LinkedIn Marketing

1. Introduction
LinkedIn is a social networking site that has specifically proven to be a valuable
platform for an individual’s career and professional live.

Over 467 million users in over200 countries use LinkedIn to build their
relationships with potential customers, clients, partners and colleagues
(LinkedIn Press, 2017). - There are currently over 690 million people
using LinkedIn

The site is dedicated to building strategic relationships that could help

members in their professional lives, unlike other social networking sites where
you might beco0me ‘friends’ with anyone and everyone.

LinkedIn, as shown in Figure 6.1, is the fourth fastest-growing social network

after Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.
Their earnings are majorly from the premium subscriptions, marketing and
talent solutions as displayed in Figure 6.2.

When it comes to directing traffic to the main site, LinkedIn is by far the
premier social referral source. As can be seen in Figure 6.3. LinkedIn got the
highest average order value of e-commerce purchases worldwide in 2015
among social media.

2. Importance of LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a powerful tool for individuals and organizations that are looking to
make new connections, generate leads, and build their brand. The platform
offers a variety of opportunities like job-hunting, freelance work, and potential
partners.
LinkedIn is used widely for the following purposes.

1. Getting connected to potential customers to get updated about

them.
2. Receiving endorsements and recommendations from network, thus
showcasing skills and abilities.
3. Creating an online business card or resume where potential clients,
joint venture partners, and employers can learn about the advertiser
and get connected
4. Job-hunting through LinkedIn-many job posts are exclusive to
LinkedIn i.e., they are not advertised elsewhere.
5. Being active on groups for different communities that align with the
interests of the advertiser. Individuals and businesses can also
participate in the discussions. Groups are seen as a place where one
can build trust and rapport that is needed to cultivate new prospects.
6. Position yourself as a professional: As with all social networking
platforms, once you sign up you have a customisable profile. You can
use this to portray yourself as a strong professional and to display
your relevant experience.
7. Networking: There is an astonishingly high amount of users across
more than 200 countries at your fingertips. Once you have a strong
professional profile, you will find more and more of these
professionals will begin to connect with you.
8. Job opportunities: By creating a standout profile and building the
right network, you are also opening yourself up to career
opportunities.

Your LinkedIn profile becomes a version of an online CV and it is

common for employers to search for and view this during the
recruiting process. Seeing a highly engaged professional with
connections in the industry is going to come across well.

It can also be a means for potential employers to find you without

you even applying for a position. With the help of the algorithm and
keyword searching, recruiters use LinkedIn to scout for talent. There
is even an ‘Open to work’ feature designed for this purpose.
Other benefits
You can tap into its powerful job board
You can build your brand
It can help rank your name on Google
It maintains your rolodex of contacts
You can research companies and its employees
It can help you tap into industry news

It is also to be noted that one can even download their connections list in the
‘scv’ format with their first and last name along with their email address. In
case of company’s page, it is not possible to download the list of followers.
Hence, it is important for a person to be active on his personal profile in
additions to the company’s page.
(An SCV ScanVec CASmate File is a special file format and should only be edited and saved
with the appropriate software.)

3. LinkedIn STRATEGY
LinkedIn offers multiple marketing opportunities for individuals as well as
organizations. Let us learn to build an effective strategy for desired results.

3.1 Build a Robust Company Page on LinkedIn.

1. Use an Image that Gets Attention
2. Create a Clear and Captivating Pitch in Description
 3. Make your Overview Section Clickable

4. Use of Careers Feature

3.2 LinkedIn Groups

1. Which Group to Join

 Size of the Group.

 Same Domain Groups
 Active Groups
2. Start groups

3.3 Leverage Paid Ads and Sponsored Updates

3.4 Use Advanced Search

4. Sales leads generation using LinkedIn
4.1 Why Use LinkedIn for Sales Lead Generation ?

LinkedIn Sales Navigator can also be your Lead Generation

Solution with following features:

 Advanced Search with Lead Builder – Use custom criteria to

build sales lead lists.
 Lead Recommendations – Get recommendations on who are
the influencers and decision makers.
 Team Link – See who within your company is connected to your
prospects for warm introductions.
 Extended Network Access – Unlimited searches in your
extended network – 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree.
5. Content Strategy
5.1 The Most In-Demand Content is Industry Insights.

5.2 Time It Well

5.3 Post at Lease 20 Times Per Month.

5.4 Create a Showcase Page

5.5 LinkedIn Pulse

6. LinkedIn Analytics
LinkedIn provides with metrics about pages. Only the company
page's administrators can access this tab. This help them to
understand the profile of their followers - like their demographic
details, reach, engagement level, follower's trend, page views and
unique visitors.

LinkedIn has broadly divided their analytics section into three

categories (1) Updates, (2) Followers, and (3) Visitors.

6.1 Updates

 Audience
 Sponsored
 Impressions
 Clicks
 Interactions
 Followers Acquired
 Engagement
 Reach

6.2 Followers

The followers' tab is divided into four sections

 Types
 - Total
- Organic
- Acquired
 Follower Demographics
 Follower Trends
 Comparison

6.3 Visitors

Visitors section has the following information about the viewers as

per figure 6.14

 Page Views
 Career Page Clicks
 Unique Visitors
 Visitor Demographics
7. Targeting
A unique feature of LinkedIn is that it allows page admin to target not only paid
ads but also organic content. Most users post content to all followers, but this
only leads to spamming and hence users do not pay attention to the content.

Best practice is to target even organic content as content on LinkedIn is highly

specialized and is not of general interest.

Targeted updates allow page admins to target their company posts or updates
to specific followers so that they can deliver the most relevant content to the
most appropriate audiences.

As shown in figure 6.15, LinkedIn has rich targeting options as follows :

Industry

Company

Job Title

Size

Seniority

Demographics - gender, age, school, education

Job Function

Skills
Groups

7.1 How is LinkedIn’s Targeting Different from Facebook

You must have realized that LinkedIn targeting is very factual, based
on objective date that users themselves enter in their profile. It is not
inferred (conditional / secondary) like Facebook and Google, and
hence it is very accurate, and chances of incorrect targeting will not
be there.

Do you know which is the most popular targeting method on

LinkedIn ? Title is the most sought after targeting method and
probably most expensive too. You can be clever and target by a
combination of seniority and function and reach the same people at
a lesser cost.

You can target group members and that may be very effective as
these members are highly interested in a particular topic.

A challenge with targeting options on LinkedIn is that it is unable to

capture the intent of the user and thus cannot target in-market
audiences and it may subsequently lead to not generating
conversions and sales.
Did you notice that LinkedIn does not have Remarketing, CRM-based
targeting, interest-based targeting or lookalike targeting in its
dashboard ? You can run remarketing campaigns through DSPs
though.
8. Ad Campaign
8.1 Choose Self-Service or Managed Ads

8.2 Get Started with Campaign Manager

8.3 Choose an Ad Format

 Sponsored Content

 Sponsored InMail

 Text Ads
  Display Ads

8.4 Create Ads

8.5 Target Ads

8.6 Set the Budget

8.7 Measure and Optimize your Campaign