Invest in LinkedIn Marketing Now — The 5 LinkedIn Features Manufacturers Should Start Using

LinkedIn as a marketing platform stands out in a time when manufacturers across different industries are looking for and pursuing the best return on their marketing investment. Let’s look at Johnson & Johnson. Back in April 2020 Johnson & Johnson streamed their first-ever weekly COVID-19 news series “The Road to a Vaccine” driving massive engagement on LinkedIn Live. The effort resulted in 1,000,000+ total views for the series on LinkedIn and 983K average total minutes watched across each weekly episode. The platform offered them an opportunity to not only establish trust but to bring conversations around a global problem under one umbrella. LinkedIn works because it's trustable, and it covers the full spectrum of B2B audiences –– including prominent members in the textiles and apparel space. 

Today, accurate and credible information has never been more valuable or harder to find. Businesses are facing a difficult time, and the stakes are high. LinkedIn offers a way for people to stay grounded and find reliable insight. There is a halo effect, i.e. when an impression created in one area has the ability to influence a decision in another area. For marketers and advertisers working with manufacturers on the platform, the content that’s being shared can be seen in a more positive light, it can influence key business decisions especially when other people share your content. 

So should manufacturers be actively marketing right now? Yes. 

Let’s jump into the 5 LinkedIn features we recommend you start looking into. 

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1. LinkedIn Showcase Pages:

A Showcase Page is a part of your LinkedIn profile designed to highlight individual brands, companies, and initiatives. They will be listed under 'Affiliated Pages' on your main LinkedIn page. You can think of showcase pages as a means to highlight the business units/product development units under your brand. If you serve a diverse group of customers, you can tailor each showcase page to a segment of your audience.

Learn how to create a showcase page.

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2. Saving Searches

This isn’t a direct feature that’s marketed heavily by LinkedIn but it is one that has great potential in helping your sales team reach the right people. Saving searches allows you to receive email alerts when new LinkedIn members match your saved search criteria. This could include a new member on LinkedIn or someone getting promoted to a job role that holds more buying power. Saving searches helps your sales team stay current with industry changes and activity.

Learn how to save your searches and create automated alerts here. 

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3. Polls

By using LinkedIn Polls, you can engage with other members by asking them for their opinions on a variety of topics. By creating Linkedin polls, you can gain a better understanding of your audience by directly studying their responses. Once you know what your audience wants to see, you will be able to tailor the content you create. You could ask your network how they like being communicated to, or what are the goals that they’re prioritising in the upcoming year or what 3D design software they’re using.

You should know that the quality and quantity of your answers and data collected through polls is very specific to your network so it’s best to study your audience. 

Learn how to create LinkedIn polls. 

Get our comprehensive playbook with messaging scripts for a variety of situations to help your sales team connect with potential customers.

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4. LinkedIn Live 

Live videos get, on average, 7x more reactions and 24x more comments than regular videos. If you have existing content ideas, you can view LinkedIn Live as another channel to display them. Launch new products, showcase the people behind your brand or show your thought leadership with it. You can start with a live panel interview with a senior executive or demonstrate expertise and highlight your products on a monthly basis to drive new audiences to your page. It all comes down to making it interactive.

With LinkedIn Live’s analytics, you can see the top pages, job titles, and locations that are tuned in to create more tailored content in the future. No other platform offers this type of data, which is also known as firmographic data. 

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5. Document Sharing

LinkedIn lets you share high-quality documents that let you find new opportunities and make connections. LinkedIn document posts work best with PDFs. So the next time you want to send a general trend report or share multiple images from an event or even release a new press release, we recommend using LinkedIn’s Document Sharing feature.

‍Learn how to share documents on LinkedIn. ‍

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LinkedIn is home to 700+ million members spanning a wide range of professions, interests, functions, and career paths. All of these details can be found easily via profile data and content engagements, providing you and your sales team with information on who to target and what's important to them.

By targeting the right members and resonating with a well thought out marketing strategy, LinkedIn has the potential to drive fantastic results for your business without having to spend money on advertising

All you need to do is find your audience on LinkedIn, learn about them, and achieve your marketing objectives — whatever they might be. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Let us help you make the case for why you should invest time on LinkedIn in 2021 and beyond: download our LinkedIn Marketing Guide for Textiles and Apparel Manufacturers to know more.
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