The ultimate guide to LinkedIn marketing [best practices for 2024]

Mattison Hofstedt

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May 23, 2023

October 17, 2024

LinkedIn marketer wearing yellow.

Understanding LinkedIn marketing in 2023

Set up your LinkedIn marketing goals

Optimize your LinkedIn business page

Build a strong LinkedIn presence

Create a content strategy for LinkedIn success

Target the right audience with paid campaigns

Track your success on LinkedIn

Looking to up your LinkedIn marketing game in 2023? Look no further than our ultimate guide, complete with the latest best practices and expert tips to help you succeed on the platform.

If you're looking to make the most out of your LinkedIn marketing in 2023, you're in the right place! 

LinkedIn is one of the most powerful social media platforms for businesses, and it's time to leverage its potential. In this guide, we'll cover everything you need to know about LinkedIn marketing in 2023. 

From understanding its power to building a strong presence and creating engaging content, we've got you covered.

Understanding LinkedIn marketing in 2023

LinkedIn marketing has come a long way in recent years. It's no longer just a platform for job seekers and recruiters. With about 123.5 million active users using LinkedIn each day, it is now a powerful marketing tool for businesses of all sizes. 

LinkedIn offers a unique opportunity to connect with professionals and decision-makers in your industry, build your brand, and drive traffic to your website.

In 2023, it's predicted that LinkedIn will continue to grow in popularity, with even more businesses using it as a part of their marketing strategy. As the world becomes more digital, LinkedIn has become an essential platform for businesses to establish their online presence and reach their target audience.

We're going to let you in on a secret before you get to the bottom of this article... Video is one of the best ways to drive more results LinkedIn—and they aren't hard to create either. Try creating professional videos for free (like the one below) using the text you already have.

The importance of LinkedIn for businesses

LinkedIn is a powerful platform for businesses looking to reach a professional audience. With over 55 million registered companies and around 93% of B2B marketers using the platform for content marketing, LinkedIn is undoubtedly worth investing in. Whether you're looking to generate leads, build brand awareness, or establish yourself as a thought leader, LinkedIn is the platform to be on.

One of the biggest advantages of LinkedIn for B2B marketing compared to other social platforms is its ability to target specific demographics. 

With LinkedIn’s targeting options, businesses can reach their ideal audience based on factors such as job title, industry, location, and more. 

This means that businesses can tailor their content to their audience and ensure that their message is seen by the right people (not just guess).

Key LinkedIn marketing trends for 2023

Here are a few LinkedIn marketing trends that businesses should not ignore in 2023:

  • Video content on the rise - Video marketing has been on the rise for the past few years, and LinkedIn is no exception. In 2023, businesses will use LinkedIn video content to stand out from the crowd and engage with their audience. Whether it's product demos, behind-the-scenes footage, or interviews with industry experts, video content is a powerful way to connect with your audience.
  • Personalization is key - Personalized messaging is becoming more crucial than ever, and businesses must tailor their content to their audience's needs and interests. By personalizing your content, you can create a more meaningful connection with your audience and increase engagement.
  • Employee advocacy - Employee advocacy is expected to gain traction in 2023. Encouraging employees to share and engage with your content can help businesses expand their reach. By leveraging the power of your employees' networks, you can increase your brand's visibility and credibility.
  • AI-powered marketing - Artificial intelligence is becoming more prevalent in marketing, and LinkedIn is no exception. In 2023, businesses will use AI-powered tools to optimize their LinkedIn campaigns, including ad targeting, content creation, and more.

Set up your LinkedIn marketing goals

Before diving into LinkedIn marketing, it's crucial to set your goals. What do you want to achieve with your LinkedIn presence? Knowing what you're trying to achieve will make it easier for you to Here are a few goals to consider:

  • Establish your brand as an industry leader - By sharing valuable content, engaging with your audience, and showcasing your expertise, you can position your brand as a thought leader in your industry.
  • Generate leads and sales - LinkedIn is a powerful lead generation tool, and businesses can use it to drive traffic to their website and convert leads into customers.
  • Grow your network of connections - Building a strong network of connections on LinkedIn can help businesses expand their reach and increase their visibility.
  • Build brand awareness - By creating a strong brand presence on LinkedIn, businesses can increase their visibility and reach a wider audience.

Optimize your LinkedIn business page

Once you've set your goals, it's time to optimize your LinkedIn business page! 

Make sure your page is complete and up-to-date, with a clear description of your business and its offerings. Your LinkedIn business page is the face of your business on the platform. 

It's crucial to create an appealing and informative page that tells visitors what your business is all about, your products and services, and why they should connect with you. 

Create a compelling company description

The company description is one of the most critical sections of your LinkedIn company page. It's where you showcase who you are and what you do. Make sure your company description is clear, concise, and engaging. Use language that resonates with your target audience and highlights your unique value proposition. Don't be afraid to inject some personality into your description to make it more memorable.

For example, if you're a software company, instead of saying "We develop software solutions," you could say "At XYZ Software, we're passionate about creating innovative software solutions that help businesses streamline their operations and achieve their goals."

Remember, your company description is your chance to make a great first impression. Make it count!

Need inspiration? Check out the Storykit company page below. 

Storykit LinkedIn page

Design an eye-catching banner image

Your banner image is the first thing visitors see when they visit your company page. It's essential to create an eye-catching banner that reflects your brand and captures your visitor's attention. Your banner image should be high-quality, visually appealing, and relevant to your business.

Consider using your banner image to showcase your products, services, or company culture. You could also use it to promote a specific campaign or event. Whatever you choose, make sure it aligns with your brand and messaging.

For example, if you're a travel company, you could use a banner image of a beautiful destination to inspire visitors to learn more about your travel packages and services.

Need inspiration? Check out the Salesforce page below. 

Salesforce LinkedIn page

Showcase your products and services

Take advantage of LinkedIn's product and service features. This section allows you to showcase your offerings and provide detailed information to potential customers. Use high-quality images and videos to showcase your products and services in action.

Make sure to highlight the unique benefits of each product or service and how they can help your customers solve their pain points. Use customer testimonials or case studies to provide social proof and build credibility.

For example, if you're a marketing agency, you could showcase your services such as SEO, PPC, social media marketing, and content marketing. You could also provide case studies that demonstrate how your services helped clients achieve their marketing goals.

Need inspiration? Check out Hubspot’s CRM product page below. 

Hubspot product page

Build a strong LinkedIn presence

Now that you've optimized your LinkedIn company page, it's time to start building a strong presence on the platform. LinkedIn is a powerful tool for networking, building your personal brand, and establishing yourself as an industry leader. Here are a few tips to help you get started.

Grow your network of connections

Connecting with other professionals in your industry is key to expanding your LinkedIn network. Reach out to peers, customers, and partners to establish yourself on the platform. But don't just connect with anyone - make sure to connect with people who are relevant to your industry and who can provide value to your network. You can also join LinkedIn groups related to your industry to connect with like-minded professionals.

Engage with your audience

Engagement is crucial for LinkedIn success. Make sure to respond to comments on your posts and articles, share and like industry-related content, and interact with your followers. This will help you build relationships with your audience and establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry.

According to LinkedIn expert Richard Richard van der Blom, to get the most out of the LinkedIn algorithm, you should answer comments within 12 hours.

Another way to engage with your audience is by creating and sharing valuable content. This can include blog posts, articles, infographics, videos, and more. Make sure your content is relevant to your industry and provides value to your audience.

Establish your brand as an industry leader

To establish your brand as an industry leader, you must showcase your expertise and knowledge.

Share thought-provoking content, participate in industry-related conversations, and post articles that demonstrate your expertise. You can also create and share case studies, whitepapers, and other forms of content that showcase your experience and knowledge.

One way to establish yourself as an industry leader is by speaking at conferences and events related to your industry. This will give you the opportunity to share your expertise with a wider audience and establish yourself as an authority in your field. You can also participate in webinars and podcasts to share your insights with a virtual audience.

Create a content strategy for LinkedIn success

Now that you've optimized your company page and built a strong presence, it's time to focus on content creation. Creating valuable content is essential to attract and retain followers, establish your brand as an authority in your industry, and ultimately drive more business. 

Here are some tips to help you create a winning content strategy.

Types of content that work best on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a platform for professional networking, so it's essential to focus on content that is informative and relevant. Consider sharing industry news, research and statistics, and how-to guides that offer insights and solutions to your audience's pain points. When creating content, always keep your target audience in mind and tailor your messaging to their needs.

Another effective type of content to share on LinkedIn is longer-form content, such as articles and whitepapers. These types of content allow you to dive deeper into a topic and offer more in-depth insights and analysis. They're also an excellent opportunity to showcase your expertise and establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry.

Craft engaging LinkedIn posts

Best practices for text

When posting on LinkedIn, it's essential to keep them informative, engaging, and concise. Use catchy headlines that grab your audience's attention and encourage them to read more. Additionally, ask questions to encourage interaction with your audience and create a dialogue around your content.

Best practices for media

To create truly engaging posts, video should be your go-to format. It's no secret that video content reigns supreme on LinkedIn when it comes to capturing and captivating your audience. In fact, video gets 5x more engagement on LinkedIn than other types of content. 

Source: LinkedIn

Instead of relying solely on whitepapers, reports, or valuable insights, consider using video as the medium to present your information and pique interest in your content.

Videos convey information in a visually compelling and concise manner, making it easier to communicate complex concepts or share compelling stories. Moreover, the autoplay feature in LinkedIn's newsfeed grabs users' attention, increasing the likelihood of engagement. 

Video content on LinkedIn also helps humanize your brand, establishes credibility, and fosters deeper connections with your target audience, making it a powerful tool for driving engagement and achieving your marketing objectives.

Here is an example of how you can present the key take aways of a report in a video.

Learn how to post a video on LinkedIn and what LinkedIn video specs you need to succeed. Here are some other video templates to inspire you as well! 

Ready to dive into video creation? Try Storykit for free and turn the text you already have into engaging videos for LinkedIn.

Utilize LinkedIn articles and long-form content

LinkedIn articles are an excellent way to showcase your expertise and provide valuable insights to your audience. When creating articles, make sure they are well-written, informative, and engaging. Incorporating images and videos can also make your content more visually appealing and increase engagement. Additionally, make sure your articles are optimized for SEO to increase their visibility on the platform.

Long-form content, such as whitepapers and e-books, can also be effective on LinkedIn. These types of content allow you to dive deeper into a topic and provide more in-depth insights and analysis. They're also an excellent opportunity to showcase your expertise and establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry.

Here are some tips for writing articles on LinkedIn.

Start a LinkedIn newsletter

Starting a LinkedIn newsletter is a fantastic way to share your content with the right people. LinkedIn has a large community of professionals, making it a perfect platform to connect with your target audience. By creating a newsletter, you can provide valuable insights, trends, and exclusive content to establish yourself as an expert in your field. This helps you attract potential clients, employers, or collaborators. 

With LinkedIn's networking capabilities, your newsletter can reach a wider audience and increase your visibility. By consistently delivering valuable content, you can build credibility and strengthen your professional profile on LinkedIn.

Here you can see how Storykit promotes their newsletter directly on their LinkedIn page.

Storykit LinkedIn Newsletter

Use paid advertising on LinkedIn 

Utilizing paid advertising on LinkedIn is a highly effective strategy for achieving your marketing goals. With paid ads, you have the advantage of instantly putting your messages in front of the right audience, ensuring that your content reaches the people who matter most to your business. This targeted approach allows you to tailor your messaging based on factors such as industry, job title, location, and more, maximizing the relevance and impact of your ads. 

Furthermore, LinkedIn's advertising platform provides valuable insights and analytics, enabling you to quickly learn what type of content resonates with your audience. 

This data-driven feedback loop allows you to optimize your campaigns in real-time, making necessary adjustments and refining your content strategy to generate even better results.

By using LinkedIn ads best practices, you can effectively and efficiently achieve your marketing objectives while gaining valuable insights to drive future success.

Here are some types of paid ads available on LinkedIn along with a brief description for each:

  1. Sponsored Content: Sponsored content allows you to promote your updates, articles, or blog posts directly in users' LinkedIn feeds, increasing visibility and engagement.
  2. Sponsored InMail: Sponsored InMail allows you to send personalized messages directly to users' LinkedIn inboxes, allowing for direct communication and targeted lead generation.
  3. Text Ads: Text ads allow you to display text-based ads on the right-hand side or top of LinkedIn pages, driving traffic to your website or landing page.
  4. Dynamic Ads: LinkedIn Dynamic ads allows you to tailor personalized ads to each viewer based on their LinkedIn profile data, creating a more personalized and engaging experience.
  5. LinkedIn Carousel Ads: LinkedIn Carousel Ads allow you to showcase multiple images or videos within a single ad unit, enabling you to tell a more comprehensive story and drive engagement.
  6. Display Ads: Display ads allow you to run visually appealing banner ads on LinkedIn's desktop and mobile platforms to increase brand awareness and drive website visits.
  7. Video Ads: LinkedIn video ads allow you to share video content with LinkedIn users, capturing attention and delivering engaging brand messages to your target audience.
  8. Conversion Ads: LinkedIn conversion ads let you optimize for specific actions, such as lead generation or website conversions, by utilizing LinkedIn's tracking and conversion tracking capabilities.
  9. Lead Gen Forms: Lead gen forms allow you to collect valuable lead information directly on LinkedIn with pre-filled forms, simplifying the conversion process and increasing lead generation efficiency.
  10. Event Ads: Event ads let you promote your events, webinars, or conferences to targeted LinkedIn users, increasing registrations and attendance.
  11. Message Ads: LinkedIn message ads deliver personalized messages to targeted LinkedIn users' inboxes, initiating direct conversations and driving engagement.
  12. Job Ads: LinkedIn recruitment ads let you advertise job openings within your organization, attracting qualified candidates and driving applications.

These various types of paid ads on LinkedIn offer a range of options to suit your marketing goals, helping you effectively reach and engage with your target audience. LinkedIn advertising costs can be quite expensive so make sure you are using high-quality content with the right ad specs and know the goals you are trying to achieve.

Target the right audience with paid campaigns

Many businesses struggle to effectively target their audience and end up wasting valuable ad dollars. But fear not, there are steps you can take to ensure that your ads are seen by the right people.

Define your target audience

Before you can effectively target your audience, you need to know who they are. Take the time to define your ideal customer. Consider factors such as job titles, industries, seniority levels, and other demographics pertinent to your business. This will ensure that your ad dollars are being spent where they are most effective.

But don't stop there. Take a deep dive into your audience's behavior. What are their pain points? What motivates them? What are their goals? Understanding your audience's behavior will allow you to create ads that speak directly to their needs and desires.

Keep in mind, targeting companies can be more expensive than targeting industries or job titles. The same goes for different markets. Learn more about LinkedIn advertising costs here.

Use LinkedIn's targeting options

LinkedIn offers countless targeting options to help build a specific audience. Use targeting filters to hone in on users based on their career path, educational experience, or geographic location. Additionally, you can utilize Matched Audiences to retarget users who have already visited your website or engaged with your brand on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn also offers interest targeting, which allows you to target users based on their interests and hobbies. This can be a powerful way to reach users who may not fit into your typical demographic but are still interested in your products or services.

Use retargeting and custom audiences

Retargeting is a powerful feature that allows you to outreach to users who have already interacted with your website or previous ads. By targeting users who have already shown an interest in your brand, you can increase the likelihood of conversion.

Custom audiences allow you to use your own contact lists to target leads and current customers on LinkedIn. This can be a great way to nurture leads and keep your brand top of mind for current customers.

By taking the time to define your audience, utilizing LinkedIn's targeting options, and leveraging retargeting and custom audiences, you can ensure that your carousel ad campaign is seen by the right people and drives the results you're looking for.

Need help setting up and structuring your campaigns? Take a look at Maximize social media video ads: The full-funnel approach for actionable tips.

Track your success on LinkedIn 

Tracking your marketing success on LinkedIn is crucial to understanding the effectiveness of your efforts and making data-driven decisions. LinkedIn analytics provides a range of tools and metrics to help you measure and evaluate your performance.

Here are some key aspects to consider when tracking your marketing success on LinkedIn:

  1. Reach and impressions: Tracking reach and impressions on LinkedIn is crucial for assessing the visibility and impact of your content. Reach measures the unique users who see your content, while impressions represent the total views. Monitoring these metrics helps optimize distribution strategies, evaluate content effectiveness, and gauge brand presence on LinkedIn. Understanding reach and impressions empowers data-driven decisions for maximizing visibility and achieving marketing goals.
  2. Engagement metrics: LinkedIn offers insights into the engagement your content receives, including metrics such as likes, comments, shares, and click-through rates (CTRs). These metrics can help you understand how well your content resonates with your audience and which types of posts generate the most engagement.
  3. Follower growth: Monitoring the growth of your LinkedIn followers over time is a valuable indicator of your brand's reach and popularity. By analyzing follower trends, you can assess the impact of your content and campaigns on audience acquisition and retention.
  4. Conversion tracking: LinkedIn's conversion tracking allows you to measure specific actions taken by users after interacting with your ads, such as website visits, form submissions, or purchases. By implementing conversion tracking, you can evaluate the effectiveness of your campaigns in driving desired outcomes and optimize your strategies accordingly.
  5. Audience insights: LinkedIn provides audience insights that help you understand the demographics, industries, job titles, and locations of your audience. This information enables you to refine your targeting and tailor your content to better resonate with your audience's preferences and needs.
  6. A/B testing: Experimenting with different ad variations, targeting options, or content formats is an effective way to optimize your LinkedIn marketing campaigns. By conducting A/B tests, you can compare the performance of different elements and make data-informed decisions to improve your results over time.
  7. Return on investment (ROI): Evaluating the financial impact of your LinkedIn marketing efforts is essential. Assessing the ROI allows you to understand the cost-effectiveness of your campaigns and compare the value generated against the resources invested.
  8. Benchmarking: Comparing your performance against industry benchmarks and competitors can provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of your LinkedIn marketing efforts. Understanding how you stack up against others in your industry can help identify areas for improvement and set realistic goals.

By regularly monitoring and analyzing these metrics, you can gain a comprehensive understanding of your marketing success on LinkedIn.

This data-driven approach empowers you to optimize your strategies, refine your targeting, and improve the overall effectiveness of your LinkedIn marketing initiatives.

Keep in mind, the goals that you set initially should help determine the type of metrics you want to be tracking. More isn't always better.

Get the most out of your LinkedIn marketing

With these tips, you should be well on your way to LinkedIn marketing success in 2023. Remember, LinkedIn is an ever-evolving platform, so keep an eye on the latest trends and adjust your strategy accordingly.


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