LinkedIn marketing

Why LinkedIn marketing?

LinkedIn marketing is relevant for both B2B and B2C companies. Close to ¾ of the entire Danish business community is represented on LinkedIn, and worldwide we are talking about over 600 million users. So there is a very high probability that your prospects or future business partners can be found on LinkedIn.

Compared to Facebook or Instagram, for example, LinkedIn as a social platform has the advantage that its users are all connected to the labour market in some way. Being visible on LinkedIn also sends a more professional signal in the eyes of many. On LinkedIn, there are no holiday pictures or silly memes. So your messages and searches automatically become more targeted.

As LinkedIn has put more and more emphasis on the social aspect in recent years, it makes sense nowadays to use it for organic listings. For example, you can spread messages and brand awareness linked to your company by telling interesting facts or sharing bits of the story behind it.

It can also be a good idea to like, comment and share different content on your timeline. This way, you're not only showing what you have to offer, but also reaching out and showing interest in other people's content. There's plenty of opportunity for cross-pollination here, as well as connecting with new acquaintances, for free.

Then there is the inorganic - or paid - visibility. That is, ads.

Guide to LinkedIn campaigns

So how do you advertise on LinkedIn? LinkedIn has an ad interface very similar to the one you might know from Facebook advertising. However, slightly less complex and detailed. LinkedIn doesn't have quite the same granular information about their users, but they are very good at it. They call their ad interface Campaign Manager, or LinkedIn Campaign Manager, and by and large follow the same recipe as Facebook's ditto:

1. You must first have a personal profile on LinkedIn, if you don't already have one.
2. Then you can create a LinkedIn page for your company.
3. Once your company page is set up, your business is visible on LinkedIn. Now you can start running ads. To do this, first set up your Campaign Manager.
4. Then create a campaign group.
5. Now you're ready to create your first campaign. This is where you really start to get to the targeting of your ads. You can create your ads following a lot of guidelines.
6. Goal: Should the goal be brand awareness, engagement, leads, or something else? LinkedIn lets you choose your specific goal.
7. Target group: Who should see your ad? LinkedIn lets you segment your audience by geography, job title, school, skills, age and more. They also offer audience templates if you're unsure of exactly what your ideal audience looks like.
8. Format: like Facebook, LinkedIn offers image ads, video ads, carousel ads and more.
9. Location: you can run your ads on LinkedIn only, or you can reach the LinkedIn Audience Network, which is LinkedIn's partners.
10. Budget and schedule: LinkedIn lets you choose between a fixed daily budget, a total campaign budget or bidding, which is calculated either in CPC or CPM.

Once your ads are up and running, it's obviously important to monitor them and track how they perform and convert. Especially if you've opted for bidding in your budget, you'll need to be careful to track where the threshold is for when you start getting views of your ads and therefore spend of your budget. This threshold fluctuates depending on location and target audience, so you need to test it.

Is marketing on LinkedIn necessary?

The short answer is no. As such, there is nothing in marketing that is a necessity. As a business, you always have a lot of different tools and levers to turn. But that doesn't mean that marketing on LinkedIn can't become a very useful element for you in your marketing.

For example, an obvious advantage of marketing on LinkedIn is that the leads you find are automatically significantly hotter than those you'll find on Facebook. Facebook users are online for a variety of reasons. It may be sheer boredom. They're not necessarily in the mindset you're hoping for when looking for potential buyers or business partners.

Here you often get much more targeted results on a site like LinkedIn, where you not only know that every user created is in some way involved in the job market, but probably also browsing LinkedIn for reasons that are much more relevant to you. They may be looking for job opportunities, potential collaborations, or simply business projects that seem alluring. Either way, you can be reasonably sure to catch people in the right mindset when you run your marketing on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn strategy for businesses

Before you start marketing on LinkedIn, make sure you have a strategy in place. It may not need to be detailed, but an overall game plan is still useful. What are you looking to achieve? What can LinkedIn marketing do for you? What are the pitfalls/disadvantages of marketing on LinkedIn?

Here's our take on a LinkedIn strategy for businesses that might be good to keep in mind before you start your LinkedIn marketing.

• Be clear about your target audience. In all marketing, you must first know your audience. Make sure you know who you're trying to target (and why - that is, what value you can offer them) before you start LinkedIn marketing. If you come up with a clear profile of your ideal end user, you can hold it up against LinkedIn's audience segmentation and already be in a strong position.
• Organic content. It sends a good signal with an active and engaged profile. You may want to allocate an employee to spend 20 minutes a day creating activity on your LinkedIn profile. Unlike Facebook, LinkedIn has the advantage of appearing more professional as a network - there are no cat pictures. So it's okay to like and share content you find relevant. Better still, create your own content. Feel free to use your blog or link to your newsletter if it seems relevant.
• Graphic content. Just like on Facebook, images and especially videos often win over plain text posts. They just have a stronger punch. So use professional graphics and videos as much as you can, both in organic posts and in your LinkedIn advertising.
• Still unsure? There are plenty of marketing agencies that can help you with your LinkedIn marketing. If you feel that there is something to be gained on LinkedIn for your business, you can reach out to one of these agencies and consult with them. Most will be happy to give you a no-obligation assessment on whether they can help you run your LinkedIn advertising, for example.