LinkedIn for B2B: company pages, Sponsored Updates and lead gen

LinkedIn passed 225 million members at the start of the year and is adding two a second. More than a third are in the US. The redesigned Company Pages that rolled out last fall put updates front and center rather than a static description, the Influencer program and the Pulse acquisition in April turned the homepage into a content feed, and Sponsored Updates, which opened in July, let any company promote a page update to members who do not follow it. Endorsements, introduced last September, have made profiles busier and more visited.

What that adds up to: LinkedIn has become a place people read, not just a place they keep a resume. Decision-makers are spending time in the feed, and the feed is where you can now reach them.

Before spending anything, fix the page. Most B2B pages are a logo, a paragraph of boilerplate and nothing since 2011.

1. Banner and logo. A 646 by 220 pixel banner image that says what you do for whom; a square logo that reads at thumbnail size.
2. A description written for buyers. The first two lines show before the fold. Lead with the problem you solve, not the year you were founded.
3. Products and Services tab. Fill it in. Each product can carry its own image, description, link and recommendations from customers, and the tab can show different content to different audiences by geography or job function.
4. Careers if you hire. It is a reason for people to follow and it attracts traffic the rest of the page benefits from.
5. Employees linked properly. Ask staff to list the company from the dropdown so their profiles connect to the page; every employee profile is a doorway.
6. Admins named. At least two people who can post, in case one leaves.

The page's followers are your organic reach. Add a follow button to your website and email signature, and invite customers and partners personally; buying followers is not an option on LinkedIn and would be pointless anyway.

Posting is where most companies either stall or start sounding like a press office. A workable program:

Two to five posts a week. Under 150 characters of text with a link or an image; posts with images are getting roughly double the engagement of text-only updates. Weekday mornings. Target updates by geography, industry, function, seniority or company size when the content only fits one segment, so a post about a regional event does not go to your followers on three continents.

Measure with the page analytics tab: impressions, clicks, interactions and engagement rate per post, and follower demographics. Keep what gets clicked, retire what does not, and look at which content types generate followers rather than just likes.

A Sponsored Update is a regular page update that you pay to show to members outside your follower base, in the desktop and mobile feed, labeled Sponsored. You buy it through the Campaign Manager, by cost per click or cost per thousand impressions, against targeting that includes location, company name, industry, company size, job title, function, seniority, skills, groups and schools.

How to run them well:

• Promote content, not ads. The unit works because it looks like something worth reading. A product pitch gets ignored and costs more per click as engagement falls.
• Start with proven posts. Sponsor the updates that already performed organically; you have evidence they work.
• Target narrowly and name the audience in the copy. An audience of 20,000 marketing directors at companies over 200 employees beats 2 million members.
• Bid above the suggested range at first to win impressions and learn, then bring the bid down.
• Send the click somewhere that converts. A landing page with a form for the guide, not your homepage.
• Budget: $1,500 to $5,000 a month buys a real test for most B2B companies at current prices; expect $3 to $8 per click.

The older self-serve text ads in the right column still exist, with the same targeting and a $2 minimum bid. They are useful for recruiting, events and cheap awareness, but their click rates are a tenth of a sponsored update's.

Nobody buys enterprise software from a LinkedIn post. The post starts a path:

1. Content worth an email address. A research report, a benchmark, a practical template. Gate the valuable piece; leave the blog ungated.
2. A landing page with a short form. Name, email, company, title. Every extra field costs you 5 to 10 percent of completions.
3. A follow-up sequence. An email within a day, a second piece of relevant content within a week, a human call or a personalized InMail for the ones who fit your buyer profile.
4. Sales using LinkedIn properly. Reps with complete profiles, following the prospect's company page, joining the two or three groups where the prospect's peers talk, and sharing the company's content with their own networks. A rep's share typically reaches further than the page's own post.
5. Groups as a listening post, not a billboard. Answer questions, do not paste links. The groups where buyers compare vendors will notice.

Track the whole path with tagged links, form source fields and a CRM stage, so you can say what a LinkedIn lead costs and how many close, not just how many clicked.

Treating the page as a newsroom. Press releases and award announcements are the least-clicked updates on the network.

Posting the same thing to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The audience and tone differ; LinkedIn readers are at work.

Letting the CEO's profile do nothing. Executive profiles get more views than company pages. A personal post from a founder, shared to the page, reaches more people than the page alone.

Sponsoring without a landing page. Paying $5 a click to land someone on a homepage with no offer.

Ignoring the analytics tab. It tells you who follows you and what they click. Most admins have never opened it.

Discover: we audit your company page, your employees' profiles, your competitors' presence and the content you already have that could be reused. Plan: we set the audience segments, the posting calendar, the content pieces to produce and gate, the Sponsored Updates budget and a cost-per-lead target, in one document. Build: our social media team rebuilds the page and runs the calendar, our content production team makes the guides and short videos, our performance marketing team runs Sponsored Updates and text ads, and our web team builds the landing pages and the form-to-CRM connection. Improve: monthly reviews of engagement, cost per lead and lead quality from sales, with the calendar and targeting adjusted accordingly. Brand, growth, web and technology work as one team, so the post, the page and the follow-up are consistent.

The Content Program engagement is the representative pattern. A B2B services company with an idle page and a sales team that relied on cold calls built a quarterly content calendar around one substantial gated guide per quarter and weekly supporting posts, trained its consultants to share from their own profiles, promoted the strongest posts with Sponsored Updates to a tight list of titles and industries, and connected the landing-page forms to the CRM so every lead carried its source. Reporting moved from likes to qualified conversations per month.