Creating and following a Business to Business (B2B) content marketing strategy on LinkedIn can grow your midsize business’ brand awareness and loyalty, ultimately driving sales.
Not only does this B2B marketing solution impact your brand’s current connections, but through the use of hashtags, can connect your midsize business with thousands of potential customers within LinkedIn’s pool of nearly 740 million active users.
If your midsize business is searching for a partner in LinkedIn B2B Marketing or any B2B content marketing strategy, schedule a free 1-on-1 consultation with a Fratzke expert today.
Developing a LinkedIn B2B Content Marketing Strategy
It is imperative that your B2B content marketing strategy is as detailed as possible. During development, be sure to outline every possible success, opportunity, and pitfall in your current and future LinkedIn marketing.
We recommend checking out LinkedIn’s Ultimate Guide to Improve Your B2B Content Marketing Strategy. They emphasize incorporating six important components when building out your strategy: audience, competitors, objectives, measurement, customer journey, and relationship-building.
Make It Personal
Those familiar with corporate relationships know that business partners, like public consumers, respond positively to personal touches and individual attention. On LinkedIn, your midsize business should showcase team wins and emphasize brand values to illustrate their brand’s humanity.
If bandwidth allows, determine a LinkedIn B2B Marketing Coordinator or Manager to put a face to your midsize business’ name. At the end of the day, people prefer to buy from people over corporate entities.
Business audiences respond to branding and personality, in part because B2B businesses now market on social media, like consumer brands. On LinkedIn, marketers can emphasize personal connections by showcasing individuality.
As MarTech puts it, “This way, buyers don’t just think about your company as a faceless entity. They have a face to associate the brand with and personalize the connection.”
Your selected LinkedIn B2B Marketing Champion will act as your brand’s LinkedIn influencer. Alternatively, this champion can respond on behalf of a member of your midsize business’ executive team to add experience and credibility to their interactions.
Allocate Time to Focus on LinkedIn B2B Marketing
Anyone who is representing your midsize business must have at least an hour or two per week to dedicate exclusively to analyzing your B2B content marketing strategy. They must also be comfortable with being in the public eye (or at least representing an executive in the public eye).
In an interview with MarTech, CRO of VanillaSoft, Darryl Praill said that he “had to be willing to be vulnerable, to be transparent and to be different, to speak loud and stir the pot and to actually force people to think, and have a different take than what they were hearing out there from other influencers.”
“But I’m telling you now,” he added, “the hardest challenge is you can’t do this ad hoc. You have to book time in your calendar to do this like you would anything else, like if you go to the gym every day. Same thing if you’re a sales rep and you book out your calendar for prospecting.”
Share Your Brand Story
The goal of content marketing is not to deliver a sales pitch, but instead to tell a story about your midsize b business. No matter the demographics of your target audience, your customers are seeking a place of community on social media.
The best stories out there are centered around a protagonist or protagonists. Define your brand’s protagonists before sharing your story. A few common examples include stories about your midsize business’ partners, customers, team members, or the families of those team members.
Whenever possible, tag a LinkedIn connection in posts that establish your brand’s figurative cinematic universe. After all, that is what building a LinkedIn network is all about: fostering a place of community for your team, partners, and customers.
If bandwidth allows for your content to feature video, all the better. Your posts are likely to garner more attention this way.
Build Relationships with the In-Crowd
To reference the introduction of this post, the ultimate goal for LinkedIn B2B Marketing should be to increase brand awareness and loyalty. In order to achieve that goal, it is essential to establish connections with your industry’s top influencers.
If you follow popular hashtags within your industry, you’ll quickly be able to identify these users. They’re the folks whose posts receive thousands of engagements in an instant.
As your LinkedIn B2B Marketing Champion begins to take on their role, the quicker they’re able to connect with these top influencers, the better. We recommend regularly engaging in these influencers’ comment sections and eventually connecting with them via a personalized request.
As always, if you’re looking for a digital marketing partner to elevate your midsize business strategy, schedule a free consultation with one of our experts today!
