LinkedIn Marketing – just B2B? Or B2B and B2C?
I quite often get asked questions about the choice of social media platforms for marketing. Many local business owners are confused about which social media platform(s) they should spend time promoting their small businesses on.
From a marketing perspective, the answer is simple. Spend time on the platform(s) that your target audience spend their time on.
That doesn’t mean you can’t be on other platforms – just make sure you’re prioritising your marketing time wisely, and putting more effort into the marketing platforms that your target customers use. A good example of this can be found with LinkedIn.
Most would agree that LinkedIn is predominantly a business-to-business (B2B) platform, which many entrepreneurs who run B2B businesses use to try to generate new leads and build up new networking connections.
So, does that mean if you run a business-to-consumer (B2C) business that you don’t have to worry about LinkedIn?
Well, in my mind – no, it doesn’t.
I think if you’re an entrepreneur, in whatever sector, you should be on LinkedIn. You don’t necessarily have to be very active on LinkedIn, but I think you certainly should have an up-to-date and fully optimised LinkedIn profile.
Why? Well, for several good reasons, but here are just a few:
- Searches and recommendations. When people ask their family and friends for recommendations, the quality of the recommendations vary. Sometimes people can remember the owners name but not the business name. Sometimes the other way round! So, if someone were to take a look for you or your business on LinkedIn, they’ve got a good chance of finding you if you have a presence on the LinkedIn platform, and no-chance of finding you on there if you’ve not registered!
- Google. We all know how much we rely on Google to search for information these days. We even turn the company name into a verb when we say, ‘let’s Google it!’. LinkedIn information often appears in Google searches, so if someone looks for you or your business on Google, it maybe that they find you on there, or you appear higher in the search listings, purely because of your presence on LinkedIn!
So, if you’re a B2C company owner, do you have to spend a lot of time and effort on LinkedIn? No, not necessarily, not if it’s not where your customers hang out.
But should you have a presence on LinkedIn? Hell, yeah!
And, if you’re on there, be on there! Don’t be one of these people who only enters minimal details and leaves their profile image as the grey silhouette!
If you’re going to be there, show up proud! Take a bit of time to enter the kind of details that might get you found, and even might get you contacted! Add a professional photograph, utilise the banner image, use keywords in the right places. Become a LinkedIn All-Star!
I’ve just put together a training video and workbook for my Marketing Momentum members, to take them through all the necessary steps to fully optimise their LinkedIn profile for success.
Whilst putting together the training, I found some research that highlighted how LinkedIn has over 760million registered users worldwide. That’s a lot of people on LinkedIn! So, even if you don’t do much on LinkedIn because it’s not where your target customers hang out, I think you’ll agree that it’s well worth being on there.
If you want to read more interesting statistics about LinkedIn, click to the research site I found at www.omnicoreagency.com/linkedin-statistics/
To find out more about the LinkedIn Profile video training and the many other trainings and resources in the Marketing Momentum Membership just visit www.smallbusinessequaliser.com/marketing-momentum-membership
Follow me on social media:
