Among the social networking platforms dedicated to the world of work, LinkedIn stands out as a must for individuals and companies looking to expand their network. Or to promote their brand, or generate sales opportunities.
Accustomed to treating LinkedIn as an online CV, many people find it difficult to switch to the business side of the platform.
I get it. Navigating LinkedIn’s rich and diverse ecosystem can seem complex. What’s more, when thinking about a company’s presence on LinkedIn, the strategic use of its four key components becomes crucial. These four pillars are LinkedIn Basic, LinkedIn Ads, the LinkedIn company page with its showcase pages, and Sales Navigator. This is what I’m going to try to demystify for you today.
Each of these components serves a specific purpose and targets different aspects of professional online presence. These range from marketing and communication to sales and employee professional development. By deploying these tools in an integrated way, companies can improve their visibility. But also significantly refine their growth and sales strategy.
In this post, we’ll explore each component in detail. We’ll highlight how they can serve your business objectives, and how using them together can catalyze a major transformation for your company’s online presence. And have a significant impact on your bottom line.
Looking to amplify your marketing message? Strengthen your employer and sales brand? Optimize your sales strategies or be seen as a leader in your field of expertise? LinkedIn offers a range of tools to suit every need. Ready to dive into the world of LinkedIn opportunities?
1- Basic LinkedIn: communication and visibility
At the heart of LinkedIn is its core platform, accessible to any professional wishing to build or enrich their online professional network. It’s a dynamic ecosystem designed for professional development, networking, and visibility in each user’s industry.
Here’s how employees and professionals can leverage LinkedIn as a foundation for their communication and visibility objectives, while serving as brand ambassadors. It’s a place to get to know the “person” we are. It’s a place to be appreciated for the useful content we share, and ultimately a place to inspire trust.
A- Profile optimization
The first step is to create a well-optimized profile. This includes a professional photo, a captivating summary that highlights your key skills and experience. A “my selections” section allows you to showcase multimedia content that highlights your skills and those of your employer. An “information” section allows the employee to share his or her achievements and explain in clear terms what he or she can do for the reader. Finally, recent recommendations and skills validated by other users add a layer of credibility and trust to your profile.
B- Strategic networking
Basic LinkedIn offers powerful tools for finding and connecting with other professionals. Whether it’s long-time colleagues, old friends from your university, or thought leaders in your field.
Building a strong network is an effective way to share. And also to receive valuable information, keep abreast of industry trends, and establish your own professional reputation.
C- Active participation
The key to maximizing visibility on LinkedIn is active participation. This can take the form of commenting on publications by potential customers (prospects) from companies within your target customer base. Sharing relevant articles, publishing original posts that reflect your expertise. Or engaging in discussions in professional groups. Every interaction is an opportunity to showcase your expertise and extend your influence.
D- Benefits for communication and visibility
For employees, basic LinkedIn is a platform to stand out, connect with peers, and advance professionally. For companies, encouraging employees to have an active and optimized presence on LinkedIn amplifies the reach of the employer brand. This contributes to an image of a dynamic company committed to the professional development of its staff.
2- LinkedIn Ads: precise targeting for B2B marketing
Whether you’re launching a new product, increasing the visibility of an existing service, or building brand awareness in a specific sector, LinkedIn Ads offers an unrivalled platform for achieving your marketing objectives with precision. A cornerstone of B2B marketing thanks to its unique ability to target professionals according to specific criteria, LinkedIn Ads can transform your company’s marketing strategy.
A. Advanced targeting
The most remarkable aspect of LinkedIn Ads is its sophisticated targeting engine. Companies can refine their audience with unrivalled precision. By doing so with criteria such as targeting a specific industry, company size, position, skills and much more. This ensures that their message reaches exactly those professionals most likely to be interested in their products or services. This precise targeting reduces advertising waste and improves campaign ROI.
B. Diversity of advertising formats
LinkedIn has what you need to boost your brand awareness. To bring people to your site and drive engagement on your posts. But also to increase views on your videos or capture “leads” directly on the platform. It’s a treasure trove of possibilities for your marketing department:
Linkedin has the tools to match your strategy. Which allow you to put an expert in the spotlight rather than the company. E.g.: images, carousels, videos, events, texts, conversations, private messages, documents. And even “click to send a message” ads and the new thought leadership ads.
C. Analytics and optimization
An advertising campaign is only as good as its ability to be measured and optimized. LinkedIn Ads provides comprehensive analytical tools that enable companies to track campaign performance in real time. And adjust their targeting, budgeting and messaging to maximize effectiveness.
By integrating LinkedIn Ads into their marketing strategy, companies can reach their target audience more effectively. But also gain valuable insights into their preferences and behaviors. This enables a B2B marketing approach that is both strategic and personalized.
To advertise on Linkedin, you need a company page. Which brings me to the third pillar.
3- LinkedIn company pages and showcase pages: strengthening the brand and communication
In an increasingly saturated business environment, standing out and building an authentic connection with your audience is crucial. LinkedIn company pages and showcase pages offer a unique opportunity to do just that. They highlight what makes your company unique. While engaging in conversation directly with those most likely to be influenced by your message.
LinkedIn company pages and showcase pages offer a powerful platform for building and promoting a company’s brand image to a targeted professional audience. These tools don’t just communicate essential information about the company. They also enable you to tell your company’s story. To share its values, and to engage directly with employees, potential customers, and partners. Here’s how these components enrich communication and branding on LinkedIn.
A- LinkedIn Company Page: your professional showcase
The Company Page lets you present the key details of your business, such as its sector, size and special features. It serves as a central point for publishing updates. News, and articles, offering a wealth of content to your audience. Features such as events, job offers and products highlight the dynamic aspects of the company. This draws attention to innovations, career opportunities, and special offers.
Employee engagement is crucial to a dynamic company page. Encouraging your employees to interact with the page’s content amplifies its reach and authenticity. It turns every employee into a brand ambassador.
B- Showcase pages: when your company has star products or services!
Each showcase page can be optimized and managed independently. It allows for a flexible, targeted content strategy that resonates with the particular interests of each audience segment.
Together, the Company Page and Showcase Pages create a coherent, multi-dimensional communication strategy on LinkedIn. They contribute to a rich and diverse brand narrative that can be adapted to the different facets of the company and the varied interests of the audience. Strategic use of these tools strengthens the brand’s reputation. Improves stakeholder engagement. And supports business objectives by closely aligning published content with the interests and needs of the target audience.
4- Sales Navigator: the ultimate tool for sales teams
LinkedIn really took a B2B sales turn with the launch of Sales Navigator. This is a valuable asset for sales professionals. It provides them with advanced search and filtering tools. In-depth information on companies and potential customers (prospects). And personalized follow-up and engagement features. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a strategic investment for any company looking to optimize its sales process.
Here’s how Sales Navigator can revolutionize a company’s sales strategy.
A. Precise targeting and advanced search
With Sales Navigator, sales teams have access to an advanced search engine. This enables prospects to be filtered according to specific criteria such as sector, company size, role, geography, and much more. This precision in targeting ensures that sales efforts are focused on the most relevant and promising prospects. Searches are retained and can be used as filters for other searches (N.B. Sales Navigator has 12 more search criteria than basic Linkedin).
B. In-depth insights into prospects and companies
Sales Navigator provides detailed information on companies and individuals. It gives salespeople a deep understanding of their potential customers (prospects) even before the first contact. Important signals that can include job changes, company announcements, and recent activity on LinkedIn, enabling salespeople to personalize their approach and engage in informed conversation.
C. Automation, tracking and engagement features
Not only do you save your searches, but the results update constantly! Every time you return to the platform, it informs you if there are any new search results (companies and/or prospects) matching your criteria.
Tracking features enable sales teams to stay up-to-date on the activity of their key accounts and prospects, receiving alerts in real time. This creates opportunities for timely engagement, increasing the chances of conversion.
D. Integration with sales tools
One of Sales Navigator’s strengths is its ability to integrate with other sales platforms and tools such as your CRM, enabling a smooth workflow and increased efficiency. These integrations can help sales teams track interactions with prospects, manage sales pipelines, and measure the effectiveness of their strategies.
E. Impact on sales strategy
By using Sales Navigator, sales teams can adopt a more strategic and personalized approach to their sales efforts, leading to shorter sales cycles and higher conversion rates.
Combined use: strategically transform a company’s growth and sales.
The integrated exploitation of LinkedIn’s four key components – LinkedIn Basic, LinkedIn Ads, the LinkedIn Company Page with its Showcase Pages and, Sales Navigator, can create a powerful synergy, propelling a company’s growth and sales to unprecedented levels. Here’s how the strategic use of these tools in tandem can have a remarkable impact on a company’s overall performance.
Creating a consistent brand
:By jointly using the LinkedIn company page and optimized employee profiles (basic LinkedIn), a company can present a consistent, professional brand image. This strengthens the trust of potential customers, partners and future talent, creating a consistent and solid brand perception for all marketing and sales activities.
Amplify communications reach and engage subscribers and readers
LinkedIn Ads (including “boosts”) precisely targeted at relevant audience segments, can be used to promote content created on the company page and showcase pages, significantly increasing visibility and engagement. This multi-channel strategy ensures that the company’s message reaches a large but relevant audience, generating high-quality sales leads.
Accelerating the sales process
The criteria for segmenting Linkedin ads are very similar to those used by Sales Navigator. By combining a Linkedin campaign, a targeted approach via Sales Navigator and increased engagement on the company page, sponsored content helps to pre-heat potential customers (leads), making the sales process smoother and faster.
Strengthening customer relationships
The combination of quality content and personalized engagement via Sales Navigator creates multiple opportunities to strengthen relationships with existing customers. By delivering value through every interaction, companies can cultivate brand loyalty and encourage repeat business.
Measuring and optimizing results
By leveraging the analytics offered by each LinkedIn component, companies can measure the effectiveness of their strategies in real time, and adjust their approach to optimize results. This feedback loop enables continuous improvement of marketing and sales efforts.
Impact on growth and sales
The synergy created by strategic, integrated use of LinkedIn can lead to a significant increase in brand awareness, engagement, qualified leads and, ultimately, sales. This not only increases short-term growth, but also builds a solid foundation for long-term sustainability and success.
In conclusion
The incredible impact of using LinkedIn’s four components together on growth and sales cannot be underestimated. By adopting a holistic and strategic approach, companies can maximize their potential on this platform, transforming the way they connect, communicate, and do business in the digital professional space.
To help your sales and marketing teams benefit from the extraordinary potential of the Linkedin platform, click HERE or contact us.
