LinkedIn is the premier social network for professionals. It’s the place where people go to find jobs, connect with colleagues, and gain new clients for their businesses.
But what is a secret is how to use LinkedIn as a sales funnel. You’ve probably heard the saying “there’s gold in them hills,” right? Well, there is gold on LinkedIn too, but you have to know where to find it and how to get it out!
With that said, it’s important that you understand just how much competition there is on the platform. Even if you set up your profile correctly, there are still millions of other people who can pop up in your target audience’s feed and steal away sales from you.
For a small business owner, LinkedIn is a great platform for connecting with other professionals. And if you know how to use it correctly, you can use your profile and page as a sales funnel to generate leads.
Here are five steps to doing so.
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Put Your Company Profile on Display
Your LinkedIn Company Page is the center of your online business universe. It’s where prospects and customers can see what you offer, what other people think about your products, and how to get in touch with you.
The first thing you have to do to create a page is log in to your personal LinkedIn profile, then click “Work” on the main menu at the top of the screen. Make sure you upload a photo or logo that will represent your brand on LinkedIn, and it should be square and 2 MB or less in size.
Optimize Your Company Page for More Traffic
How you set up your company page can have a big impact on organic traffic. The more link juice that flows to your website from social media, the better it is for SEO.
How you set up your company page can have a big impact on organic traffic. The more link juice that flows to your website from social media, the better it is for SEO.
Here are 10 ways you can optimize your LinkedIn company page:
- 1. Add a description to your company profile
- 2. Choose categories that best describe your business
- 3. Use relevant keywords in your company description
- 4. Add links in your company description
- 5. Encourage employees to add their work experiences
- 6. Include contact information for customer support
- 7. Upload a cover photo for your LinkedIn company page
- 8. Post relevant updates at least twice per week
- 9. Post videos and images in updates
- 10. Add product showcase pages
If you have multiple people working in your company and sharing content from that company page, this sends signals to Google that there is activity on this domain, and therefore it’s trustworthy. This can help improve SEO rankings.
Promote Your Most Popular Content
You can share any status update on LinkedIn with just a few clicks. If you have a new product launch or an upcoming event, share it across all your social media channels. And if you’re attending a trade show or other industry event, share photos and updates along the way.
Some other tips for promoting your content:
Encourage sharing. Add social media buttons to all of your articles, images and infographics, and ask people to share them across their networks.
- Consider increasing the frequency of posts during peak traffic times (e.g., morning commutes) or on days when there is more demand for content (e.g., Mondays). Also experiment with shorter posts to see if they get more engagement than longer ones.
- Cross-promote posts on other channels such as Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, and especially if they’ve received positive feedback from followers who may not be on LinkedIn yet.
If you are writing for someone else’s blog or publication, share it on LinkedIn as well. This will help drive traffic to the content and increase exposure for the blogger and/or publication as well.
Promoting your popular posts will help drive consistent traffic to your website, which will also keep people coming back to your LinkedIn page. It’s a win-win!
Create Customized Paid Campaigns to Target Specific Audiences
It’s no secret that LinkedIn is the ultimate platform for B2B marketing. With more than 500 million members hailing from over 200 countries and territories, you have a huge pool of potential leads to target.
With the right targeting strategy, you can reach almost anyone on the platform, including all their connections and followers as well, which means more exposure for your brand.
To help you get started, we’ve put together this handy guide to walk you through how to set up paid ads on LinkedIn (with or without an agency or consultant) so you can see real results.
Engage in High-Level Discussions
Engage in High-Level Discussions With Influencers and Industry Leaders to Build Authority & Thought Leadership. Instead of focusing on lead generation, There’s an old saying in sales, “you’re only as good as your network”. The best way to build a strong network on LinkedIn is to engage in high-level discussions with influencers and industry leaders.
This will help you to:
- Build authority/thought leadership
- Gain access to a much wider network
- Be seen as a leader by potential prospects
- You can achieve this through the following methods:
- Writing articles on LinkedIn Publishing
- Sharing existing articles from others that are relevant and useful to your audience
- Commenting on posts from other industry leaders (with something useful – don’t just leave a generic comment like ‘thanks for sharing’)
By engaging in high-level discussions, you will begin to build authority and thought leadership within your own field. It doesn’t matter if you’re the one starting the conversation or following up on it, what matters is that you’re part of the conversation.
Conclusion
So, although it’s not a sales funnel on its own, it can be a powerful component of your sales funnel if you use it correctly. For example, you could use your LinkedIn profile to drive people to a landing page or blog post that does have a sales angle. Maybe you’re trying to turn them into subscribers, or maybe you just want them to give you their email so that you can send them useful resources one or two times per week. Whatever it is, there are plenty of ways for you to leverage this platform for marketing and sales purposes.
