Growing your Brand and Generating Leads on LinkedIn

The big three of Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are very important, and if you use one, or more, of these as part of your lead generation strategy, you might think you are all set.  

But if you're selling products and services to banks, mortgage companies, or credit unions and you are not using LinkedIn as a lead generation tool, you could be missing out on a major  opportunity to grow both brand recognition and revenue. 

Studies have shown that 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn and most LinkedIn users are on the site specifically for content related to their profession.  They are viewing their LinkedIn feed seeking out information to help them grow their career and their business.

These are just a few of the reasons we love LinkedIn.  Follow these simple steps and you'll like what LinkedIn can do for you too.

1. Make sure your executives have a strong LinkedIn presence. 

LinkedIn is an excellent place for small businesses to create a strong following.  But people don't follow businesses.  They follow people.  Make sure your executives create a strong LinkedIn profile. Their profile should be a statement about what your company stands for and what value they deliver to your customers.   

Take a look at your company leader's current LinkedIn presence.  Are they contributing useful content regularly?  Do they post often?  Do they create thoughtful contributions to LinkedIn Groups? More than likely, your executives could be doing more to grow their LinkedIn following.

For instance, let's take a look at Brian Vieaux's LinkedIn activity: 

Vieaux is President of FinLocker, a lead to loan to customer for life platform.  He's also an influential leader in the mortgage industry.

Vieaux uses LinkedIn wisely, sharing company updates, contributing useful and valuable dialogue in conversations, and promoting others. He likes or shares content regularly throughout the day. He also posts the occasional video onto his feed, a nice touch that gives his followers a clear glimpse into his personality. 

Vieaux has built a strong personal brand on LinkedIn and has helped his followers find useful content, all while promoting the FinLocker brand.  Ideally, your executives should be doing the same. 

2. Create a robust LinkedIn page  & presence for your business. 

Once your executives have a great presence on LinkedIn, it's time to pivot toward your business page. 

Your page should go beyond just highlighting what your company does. Describe the value your company brings to your customers. Provide some thought leadership. It's a place to promote all that you have to offer, and it's my favorite price – free.  You'll get added bonus points if you have video content.   

Similar to your executive's LinkedIn presence, you'll want to be active on your company page.  Sharing valuable content and contributing to conversations is important.  

And it's perfectly ok to share content from other sources.  What you post on this page doesn't have to be created by your marketing team. 

3. Use LinkedIn ads to connect with your target audience. 

Now nobody has ever said, "Let me LinkedIn that." But for B2B selling, it's the place to be.  What we like about LinkedIn is it provides great targeting options. You can target by industry, job title, location, years of experience, level of education and more. 

 This paid advertising is native, meaning the LinkedIn sponsored posts show up on the target's home page, naturally nestled in with the posts of the people they follow. It allows for some valuable ways to create engagement with your brand.  

LinkedIn also has an interesting lead capture option that allows the responder to immediately use their data to fill out a form or respond to your event.  Since their data is already saved on LinkedIn, it is a single button press.  It makes it super easy for them to respond to your offer. Fast, simple and easy. 

Final thoughts 

If you are only logging into LinkedIn once a week, not interacting with your network, or aren't using LinkedIn paid advertising, you're likely missing out on tremendous opportunities to grow your business.