New year, new me — why not in business too? The new year offers numerous opportunities to take your brand to the next level.

If your business isn't yet active on LinkedIn, today we'll show you some good reasons why B2B marketing on LinkedIn should definitely be on your list of New Year's resolutions.

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Build up a range

Especially as a start-up, your own network is usually manageable at the beginning. LinkedIn can remedy this very easily and sustainably expand your network even in a short period of time.

It is therefore worthwhile to interact with like-minded people: The interactions such as likes, comments or shares are also visible to their networks, so that people outside your network also become aware of you.

The whole thing also has another positive side effect: By being present, you can effectively increase the level of awareness of your brand with just a small budget.

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Connect and exchange ideas with other marketers

Just like face-to-face, interacting with people in similar positions on LinkedIn can help you find new ideas, solve challenges, or simply find inspiration for specific topics.

For particularly subject-related topics, it is also worth taking a look at forums where you can post (re) questions. Anyone who follows the posts in this forum can respond to them. This gives you the opportunity to receive valuable input from a wide variety of companies, industries, niches or even countries.

As a result, you can always learn from the big players and other established companies in your industry and learn one or the other trick.

Of course, these contacts are also always useful for business relationships later on — whether as a customer, service provider or sales partner.

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The modern form of customer acquisition

Cleaning clinics and advertising calls are a thing of the past: Customers are now more easily acquired on social media. Potential customers will be more easily aware of your company and its products and services on LinkedIn if you are active there.

The option of direct contact is also particularly practical here: This allows you to easily get in touch with potential customers via the chat function.

This variant is often faster and more personal than formal emails and thus enables start-ups in particular to establish proximity to their network.

You can also actively reach out to potential customers: They can be easily narrowed down and contacted via filtered search queries.

But here too, care should be taken: opinions differ significantly, especially when it comes to 'cold calling, 'on LinkedIn. To avoid this, contact can also be established in smaller steps, for example by responding to contributions, comments and contact requests.

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Advertising and positioning of your brand

Especially as an unknown start-up, LinkedIn helps to give your brand a voice and position it: Who are you, what are you offering, why are you doing it, who are you working with and other questions can be answered so easily.

At the same time, you can also promote your own products and services — but this is not the focus of LinkedIn B2B marketing. No buyer persona wants to be filled with advertising on LinkedIn by providers.

Our tip: Focus your content on adding value to your network in order to make it more sustainable. It is advisable to use a mix of “more personal” content & professional expertise for your content. You should use the pitch of your service/product less frequently and in a very targeted manner.

In general, the following applies to sales on LinkedIn: Build long-term relationships, interact with the community, be perceived as an expert/industry leader, automatically receive inbound inquiries.

Inspiration and learnings from brands in the industry

When you connect with like-minded people on LinkedIn, you can not only learn tricks, you can also learn completely different things from the content of other brands.

For example, you can learn about the advantages and disadvantages of certain business models or practices and weigh up for yourself how you can implement this for your brand.

This allows you not only to learn from others' mistakes and save valuable capital and time, but also draw inspiration from what you would like to try out or avoid in the future.

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You never stop learning

LinkedIn is one of the best platforms if you want to continue your education: Through courses, certificates and seminars on a wide variety of topics, you can demonstrate your expertise and share it with others.

LinkedIn Learning in particular offers a variety of courses in a wide variety of areas, from marketing to corporate management, recruiting and time management to specific technical topics.

These video courses can also be useful for employee training, for example, and enrich your team and yourself.

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And of course: employer branding and recruiting

Last but not least, positioning your brand on LinkedIn can of course also be used specifically for recruitment.

Apart from the job portal, which LinkedIn already has, you can introduce your company to potential new employees: You can give insights into what it is like to work for the company, what the brand stands for, how everyday life works, what benefits there are and much more. There are no limits to your creativity.

This type of content gives you the opportunity to search for employees outside of your bubble. Never underestimate the positive network effect!

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This is why B2B start-ups should take personal branding on LinkedIn seriously

However, your personal brand is just as important, if not even more important than your business LinkedIn: Since the reach on private accounts is higher than with brand accounts, it is worthwhile to become active there as a personal brand in parallel with your business LinkedIn.

The benefits? Your personal brand makes it easier to establish personal proximity to your network. This is primarily due to the fact that people identify more with other people than with brands.

So don't be afraid to share personal facts with your network, such as insights into your everyday life or tips that you have acquired as a marketer.

This creates an expert status that makes potential partners, customers and investors aware of you. Encourage your colleagues to actively develop their personal brands on LinkedIn — just like our founders did Yannik & Tobi 🙂

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Do you want to implement these tips right away and learn more about websites, conversion optimization and our learnings as a start-up? Then let us Connect on LinkedIn! 🤙🏼

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