When launching a small business, one of the biggest concerns would be the budget and how to save it. The modern world offers a wonderful solution – social media for the promotion of your business. This instrument has a wide diversity of methods to push your brand. And different types of businesses require different kinds of social platforms for support. In this article, we want to highlight the specifics of running a small business in the B2B section with the help of LinkedIn.
Build A Professional Look For Your Brand
LinkedIn is a social network that serves primarily for the professional sphere. This is why it is very important that your LinkedIn followers can find much information about you and your brand. This matter is about both your attitude and professional goals. In your profile, you have to display such points as:
- Your business aims
- Social positioning
- Services that you offer
To fulfill this assignment you should create your personal page on LinkedIn, and the profile of your company as well. While your potential customers can learn about your business from its profile directly, they would still prefer communicating with you, as a representative or it. Having both the profiles running, you will gain more control over the process of purchasing your services.
Gain Authority As A Pro
To become influential on LinkedIn you must create the image of a professional, who knows what he is doing. There are many ways to achieve this goal, and we would like to highlight the most effective of them:
- Explore the needs of your potential customers and concentrate your efforts on acknowledging the theme
- Share the content you think your viewers will find valuable
- Track the hottest trends and news from your industry and provide this information to your followers as soon as it is possible
- Reveal your professional opinion on things that relate to your sphere
Don’t oppose the idea of sharing some professional tips for free. What you are trying to reach here is trust. Sharing your knowledge is a sure way to attract people to your persona and thus to the services that you offer. At first, you must assure people of your competencies, and then they will be eager to buy more from you.
Keep Your Profile Updated
This point was mentioned in the paragraph above, yet it deserves to be highlighted. Providing the freshest information is a working method to gain the attention of the clientele. Speed is your best friend in this matter. To be confident in your result, fulfill these tips:
- Check out your competitors to see what is their strategy
- Follow the leaders of thoughts and influencers who are popular on the platform. That would give you the opportunity to adjust your plan according to the new information you get
- Look through hashtags that are relevant to your industry, to see what it got right now. Contribute posts to the most popular hashtags from time to time
- Explore the profiles of the companies and their representatives which you like. They are not supposed to refer to your industry though. Just take inspiration from the ones you respect and find success.
Co-Work
Collaboration with other organizations or people is a must when you are promoting your company with the help of social media. Creating partnerships on LinkedIn requires time and effort, but it pays off quite soon. First of all, get in touch with people and companies that are already familiar with you. And then, use the word of mouth to make your expansion effective.
At first, you may think that this is absurd because of the competition that is supposed to be going on between the businesses in the same niche. Partially, it is true. But in fact, promotion on social media makes the race equal for everyone, so cooperation becomes a thing that is a must-do for anyone who wants to get a good result.
Collaboration and mutual communication is a very important matter nowadays, due to the epidemic of COVID-19 still being a threat. Linkedin has become a support station, where professionals of different kinds can unite, seek for new job opportunities, and simply share their experience in life and work issues.
Generate New Clientele
For any small business owner, it is vital to push to horizons further and increase the sales rate. On LinkedIn people do not expect the direct selling approach. Actually, no one will appreciate that. You have to seek more subtle ways to promote your business. And that’s where the process called the Lead Generation comes to help. First of all, you must find what suffices your understanding of a perfect client to you. On LinkedIn, use the keyword search to find people to whom you definitely have something to offer (simply talking, type in the professions that are related to your industry and which can possibly show some interest to you). After you have found profiles that suit you, look through them carefully, and form a list of best matches. Then, you start finding your way to reach them:
- Request introduction from colleagues and fellow organizations
- Approach your potential customer directly
Both these methods have their own pros and cons, and it is up to you to pick the tactic that will bring you the best result. Remember that you have to remain careful and subtle, while you don’t have much experience in this.
Conclusion
LinkedIn is a fine resource for B2B. It helps to set up useful connections and find customers among the professional crowd. To start a promotion campaign for your business on this platform, you don’t need to pay, like, at all. All the strategies we have described in this text are completely free of charge. That means that you could spend all the money that you saved for improving other aspects of your work. What that would be – it’s your decision. Good luck!
