Building Your Wholesale Brand on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the world’s most popular business social network designed for career and business professionals to connect. But unlike some other social networks that can be focus on making friends and gaining followers, LinkedIn is all about building strategic relationships—relationships with potential customers, clients, and partners.

With over 660 million members from almost every country and every industry you can imagine, LinkedIn is a B2B haven. And, of all the social media platforms, it’s the one that is most effective when it comes to generating B2B leads.

According to a survey by Demand Wave, 59% of B2B marketers say LinkedIn generates leads for their business; 38% of B2B marketers say LinkedIn is generating revenue for them; and 65% of B2B companies have acquired a customer through LinkedIn.

9 ways to grow your wholesale business with LinkedIn

LinkedIn is much more than an important part of the social media marketing mix for your wholesale business. You can also think of it as a primary lead generation and relationship-building tool that will also effectively build your company’s brand, give your company fantastic exposure, and drive a large amount of traffic to your website. In fact, in many social media industry reports, LinkedIn is one of the top places for enhancing brand recognition, especially for the B2B sector.

To help you make the most of LinkedIn as a marketing vehicle for your wholesale business, we’ve compiled a list of ways you can use this powerhouse social media platform to find new customers, create new business contacts, and ultimately grow your business locally and globally.

1. Post regularly, but don’t overdo it

‍Posting regularly on any social media platform is vital to keeping your audience interested and engaged. However, the shelf-life for LinkedIn posts tends to be longer, so it’s important not to overdo it so that your posts aren’t competing with one another.

According to LinkedIn, companies that post at least 20 times per month will reach at least 60 percent of their audience.

A good rule of thumb for posting on LinkedIn is once a day. If you do post more than once a day, try to keep several hours between them.

2. Join groups

‍Search out groups on LinkedIn to join that are relevant to your target audience and where you might want to establish your brand as an influencer. Then, take part in the conversations in those groups, remembering to always add value. This is a highly effective way of not only finding out what your audience is talking about but also offering advice to and interacting with them.

3. Use Showcase Pages to feature your products and services

‍LinkedIn Showcase Pages allow you to highlight specific areas of your business and all aspects of your brand, such as product lines, individual business units, or social initiatives. They are an extension of your LinkedIn company page and provide a fantastic opportunity to feature unique content with your target audience. Showcase Pages have the same posting options and analytics as your company page to help meet your growth objectives.

4. Create content that is relevant, valuable, and engaging

‍Great content will grab your audience’s interest, build their trust and then aim them toward your products and services. To ensure your content is valuable and memorable, remember to balance content focused on making the sale or promoting your products and services with content that teaches your audience to solve a problem or do something better and establishes your business as a thought leader.

5. Invest in advertising

‍LinkedIn offers a diverse range of advertising vehicles for any size of business to build brand awareness and generate leads. These advertising vehicles include Sponsored Content (boosting a regular post), Message Ads (sending personalized custom messages), Text Ads (a text plus a small image ad that appears in a user’s feed), Display Ads (engaging prospects with visual ads that inspire them to take action), and Video Ads (a video ad that plays automatically and appears in a user’s feed). With each LinkedIn marketing campaign, you can precisely target your ideal audience, create effective ads quickly that align with your brand and unique message, and control your advertising budget and costs with flexible pricing options.

6. SEO your company page

‍It’s common knowledge that success with online marketing is greatly enhanced when search engines are better able to find you and understand what your B2B business is about. This is true not just for your company’s website but also for your company’s LinkedIn page. When you search engine optimize your LinkedIn company page, it’ll be easier for your audience to find you. Here are a few things you can do to make the most of your page:

• Put relevant keywords into your company description and page text.
• Include action words in your business title and company name.
• Add a link to your website or company blog in your profile, your company description, and your posts.

7. Cross-post from your existing social media profiles

‍Struggling to figure out what to post on LinkedIn? Start with posting the content you already have on your other social profiles. Check your Twitter posts, for instance, and look for posts that received the most retweets, and then post that content to your LinkedIn company page. Similarly, on your Facebook business page, look for content that was shared the most and use that. As long as the content you post on LinkedIn is consistent with your brand and unique message, sharing the most popular content from your other social media profiles on LinkedIn can provide access to a whole new audience.

8. Invite your employees to connect and share content

‍An effective and easy way to expand your company’s reach on LinkedIn and give you greater exposure is to have your employees pitch in! Ask them to create and complete their individual profiles on LinkedIn and note their current position at your company in their profile title. You can also have them follow your company and ask them to like and share your posts.

9. Track analytics to measure your results and improve content

‍The analytics feature on your LinkedIn company page is a simple, free tool that will give you basic measurements of how your page is doing, who it’s appealing to, and where you can improve. The information provides insight into the performance of your page with rich analytics that gauge trends across metrics and time periods. You’ll see how many fans you have, who your top influencers are, and which posts are realizing the most engagement so that you can refine your page’s content accordingly.

‍Find your next B2B customer on LinkedIn

If you thought LinkedIn was just for job-seekers, think again! Every single day, over 660 million members use this popular business social network to discuss their industry, establish relationships, share expertise, and build their careers. It’s the ideal resource for B2B marketing and offers your wholesale business (whether big or small) many opportunities to develop and grow. With LinkedIn, your business has direct access to customers, competitors, partners, and prospects. So, it’s no longer the time to ask, “Why should we use LinkedIn?” but rather, “How do we master B2B marketing on LinkedIn?”