B2B marketing is a vital part of any LinkedIn strategy: with 95% of prospects not in the market to buy immediately, finding good-fit leads is a needle in a haystack activity without a sustained, sophisticated marketing funnel.
Account for these 5 LinkedIn trends with your B2B marketing strategy to consistently create demand and prove the efficacy of your digital marketing efforts.
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Trend 1: Engagement is up (but so is content volume…)
LinkedIn continues to grow in importance for the B2B market. Members viewed 22% more Feed Updates last year than the year before, and 40% of LinkedIn visitors engage organically with a Page every week. The company also noted a 25% year-on-year increase in public conversations on the platform, and a 25% increase in the amount of content shared publicly.
It’s great news for B2B marketing, but increased engagement calls for some strategic shake-ups. With more content than ever, marketers must be aware that their percentage share of audience views could diminish without a regular, high-quality content strategy.
What to do
The key is a B2B marketing strategy that’s consistent. It’s not enough to post sporadic or subpar content. With 2.7 million LinkedIn Pages posting weekly or more, you need a content plan for topics and insights your audience will find valuable, and a content calendar to make sure these updates are posted frequently and consistently.
The results will speak for themselves: LinkedIn’s internal data shows that LinkedIn Pages that post weekly have 5.6x more followers than those that post monthly, and grow their following 7x faster.
How to do it
Use LinkedIn’s content suggestions feature to find content ideas that will attract and engage your target audience. It shows you topics and articles trending among your ICP, which you can share or use as a starting point to generate ideas for your own posts.
To improve consistency, start scheduling posts in advance. Consider how AI tools can help you speed up how you outline your posts.
Trend 2: AI is great for personalization – but also adds more spam
Top of mind everywhere in 2023 has been the advances in AI, and LinkedIn is no exception. These new tools can save you time and help with precision targeting and personalization. And such an outcome shouldn’t be underplayed: 65% of consumers say personalization is key to creating brand loyalty in 2023.
However, LinkedIn has been around long enough now – and has increased in popularity so much – that spam has become a real concern. The company has made moves to crack down on irrelevant content with the LinkedIn focused inbox and spam reporting features. The rise of AI will only increase the amount of content on the platform – and, unless human quality assurance takes place as well, is likely to increase concerns about irrelevance and spam.
What to do
For effective B2B marketing on LinkedIn, you need a way to increase the percentage of time users spend engaging with your brand, which means you need a lot of content. However, it has to be good and clearly (and immediately) differentiate itself from the incoming stream of hastily-created AI posts.
How to do it
Customers are tired of fluff. To add value, create content that speaks directly to your audience’s pain points and educates them, rather than immediately selling them your offering.
Where possible, make content interactive. Include formats like polls and quizzes, which will give you more data insights into your audience as a bonus. Even carousels can add an interactive element to your posts, as viewers have to click through to the next piece of information.
To maximize your content’s value, look for opportunities to repurpose your work into different formats. Turn blogs into digestible carousels, Twitter threads into LinkedIn posts, and recordings from live LinkedIn Events into key takeaway snippets for socials.
Trend 3: B2B buyers want humans, not brands
For too long, B2B brands have focussed on what their product can do, not the benefits it offers their audience. Now, business decision-makers expect vendors to have real subject matter expertise and understand their needs precisely.
What does this mean for how you approach B2B marketing on LinkedIn? Alongside the need for greater personalization and audience insight, you need to focus on ways to make your company’s leaders seem human and knowledgeable. One of the best ways to do so is via thought leadership content on LinkedIn.
What to do
It’s important to create thought leadership content and get your name out there, especially if you’re a small or newer company. But you need to make sure this content is of the highest quality. Although almost 90% of decision-makers find thought leadership builds trust, 30% rate existing thought leadership as mediocre or worse.
Since the pandemic, the amount of thought leadership content has only increased, as more of the sales and marketing process has switched online. 38% of B2B decision makers think the market is oversaturated with this type of content, even while agreeing on its importance for brand reputation. Your content needs to genuinely add value for your audience if you want to stand out.
How to do it
Get specific with content that educates your niche. Involve subject matter experts across your organization. If you’re offering coaching services, for example, get leaders within your organization to talk about how they built out their brand and thought leader status or scaled their customer base and kept consistent motivation.
If you have multiple subject matter experts or thought leaders within your company, encourage each of them to leverage their own accounts to post insights. You can share their posts on your Company Page as part of your B2B marketing strategy.
The most important thing is not to over-complicate content production. Keep it as human and down to earth as possible to build genuine, authentic connections.
Trend 4: The spotlight is on LinkedIn Live Events
Video-based content is on the rise across B2B marketing, and LinkedIn is no exception. LinkedIn members are scheduling 176% more LinkedIn Live events year on year, with a 75% increase in the number of spontaneous events. Event attendance is increasing even more rapidly than the number of events being scheduled, suggesting that, on average, each LinkedIn Event is attracting more users.
What to do
Look for opportunities to add LinkedIn Live Events to your B2B marketing strategy. Not only will you benefit from an attendance list that you can easily retarget or send to Sales for prospecting, but they offer a great opportunity to build community, learn more about audience pain points, and respond to FAQs in real-time. You can also repurpose any recordings or insights from subject matter experts into other content, such as blogs or social posts.
How to do it
You need a Live Events strategy. As part of your content plan, consider internal subject matter experts you could interview or external experts you could invite onto a panel or webinar. When planning live events, pay attention to format: do you want to host a Q&A, a how-to strategy session, or an informal knowledge share?
Whatever you choose, give as much attention to advertising the event as you do hosting it. And consider your follow-up strategy: how will you continue to nurture attendees after the event is over?
Trend 5: Buyers go mobile
Mobile phones and tablets now generate roughly 70% of the traffic on the web, and more than half of LinkedIn users now view their feeds primarily on mobile devices.
B2B marketing on LinkedIn needs to adapt to account for this engagement on the go or risk quickly becoming outdated.
What to do
Adapt your B2B marketing strategy to match the reality that business decisions are now being made everywhere. Consider what this increase in flexibility means for stakeholders’ attention spans: you now have more opportunities to engage leads but less time in each interaction to do so.
How to do it
Remember, what looks good on the web won’t always look good on other devices. Always optimize your content and adverts for mobile users. Keep ads and videos vertically oriented, and make sure closed captions play automatically.
Your complete guide to B2B marketing on LinkedIn
As we continue through 2023, consistent, high-quality content will be the key to successful B2B marketing on Linkedin. Account for the five trends above with our tips and you’ll have a strong marketing funnel in no time.
If you need further content marketing tips, download our complete guides to LinkedIn prospecting, from successful copywriting to messaging templates that convert.
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