How to use LinkedIn effectively to support your marketing goals

By Nick Johnson, Demand Manager at Bright

You are probably only too aware of the power of LinkedIn as a social network to grow your business pipeline, professional profile or job hunting prospects at the click of (a few) buttons. It’s the platform for creating engagement.  

But the real value of LinkedIn comes from who you are connected with. Like all good marketing and sales campaigns, the focus should be very much on quality over quantity. This is where LinkedIn is ultimately unrivalled.   

Over the last 12+ months we have been working with our clients on projects ranging from recruiting partners across Europe to building registrations for virtual events in key target markets. The constant here has been using LinkedIn as a key driver for these activities.   

At Bright we take a highly targeted, segmented and personalised approach to this which allows our clients to grow their LinkedIn presence with the right audience, at pace.  

Over the last six months in particular, the results from these projects have improved time and again, resulting in numerous new connections, meetings and attendees. All helping clients progress towards their business goals. You can see how we helped drive 2,000+ attendees to a virtual event for our client TECHNIA in this video case study. 

So, you’ve got yourself 350 new connections on LinkedIn – what do you do next? 

The optimising of a profile, targeting stakeholders from key accounts, building new connections, and starting conversations is really just the first steps of the process. The ultimate outcome is portraying the user as an industry and business thought leader amongst their peers, prospects, customers and wider network.  

Building towards this longer-term goal takes preparation, a defined strategy, engaging content and a consistent approach to networking. This is also something which cannot be turned on and off. There will naturally be peaks and troughs, but at least one of the following elements should be running:

• Personal brand – promoting you, your company, your products or services and industry thought leadership content 
• Dream clients and contacts – monitoring and understanding what your key target contacts and accounts are doing in the market 
• Connections and conversations – keep networking and engaging with your contacts  
• Community leader – posting in relevant groups for peer-to-peer engagement 
• Soft selling – interacting by liking, commenting and sharing your target audience 

Yes, it is a lot of work. But it is definitely worth the reward.  

Interested in using LinkedIn to support your marketing goals? Drop us an email at hello@brightinnovation.co.uk 

Nick is a results driven Demand Generation Manager at Bright. He has over 6 years B2B demand generation and business development experience gained working with some of the world’s largest IT and tech companies. Nick has managed projects around the globe, creating engagement across a variety of industries and contacts. He is passionate about how bespoke, highly targeted and (most importantly) agile campaigns can deliver value for his clients.