LinkedIn Marketing: How to Set Your Brand Apart in 2021

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LinkedIn has become a central hub for B2B marketing. As most marketers say, LinkedIn has become what Facebook was supposed to be years ago. But now, it has established itself as a niche platform that businesses can trust to create a network, establish their brand, and market their services to other businesses seeking their help.

According to studies, LinkedIn users convert to leads three times higher the rate than Facebook or Twitter users. Additionally, although LinkedIn’s cost per click is $3.49 compared to Facebook’s 64 cents, the quality of conversions is greater than that of Facebook.

Identifying your target audience for B2B marketing can be tricky. Unlike B2C marketing wherein you only target one consumer, for B2B marketing, there are multiple individuals involved with different responsibilities. Essentially, you have to persuade the company’s buying committee and convince each of them why you are fit to do the job throughout every stage of the sales funnel.

Here’s the thing: a lot of businesses and professionals are using LinkedIn. Over 40 million people use LinkedIn to search for jobs each week, so it can be a challenge to market your business on this ever-growing platform.

Plus, with the pandemic, a lot of people have switched to doing remote work and thus, are maximizing the features LinkedIn has to offer its users.

Therefore, you must set yourself apart from your competition by creating a unique brand that reflects your message and what you can offer to your customers or clients.

Your profile is how you present yourself online. That’s why you need to come up with a solid profile that will introduce to your target audience what you bring to the table. Make sure you have all the sufficient information you need to present yourself as a trustworthy and legitimate business on LinkedIn.

Here are ways on how you can do it:

Make sure you have an appropriate profile picture. If you’re presenting yourself as a business, you can use your company logo as the profile picture. Provide them with a detailed description as to what your company does in your “About Us” section. This should include the following:

If you’ve finished with these, then you can implement the following strategies in establishing and growing your brand in 2021.

2021 is looking different for businesses. Due to the pandemic, many businesses have shifted their business model to adapt to the new climate. And this also true for B2B businesses. Most B2B businesses have now made use of LinkedIn to expand their network and find more clients.

As more businesses have shifted to a remote workforce and focus their marketing strategies online, LinkedIn continuously grows, making it harder for businesses to make a name for themselves more than ever.

But with the right brand strategy, they can establish their identity online and gain more leads. Here are some of the LinkedIn brand strategies you need to know in 2021:

Be Agile in Evolving to Meet Your Consumer’s Various Needs Like B2C marketing, B2B marketing is also continuously evolving. You can expect emerging trends and technologies to be present at any corner. With this, your team and your strategies must have the adaptability to meet the growing needs of your consumers. Learning key trends and identifying your target audience can help you in designing a thorough strategy that you can implement to build an impactful and distinct brand identity. Are you new to account-based marketing? Account-based marketing, or ABM, is a strategy that focuses on targetting specific accounts to direct your marketing resources on. By targeting specific accounts, you create a more personalized message for every account you engage with. Rather than casting a wide net through lead generation efforts, you use ABM to identify key prospects when customizing programs and messages that reflect its needs. More and more marketers are seeing the significance of ABM as is focuses them on relationships with accounts that have the highest opportunity and value. Typically, ABM is most effective for B2B companies. By targeting key accounts, personalizing their experience, and nurturing them with the appropriate marketing message, you can achieve great results. In fact, 84% of businesses engaging in ABM have reported achieving a higher ROI compared to when they were using other marketing campaigns. Content Marketing Is the Key to Knowing You Better Content marketing continues to dominate as the New Year approaches. You can expect a lot of brands relying on high-quality content to establish themselves as a reputable force to be reckoned with in the LinkedIn sphere. Of course, the more you know about your niche, the more businesses will trust you with their needs. That’s why you must find new ways to provide quality content to your consumer. But that’s not all. You shouldn’t just put content whenever you want to or feel like it. If you aspire to get a long-term return on investment (ROI) in your content marketing, you need to: Publish consistently based on your services or industry Add paid promotion into the mix. Use your top-performing content So don’t miss out on the opportunities that content marketing presents to your LinkedIn page. If you have a website, you can even link some articles on your website to your LinkedIn page so that they can have a more comprehensive idea about your services, and you can receive more traffic there. Don’t just stop on written content. Video content is emerging to be one of the most useful tools in presenting a brand to consumers. With written content, often not a lot of people have the patience to go through words down a webpage and scan through information. Some may prefer video content, wherein it’s digestible and stimulates their vision and senses better. When you create quality video content that provides useful information to your target audience, you will have more people looking into your content and ultimately gain conversions that turn into ROI. Recently, LinkedIn has also added a new live streaming feature. If your brand calls for live streaming, it would also really help in boosting your profile. A lot of businesses are still struggling. And they don’t want businesses that directly ask them for work. When you reach out to your potential consumer, don’t say, “Can you give me some work to do?” It’s more self-centered and demanding. Instead, approach them with a “Is there anything I can help you with?” This kind of message is more approachable. It presents your brand as a business with values that revolve around helping consumers. Strong values do not simply stop in the B2C marketing sphere. Businesses want to work with other businesses that have values that are in line with theirs. When you create other marketing messages for your target consumer, be sure it is the type of socially conscious message that helps in building trust and boosts your reputation, letting you come out on the other side of the crisis. Lead magnets are a perfect way to get more conversions. Having a compelling lead magnet gives your clients or customers a taste of what you can do. There are many ways to create a lead magnet that will get your consumer’s attention. The most common lead magnets used by marketers are PDFs and Training Courses. Before, marketers tried using Ebooks as a lead magnet. However, there has been a recent decline in the use of Ebooks as most consumers don’t seem to have the time to go through pages upon pages of content to get their information. It may take a chunk of their valuable time, and it’s less engaging. But with PDFs, they takes these pieces of information into shorter chunks, making it easier and digestible for consumers to take in. On the other hand, training courses are another way for them to take in information, but more engagingly. When you share what you’ve learned in the industry and packaging them into different training courses, it can boost your brand identity and establishing you as an expert in your niche. Make sure to provide new, relevant, and well-researched information that can help your consumers improve their business. Other lead magnets that you can use and may be valuable for your clients are reports and even consultations. Strengthen Your Relationships with Businesses and Gain More Referrals Reports by Smart Insights say that Referrals are a huge factor in sales and marketing leads. It takes up 65% of the lead generation. Until now, word of mouth and building solid relationships with other businesses play a significant role in generating revenue. Your prospects love recommendations, and that’s why when you’ve created a network built on trusting business relationships, more and more businesses will turn to you for your services. With recommendations, there is less risk and more positive information about what you can do for your prospects. That’s why referral marketing (as it is called) is effective in generating leads until now. So how does effective referral marketing work in providing a great customer experience? When you provide great service or products to your clients, you will surely get more people to entrust you with their needs. Then, the process follows as more referrals come in. Here are things to keep in mind when it comes to referral marketing: Of course, your products or services are the key players in creating an exemplary customer experience. If your clients or customers are not satisfied with your services, then you won’t expect referrals any time soon. Make sure that when you design your services or products, you must have a completely customer-centric view. Build on your relationship with existing clients our customers Staying in touch with your existing customers helps in increasing your referrals. Make it your objective to market to them at least once a month with a high-quality service that may be valuable to them. When they are subscribed to a specific service from your company, see to it that the quality you provide is consistently good to maintain their trust. At the same time, be genuine in your service and get to know your customers or clients well. This establishes you as not just their supplier, but also as a business partner. Some businesses even offer referrals as an incentive, whether it’s giving discounts for the next purchase or an additional free service. When you reward your referrals, you can motivate your customers or clients to recommend you to their colleagues or friends. Be grateful for their referrals Your gratitude can go a long way. Not just with rewards, but giving your clients an honest “thank you” and showing them how much you appreciate their efforts can help in setting you apart from the rest. Know that your customer will appreciate your gratitude as well.

Although the landscape for B2B marketing has changed due to the pandemic, it only means that more and more businesses are going digital to establish their brand and expand their presence.

The key player in the B2B business sphere is LinkedIn, a social hub wherein businesses and professionals can reach out to each other for services and partnerships. Once you’ve managed to build your business’s brand through LinkedIn and adapt your marketing efforts to emerging trends, you can build solid networks and convert prospects into buying customers and increase your ROI.

Proweaver has years of experience adapting our services to the changing trends of online marketing. We have a team of professionals with up-to-date know-how on the evolving marketing strategies and tools needed to boost your business’s brand identity online now and in the future.

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If you want to know more about our services, feel free to get in touch with us at +1 (800) 988-3769.