LinkedIn strategy for B2B Sales in 2023: your complete Guide to win
You want to grow your B2B sales ?
LinkedIn is definitely the place to start, because the network for professionals has become the most important channel for B2B businesses to find new customers, grow sales and expand their professional network.
Whether you are a solopreneur, a small business owner or a sales professional in a sales team, LinkedIn must be in your sales toolbox.
In fact, LinkedIn is now the leading social media for B2B sales professionals.
Why?
Because it’s a powerful way to find potential customers, build trust and authenticity, and drive lead generation.
So if you’re just getting started with LinkedIn as a B2B marketing tool, this article makes it easy for you to use LinkedIn for B2B sales process and more.
Let’s dive in…
Why a LinkedIn strategy is key to B2B Sales?
LinkedIn has grown in popularity as a business-building platform now surpassing Google, Facebook and Twitter.
LinkedIn’s more than 875 million members in 200 countries are primarily business professionals aged 35 and older.
So now is the time to learn how this social media works to make the most of it.
Step 1: your LinkedIn profile is your personal brand’s sales brochure – NOT your resume
Use your personal account to reach your future clients and build your personal brand.
Your personal LinkedIn profile is your entry door to the B2B kingdom.
It’s your showcase that will convince your prospects to talk to you.
So if you don’t have one, create a LinkedIn profile A.S.A.P.
And then turn it into a sales brochure.
Here are the 6 areas to brush up and optimize:
Take your best shot: your photo is key
Your picture will give your visitors a first impression in less than 1 second.
So make it look professional and friendly.
Your background photo is your flagship
Choose a nice picture and display your baseline and contact information.
Your headline is your personal brand’s slogan
Don’t limit it to your job title and company name, as most people do.
Make it sound like a marketing promise: tell your future clients what value you bring them.
Your “About” section is the back cover of your professional biography
This is where you make your sales pitch.
It should include:
- your value proposition: what do you (or the company you work for) offer to your clients (product, service)
- the benefits of this value proposition: tell your clients what’s in it for them
- your personal or your company’s successes
- social proof: reassure your future clients by telling them what do your actual clients say about you or your company
- contact information: website, email, phone
Remember to use keywords that are important in your job, company or industry. They upgrade you profile’s position in LinkedIn searches.
You might even add some popular hashtags to help your personal profile appear in LinkedIn searches.
Make sure your Experience is up-to-date
Describe each job experience by saying what was your actual role, and include successes as well.
Be sure to link each experience to the company LinkedIn page (it should show automatically when you type the name of the company).
Ask for recommendations
Build your social proof by asking superiors, clients or colleagues to write good things about you.
They might need some help. In that case, tell them the key personal or professional qualities you’d like to see appear.
Step 2: create your outstanding LinkedIn company
Your LinkedIn company page is the hub for all your business information, including your mission, vision, products/services.
Your company page should be the hub for all information related to your business.
As for your personal profile, transform your company´s Linkedin page into your brand’s Linkedin flagship by shaping it like a sales brochure.
You may reuse content from your website.
When building it for the first time, follow LinkedIn’s instructions and make sure to add a link to your website.
Your LinkedIn company page can help you reach various marketing goals:
- Brand recognition
- Generate leads
- Attract your next hire
- Engage a community
In any case, your company page should definitely be a part of your Linkedin marketing strategy.
More details on how to create your outstanding LinkedIn company page.
Step 3: Sales Navigator is your sniper rifle to find your prospects
Sales Navigator is a paid LinkedIn add-on dedicated to sales people (more on LinkedIn paid plans).
It will allow you to:
- Better find your future clients with advanced filters (notably the company size filter)
- Build prospect lists
- Unfold a company’s decision-making circuit by looking at its org chart
- Build a watch-list of contacts or companies you’re interested in.
The benefits over LinkedIn’s free search engine are:
- Sales Navigator gives you 2,500 results (vs 1,000 for LinkedIn’s search engine)
- You can search by company size
- You can save your searches: Sales Navigator will regularly add new results to the same search
Step 4: outreach automation is your machine gun to generate sales leads
Using automation tools, you can send invitations and messages to new contacts or your own network.
The process is simple:
- Use LinkedIn search or Sales Navigator to find your future clients
- Write a sequence of messages to send them
- Automate that sequence in an automation tool
The 7 best LinkedIn automation tools are described in this article, and they are:
Step 5: publish and comment on LinkedIn: your target audience will love your content strategy
Next step once you’ve initiated your outreach : build your personal brand with your content strategy.
Successful LinkedIn content marketing strategies all have 1 thing in common: persistence.
To tame LinkedIn algorithm and reach your target audience on LinkedIn, you need to publish content regularly. And never get discouraged.
The second Key Success Factor for your content strategy is: engagement.
The number of LinkedIn users who engage with your content is the signal that the platform uses before it decides to amplify your content’s reach (reach: number of contacts exposed to your publications).
On LinkedIn, engagement takes mainly 3 forms:
- clicking on “Read more”
- giving a “Like”
- leaving a comment
Read this If you want to know how to write LinkedIn posts that perform.
Here are a few tips on publishing content on LinkedIn:
- To share content might entertain your target audience, but it does not help you with LinkedIn algorithm.
- External links (i.e. links that will take your readers away from the platform) will affect negatively your content reach
- Tagging contacts (@nameofcontact) will send them an alert and raise their awareness about you and your conten
- Upload your videos onto the platform, as to make them original LinkedIn videos.
You should publish original and quality content.
Relevant content that helps your target audience.
And remember rule #1: be constant AND patient !
Step 6: join LinkedIn groups and events to meet more prospects
Joining LinkedIn groups and events is a great way to meet new prospects.
LinkedIn Live is an excellent way to share content with other members and can help you build your network quickly.
When creating content for these groups or for LinkedIn posts, make sure it’s helpful, relevant and meets the needs of the group members.
By doing so, you can create a reputation for yourself as a thought leader and attract more potential customers.
You should also take the time to curate content from other sources that might be useful to the members of your group or in your LinkedIn posts.
This will show that you are willing to go out of your way to provide helpful information to others, which will increase your visibility among potential customers.
Additionally, don’t forget to engage with other members by commenting on their posts or participating in group discussions – this will help you connect with more members and potentially build valuable relationships with them.
Step 7: use LinkedIn Live Events to gather your community
With LinkedIn Live Events, you can leverage LinkedIn’s targeted audience to organize events with your future clients.
In this article, we detail how to leverage LinkedIn Live Events.
These events can be:
- Live events on LinkedIn
- Live events outside of LinkedIn
- In-person events
Step 8: use LinkedIn ads to go faster and grow your reach
Using LinkedIn ads will help you get an immediate visibility towards your audience.
We go deeper into LinkedIn ads solutions and strategies in this article.
LinkedIn marketing solutions offer different formats:
- Sponsored content: push your content int the LinkedIn feed
- Display ads:
- Dynamic ads: ads personalized to the individual seeing it
- Text ads: display ads on a PPC or CPM model
- Sponsored messaging: send Inmails in bulk to targeted audiences
LinkedIn campaign manager guides you in setting up your marketing campaign, with 3 mains campaign objectives you can pursue:
- Brand awareness
- Drive website traffic, engagement or video views
- Lead generation: on LinkedIn or your website
Use sponsored content to gain visibility
Sponsored content are posts that will appear in your target audience’s LinkedIn feed.
Various options exist:
- Single image
- Documents ads that can be downloaded
- Video ads
- Carousel ads: deliver a longer message with various screen that can be swiped
- Event ads: invite your audience to your LinkedIn Live event
Single image
Documents ads
Carousel ads
Events ads
Use display ads to generate clicks
Display ads on LinkedIn take 2 forms:
Dynamic ads: personalized with the name of your contact:
Text ads: that appear at the top of the page or in the right column:
Use sponsored messaging to engage in conversations
LinkedIn Inmails are private messages that are viewed in the LinkedIn’s message box.
There are 3 differences between Inmails and regular LinkedIn messages:
- Inmails are not free – they are usually included in a LinkedIn paid plan.
- Inmails can be sent to anyone on LinkedIn – event contacts who are not in your direct network (level 2 and 3)
- Inmails look more like an email (with an object and formatting options) than basic LinkedIn messages
In a sponsored messaging campaign, Inmails will be sent in bulk to individual contacts within your target audience.
Bottom line
LinkedIn has become the leading social media site for B2B sales professionals.
It’s a powerful way to find potential customers, build trust and authenticity, and drive lead generation.
LinkedIn is the best B2B social media platform.
Your LinkedIn marketing efforts will surely pay if you dedicate enough time and energy.