If you're a B2B marketer, you've probably had a conversation like this before:
Marketer #1: “Where are all our customers hanging out?”
Marketer #2: “Definitely not Facebook or Instagram… LinkedIn maybe?”
Marketer #1: “Yeah, LinkedIn is a purely business network, so we should just advertise there to reach our audience! It can't be that expensive, can it?“
Marketer #2: “Let me look it up… Ok, it's $23 per click to reach our audience. Should I commence lighting our money on fire?”
Marketer #1: “Umm… is there a free option?“
This fake conversation represents the harsh truth about advertising on the other Social Network.
LinkedIn doesn’t offer a massive and relatively low-cost advertising opportunity like Facebook does.
Nor can it help you attract “now buyer” visitors at scale like Google can.
And when it comes to the entertainment value… well, LinkedIn just doesn't measure up. I mean, come on… where are all the recycled memes, political arguments, and cat lip-sync videos??
Given these shortcomings, it’s easy to dismiss LinkedIn as a second-tier social channel.
But, if you are completely overlooking this platform… then you will be missing out on some of your biggest opportunities as a service provider.
Which is why today, I am going to shine the light on four little-known benefits of Linked that every service provider (whether you're an advertiser, an attorney, or selling insurance) should be aware of.
These four LinkedIn features can help you:
- Collect more granular data about your website visitors
- Enhance your ad targeting
- Gather high-value competitor intel
- And, eat up more real estate in the search results
Follow along to learn how you can take advantage of some of LinkedIn’s most powerful (yet under the radar) features.
1) The LinkedIn Audience Insight Tag
Similar to other platforms, Linkedin has its own audience insight tag. Technically, it's meant to be a resource for LinkedIn advertisers.
But, you don’t have to be an active advertiser to use this tag. You can create an insight tag and start gathering data on your website without ever running an ad campaign.
Go more granular than you can with Google or Facebook
The cool thing about the Insight Tag is that you can get access to data only LinkedIn can provide.
For example, you can see the job function, title, company, industry, seniority, and company size of many of your website visitors.
This identity-specific data can be highly valuable. You can use it to:
- Optimize your website
- Produce targeted marketing content
- And, directly reach out to your most engaged prospects
How to Create your Insight tag
To create your insight tag, you need to visit the LinkedIn Campaign Manager. If you've never created a Linkedin advertising account you'll be prompted to set one up.
Your ad account will be associated with your normal Linkedin account, which you will use to login and access the reports. Remember, you don't have to run an ad campaign to get access to the insight tag. You just need an ad account.
After setting up your Ad account, click your advertising account name.
Then click Account Assets > Insight Tag.
Then click Manage Insight Tag > See Tag.
Installing your tag
After clicking ‘See Tag' you'll be taken to the insight tag installation page. There are two ways you can install the Insight Tag.
- Directly copy/pasting your tag into a global element of your website (like the header or footer)
- Use a tag management tool, like Google Tag Manager.
Once your tag is installed on your site, it can take up to 24 hours for LinkedIn to validate your tag.
2) LinkedIn Lists for Remarketing
If you've ever done any kind of paid advertising online, you're probably familiar with remarketing and lookalike audiences. Believe it or not, you can use your Linkedin network to create high quality remarketing and lookalike lists.
Your network is your list(s)
When you connect with someone on Linkedin you know their name, email, and professional details. Assuming you're connected with your target audience… that's a recipe for high-quality remarketing and lookalike lists!
Getting your list off LinkedIn
There's no way around it, if you want to get your list off LinkedIn, you have to use a third-party tool to scrape your connections. (Be aware scraping does violate Linkedin's user agreement. So exercise caution if you decide to export your list). There are a lot of scraping tools on the market (both free and paid). You can search for ‘Linkedin profile scraping tools' to find the latest and greatest.
Once you’ve found a way to export your LinkedIn network data to a CSV, you can use it to create a remarketing or lookalike audience. Be mindful of GDPR and the polices of the ad platform you're advertising on.
3) Gain competitor intel from LinkedIn Ads
Linkedin ads are expensive. Really expensive! Which means if a competitor is running an ad on LinkedIn consistently… that ad is probably producing great results. (Either that or your competitors are about to go bankrupt because they're lighting money on fire.)
So these high-cost ads are an excellent source of marketing intel.
And just like on Facebook, you can scope out these ads to see how they are winning over your audience.
Here’s how to do this.
Go to your competitor's company page.
Then, scroll down to their content and select the ads filter.
This filter will reveal all of your competitor's LinkedIn Ads.
You can now examine these ads to see how your competitor is using thier ad content to attract customers.
4) Power up Your Profile
LinkedIn is a massive and authoritative site.
When you create a page on LinkedIn, you can use LinkedIn’s authority to gain more real estate in search results.
There are two types of pages you can create on LinkedIn, a profile page and a company page.
Creating a profile page can help you rank for searches of your name.
And creating a company page can help your business rank for branded search queries (searches for a business by brand name).
By and large, branded queries tend to be bottom-of-the-funnel searches, and therefore have high conversion rates.
So, just because creating a profile or company page is simple, don’t overlook this opportunity.
Setting up your LinkedIn profile and company page is low-hanging SEO fruit. It's essentially a gimmie any marketer or business owner can take advantage of utilizing.
Which LinkedIn hack will you try first?
If you’re an ambitious marketer, it’s natural to come up with complex strategies in search of better, faster results.
Yet, the four hacks I just covered are simple, readily-available opportunities.
So now that I’ve shared, I want to hear from you.
Leave a comment below, and let me know which one of the methods is new to you? And which hack are you eager to test out first?