How to Use LinkedIn as a Marketing Tool

With a large pool of industry leaders and researchers, LinkedIn is considered the largest social media site for professionals. If you consider yourself to be a professional, you may already have an account on LinkedIn.

In plain site, LinkedIn offers members the ability to network and communicate with industry professionals, similarly to Facebook. Underneath, however, LinkedIn offers an array services that help professionals expand their brand names and market their products and services. Just like most social media channels today, LinkedIn can also be used as an effective marketing tool.

What’s Great About LinkedIN ?
What’s great about LinkedIn is that it uses data from its members to identify your potential consumer base and marketing niches. Basically, users can manage their target markets by focusing on location, job title, industry, company size, age, gender or company name. Once you identify your consumer market, you’ll be able to place an ad on their profile page, making it more likely to get bites from potential customers.

Promote Yourself
LinkedIn also helps you build your own banners by using their Display Ads as templates to showcase your website, products or services. Either way, it won’t leave you in the dark. Marketing expert Rich Gorman explains that the most successful banner ads are simple, loud and colorful. Creativity is a must!

The effectiveness of your marketing strategy on LinkedIn will depend on the kind of service you purchase. Like many sites, i.e. Google, you pay for quality marketing.

However, the cost of the services used will most likely depend on ad clicks or impressions. The former could be a better deal since generating site impressions doesn’t really mean that your company message has successfully stuck with the consumer.

Analytical Tools
LinkedIn also offers analytical tools to keep track of your ad/marketing campaign’s progress, you may want to make sure if it’s working effectively or if you need to make a few changes to your target demographics.

LinkedIN for Business
Ads are not the only way to market to your consumer base on LinkedIn. Facebook offers business owners company pages, therefore, LinkedIn’s response to Facebook’s merger into the business sector sparked a change within the professional social site. Now, LinkedIn offers users to create business profiles as well.

This unique, free service allows LinkedIn members to connect with your company, follow along and stay up-to-date with business news, sales, job opportunities and changes in the company. The website also allows companies to upload user recommendations, so ask your happy customers to write a positive review for cyberspace to see.

Since most LinkedIn users set up accounts in order to connect with potential employers, you’ll easily be able to market open positions to pools of qualified professionals through the Career Tab on your company profile page.
LinkedIn also keeps track of visits to your company page and lets users know how many people were reached, very similar to the analytical tools used in other social media sites.

LinkedIn is not only a social media platform that links professionals with potential employers, it’s much more than that! It’s a major marketing tool! If you already have a LinkedIn account, ask yourself, “am I getting the most out of my LinkedIn account?”

Image Credit:Shekhar