Selling on LinkedIn: Best Practices

LinkedIn may not have the cultural clout of TikTok, Instagram, or even Facebook, but among business professionals, it is one of the most prominent social networking platforms on the web. You may not realize that, despite LinkedIn being a great place to showcase your expertise, it’s also a fantastic resource for connecting with prospects and leads.

Getting the Most Out of LinkedIn

While you can search for phrases like “how to sell on LinkedIn best practices for small business owners” to get tips for maximizing your usage of LinkedIn, you’re likely to be met with a lot of information that can be overwhelming (or even outdated). To help you make the most of your time on the platform, we’ve compiled some of the best practices you can use for LinkedIn lead generation and more. Don't forget to check out our LinkedIn Social Guide for even more tips!

Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile

If you’re new to LinkedIn, you must create a personal profile. This is where you can post everything from your latest career highlights to funny anecdotes about your morning commute. Most people use LinkedIn profiles to post business-specific rather than personal updates.

Having a profile alone, however, isn’t enough if you’re looking to learn how to sell on LinkedIn. Here are the best practices for small business owners. You also need to optimize your profile for success. This means choosing an engaging profile picture representing your professionalism and how you want to be perceived.

It also means highlighting your skills, accomplishments, and experience through your self-summary, employment history, and updates. Don’t forget to include relevant keywords used by prospects and leads who may be searching for what you have to offer.

Know Your Audience

Like in the offline world, knowing your audience is the foundation of success in any LinkedIn marketing strategy. Social selling on LinkedIn requires research into your audience’s goals, fears, hopes, and pain points. Still, the added benefit of using LinkedIn is greater control over your audience.

Because LinkedIn allows users to connect with others on the platform, you have the ability to search for people in specific industries and geographic locations. You can also search for professionals connected to people with whom you’re already connected. This makes it easy to connect with and get in front of the right people from the industries with pain points your brand can address.

Build and Maintain a Company Page

While your personal page is a great way to introduce yourself and your company to others, you’ll also want to build a company page and maintain it with media and updates. LinkedIn company pages function similarly to personal profiles in that you can post updates as your company, and users can follow your company page to receive updates about the latest developments at your business.

You can also interact with other profiles as your company through the company page, offering the ability to engage with potential customers, business partners, and more. Plus, employees of your business on LinkedIn can connect to your company page to show their association, and you can see employee activity when a team member engages with a post from your company page.

Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator

In addition to being able to search for other users and companies on LinkedIn, the platform offers access to a proprietary tool known as Sales Navigator. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a tool that integrates with CRM systems, but it can also be used as a standalone resource on the site.

This tool provides additional features designed to assist in sales functions, including advanced search and filtering options, automatic lead recommendations, the ability to create custom prospect lists, and the ability to extend your connections beyond LinkedIn’s standard network limitations. It should be noted that Sales Navigator is a paid feature of LinkedIn.

Research the Best Times to Post

As with other social media platforms, LinkedIn has times when the platform is busier than others. Because LinkedIn caters to business professionals, you’ll want to consider when your prospects and leads are most active. This is particularly true if you’re researching how to sell on LinkedIn best practices for small business owners, since there’s no point in posting content that leads won’t see.

In general, best practices suggest that mid-morning during the workweek is among the best posting times on LinkedIn. Specifically, aim for between 10 a.m. and 12 p.m.

These are times when people take lunch breaks or catch up on their LinkedIn sales activities. Of course, people in different geographic regions should be considered, and your industry’s social media habits may vary.

Create Engaging Content

It should go without saying that sales content on LinkedIn needs to be engaging, but what does engaging content look like on LinkedIn? In recent years, the platform has turned more and more toward short-form video content, and engaging LinkedIn carousel posts tend to perform well too.

In terms of engagement, use standard marketing best practices and consider what your audience cares about. Can you demonstrate solving a problem through content? Can you use content to highlight your expertise? Does your content speak the lingo or represent the culture of prospects and leads?

While it may be tempting, avoid creating content for the sake of creating content. When produced without purpose, this type of content is merely entertainment and is unlikely to support your sales goals on LinkedIn. Instead, think about the pressing matters to your audience, and create content around these issues. Personalize your content as much as possible for added engagement, and post frequently to tell LinkedIn’s algorithm that you’re active.

Review Your Analytics

To get the most out of your sales efforts on LinkedIn, review your analytics on a regular basis. LinkedIn analytics insights can help you key in on what content has shown the most engagement, and this data can then help you shape future sales efforts.

When reviewing LinkedIn analytics, don’t merely focus on your posts. You should also consider your analytics for message acceptance and connection requests.

Analytics can show you which messages received the best reception, allowing you to fine-tune your approach in the future. You can also include introduction messages and connection requests to people you don’t know on the platform. Measuring the number of accepted connection requests and then analyzing your introduction messages can offer insights that can help you connect with a greater number of leads in the future.

Use InMail for More Personalization and Authority

To get the most out of direct messages on LinkedIn, consider subscribing to InMail, a paid, premium feature. InMail allows you to send direct messages to people you are not connected with.

Because of this feature, sending mass messages to prospects and leads across the platform may be tempting. However, you should still focus on personalization to make a good impression and achieve the biggest impact. Personalized InMail templates can help speed up the process, but make sure you take the time to include messaging that shows you’ve done your research about a particular lead or prospect.

Feature Your Best Work

Before a lead or prospect connects or engages through messaging with you, they’re likely to check out your LinkedIn profile. As mentioned above, you’ll want to optimize your profile to reflect who you are and how you want to be perceived. Beyond that, you should also highlight your best work in the Featured section.

The Featured section is an area toward the top of your profile feed that displays content that you want to showcase. You can start leveraging LinkedIn's featured section content by thinking about what you want people to see when visiting and scrolling through your profile.

Consider including a demo video or brand showcase in the Featured section if you're selling a product or service. If you want prospects and leads to contact you directly or visit your website to learn more, create content designed to prompt action on the part of a lead or prospect.

Treat LinkedIn Like In-Person Sales

Regarding how to sell on LinkedIn, the best practices for small business owners are to treat every interaction like you would during in-person sales. Know your audience, speak to people in a language they understand, address pain points, and utilize tools like InMail and Sales Navigator to improve your impact. With time, dedication, and attention to detail, LinkedIn can become one of your most valuable web sales resources.

Contact E-Marketing Associates to Learn How We Can Enhance Your Online Marketing

Whether you want to boost your LinkedIn visibility for greater sales success or are looking for a partner to help your business expand its reach on the web, E-Marketing Associates can help. Sign up for our marketing strategies newsletter right now, and contact us on the web to learn how we can take your social sales strategy to the next level.