The Ultimate Guide To B2B Marketing On LinkedIn

Jayakumar Muthusamy
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January 11, 2023

Contents

More than half of all decision-makers report using LinkedIn B2B ads and content material while researching and selecting the brands with which to collaborate.

In addition, with more than 3 million members posting content each week, LinkedIn accounts for more than half of all social traffic to B2B websites and blogs.

If you want more people to buy your product, think about how you can leverage these trends.

On LinkedIn, there are two main ways to get leads and, eventually, boost your sales.

  • You can put in the time and effort, get Sales Navigator, split-test extended outreach sequences, and try out various outreach messages to find out what resonates with your target audience.
  • On the other hand, you can go to work on the content that will entice your ideal buyer to find you.

In this guide, we'll cover the following: 

  • What Is LinkedIn B2B Marketing?
  • What percentage of B2B leads come from LinkedIn?
  • Reasons to use LinkedIn for B2B Marketing 
  • Tips To Improve Your B2B LinkedIn Marketing Campaigns 
  • How To Measure Your LinkedIn Marketing B2B Campaigns 

What Is LinkedIn B2B Marketing?

LinkedIn can help you and your company promote your products and services, reach a wider audience, and strengthen existing relationships like other social networking sites. Professionalism is what sets LinkedIn apart from other social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. In fact, if you want to master the basics of LinkedIn B2B marketing, this guide is your best bet. Your newfound knowledge will serve as a solid groundwork for the more sophisticated guidance shared below in this article.

A little bit of planning and online research is really all that's needed to kick off a fruitful LinkedIn campaign.

It takes a lot of effort, though, to get a campaign from the "active" to the "A" stage. In order to get the most out of the platform, marketers need to understand how it works and conduct experiments to determine the optimal settings.

Further, LinkedIn is great for networking with other professionals and, more importantly, key influencers in your field. From the time you make or accept a connection request on LinkedIn, the relationships you are building are tactical. In fact, 80% of LinkedIn users hold managerial or executive positions. Advertising in this area puts you in touch with the decision-makers at your target businesses.

These ties serve a similar function as partnerships do in business. As a B2B marketer, using LinkedIn to spread your message and attract potential customers is a no-brainer. Leverage the potential of LinkedIn B2B marketing with LinkedIn B2B ads. 

What Percentage of B2B Leads Come from LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is an excellent place to find potential leads. According to Hubspot's research, LinkedIn is 277% more effective in generating leads than either Facebook or Twitter. Considering this, it's not surprising that 43% of marketers have found at least one customer using LinkedIn and that 79% of marketers believe LinkedIn to be an excellent source of leads. 

For business-to-business marketers, that figure jumps to 80%, with 40% citing LinkedIn as their most successful platform for generating high-quality leads. Of LinkedIn's 336 million users, 194 million are located outside the United States. The median annual income in the United States is $75,000. Therefore 44% of LinkedIn users earn more than that.

LinkedIn B2B ads is a top choice for LinkedIn B2B marketing campaigns. Business Insider claims that LinkedIn is the most reliable social media network for businesses to connect with potential customers. Moreover, according to LinkedIn, the social media platform generates 80% of all online B2B leads.

People are making LinkedIn B2B ads an investment rather than an expense. Therefore, LinkedIn B2B ads can be useful if your product or service is geared toward assisting your target market professionally. 

LinkedIn claims that its lead gen forms have a 13% conversion rate, whereas landing pages only have a 2.35% rate. To that end, instead of using a third-party landing page, B2B marketers should use the lead gen form.

Users are spared the inconvenience of leaving LinkedIn in order to fill out the LinkedIn ads form, making it a more pleasant experience overall. 

Reasons to Use LinkedIn for B2B Marketing 

One LinkedIn B2B marketing strategy that uses LinkedIn is to promote services and products within the company's network. The ideal form of digital advertising is a network that successfully combines the target audience (customers or job candidates) with the intended audience (business owners or HR personnel).

Nearly three-quarters of B2B companies (75%) already advertise on social media. For this reason, we must zero in on the most crucial benefits of LinkedIn's use so that you may maximize your business-to-business marketing efforts on the platform.

Create brand awareness and boost your company's reputation

LinkedIn's prominence on the social media platform means that it attracts new users every second. Connecting with more intriguing people on LinkedIn can increase your business's efficiency and social circle.

The issue at hand is, naturally enough, how to raise awareness of and trust in one's business on LinkedIn. 

Here’s a few posts from Gong from LinkedIn creating their brand awareness by posting some good high-quality content.

Post #1

Post #2

Furthermore, taking advantage of LinkedIn's myriad of personal and group features is your best bet.

Over 57 million companies and 120,000 schools have LinkedIn accounts.

Identify your target audience

LinkedIn's ad targeting relies heavily on user-supplied information. In the right hands, this first-hand information can help propel your business in front of your target demographic. The possibilities for LinkedIn targeting are practically endless.

Here are some actionable tips on how to generate more high-quality leads with lead scoring strategies and marketing strategies that depend on data.

Below is the framework for profiling your ICP, covering:

How to identify your ideal customer profile:

  • Gather data
  • Use retention analysis
  • Understand that product-market-fit is a moving target
  • Use a price sensitivity analysis
  • Look at the properties your customers have in common
  • Look at conversion rates

We analyze the data from previous campaigns to determine the optimal targeting parameters for the upcoming one. 

For instance, if you are trying to reach people who work in B2B sales but whose job titles aren't directly tied to B2B sales gen, using a wide variety of job titles for that purpose might work. Using the function parameter in place of job titles is one approach; using talents is another. But how can you choose the best option?

Strategic testing can help you learn which groups of people and which settings for your targeted parameters yield the best outcomes. Just make two ads using the identical concept, text, and funding. Then, you can create unique target groups for each campaign. Fine-tune the target demographics continuously until peak performance is achieved.

How to build a lead scoring model and why

This data analysis helps you create your ideal consumer profile. We need a model to determine if you're reaching these customers.

Building a lead scoring model, a points system that ranks and gives points to properties in data. This algorithm scores how well your clients match the desired profile. This phase may be completed in 20 to 30 minutes despite sounding laborious.

Lead scoring is less restrictive than the ideal customer profile. After entering certain variables into your model, you'll see various ideal client scores. Your lead score model shows you how classifications of your desired factors link with revenue and retention, helping you make smart decisions like:

  • How to spend your time and money on the greatest customers
  • How to prioritize so you spend less time and resources on bad fits and double down on excellent ones Whom to discount without missing key possibilities
  • These decisions will affect your company's growth and health. Knowing your customers inside and out is important to business success. All of the data-gathering and -analysis mentioned here will help you understand your customers' needs.

Social selling and generating leads

For LinkedIn B2B marketing, LinkedIn offers a distinct advantage: context. LinkedIn users want to enhance their life as business professionals, unlike Facebook and Instagram, where users want to see their new nephew or what an odd high school acquaintance is doing today. LinkedIn may use your time-management or employee-training tools.

LinkedIn B2B ads target professionals more than regular Facebook users. When you advertise on LinkedIn, your posts will display alongside articles about your sector, peer insights and suggestions, and career training and techniques. Your blog post about industry standards matches well with posts about workplace ethics and a forthcoming conference.

LeadGen ads on LinkedIn will reach people looking to advance their careers. LinkedIn B2B advertisements generate B2B SaaS business through social selling and lead development.

Social media lead generation shows B2B marketers which social media consumers are interested in their products. This gives you the edge you need to target them with personalized information and offers, where they're most likely to become paying customers.

Now let’s find out how you can leverage social selling and generate leads:

  1. Create lead magnets that people want, this could be a report or tool. Offer discount codes, case studies, webinars, whitepapers, etc. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions promotes a free Insight Tag tool.
  2. Share social proof testimonies since customer anecdotes and testimonials can generate leads. Show how your products and services helped clients to build your brand.
  3. Using paid social advertisements' incredibly specific targeting possibilities, you may present your audience with personalized offers. Promote unique content, discounts, and limited-time deals with these ads.
  4. LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms convert at a 13% average rate, whereas landing pages convert at 2.35 percent. LinkedIn Lead Gen Form fields are pre-filled with information from the prospect's LinkedIn profile, so both your reader and you can access the content easily.
  5. Set up sequential retargeting ads to boosts social advertising and lead generation by reengaging lost leads. Retargeted advertising offers a 10X higher click-through rate than standard display ads.

Keep in mind the "Four Ps" of marketing. The Place where your campaign is visible. The initial touch with the customer occurs as important as the Product, the Price, and the Promotion. 

This is why LinkedIn is so great for B2B advertising. Your customer's thinking is already in a business frame of mind when you make that initial or follow-up connection with them on LinkedIn. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions promoting a free LinkedIn Insight Tag tool is an excellent example.

Source

Also, nearly 89% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn's B2B marketing strategy for SaaS lead generation

Take advantage of LinkedIn community features:

To interact with other clients, use the LinkedIn community tools.

The result is an increased ability to connect with other people.

Groups and influential members are two cornerstones of each community.

Groups:

  • If you want to know what's going on in your field and maintain contact with the people and businesses you already know, joining clubs that share your interests or expertise is a great way to do both.
  • Form a company-specific group.
  • Participating in group discussions is a terrific way to meet new people and increase your impact in existing circles.

Influencers: 

  • Influencers on LinkedIn can help you connect with a wide range of influential people in your field of study.
  • Topics of current interest and/or novelty are frequently discussed.
  • You may stand out by actively participating in the conversation below their posts.

With more than 690 million users, LinkedIn significantly impacts LinkedIn B2B marketing strategies, allowing business owners in every industry to expose their company to their target audience effortlessly.

It is widely recognized as a major B2B social media network.

Establishing trusting relationships with your clientele is difficult, but LinkedIn makes it possible.

In addition, you can grow your brand's visibility and the sphere of influence inside your sector to attract more customers. Using this social media platform, you can do market research and earn the trust of your target audience.

Precise targeting

Be sure to consider the optimal targeting criteria for each campaign before launching. A company that employs several SaaS B2B marketers can contact people with specific job titles in the SaaS B2B industry. Still, they may need to reach people who conduct SaaS B2B-related tasks but have unrelated job titles. The function argument can be used in place of job titles, or skills can be used instead. How, then, can one determine which option is optimal?

To get the most out of your campaigns, you need to target specific groups of people. By implementing a testing strategy, you can learn which groups of people and which settings for your target audience perform best. It's as easy as making two identical campaigns in every way (copy, visuals, and spending). Make little adjustments to the audiences regularly until you get the best results.

Tips To Improve Your B2B LinkedIn Marketing Campaigns 

For improved outcomes in quality linkedIn B2B lead generation, refined target marketing, communicating with like-minded people, and ultimately more conversions, here are a few tips to keep in mind while developing your LinkedIn B2B ads campaigns.

Embrace the influence of content marketing

One of the best methods to connect with your audience, solve their problems, answer their questions, and move them closer to making a purchase is through the use of content. LinkedIn's ready and painless accessibility is one of its defining characteristics. Use a LinkedIn article to publish an original piece of content rather than linking to external content in a LinkedIn post.

You can write and publish high-quality pieces, such as listicles, how-to instructions, and in-depth guides highlighting your customers' successes. In doing so, you will demonstrate your competence and credibility as an expert in your industry.

In addition to fostering stronger bonds with current clients and luring new ones with enticing offers, you may use LinkedIn to disseminate email testimonials, references, social media posts, and virtual product demonstrations.

Preparing a balanced LinkedIn publishing schedule allows you to organize the content for a week or month in advance, making the process simple and uncomplicated.

Make use of campaign groups on LinkedIn

LinkedIn's campaign structure is less complicated than that of Facebook. Except for the ad creatives, everything related to your LinkedIn B2B ads campaign is handled at the campaign level. You'll have to start from scratch with a new LinkedIn B2B ads campaign strategy if you want to change any of these.

You will need to launch an entirely new campaign if you want to test out variations of your advertisements, such as those featuring a carousel of images rather than just one. Making a new campaign that does the same thing over and over again could get tiresome. However, LinkedIn has provided campaign groups to aid in the management of campaigns on the site.

Grouping campaigns of a similar nature into one convenient location is a must for B2B marketers on LinkedIn. The campaign groups will help you maintain an orderly structure and efficiently allocate resources and time to individual initiatives.

Use advanced search

One of the most valuable aspects of LinkedIn is the advanced search feature, which allows you to zero in on the precise demographics of your intended audience. Having a larger and more robust personal network increases your chances of finding warm prospects on the site. LinkedIn's advanced search function allows you to conduct a comprehensive online search and obtain the most relevant results.

Retarget your website visitors 

You will see actual returns from your LinkedIn efforts once you consistently put in the time and effort. Your B2B LinkedIn marketing efforts will be more successful if you retarget your site visits. This is made feasible by LinkedIn's visitor tracking and, subsequently, paid campaign follow-up features. 

Maintaining congruence between your remarketing messages and their persistent engagement with your website is crucial. LinkedIn's remarketing capabilities include retargeting, which lets you refine your search and find only the people you're looking for.

Sales Navigator on LinkedIn is a great tool for keeping track of your various clients and target audience segments so that you can better target them. If you can easily share your curated lists with your teams and coworkers, you can reach more people with less effort.

Use a B2B LinkedIn lead generation tool 

You can greatly improve your results by using a B2B LinkedIn lead creation solution. Among the best B2B LinkedIn lead-generating solutions, E Leads Pro helps you find and connect with qualified prospects, expand your professional network, zero in on your ideal clients, forge lasting connections, raise brand awareness, and boost revenue.

  • Zapier - You can take charge of your time and tech stack with Zapier. It works by linking all of your apps together, making everything run smoothly. The platform works with more than 1,500 apps, and you don't need technical knowledge to connect them.
  • MailChimp - Mailchimp may be integrated with landing page tools. It doesn't just send emails. It has exit-intent-enabled lead collection forms. Leads can share your newsletters via shareable URL links. It's useful for transactional emails to customers.
  • HubSpot - You can handle most processes in HubSpot. You can schedule blog entries and automate social media. It improves SEO to boost organic visitors. It’s an all-in-one solution designed for inbound marketing. The platform provides valuable campaign insights. Landing pages, ad management, bots, forms, and live chat are among its features.
  • Linkedin Sales Navigator - LinkedIn Sales Navigator lets you target people, companies, and leads. Advanced lead and corporate searches help locate appropriate prospects. The platform provides personalised leads. This helps find target account contacts. It's also CRM-integrated. Customize lead and account listings. Alerts and insights help. When a lead or account moves positions or grows, you'll know. One month is free. Annual plans cost $65/mo. Sales Navigator Professional and Team ($103/mo yearly) are available.

These are some of the notable CRMs and apps it is compatible with. 

Two-sequence production, comprehensive management, company page follows, profile data extraction, calendar invites, group inviter, artificial intelligence software, and campaign optimization are only some of the capabilities offered by the application.

Leverage the community features 

The community function on LinkedIn is a great way to interact with other users, find new connections, and promote your business. In order to keep up with the most recent communications from major corporations, you can join as many organizations as relevant to your interests and field as you like. If you create your own groups, you can take pride in being seen as the person responsible for facilitating communication between members of your ideal demographic. 

Embrace influencers

Make use of influencers to great effect in the B2B sector. Customers today are looking for and responding positively to information that they can relate to. It's encouraging to see staff members evolve into key opinion leaders contributing to the company's success. Reaching out to a LinkedIn influencer in your field is a great way to increase your LinkedIn following.

If you look around for the newest industry news and trends, you can spot an influencer who is open to hearing from you. To get recognized, you must interact with their post by liking it, commenting on it, or sharing it. Firms also leverage micro-influencers, or particularly engaging and well-informed staff, to spread the word about what they do and why it matters. 

How To Measure Your LinkedIn Marketing B2B Campaigns

LinkedIn marketing initiatives have four main goals: brand promotion, brand recognition, SaaS lead generation, and network expansion. LinkedIn B2B ads campaigns need metrics tracking like any other marketing effort. Measuring results is crucial to the prosperity of any advertising effort.

Do you know how to gauge your LinkedIn marketing campaigns' success accurately? The best strategies to evaluate your LinkedIn marketing B2B campaigns are discussed here.

Identify goals and key metrics

Determine the direction of your campaign by the goals you set for it. LinkedIn's Campaign Manager is built on a goal-oriented, objective-first structure. 

No matter what indicators you choose to track, they should all serve the same purpose. 

  • BRAND AWARENESS - If you want to increase brand recognition, you might focus on things like ad impressions, clicks, and conversion rates. 
  • LEAD-GENERATION - Increasing consideration or generating more conversions to increase social media traffic to your company are two other important aspects. 

To ensure your KPIs align with your objectives, use LinkedIn's Campaign Manager. In this approach, you'll be able to monitor and assess the most important indicators for your LinkedIn B2B ads campaigns.

Here are a few most important LinkedIn KPIs and metrics:

1. LinkedIn Engagement rates

Engagement tells businesses if their LinkedIn posts reach the proper people. The number of interactions (likes, comments, shares) divided by impressions equals the LinkedIn engagement rate. 

The high LinkedIn engagement has several benefits.

  • It demonstrates that you're socially active and a valuable LinkedIn member.
  • This can lead to greater networking possibilities.
  • A strong engagement rate can help enhance profile views and brand visibility.

2. Click-through rate (CTR)

CTR determines how many people click on a LinkedIn ad or sponsored post. A high CTR suggests your ad is relevant and attractive to your target audience.

This KPI is essential for many reasons.

  • CTR helps improve ad campaigns. It's a crucial advertising metric.
  • It shows which ads are working and which need work.

Images and videos can increase engagement and CTR. Creating interesting headlines and descriptions will boost your LinkedIn CTR. Finally, post consistently and market your material to reach more people.

3. Conversion rate

Conversion rate is the percentage of ad viewers that take action. LinkedIn conversion rate shows how well your efforts generate leads and sales. By tracking your conversion rate, you can see how many people click on your ad and then fill out a form or make a purchase.

Low conversion rates may mean your ad isn't relevant, or your landing page could be more efficient. You can improve outcomes by tracking conversion rates.

4. LinkedIn page views

More LinkedIn page views indicate a user's popularity and influence. This measure shows marketers how many potential contacts a profile has.

LinkedIn page views let you evaluate interest in your profile. If you have many page views, people are interested in what you say and will give you connection requests. Page views boost your LinkedIn search ranking, so obtain as many as possible.

5. Cost per conversion (CPC)

The total cost of obtaining a new client is divided by the number of customers.

This indicator helps organizations assess how much they spend to gain new consumers and whether that investment is profitable.

You can lower your LinkedIn CPC by:

  • Targeting your ad.
  • Create an attractive offer or lead magnet for your audience.
  • Ensure your landing page converts.

These techniques can reduce LinkedIn CPC and boost ROI.

Set up Insight tag

 Ad performance can be better understood with the use of conversion monitoring. You may better understand your audience, optimize your campaigns, retarget your website's users, and measure your success, all with the help of the LinkedIn Insight Tag, a JavaScript code you can include on your site. 

The Insight Tag will reveal the total amount of conversions brought about by your advertising campaigns, including downloads, sales, and signups. Even if a user clicks off of LinkedIn and into your website or views your ad but doesn't act on it, you can still track their conversion.

Visitors' occupations, industries, and employers are just some of the demographic details that Insight Tag can provide about them. Demographic data is essential to comprehend site users better and create targeted advertising campaigns. Insight Tag can be used to monitor and enhance the efficacy of your advertising initiatives.

Need to launch your LinkedIn B2B ads now? If you need some assistance getting started, this short instruction should do the trick. 

Set up lead gen forms

High-quality leads are generated when you use lead gen forms. LinkedIn B2B lead generation forms are the way to go if you want to convert. Sponsored Content and Messaging Ads on LinkedIn can be used with LinkedIn's B2B lead generation forms for maximum effectiveness. They're made to be filled out quickly and easily. 

For convenience, these forms can automatically fill in some of the required fields with information from the user's LinkedIn profile, such as the name, contact information, job title, seniority level, etc. Users are more likely to convert because they are simple to fill out. 

In the below example, FinDex is popping out its lead gen form via third party tools like Zapier or Driftrock to promote its new webinar series. The sole expectation here lies to attain the potential prospects. Marketers can manage these lead gen forms directly via LinkedIn Campaign Manager dashboard. This will include KPIs like total number of leads generated, form completion rates, and CPLs.

Source

Marketers also benefit from these forms since they collect useful information about potential customers. 

Key parameters like cost per lead, number of leads, or lead form fill rates from audience segments can all be monitored with these forms thanks to their integration with Google Analytics.

More people will sign up for your freebies, events, and downloads if you pre-populate your lead gen forms. Boosting interest and click-through rates is as easy as including a compelling call to action. Lead generation forms are essential to any marketing effort and should not be overlooked.

Weekly reviews

Regularly monitoring and evaluating the success of your campaigns is crucial. By keeping track of metrics, you can evaluate the success of your efforts and pinpoint problem areas for tweaking. Be sure to track the results of your advertising efforts after you get them rolling. Check to verify if the metrics you're using are providing enough insight. 

The key to gaining actionable insights for your company is picking the right metrics to track. It is only by constant monitoring of your progress and examination of a wide range of metrics that you can be confident you are focusing on accurate indicators of success.

LinkedIn B2B ads campaigns should be evaluated weekly. Please allow your advertisements a week to reflect true results. A week is a reasonable amount of time to see the effects of any modifications made after the review. By keeping tabs on your progress every week, you'll be able to develop highly targeted advertising strategies that bring in more customers and bring your business success.

Leverage campaign demographics

The success of a LinkedIn B2B ads campaign depends on the advertiser's familiarity with its target demographic. Through Campaign Demographics, advertisers may learn more about the people who are responding to their campaigns. Because they are the ones engaging with your ads, you must know your target audience inside and out. 

Future buyers will come from the demographic you select. As a result, it is crucial that you acquire a thorough understanding of them. You must also ensure that the proper people click on your ads and see your content. If you only analyze clicks and impressions, you could miss out on potential customers and revenue.

Users' occupations, industries, locations, and firm sizes are just some of the professional details that may be gleaned from Campaign Demographics. Campaign Demographics can help determine if your ads reach the intended audience.

View campaign insights

"Campaign Insights" in Budget & Bid's reporting dashboard offers real-time campaign data that may be utilized to target LinkedIn B2B advertising. Consider these examples.

  • Total budget: Budget amount spent to date.
  • Daily budget: Average daily spending over the past seven days.
  • Bid: Recommendations on bid amounts to help your ads compete in the ad auction.

Your budgeting decisions will benefit greatly from these observations. Your advertising budget is an essential factor. Verify that your spending is effective and producing the desired outcomes. 

These insights can help you track your spending and estimate your monthly budget. By staying inside your budget, you can win the advertising auction.

Starting LinkedIn B2B ad campaigns might be overwhelming. If you're unsure of your expertise to monitor campaign progress, use a respected B2B lead-generation agency.

If you monitor your campaigns and evaluate the right data, you can calculate ROI. Keeping track of how much time and money you spend on marketing is vital.

Below is an example of how FixDex is keeping an eye on the campaign insights to keep their Linkedin B2B ad campaign a success. 

Source

Final Takeaway!

It's time for every firm to start promoting on LinkedIn, no matter how big or small its B2B division. Incredibly, you may be successful in Linkedin B2B marketing without spending a fortune. If you need help with LinkedIn's B2B marketing, you may engage the best LinkedIn B2B lead generation agency to do the heavy lifting for you. An outside, knowledgeable opinion is always welcome. 

If you're looking for effective B2B advertising on LinkedIn, go no further than TripleDart, the industry-leading B2B SAAS performance marketing agency. With a singular focus on increasing your SaaS firm's pipeline and annual recurring revenue (ARR), the company provides the highest quality, outcome-driven B2B PPC services available. 

To maximize the ROI from your LinkedIn PPC ad campaign, we can help you with management, monitoring, and scaling. So, avoid the distractions and find your core audience to generate exponential growth in sales. Get in contact with us today to schedule your LinkedIn B2B advertising campaigns.

Book a call with us to know more!

Jayakumar Muthusamy
Jayakumar Muthusamy
Head of Content and Analytics at TripleDart Digital

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