LinkedIn is home to 40 million B2B decision-makers and 61 million senior-level influencers. It also is Fortune 500 companies’ preferred social media platform.
If you’re in the B2B space, you need not only a defined content marketing program but a distinct LinkedIn marketing strategy. This is one of the most effective ways to build brand awareness and your target audience. Rather than allocating spend toward another social media platform like Twitter or Facebook, lay your chips where you know they’re most likely to be cashed in: your LinkedIn company page.
We’re diving into several examples of B2B brands excelling at LinkedIn marketing to illustrate what lessons you might apply toward your marketing efforts to get more users visiting your company page.
Quick LinkedIn Stats
Here are some reasons LinkedIn is fundamental to B2B content marketing success.
- Marketers see up to 2x higher conversion rates on Linkedin.
- More than 50% of all B2B social traffic comes from LinkedIn.
- 94% of B2B marketers say LinkedIn is their best distribution channel.
- 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn.
- 850 million accounts have been set up on Linkedin.
- 45% of people who read LinkedIn articles are managers, directors, VPs or C-suite.
- 310 million LinkedIn users are active monthly.
With these figures in mind, it’s clear that B2B marketers who aren’t running strong LinkedIn content promotion are leaving qualified leads on the table.
So, here are 5 companies getting the job done.
1. HubSPot
You know the name, and you probably know the game — HubSpot markets software products for sales, inbound marketing and customer service. The brand’s blog post formula is one of the best of its kind, breaking down all the essential marketing ins and outs for its readers. In a nutshell, HubSpot grants you the insight for great content ideas.
HubSpot knew its audience overlapped substantially with LinkedIn marketers, so placing text ads directly in front of B2B users was a no-brainer. Being a marketing organization itself, HubSpot was likely able to leverage tons of its own customer data to better craft the ad creative for maximum impact and bringing in the ideal client time and time again.
Why It Works
HubSpot has built content and efficacy over time, and experienced benefits from word-of-mouth due to their performance. Leveraging LinkedIn was a huge part of this, leading to more engaging content, which led to better conversions and growth.
This example highlights the necessity of using the full spectrum of LinkedIn’s offerings. Done to more fully stand out from competitors, HubSpot also underscores how effective the LinkedIn platform can be in generating leads at scale.
2. Adobe
Adobe is at the forefront of its industry, so its ideas matter. As a provider of digital media platforms and creative marketing software, Adobe’s services have an array of uses.
Its LinkedIn profile mirrors this breadth of services with social content that is, at times, branded, educational, research-driven, graphical, collaborative, motivational and more.
Audiences beyond the traditional B2B persona may find their posts insightful, and that’s what Adobe tries to focus on: content that’s interesting, as opposed to content that’s conspicuously calculated for lead generation.
Why It Works
Adobe gets right what a lot of brands get wrong. They view publishing platforms and social media channels as more than just soapboxes. In reality, they’re communication corridors: Adobe has something they find interesting, and they think you might find it interesting as well, so here it is … There are fewer taglines and sales overtures and more abstract, aha moments.
This model differs from brands so constrained by narrow messaging and corporate identity that they’re afraid to even try to be unique.
And we don’t fault those organizations. When content marketing comes down to cents and dollars, it’s difficult to invest small budgets in content that doesn’t have a clear conversion goal or that doesn’t shorten the sales cycle in any way. In this sense, Adobe has the luxury of experimentation.
But experimentation can also lead to new possibilities and revenue streams over time. Case in point: we at Brafton rewrote our product landing pages at the beginning of 2018, and since then, 70 percent of them rank on the first page of Google.
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3. MailChimp
Sure, LinkedIn’s a B2B platform, but audience engagement is audience engagement. That’s what MailChimp’s LinkedIn content strategy proves with each post.
A short, auto-play video here, a photographic mashup of employees in MailChimp sweaters there, and you start to forget you’re on LinkedIn, not Instagram.
By transferring over the visual marketing practices of a platform like Instagram or even Snapchat, MailChimp successfully strikes a balance between professional and cheerful.
Why It Works
MailChimp weaves in video testimonials and written case studies to its LinkedIn publishing schedule, providing followers with real-life takeaways on the benefits of their services. So, not only do readers gain a better understanding of MailChimp products and the added trust conferred from a testimonial, but they also obtain a strong sense of the company’s personality and values.
Though LinkedIn is often a repository for industry opinions and longer-form content — especially LinkedIn Pulse — it doesn’t have to be. Short videos with subtitles, custom illustrations and simple animations also have a purpose on LinkedIn, and MailChimp shows us how.
4. Amazon Web Services
As the primary revenue driver for Amazon, the AWS platform powers the business world through low-cost cloud infrastructure. While much of what AWS publishes on LinkedIn is brand-centric, their social team aggressively promotes new services, training around existing products and concepts that support their overall mission of global cloud deployment. In short: They have a theme, and they stick to it.
This certainly isn’t revolutionary, and for many organizations, being so promotional may fall flat. Because AWS dominates its industry and provides services that impact virtually every aspect of our lives, however, its LinkedIn content strategy resonates. It isn’t necessarily about sales; it’s about education.
Why It Works
Each of AWS’s LinkedIn posts is effectively a mini case study on how impactful its technology is and the ways it is being utilized.
By elaborating and offering examples on the latest tech, such as machine learning and artificial intelligence, AWS co-opts part of the larger conversation around these topics. And by inputting their own expertise and use cases, they position themselves on LinkedIn as a go-to resource for timely content on important tech developments.
5. Deloitte
Few organizations carry the B2B reputation of Deloitte, which is known to produce quality content in the form of lengthy industry reports, data-driven research and insights from internal experts. And through its LinkedIn page, Deloitte posts timely, relevant content several times a day, and in different formats.
Graphical representations of survey results, video interviews of executive team members and articles summarizing proprietary trends reports are just a few of the ways Deloitte conveys its brand values to followers. The management consulting firm also prioritizes quality feature images, alternating between custom illustrations, stock imagery and simple text overlays.
Most prominently, Deloitte’s social presence covers a wide range of important business matters, such as automation, regulation, green infrastructure, smart city planning and blockchain, among others.
As a business owner or board member, Deloitte would be a great resource for developments on how technological and governmental trends may impact his or her operation.
Why It Works
Deloitte is the largest professional services network in the world, with roughly $40 billion in annual revenue. Its expertise in consulting business leaders and advising enterprises is put on display on LinkedIn, which is precisely the platform to do so.
When your primary offering to customers is a somewhat nebulous service like “consulting,” it can be difficult to speak plainly, to show results, to convince others of your inherent value. But Deloitte – irrespective of its existing brand image and name recognition – uses LinkedIn as a tool for fleshing out its messaging and reinforcing what it brings to the table.
By scanning the company’s LinkedIn content, you immediately get the idea that it is abreast of business trends, has predictions for the future and employs experts who have something to offer customers of all stripes. Moreover, because senior executives and decision-makers prefer quick, visual and video content, Deloitte formats its posts to cater specifically to its target audience.
Launching Your LinkedIn Content Strategy and Promotion Plan
In many ways, LinkedIn is a more precise and potentially lucrative platform than other social channels for B2B brands. An average LinkedIn user spends only 17 minutes a month on the platform. They’re often there to interact directly with other professionals and brands differently than any other social network — and draw in potential customers.
Even if the initial goal of a user is networking, information-gathering or engaging with content, the underlying motive is to advance professional and digital marketing objectives, either now or at some point in the future.
Here are a few parting essentials for conquering the LinkedIn algorithm.
- Have a testing phase. Sponsored content can die quickly if you’re not adapting based on results. You want people to engage, not mute you.
- Post at the right time. Most LinkedIn users are on at the beginning and end of their workday on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
- Create content specific to the platform. The above examples are a great place to start. A LinkedIn article that goes up to a max of 2000 words performs best.
- Use hashtags. Hashtags are more relevant than ever — don’t overuse them. Be in the ballpark of 3-5.
