Brands of all sizes around the world, from B2B to B2C have recognized by now that they not only shouldn't, but can't ignore social media. One issue many brands continue to face, even now, is which platforms they should be investing their time and efforts into.
The best strategy to address this problem is to begin by understanding who your target personas are, and then to figure out which platforms they are using.
Here are 3 reasons that you must use LinkedIn advertising if your personas include B2B decision makers at the director and C-suite levels.
1. Pay for traffic from Your LinkedIn Ads, not for social interactions.
One great benefit to LinkedIn Advertising is that while Facebook and Twitter charge you for any type of interaction on your ads, whether its a click or just a like or favorite, LinkedIn's CPC advertising only charges you for actual link clicks where someone clicks through to your website or blog.
If you're producing great content, you're using the LinkedIn Ads interface effectively, and you understand how to target your personas on LinkedIn then while you likely will see many likes and even some shares on your LinkedIn posts and ads, and in my experience gain slews of followers as well, you don't have to pay directly for any of that growth or those interactions, only for the clicks.
2. Reach Decisions Makers and Senior Employees with LinkedIn Advertising.
While Facebook and Twitter are a great resource for reaching the employees and middle managers at the organizations that you want to work for, the only way you're going to reach the directors and C-suite, the people who have the most pull or even the direct control over whether to hire or fire your company, consistently is on LinkedIn. 81% of B2B decision makers visit LinkedIn at least monthly, 26% of them for primarily business reasons. This is at a higher rate than any other established social media platform.
Source: MarketingCharts.com
3. Targeting Your Personas on LinkedIn Offers Better Organic Reach
As I mentioned earlier, LinkedIn advertising can help you quickly gain followers who are B2B decision makers without having to directly pay for that growth as you would with other social media platforms. Another benefit to this is that once you have successfully targeted your personas on LinkedIn and you build that following, it's now easier to reach those same decision makers again, without having to pay.
LinkedIn currently provides some of the best organic reach available to you, with B2B brands reporting an average of 20% or better organic reach on LinkedIn.
Not only is LinkedIn the ideal social media platform for you to reach decision makers at the businesses that you want to work for, it's also currently the most affordable option for building and maintaining a social media community of your ideal customers for a B2B brand.
Of course you can't afford to ignore the other social media platforms, but if you want to build your personas and target them effectively, you're going to want to segment your target audience and make sure that you're reaching out to those segments on the platform that the people who fit within each of your personas are actually using.
In the case of B2B decision makers, that platform is LinkedIn.
