LinkedIn has emerged as one of the most powerful platforms for B2B marketing and lead generation. With over 875 million users worldwide, of which 75 million are businesses or organisations according to Business of Apps, LinkedIn offers a vast pool of potential leads for businesses.
The Power of LinkedIn For B2B Marketing
LinkedIn is an incredibly valuable tool for B2B businesses looking to reach their target audience and generate leads. The platform’s users include decision-makers and business professionals, making it the ideal place for B2B companies to showcase their products and services.
One of the key benefits of LinkedIn marketing is the ability to target specific audiences. With LinkedIn’s advanced targeting options, businesses can reach their ideal customers based on factors such as job title, company size, industry, location, and more.
This level of targeting helps businesses ensure that their messages or content are reaching the right people and increasing the chances of generating leads.
Guide to Maximising LinkedIn For Lead Generation
LinkedIn is a great platform that businesses should use for lead generation. The platform has three characteristics that make it suitable for lead generation strategy.
- Access to professional targeting filters such as position, seniority, industry, and location is an efficient feature for businesses to be able to reach their target audience.
- Ads on LinkedIn show up next to content in your News Feed for a more consistent experience.
- The platform is known as the go-to place for users who need to research business topics and build their careers, making users open to B2B messaging.
Businesses can follow our guide below on how to generate B2B leads on LinkedIn.
Step #1: Create personas for B2B lead generation
One of the most important aspects in a lead generation strategy is identifying and reaching the audiences that will convert. That’s why marketers need to create personas, the common characteristics among your customers. Once you have personas, you can target your audience and ensure that every engagement counts.
- Use multiple targeting parameters for best results. With LinkedIn’s advanced targeting filters, you can layer on targeting parameters to find the right audience for you. For example, you can set the targeting parameters to “Job Function”, then add “Seniority” and “Job Skills” as additional layers of parameters. This way, you’ll be able to find specific professionals who fall within your target audience.
- Use Matched Audiences in reaching prospects. Aside from layering targeting parameters, LinkedIn has another powerful feature called Matched Audiences. Businesses can use it in three ways: website retargeting, account targeting, and contact targeting.
Step #2: Dedicate lead gen content throughout the funnel
Another important step in the lead generation strategy is to match content to each stage of the funnel. Using LinkedIn’s targeting and Matched Audiences, you should categorise your audience. There should be specific content that is appropriate for them at their particular stage of the funnel. You would want to focus on prospects who are in the Interest/Consideration stage.
For example, for those who have visited your product page, you can use LinkedIn’s website retargeting to either send them additional product information or invite them to a free trial. If you have a list of prospects, you can use Contact Retargeting to connect with them on LinkedIn and send them specific content that will encourage them to take action.
Step #3 Distribute your lead gen content
Next in the lead generation strategy is coming up with a distribution plan to make sure your content reaches the right people. Here are the methods on distributing your content on LinkedIn that will help bring in more leads.
1. Employee advocacy
Employee advocacy is a powerful tool for businesses looking to generate leads on LinkedIn. By empowering your employees to share your company’s content, you can expand your reach and increase brand awareness, leading to more leads and business growth.
Your employees can also serve as ambassadors for your brand, promoting your products and services to their own networks. Doing this adds credibility to your brand as the recommendations are coming from trusted individuals.
In order to effectively implement employee advocacy on LinkedIn, it’s important to provide your employees with the tools and resources they need. This may include providing access to company content, training on best practices for social media sharing, and setting clear guidelines for employee participation.
2. My Company tab
This page on LinkedIn is a crucial component for any business looking to generate leads on the platform. The company page serves as a hub for all of your business’s information, allowing potential customers to learn about your products and services as well as your company’s culture, values, and mission.
By regularly updating your company page with relevant and valuable content, such as blog posts, case studies, and product updates, you can demonstrate your expertise in your industry and establish your business as a thought leader. This, in turn, can help attract potential customers and generate leads.
3. LinkedIn Ads
LinkedIn Ads is a paid advertising platform that offers businesses the opportunity to reach their target audience and generate leads. It also provides businesses with the ability to increase brand awareness and reach their ideal customers.
LinkedIn Ads also enables businesses with the ability to measure and track the performance of their campaigns. With detailed analytics and reporting, businesses can track the engagement and conversions of their ads, allowing them to optimise their campaigns for maximum results.
Moreover, LinkedIn Ads offers a variety of ad formats, including sponsored content, message ads, text ads, and carousel ads. This allows businesses to choose the ad format that best aligns with their marketing goals and target audience.
Let’s now explore how to generate leads from LinkedIn using Workato as a case study.
Case Study: How First Page Digital Generated Leads for Workato
Workato is a startup that provides services to integrate softwares & automate workflows of Enterprises globally. They provide integration platforms to link popular applications such as Slack, Salesforce, and Netsuite for individuals working in IT departments.
The goal
Workato first approached First Page with a specific goal in mind. They wanted to expand their presence in the Asia-Pacific region, which includes Southeast Asian countries, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. They also aimed to generate leads from individuals working in key positions such as IT, HR, RevOps, and Finance in larger companies. This was a targeted approach to reaching potential customers in specific industries and positions, with the goal of increasing their client base and ultimately growing their business.
Challenges met
The challenge for Workato was that they had a specific target market they wanted to reach, which created a limitation on the audience that their ads could tap. Additionally, they had an extensive exclusion list, further limiting the potential reach of their campaigns.
Another challenge faced by Workato was managing their extensive volume of content. With 5-10 ad variations, it became difficult to keep track of the best-performing ads and ensure that their content was being effectively utilised to generate leads and grow their business. This is a common challenge for companies with a large volume of content, and it can be a barrier to the success of their digital marketing campaigns.
The company also had a high number of audience types, which made it challenging to optimise all campaigns and resulted in unnecessary spending to cover all audiences. This presented a challenge in managing budgets effectively and maximising the ROI of their ad efforts.
The solutions
When Workato reached out and gave their KPI targets, First Page started by preparing an achievable media plan for the given KPI targets. Although there were altering budget plans throughout the campaign, First Page also made changes to adjust as well.
Furthermore, here’s how First Page handled the challenges met throughout the course of the campaign.
To solve the challenge of their stringent targeting requirements, First Page experimented and came up with highly relevant audiences that still met the client’s requirements and this resulted in doubling the audience size and reducing the underspending.
As for the large volume of content and ad variations, First Page performed creative and audience analysis in two weeks. After the analysis, we paused non-performing creatives which allowed for more visibility of best performing high potential ads. It also resulted in easier tracking of ads and improved lead volume.
Lastly, instead of trying to cover all audience types, we narrowed down the targeting to only performing audiences. This resulted in a higher budget for the best performing audiences. It also provided better insights such as what content and ad format works best for each audience type.
The results
After a month of implementing the LinkedIn marketing strategy and making optimisations, the company was able to achieve the following results:
- Successfully hit the target for the Asia region;
- Exceeded the target for Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) by 36%;
- Achieved a cost per lead (CPL) that was lower than the target CPL by 14% for Asia and 28% for ANZ. This indicates that the digital marketing strategy was effective in generating leads at a lower cost than anticipated, and
- Lead rates for the campaign also exceeded the target by 2.72% for Asia and 3.11% for ANZ. This demonstrates that the campaign was successful in driving more leads than initially anticipated.
Overall, these results demonstrate the effectiveness of the LinkedIn lead generation strategy that First Page implemented for Workato. The campaign was able to successfully reach and engage with the target audience, generate leads at a lower cost than anticipated, and exceed lead rate targets.
Generate Quality Leads Through LinkedIn Marketing With First Page
LinkedIn marketing can be a highly effective strategy for generating quality leads for businesses, even the very specific target leads. By leveraging LinkedIn’s advanced targeting filters, creating targeted content, businesses can connect with professionals and decision-makers in the industry and drive more leads to their website.
The case study for Workato is a great example of the power of LinkedIn marketing when done right. The results achieved for Workato demonstrate that LinkedIn lead generation can be a powerful tool for businesses looking to expand their presence in new regions and generate quality leads.
At First Page, we help businesses maximise the power of LinkedIn in generating leads. Our local team of experts can help you reach your ideal audience, from students to small business owners, and even C-level executives with a well-crafted targeted message that will make them take action. If you want to get a boost in your leads, contact us today to learn more about how we can help you do that through LinkedIn marketing.
