videos are equally driving results as the videos uploaded on LinkedIn. But, native videos does not require much budget and still drives interesting results.
An example of LinkedIn native video-
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:6546043380726673408
Hootsuite provides a detailed guide on LinkedIn Video (read this only when you finish reading this guide)
- Links
Sharing links to company news, blogs, 3rd-party mentions, and more can get you traffic and even leads from LinkedIn. Now, how you share the links matters the most.
Tip: Make sure you create the urge for your target audience to click on the links that you share.
- Images
The images that contain statistics, quotes, or some infographics are more likely to gain engagement on LinkedIn. So, use them wisely.
3. Share posts that showcase your thoughts on a daily basis
LinkedIn is not just a networking platform but a platform where you can showcase your knowledge and experience with your connections. When it comes to small businesses there’s no dearth of these. And, for that, you have got to use all of these following places-
- LinkedIn Personal Profile
Being a business owner of a small company, you need to be the face of your company. And hence, you need to share your expert opinions on your personal profile. The more people will see your profile, the more they will come to know about your company.
- LinkedIn Pulse
This is akin to blogging. For starters, the text length can be ignored. Small businesses thrive and need face to face marketing. Write-ups on multi-tasking with the right hashtags are sure-shot winners to get engagement to 3 paragraphs on LinkedIn.
Business owners going to small format bazaars. Articles about how one goes about handling all aspects single-handedly can be one of your regular post formats.
Share them on LinkedIn Pulse.
After all, as per the figures shared by LinkedIn, there are more than one million publishers on LinkedIn, and over 150,000 posts are published weekly.
Well, if Larry Kim has written 164 LinkedIn Pulse articles, you should too take the benefit out of it.
4. Analyze your posts to improve your engagement
LinkedIn provides Analytics for your company page to track and measure how much engagement you receive on each of your posts.
Based on the analysis, you can improve your type of content, media, and way of promoting your posts that helps you enhance your target audience and its engagement. So, make sure you don’t miss out on this essential step.
5. Engage with your audience
Until and unless you personally interact with the people, you and your business won’t be noticed. Hence, after all of your efforts, the last but not the least step is to engage with your audience.
Engage from both- the personal profile as well as the company’s LinkedIn page. That way, your business comes in the limelight and is more likely to generate leads for itself.
Use LinkedIn at No Cost
According to a recent study, 92% of small businesses plan to increase their investment in social media in 2018. So how should you balance your investment in social media?
LinkedIn is a free marketing platform, and to generate business out of it requires limited to no budget. The only thing you need is- consistency. Consistency will help you develop the skill to master the use of LinkedIn.
But, consistency comes by routine and to cultivate this LinkedIn marketing routine; you need an everyday LinkedIn Marketing checklist. Follow the steps given in the checklist to ensure you remain consistently active on LinkedIn until it becomes a routine for you.
Download this FREE LinkedIn Marketing everyday routine checklist, which helps you generate leads without investing anything except for your precious 10 minutes every time.
