By Tricia Akins
LinkedIn is the #1 professional networking site in the world. If you’re looking to connect with industry professionals and generate leads for your business, LinkedIn should be an integral part of your online marketing strategy.
LinkedIn by the Numbers
The demographics for LinkedIn’s 200+ million members are impressive! This makes it a valuable tool for companies that want to target an educated, influential and affluent audience.
-
- Average household income is $86K-that’s about 23% higher than the general U.S. population.
- 93% are more likely to be college graduates.
- 80% of LinkedIn members drive business decisions.
B2B Marketers: 10 Reasons to Consider a LinkedIn Company Page for Lead Generation
Research shows that 70% of people follow links posted by contacts they know. When LinkedIn members make recommendations, they are shared with their contacts. This is why LinkedIn product recommendations are powerful tools for growing your business.
First I should explain that LinkedIn allows you to have a personal page (i.e., profile page) and a company page on LinkedIn. LinkedIn company pages make a lot of sense if you target B2B and are trying to grow your online visibility and generate leads.
Company pages offer a robust tool to showcase products and services, demonstrate thought leadership, generate leads and engage your target market better than other social media sites. Some other benefits include:
- Free: No membership or subscription fee required.
- Increase company reach: Company pages provide another distribution channel for company news, thought leadership and shared content with your target market(s). 75% of members use LinkedIn to research companies.
- Employees can be leveraged as brand ambassadors: Give your company the ability to leverage your employees as brand ambassadors by asking them to follow your company page and like updates. By doing so, your company updates are shared with your employees’ connections, dramatically increasing the number of people exposed to your news.
- Improve online visibility: Company page content is indexed by the search engines that can enhance search engine page rankings (SEPR).
- Target prospects: Company updates (news, content, etc.) and products/services pages can be targeted to your target markets and to your clients.
64% say LinkedIn helped them develop relationships and grow new business
- Highlight testimonials: LinkedIn lets you collect product testimonials (i.e., recommendations) and prominently displays them on your products pages. This allows visitors to see how they are connected to the endorser.
- Drive website traffic: Company pages offer another way to drive traffic to trackable landing pages or other places on your website.
- FREE prospecting tool: Easily identify companies and their employees in a specific industry or geography. Search results show how you are connected to the company or individual.
64% say LinkedIn helped them develop relationships and grow new business.
- Targeted updates: Target company updates to specific followers (company size, industry, function and geography).
- Easy analytics: View metrics (such as impressions, clicks and shares) on your company updates. Track growth and the demographics of your followers. Review follower and page-traffic data by tracking engagement on your company page efforts.
Nearly 3 million LinkedIn company pages have been created to date. It’s an easy, cost-effective way to optimize your online visibility, showcase your company expertise and drive traffic to your website. Want to learn more? LinkedIn offers free company page webinars.
Tricia Akins is managing director of Walker-Stanley Communications. The company develops integrated marketing plans that drive growth for small and mid-sized businesses. Tricia has over 20 years of corporate marketing and communications experience which she leverages to help B2B clients optimize their online presence to digitally attract their target market and generate website traffic and leads. Tricia can be contacted at [email protected] or 720.218.0370.