Even though LinkedIn primarily started as a platform for job seekers, but it has evolved to be so much more. This is no more just for professionals and job seekers. This platform has evolved to be most effective and valuable for marketers to generate and convert leads into customers in the sales funnel. Of course, it’s best result can be seen with the combination of other tactics at conversion stage. However, this platform independently works from awareness to conversion for any business with the right approach.

There are two steps to use LinkedIn for success- First create a profile and use it as a place to promote your personal brand as well as your company (being company’s voice-reiterating the information). Second step is applicable to companies by creating a brand or company page. Companies create a LinkedIn page for their brand and use it as a part of Sales funnel to generate leads and conversion.

Let’s dive directly into how LinkedIn Marketing works!

Build Networks: LinkedIn is a search engine for people. This has become the straightforward place to grow your networks and build professional relationship. There are several ways to build networks on LinkedIn. Start by having a brief idea about who your prospects are and establish a brief outline. Use LinkedIn people feature to make most out of your search to connect. You can use filter options like keywords, location, industries to do targeted search and further refine and narrow with secondary connections.

Create and optimize LinkedIn Page: If you’re a company, LinkedIn page is essential to build audiences and connect with them. The objective here is to create brand awareness or generate leads or both. Usually, how to start a page can be a daunting process. So, lets make this process simpler. First search for similar company pages in your domain and use ideas to create your page map. Now optimize the page with straightforward steps — Put bright logos as profile picture, use team picture as a cover image and write what your company offers in the about section. What you write should be search engine friendly. So, insert keywords in this section. Now, add link of the company page in your website and other social media handles to get links to the page you created. Another way to get links is from LinkedIn profiles of your employees and colleagues. Next, your company page should offer abundant content for prospects to learn more about your company and the people who work there. Make sure you have all the initial content in place for optimization.

Use content marketing to drive traffic : Just like other social media, LinkedIn works well with content. However, unlike other social media, people check LinkedIn to read useful industry related articles and blogs or other form of content from credible sources. So, in order to attract these prospects, post written content or infographics that displays thought leadership in an industry. Begin by searching with keywords in your niche and see what people are talking about. Then build your thought leadership in the selected niche by writing content more often. Writing original content builds the company’s credibility in that domain. Write about client’s case studies, recent trends, tips from HR, job skills etc. The topic is limitless.

Promote your page: To do it effectively, make content and channel calendar for LinkedIn content sharing. This includes promoting your page in emails, newsletters, and blog posts, encouraging readers to be followers. One interesting feature of LinkedIn is articles. You can share short articles with relevant pictures directly on page and profile. Cross promoting by adding your page link wherever you are promoting your content will further increase its readership. When people follow your page, your updates appear directly in their LinkedIn feed. Therefore, building followers base have dual benefits of getting the initial readership as well as building relationship. The basic tip is to grow followers, promote content and keep the loop going. The followers base established here is more likely to convert.

Be part of a LinkedIn Group, even better create one: LinkedIn groups have so many unrealized benefits. You can directly email group members without investing on costly email marketing. The LinkedIn groups can be used to notify members of new content and reengage them constantly. This is the best solution when you are also trying to gain influence within groups. You can interact with group members asking them valuable questions. Make sure how you behave in this groups by asking relevant questions, sharing useful content and contacting prospects in professional tone and voice.

If you have more ideas, lets connect.

Marketing is a large domain which encompasses activities such as product design, pricing decision, distribution strategy, etc. One of its part is communicating the value proposition to customers in different mediums, which we call promotion. Digital Marketing is all about promotion in online sphere like website, social media and a lot more. Though theoretically it falls mainly under promotion of marketing mix, it’s implication still needs to be incorporated in all product, price and place strategies. In this blog, I will focus mostly on promotion part of digital marketing.

Here are top five fundamentals things you need to know:

1. Not just social media. There are several platforms or outlets for promotion. As like traditional media where we have Radio, TV and Print; Digital Marketing also includes different types of media to communicate message online. Some of which are: Email, Website, Social Media, YouTube, Mobile Apps, Search Engine etc.

2. Not just about creating funky graphics. Creating funky graphics does not automatically mean marketing on digital platforms. Yes, the platform demands innovative content that resonates with the target audience but the basics of marketing such as target market selection, positioning strategy remains the same. The campaign developed on marketing principles are more likely to resonate and create loyal relationship than simply posting any funky graphics. There are instances where such images get viral social share, but does that also mean people are connecting with your brand message? Is marketing hit and trial or a process to create a brand? Let’s take a moment and re-consider our approach.

3. Provides detail insights about customer behavior. Yes, you read that right. Unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing provides detail insights on your promotion campaign. Such insights are particularly important to improve your current promotion strategy — which medium to continue investing, which selected medium is not working, is the communication tactics effective to audience or whether right targeting is selected in the first place. A paper ad will make mass audience aware about a brand, but you can derive limited insights on its performance. But an ad on social media gives detail insights — how many viewed the ad with what frequency, how many engaged with the content, are people talking about the brand etc. The data is limitless. Such detailed information is impossible to derive from traditional media.

4. Important for all business. No matter what sort of business you are involved with, Digital Marketing is a must have rather than nice to have as part of your marketing and communication plan. With more people becoming connected every day, it is vital for you and your business to be able to reach to new audiences or to keep engaging with current audiences. You need to keep up with the ever-changing digital landscape where technology, software, trend and new platforms are evolving.

5. Not an expensive affair. It is one of the most cost-effective solution for promotion. Unlike traditional media, digital marketing can be started with small budget, which can be adjusted as time progresses. Also, return on investment can be tracked with insights data and this can be used to adjust budget spending accordingly.

Social media marketing is one of the proven methods to create brand awareness and build relationship with audience. Yes folks, Social Media has been growing exponentially — check out the stats and there is no way it will slow down. In this age of heightened social media use you must be at the top of your game (targeted strategies) to get noticed and this is going to be further challenging in 2020 and beyond.

I have invested years in learning and applying these social media tactics. It is showing results. So, you can try and see if it works for your business too. Here are my quick tips to get you started:

1. Start with a bang- Take advantage of social media platforms to build your online presence. Make sure to prep up before launching on social media platforms among your networks. This requires working on your social assets beforehand viz. logo or brand identity, colors selection to use across platforms, tone of your social voice, creative choices, compelling message to connect, and importantly your value propositions using keywords. Preparation needs to be done before being out there. PREP! PREP! PREP! BEFORE YOU LAUNCH.

2. Optimize pages — 50% of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts fail due to lack of social media optimization and integration in strategy. There are few rules to follow to optimize pages.

• Use the right size images for all the platforms. Check out this guide for the optimal image sizes. Not only should your images look good on desktop, it should be optimized for tablet and mobile too. Remember to keep your main content on center.
• Make sure your cover image reflects your brand message, current events or any updates. This is the first thing people see when they land on your page. Use this opportunity to give them reasons enough to come back.
• Use the right keywords in your profile to be discovered. Do necessary research. For instance, see what keywords your top competitors are using, how are they ranking for those keywords and use this information to optimize your social media profiles.
• Use the tabs feature to display your most important tabs in a relevant order. As like websites, the order of tabs is equally important.
• Create engaging content to give your audiences best first experience on your page.

3. Increase followers base - The initial followers base is crucial for organic visibility of your page. Don’t go for paid likes at first. Build your followers organically using few tactics like invite your friends on your social network and LinkedIn contacts to like your page, leverage your profile and showcase the page you manage, share the page as a normal post and add few lines on benefits of liking your page. Once your first followers base is established then go for paid strategies along with organic tactics.

4. Create a content calendar — Creating a calendar helps you create and schedule content on a regular basis. One way to increase your edge rank (post visibility in news feed) is to post on a routine basis. On average posting 2–3 times on a day is considered optimal. But even if you post once a day, make sure to do on a regular basis.

5. Be consistent - Remember Folks, no advertising budget no problem. Yes, there is no denying of the fact that advertising is key to meet the goal of engagement and conversion especially when you are a new business. But more than that being consistent on your social media marketing efforts is vital. This means being consistent on what you post across platforms, how frequently you post, how you incorporate insights into next content etc.

Bonus Tips — Split test everything! Experiment with text, design, platforms, audience. Continue with what works and dissolve what doesn’t. Experiment again. Now you’re good to go..

How will your solution succeed in the marketplace where others may have failed? It is a tough one but to answer this question is crucial before you start. For your product or service to succeed in the market place, you need to identify unique selling proposition (USP), a differentiating point to put your best foot forward. This is a next step after developing buyer persona. Both, buyer persona and USP are important part of your marketing and communication strategies.

In simple terms, Unique Selling Proposition (USP) defines your position in the marketplace and lets you stand apart from the competitors. Identifying unique selling proposition (USP) is a process of developing clarity on the feature and benefits that are distinctive about your product or service and refining your persona. For instance, this distinctive element can be about a special feature update in your product or a competitive price that customers are willing to pay for or easy availability (delivery) of your product to customers or even your story of how you came up with the idea in the first place. This unique benefit should be relevant to an entire organization or to its parts like products or services and importantly difficult for competitors to imitate.

Here are the steps in identifying and developing unique selling proposition.

1. Fill the gap left by the competitors - The gap are the areas that are often ignored or overlooked by the competitors. Start by collecting insights on what competitors are doing and which areas are they lacking attention to. The ignored areas that matter to customers can be opportunity for you. One way to identify these ignored areas or gaps is to read customer reviews on Amazon, Yelp, App store, Facebook pages/groups or other online market place and review platforms, and find out what people are talking about your competitors. Those reviews with 2 or 3 star is a place of ideas and opportunities. The key point is to do a detailed research and identify what’s missing from the marketplace. Filling those identified gap is finding key to your point of differentiation.
2. Define USP strategy- Once the differentiation point or areas are identified, the next step is to to define USP strategy.

• This includes describing about your product or service (write as a sales pitch and see if you’re convinced). Wear your creative hat while introducing your unique selling proposition in your product or service description.
• Along with defining USP (benefits and features) and other promises that you are going to deliver, it is equally and sometimes, even more important to specify what you are not going to do with your product or service. This will further establish a niche and better define your target market.
• Next, identify how you will establish or give proof that your solution works. This is difficult to provide when you are new to the market or just got started and tend to disregard while forming USP strategy. But, always remember that customers need proof that your solution works. So, even if you are a new business or planning to start one, make sure to include proof element in your strategy. One way of developing proof is to ask friends and family to give feedback on the free trial or a demo of your product or service. If you are a running business, customer testimonials is your proof of credibility.
• Lastly, include pricing in your USP strategy. As a marketer, I always follow this basic principle before launching promotion activities that “YOUR SOLUTION IS NOT FOR EVERYONE”. The idea of creating a USP is to sharpen your idea and narrow your audience. Having a clear pricing strategy helps you have that clarity. This is essential element and needs to be determined while considering competitors approach on the same.

Follow this simple steps and you have your unique selling proposition identified.

About me - I am a Marketing Professional with over 4 years of experience in marketing and advertising. I love data and have key attention to detail. Marketing landscape has changed over the years with all the new digital trends and I love to test what works and what doesn’t in this changing dynamics. Let’s Connect.