LinkedIn Marketing Tips from LinkedIn Jumpstart Founder, Isaac Anderson
Pulkit Jain
While there is so much of focus on Facebook and Instagram for social media marketing, LinkedIn has been constantly growing its user base to more than 500 million users, the reason why businesses are working hard to make their LinkedIn marketing strategy perfect, so they can tap into the largest professional network on the internet.
The question that arises then: is LinkedIn a suitable place to generate leads for your business, or is it another online platform for brand building?
In a two-part special podcast on the Rocketpod, Isaac Anderson shared some important lessons that each B2B marketer on LinkedIn needs to follow. The mastermind behind LinkedIn Jumpstart shares his insight on why LinkedIn marketers fail to generate quality B2B leads on this highly engaging platform.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Isaac emphasizes on understanding the nature of the active users present on the platform before approaching them. It’s an important parameter to help set B2B marketers their goals in the marketing strategy. For example, the majority of people who are hanging out on LinkedIn are appointed at a higher level, i.e. the decision makers of the organization. It’s important to ask a few questions before approaching them: where do they fall in the sale cycle, does their interest match with what the brand has to offer, would they care about your brand’s cause, etc. By finding answers to these questions, a marketer can chart a road-map to build an engaging relationship with them.
Once the user behavior has been mapped, the next step is to know what and how you want to communicate with them. What is your message, how are you going to build the conversation, how to make your potential leads care about your cause, etc. are a few questions that one needs to explore before reaching out to people on LinkedIn. There could be two approaches to this, sharing great content on the news feed that educates the audience about a problem and the solution that you have to offer, or by interacting with them on a personal level through InMail and LinkedIn groups.
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Most marketers miss out an important step while building brand awareness and connecting with people on LinkedIn, which is building a “P2P” (person to person) relationship before starting with the B2B sale strategy. As he mentions, the audience present on LinkedIn are decision-makers, which is why building a relationship with them over time is the most ROI effective approach, Isaac says.
In his next tip, he explores the importance of asking the right questions to the connections. He advises that adding a touch of personalization to the messages is a hit, it definitely makes a person stop and read what you have to say. The second tip that he shares is to find something in common between your brand and interests of your potential lead. It helps in building a conversation that is relevant to your brand, your service and helps in improving our marketing strategy.
On asking how we can find these common interests between us and our potential leads, he sheds light on the importance of LinkedIn groups. These forums can add great value to our marketing strategy by helping us map our conversation with them, how to educate them about our brand as an answer to their problem, and how to improve our communication strategy to keep them curious and interested in our brand. He admits that it’s not easy to gather this information from LinkedIn groups in one go, but one has to look harder to find the right answers. Marketers need to be proactive on the LinkedIn groups to find the information they need for their strategy.
He explains why LinkedIn marketing strategy differs from conventional social media marketing and points out that LinkedIn can provide highly relational connections and content over other social media channels. LinkedIn is a platform that’s structured by keeping business to business relationships in mind.
Studies show that 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn, and 94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content.
Isaac shared the secret recipe to great content marketing on LinkedIn, lesser “trending” images and more relevant content on LinkedIn Pulse. In his opinion, text gets more attention than images and just image-based videos. He suggests that marketers stop caring about how to get more “Likes” and “Shares” and shift their focus on sharing valuable content that boosts audience engagement. If you reach out to connections and have a conversation with them, these decision makers will definitely care about the content you post on your news feed, not those who can’t see what your brand actually has to offer.
He elaborates on the pivotal role that LinkedIn groups play on generating quality B2B leads. These groups may not be a highlight of the platform, but marketers can draw a lot of information on how to build a “P2P” relationship with them. If the marketer and the potential leads are a part of the same group, it can help a lot in mapping out the conversation with them. But, one has to look hard enough to gather valuable information from these groups. For example, if there are 7-10 common groups between you and the potential lead, one has enough topics to drop an InMail. In case if there is nothing common, a recent post or comment in the group should provide enough ideas to start a meaningful conversation.
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While wrapping up the session with the Isaac, he sums the whole conversation in two important points:
Get over your identity crisis before you reach out to people on LinkedIn. A number of LinkedIn marketers fail because they miss this step.
You can never assume that people care about something that you have to offer.
You need to proactively look for information about your potential leads. If you don’t look hard enough, you won’t find the right connections.
It’s important to care about “P2P” marketing without caring where they fall in the sale cycle. It’s okay to ask them, but it’s very important to build a relationship with them first.
What kind of LinkedIn videos should a marketer create?
Videos get much more engagement on any social media platform, including LinkedIn. Not only it’s a great way to build brand awareness, but it also gives you complex demographic data which is more useful to B2B marketers than the data gathered on Facebook. It’s easy to gather important info like job function, job title, seniority level in the organization, etc. of the people who viewed your video.
Marketers who use videos in their plan grow revenue 49% faster than the non-video users.
64% of consumers make a purchase after watching videos from a brand on social media.
Internet video traffic will account for 80% of all consumer internet traffic by 2019.
It boosts your storytelling variety on LinkedIn
75% of business executives watch work-related video weekly.
Believe it or not, even the professional audience of LinkedIn doesn’t have time to consume all the content that you have to offer. Hence posting videos is the best way to deliver the message in a neat, clear, concise, and engaging format.
Here are the 4 types of videos you can make to engage your audience and come one step closer to generating quality B2B leads on LinkedIn:
Thought leadership videos:
Thought leadership video is a great way to showcase your leaders’ ideas in their own voice. It’s a great way to tap into the experience, talent, and passion inside your business. Thought leadership videos can also be helpful in providing the best and deepest answers to your customers’ biggest questions in the format that your audience likes the best.
One of the reasons why most marketers hesitate from adding thought leadership videos to their content marketing plan is the quest for “the unique point of view” for their videos. However, the audience is not looking for differentiated content, they are looking for the best answers to their problems.
According to an article written by Michael Brenner, thought leadership videos are important for both consumers and B2B companies. It allows marketers to define the category of their brand purpose in customer terms. By communicating through thought leadership videos, you become a part of the conversation with your audience. It’s a great way to let your consumers know what is your brand like are and what does it have to offer to them.
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Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation shares some dynamic videos and articles displaying the thought behind their projects, and how one can join hands with them to bring an impact in the world. Here is a video update from their recent event, Goalkeepers 2018, showcasing the idea behind this award ceremony:
Company news:
Company news videos provide with a chance to add a personal message that fits well with your company’s messaging. It’s a great way to keep your audience informed about new updates, launches, announcements etc. that you need to communicate with them. It’s also a great way to show your excitement about company updates. Videos help you humanize the news and amplify it in a social way.
Marketers can create videos around product features to demonstrate what makes your product special, and how it can solve a common problem that most consumers face. While making a product-update video, make sure that you keep it light and easily comprehensible. It’s dangerous to assume that your audience already is well-versed with your business.
LinkedIn videos can also be a great way to spread the word about partnerships, updates from an event, success stories, etc. One needs to be careful about choosing a topic for such videos, and how they want to show off their success without bragging too much about it.
When it comes to bragging about their new range of all-automatic sedan cars and the cutting-edge technology that goes behind making them, Tesla does a brilliant job in sharing slow motion videos comparing their cars with other popular luxury cars. The idea behind such videos is to make their brand stand out from the rest by providing simple, concrete answers to commonly asked questions. For example, what happens to a Tesla when it hits a side pole on a busy highway? Here is your answer:
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Video testimonials and case studies can be a great way to showcase your product, when done right. They are a great marketing tool to show your audience what exactly your brand is and what it has to offer. It also enables real customers to share their perspective and ideas about your service or product.
Story-type videos are the most powerful form of video testimonial on LinkedIn. They allow marketers to connect and become emotionally attached with the person in the video. They also help us showcase a particular transformation that has taken place because of the customer relationship with your business, your service, or product.
It’s important to keep to a tone of the testimonial video in mind while creating one for your audience. Slack attempts to tickle our funny bones with a humorous testimonial video offering a twist to conventional videos. The video has a plenty of humor and sharp visual effects to entertain and engage their audience, highlighting the features of their product.
Here’s the video for you:
How-to videos:
Who doesn’t find a “how-to” video useful? Instructional videos are a great hit in LinkedIn audiences. Marketers can walk their audience step-by-step through solving a problem that they commonly face. You can use this kind of videos to showcase how your product or service works and invite them to reach out to learn more, sign up for your service, or visit the website for more information.
There are many examples of great “how-to” videos which are highly engaging, creative, and simply out-of-the-box. Here is an example for you:
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Pulkit Jain 
