LinkedIn is one of my favorite topics to present on, and it’s a good thing! With frequent updates and new features, I’m always trying to keep up and stay ahead of the curve. In the last year, we’ve seen a slew of new features with some that are particularly valuable to technology marketers I want to share with you.
Before we dive in, there is one very important thing I want to share first. It’s not a feature, but rather a strategy AND a fundamental consideration when using LinkedIn for demand generation:
Adopt a pipeline versus leads mindset.
LinkedIn is a powerful tool to find new prospects, but it’s also valuable for guiding serious buyers through the engage/convert piece of the sales funnel. Many of the newest LinkedIn features can help with this, such as:
LinkedIn Product Pages
LinkedIn has added a Product Page option to company and showcase pages. If you sell a product, you should have one! You can include a short description of your product, videos, screenshots, and calls to action (request a demo, get pricing, learn more, etc.).
Product pages also give you the opportunity to share which customers are using your products (by linking to their pages) and ask for and share reviews–a powerful conversion tool for people in the later stages of the sales cycle.
Conversation Ads
One of the newest ad types in paid marketing options on LinkedIn is Conversation Ads. These ads are chatbot-driven messages received in your LinkedIn messaging center (inbox). With conversation ads, you can offer multiple assets in a conversation so prospects have more than one way to engage with you.
For example, you can invite people to watch a video and then download an eBook if they do. Or, give them a few options to watch a video, read an article, or contact you directly for more information.
Since LinkedIn limits how many messages someone outside your network receives–depending on audience size–it can take a while to reach your whole audience. With that in mind, a best practice for using these ads is to consider them as “always-on” prospecting tools rather than to drive time-sensitive info like an invite to a webinar. Messages can come from anyone on your team with a LinkedIn account OR your company, but the leads all go to your Campaign Manager for download.
Smart Links
Smart Links replaces Point Drive and is available to anyone using Sales Navigator at the Teams level. Use Smart Links to present packaged and very trackable content to prospects on LinkedIn including links, videos, copy, and images, along with PDFs and other files. You can use Smart Links with InMail AND email.
A Smart Link package can be used at any part of the sales cycle but is really valuable further in the sales cycle when you know more about your prospect and can select the materials most interesting to them. And it’s a great tool for account-based marketing too!
Content Recommendations
Content Recommendations help you curate content or “Trending Articles” to share on LinkedIn. From your company page as an admin, click Content on the top menu to filter and share articles that interest your audience. You also can see and share Employee Milestones like new hires or anniversaries or Company News if your company is mentioned in the news.
More New LinkedIn Features to Help You Drive Engagement
LinkedIn has a bunch of other new features that can help you increase your connections and engagement with your content.
Create a poll
People love polls (as long as they are short) so they are a great way to encourage engagement with your content. LinkedIn Polls shows as an option when you’re creating a post. Keep polls short and informative and despite what you think, nobody is going to answer a poll asking if they are considering a new ERP system. You may want to share ideas for upcoming webinars or content to see what’s most interesting to your readers. Have some fun with them too! Download our 2021 Marketer’s Calendar of Fun and Non-Traditional Holidays for ideas and inspiration.
LinkedIn Events
You can now run events through the LinkedIn Live platform AND use the Events feature to promote events you run on your own platforms like Go to Meeting. Adding an event to LinkedIn Events gives you access to features that help optimize your demand generation efforts like sharing on the event tab of your company page, weekly recommendation emails to members, and easy share options. You can still share your events through regular posts but add in the Events feature for maximum views (and tracking and follow-up tools too).
Invite Connections
You can now invite personal connections to follow your company page if you’re an admin. While you won’t want to make every employee an admin, consider adding access to this feature for your thought leaders and most active LinkedIn employees.
Services Pages
The final new feature to highlight for technology marketers is the Services tab. Unlike the other features, this one is for individuals, but it can also help the company.
To add a service or services on LinkedIn:
1. Go to your profile page.
2. Select the Open To button.
3. Choose Providing Services.
4. Select from a list of categories (including software development) and then add an overview description of your service.
Once your service page is published, you can invite customers to review your services. To make this effective as a company-wide tool, identify and share the categories employees should select and provide an overview of each of your company’s services. Have a process in place identifying who will ask customers for reviews. Bear in mind, those reviews stay with that page and that page stays with your employee so it’s a good best practice to keep reviews with company owners.
LinkedIn is certainly keeping up with the demanding needs of marketers, but we understand if it’s difficult to keep up with all the changes! That’s what the LinkedIn experts here at The Partner Marketing Group are here for–to help you decipher if new features and tools will work for your company and how you can use them to achieve your goals.
Contact us today for more guidance on how to take advantage of LinkedIn in your marketing strategy.
