LinkedIn for Small and Medium Sized Businesses, Part 1

Why You Should Market Your Business with LinkedIn

If your business is not actively marketing on LinkedIn, you could be missing the best opportunity available to you for generating leads, building strategic partnerships, and developing your brand image. Many business owners and managers are methodically using LinkedIn, and finding it to be a highly cost-effective platform for a series of related objectives:

• Connecting with industry thought leaders and peers
• Widening spheres of influence among potential buyers
• Establishing your visionaries as industry thought leaders
• Marketing products in R&D and new product launches
• Improving Search Engine Results Page (SERP) rankings on Google and other search enginesbrbn
• Driving businesses who are researching your business to take an action
• Developing media contacts and generating publicity
• Gaining exposure and positive impressions for your brand
• Replacing sales cold calls
• Recruiting candidates for job openings

Consider the statistics:

General Social Media:

• 83% of B2B marketers use social media; making it the most common B2B marketing tactic. Content Marketing Institute
• 79% of businesses increased traffic by investing as little as 6 hours a week in social media marketing. Social Media Examiner

LinkedIn:

• LinkedIn is the #1 most commonly used social media platform for B2B marketers. Social Media Examiner
• 92% of B2B marketers leverage LinkedIn over all other social platforms. LinkedIn
• For lead generation and conversion:
• 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn .LinkedIn
• 44% of all B2B customers come from LinkedIn. GetResponse
• 79% of B2B marketers view LinkedIn as an effective source for B2B leads. LinkedIn
• LinkedIn users are 4X more likely to visit your website than Facebook users. BeBusinessED
• LinkedIn generates the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate at 2.74%, more than 3X higher than Twitter at just.69% and Facebook at just .77%. Hubspot
• For content distribution:
• 89% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content, making it second to email as a B2B social platform. Content Marketing Institute
• LinkedIn SlideShare reaches 70M unique visitors a month. LinkedIn
• For product launches:
• LinkedIn is the #1 platform used for product launches among B2B businesses. Regalix
• 81% of B2B businesses say they use it for launches, compared to just 71% for Twitter and 54% for Facebook. Regalix

As this collection of statistics powerfully demonstrates, LinkedIn is a remarkable platform that every small and medium-sized business should use to meet and connect with potential buyers, influencers, and strategic business partners.

In Part 2 of this series, we provide specific directions to help you get started using LinkedIn to accomplish some of your most important marketing objectives in 2018.