LinkedIn today is much more than a professional platform for connecting people. It is where you establish your presence and that of your B2B business, connect with  people, and then attract them to see what you do and what you can offer them. Today’s LinkedIn is a powerful platform where decision makers can get to know you and your brand.
Here are some very powerful LinkedIn advertising and marketing features that will make your online marketing efforts pay.
Sponsored Ads
LinkedIn sponsored ads enables you to target your posts to specific audiences, increasing the visibility of your company or product. For B2B marketers, it is a great tool to promote content to decisions makers and focused groups.
Creating a sponsored ad from your company page is very easy and the metrics are invaluable. From the number of times the post has been seen to interactions (clicks, social actions, engagement), you can clearly see the results of promoting or sponsoring your campaign.
Use sponsored ads for lead generation, brand awareness, invitations to events or virtually any campaign in your inbound marketing strategy. Target them to the audiences and/or industries that matter. You will be amazed at the results.
P2P
You’ve probably heard that B2B marketing is becoming a thing of the past, that person-to-person/peer-to-peer (P2P) or human-to-human (H2H) is the way of doing business because businesses, after all, don’t really make decisions.
LinkedIn is the platform for your P2P digital marketing strategy. The more connected you are, the more people you’ll reach in your P2P efforts.
Segment your LinkedIn connections, make a VIP list and send private emails to each person in the list to make them aware of your brand. Once they become your advocates, you can create a list of several things they can do to spread the word about you. You can ask them to share your content in their social-media pages or write a testimonial about your product.
Once you become personal, the online marketing and LinkedIn advertising opportunities at your fingertips will become limitless.
Visual Content
Visual is the next generation of content marketing. Studies show that conversion rates of video or picture advertising is 70% higher than the written word. LinkedIn is a visual platform as good as Facebook, Pinterest or Instagram. Its advantage, however, is that it is still the largest professional community out there.
All you have to do is enhance your professional portfolio with photos, infographics, screenshots, Slideshare presentations, ebooks, and videos. Virtually every image you can think of can easily be linked from/to your LinkedIn page to enhance your inbound and B2B marketing.
LinkedIn Elevate
This is a relatively new and cool platform in LinkedIn that gives the power of LinkedIn advertising to company employees. Built on the premise that a company’s employees have 10 times as many connections as the company itself, Elevate is a win-win proposition. Employees spread the word about what they are doing to their LinkedIn connections, thus advocating the company’s brand, while promoting themselves by showing that they are on top of industry developments.
Remarketing
This is another area where you can use LinkedIn powerful segmentation features to remarket your digital assets in LinkedIn ads or posts. Attract quality visitors based on their profile and what they do on your page, and target them with suitable content through your sales funnel.
LinkedIn remarketing is powered by its Lead Accelerator, a platform for lead generation and nurturing that connects companies with the right professionals and prospects. Target your LinkedIn advertising using personalized messaging aimed at prospects based on the demographics data that you obtain from LinkedIn, and see exactly what’s working and what’s not.
Discussion Groups
LinkedIn discussion groups is an amazing feature. You probably use it to stay abreast of the latest and greatest in your technology or field of expertise. Why not leverage groups to become a trend setter or guru in your field?
Join professional groups or create your own. Do not use your company’s name, just join as an individual. Give professional value, solve problems, ask and answer questions, request feedback. But don’t forget to spice the content up with some marketing ingredients. Share your knowledge to build credibility for you and your brand. Use the discussion groups’ digital marketing platform to find more qualified leads without mentioning the ‘M’ word. And most importantly, never ever indulge in spam or self-promotion.
Once you’ve mastered the powers of LinkedIn online marketing, you can get going and leverage this influential platform to increase engagement with customers and prospects.