Lend a helping hand to others. The best way to network is to help others succeed in their businesses or careers. By using LinkedIn to help others—you get to promote them, link to them, connect with them, recommend them, answer their questions, give some free advice to newbies and in general be a good business ally. Offer this service to your associates, orgs, acquaintances, suppliers, members, clients and so on. List Your Companies Assets. Describe its major benefits and what your specialties are, and then create a LinkedIn group highlighting that expertise. The groups feature is one avenue to show and demonstrate your leadership ability around a core topic. You’ll learn inside information about your customers and new potential customers. If you can, you want to ask customers to use this as a forum for engagement or have a volunteer monitor your group. Keep the content interesting and flowing by post engaging conversation and responses. B2B firms looking to locate potential customers often visit targeted LinkedIn Groups. After making a list of keywords relating to your targeted prospects/customers/clients or industries, do a search for all LinkedIn groups related to your keywords list. After locating your targeted groups, engage in some meaningful dialogue, share some wisdom of items that make some members say, I didn’t know that! Ask pertinent questions while networking and you’ll make good connections. Ask Your Vendors, Business Associates and most of all—Your Employees to get Involved. When your employees market, advertise and promote your brand on LinkedIn, you’ll get a positive following with your list of targeted firms/people. Employee contributors should actively seek similar groups and join affiliates or subgroups. They should post your company blogs on their LinkedIn status updates too. The more supporters you have on LinkedIn, the higher the visibility, which gives you better opportunities to become top leader in your arena. Why Advertise on LinkedIn? You probably promote tweets on Twitter. You position Facebook ads on key pages and groups. The value behind LinkedIn advertising is you can really target your copy appeals/products/services to a professional and business audience that is more in tune to your offer based on selecting valuable demographic information. LinkedIn ads work like PPC. Each LinkedIn profile has a wealth of information
including specific job titles, role or function, company size, work experience, projects, testimonials etc., and you can use that information to target any segment that matches your customer list. • Target the Right Audience. Use direct response ad copy that demands getting immediate response/results. When creating benefit copy for each Ad on LinkedIn you’ll need to select your demographics based on a variety of criteria; i.e. role, title, industry, geography, company size, etc. Choosing copy from your keyword list will increase your credibility and build your brand. Your ad copy aimed at a Chiropractor will be different than an ad copy aimed towards a CEO prospect or non-profit association. • Attract New Clients/Customers. If you’re advertising to attract new clients who will pay you thousands of dollars, then LinkedIn advertising is a great low-cost way to advertise. If you’re selling a product or service that’s under $100, then this may be way too expensive related to the cost of customer acquisition. • Text Ads Response Rates. The response rate for text ads will be very, very low. Typical response rate for search ads on Google is 1%. LinkedIn says on their site about their text ads, “good ads have a CTR greater than 0.025%.” The larger more expensive display ads have a higher click through rate but they’re also a lot more expensive and you have to buy an “ad package” and negotiate that through the LinkedIn ad sales team. • Include a Video Ad. Good news for those of you who have a YouTube video ad, you can also use it on LinkedIn. Adding a dynamic entertaining how-to or educational video that sells your products/services or org. may add higher visibility for your ad while improving your Google results. Make sure to create an attractive landing (squeeze) page to convert your leads—visitors who viewed the video who want to learn more about your offer. See part two of this article including more LinkedIn advertising tips at www.officialkaratemag.com. Since 1968, Andrew S. Linick, Ph.D. —The Marketing Copyologist® has had an amazing record of success in mail order and direct marketing for himself and major clients. In 1995 he began online marketing campaigns and is recognized as one of the world’s leading Internet Marketing Strategists and Social Web Pioneers. Andrew is in high demand as a master copywriter and social media marketing expert. For a FREE 15 minute phone consultation (Value $250) to increase your company’s online visibility, boost web traffic and persuade people to buy your products/services call The Social Engagement Marketing Experts™ (SEME™) at 631.924.3888 or contact Andrew@AskLinick.com or LinickGroup@gmail.com Martial Arts Grandmasters International ®
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