LinkedIn is the most powerful social media platform for B2B marketers. Today there are 774+ million business professionals and 57+ million companies on LinkedIn in over 200 countries... and this number will only continue to grow.

Within these millions of users, 80% of them are in a decision-making role. So, by marketing on LinkedIn, you can directly target the companies and people you want to prospect.

On top of these impressive stats, 46% of the social media traffic to B2B company sites is from LinkedIn.

It’s no longer an option to question whether you should be using LinkedIn. Instead, you need to think of ways to master B2B marketing on the platform.

What You Need to Achieve Success on LinkedIn

Increase Your Organic Reach

Once you have created a LinkedIn page for your brand, you need to post a steady stream of organic content. On LinkedIn, you can post a variety of organic content including images, videos, pdfs, gifs, links to blog content, and standard text posts.

LinkedIn is flooded with new content every day, so your organic content needs to break through all the noise.

First of all, it should position you as an industry leader and provide solutions to your followers’ problems. Users will only opt to follow you once they see your page adds value to their professional development.

Maybe your prospects are looking for information on the latest trends in B2B marketing or searching for a CRM system to help manage their workflow. Your content needs to provide the answer to these problems.

It’s important to keep your page fresh and relevant, so it’s advisable to post a variety of content to avoid predictability. Video is particularly effective for B2B lead generation, as they allow you to present your brand in an interactive way, which can improve brand credibility and overall brand trust.

Take Advantage of LinkedIn Ads

Now you have a page boasting high-quality organic content and user engagement, it's time to start reaching out to your desired audience via LinkedIn Ads.

While LinkedIn Ads are expensive in comparison to other social media advertising platforms, they are worth the cost.

What makes LinkedIn Ads potentially so lucrative is that they have arguably the best targeting capabilities of any social media site. This means your ads will reach your desired prospects directly.

There are 20 different audience attribute target categories including job function, job role, skills, company name, industry, location, and interests.

There is a wealth of different LinkedIn ad types to choose from. For more information, you can head over to our guide to LinkedIn ad formats, or read up on the newer LinkedIn Stories Ads.

Take Advantage of Precise Targeting

For your B2B LinkedIn Ad campaign to be successful, you should consider your targeting parameters. Otherwise, you may not reach your target audience.

For example, opting to target multiple B2B marketing titles may reach users with those specific job titles, but your ad probably won’t reach a user who works in B2B marketing with an obscure job title.

You can address this problem by opting for the function parameter or skills instead of job titles.

If you want to test which targeting options generate the best results, we would recommend creating multiple campaigns with the same content and budget. Then target a different audience with each campaign to see which users engage the most with your content.

Make Use of First-Party Data

With the demise of the third-party cookies, first-party data is becoming increasingly relevant and important for businesses and advertisers.

Already have a list of potential prospects you want to reach? LinkedIn can use this information to optimise your on-page or LinkedIn Ad performance. On LinkedIn, you can upload a list of emails and match them with user profiles.

Another way LinkedIn can leverage your first-party data is through its account targeting tool. With this tool, you can upload a list of company names you would like to target. LinkedIn will then match these names with their LinkedIn company page so you can market to your desired prospects directly.

One final way you can use your first-party data on LinkedIn is to add the Insight Tag to your website. This will allow LinkedIn to retarget your website visitors with the – hopefully relevant – advertising you desire.

LinkedIn Best Practices for Businesses in 2022

Now you’re equipped with the four key assets you need to create a successful LinkedIn presence.

Let’s dive into a few B2B marketing best practices you can use on LinkedIn to expand your reach to the users you want to attract.

Optimise Your LinkedIn Company Page

To help users find your Company Page, as well as the information within it, it needs to be optimised. LinkedIn is saturated with B2B brands and you want to ensure you stand out amongst the many searches conducted online each day.

There are many ways you can optimise your Company Page on LinkedIn. These include well-designed and branded logos and headers, full employee information, contact information with a strong custom CTA button, website link, and photos.

You can also go the extra-mile by trying out new features like LinkedIn Live, and by building a LinkedIn presence using and interacting under your company name.

Turn Your Employees into Influencers

B2B marketers, especially those in the Millennial and Gen Z demographic, value the opinion of their peers. So, to successfully market on LinkedIn you need to collaborate with influencers who can highlight the value of your brand to potential clients.

B2B influencers are usually decision-makers or part of a higher management team. And getting these high-profile influencers to collaborate with you can be incredibly challenging.

This is when you turn to your employees. According to LinkedIn, content shared by your employees improves engagement rate by 60% and can quadruple the number of followers for your profile.

With promotion on your page, your employees can share any company achievements, discuss industry trends and position themselves as an expert in your chosen field. Once your employees have gained your followers’ trust, they are much more likely to consider working with you. It’s a win, win situation.

Publish LinkedIn Articles

Posting an external link on your LinkedIn update will only reach so far on LinkedIn. If you want your content to reach a broader audience, we recommend using LinkedIn Articles.

LinkedIn Articles can be used to publish your blogs, case studies, market research and other forms of written content that showcases your company value to a larger audience.

You can also add links on your LinkedIn Articles to your website, which can drive conversions and website visits.

What’s great about LinkedIn Articles is that once published, these articles are search engine friendly 9if written with SEO in mind, of course), which means your articles will rank on Google search results too.

Final Thoughts

No matter the size of your B2B business, it’s time you got yourself onto LinkedIn. While at first creating an optimised LinkedIn Company Page is a commitment, the rewards can be more than worth it.

Unlike other social platforms, LinkedIn isn’t about quantity, it’s about quality. If you can create an optimised page complete with rich, engaging content you’ll have a hub of business leads you can reach at the touch of a button.