When you think of LinkedIn, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Most likely it’s searching for talent. LinkedIn has long been viewed as a credible hiring solution, and it certainly is! However, over the years this platform with more than 380 million users has quietly evolved into so much more – it’s become a place where professionals can reach audiences efficiently and effectively, generating qualified leads as a result. Think about it: what is one social media network where you know professionals are spending their time? LinkedIn. Could that include your buyers? Certainly!
With so much marketing attention and focus being placed on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, LinkedIn sadly gets overlooked by many marketers. The truth is, if you’re a B2B marketer in the fresh produce space, this platform likely warrants a lot more of your attention (and advertising dollars)! Here’s how you can use LinkedIn for your B2B marketing efforts:
Share Company News & Updates
LinkedIn is the perfect place to share your company’s latest news in The Packer or share updates on your team’s attendance at a major industry event. While information like this doesn’t always perform well on Facebook, particularly if you utilize social media platforms to target consumers, LinkedIn provides your company an appropriate space to highlight your trade-centric news. One of our clients uses LinkedIn to reach trade audiences and receives an average of 2,500 impressions on every LinkedIn post they share – and that’s to a qualified audience that has been identified as other fresh produce industry professionals!
Share Industry Thought Leadership
LinkedIn is the place to be if your goal is to become a thought leader in our industry’s space. By going beyond press releases and using LinkedIn as a platform to share helpful white papers, articles and blog posts that your customers can use to improve their business, you will have a leg up on your competition.
Generate Leads
According to Kissmetrics, of the 5 major social media platforms, LinkedIn is proven to be the best at generating B2B leads. We’ve seen it for ourselves: one of the clients we work with received 65% of their social media leads from LinkedIn in the past year! That’s huge, relatively speaking. If you’re thinking “great! Sign me up!” you do need to consider this reality: leads don’t just fall into your lap, even on LinkedIn. It takes a deliberate strategy and thoughtful planning to create content that will allow your company to use social sites to identify qualified prospects and customers that have the potential to generate more business for you. This ties back to the previous point about industry thought leadership. Think about what your company can create and share that would be helpful to your customers, and then ask them for some information in return before they can get it. That’s how lead generation starts!
Advertise to Gain Web Traffic
LinkedIn offers pay-per-click (PPC) ads with targeting options that will allow you to really dig deep to reach the exact companies and prospects that you want your content to reach. That’s right – you can actually tell LinkedIn that you want your ads to be shown to the employees of a specific company. You can target by company, industry, job title, company size, etc. This makes reaching qualified contacts much more straightforward than using Twitter or Facebook ads for B2B purposes. You can set up ads to link back to your website, driving traffic to content that you want seen on a continual basis. There is a one-time $5 activation fee to get your advertising account set up and a minimum budget of $10 per day once your ads are running, but I think you will find that it is well worth it if your ads are targeting a qualified audience.
If you’re pondering how to better use social media to amplify your B2B marketing efforts in the fresh produce space, let DMA Solutions help you find a starting point. Our team of social media experts can provide strategies and tips to set you up for success in 2016. And if you’re looking to improve your personal LinkedIn profile before you dive into your company page, this free resource can help!
