LinkedIn can be a prime marketing tool for Aquaculture service and product suppliers.
More than any other social media tool, LinkedIn is geared towards professional sales and can help B2B companies find new customers and create positive marketing messages.
In General, LinkedIn Is About Impression
LinkedIn gets used a lot for ‘social creeping’ for businesses.
It has become a helpful place to go to learn more about a person or business. Think of LinkedIn as your place to make an impression when you’re not in the room. More importantly, think of LinkedIn as the place prospects to see value in your company, products, or services at their convenience.
LinkedIn Is About The Person
For the most part, LinkedIn is a tool that connects people with people. Your company profile on LinkedIn is important. Set it up and make it as complete as possible. Your personal profile should be associated with your company page. Use your personal profile to reach out to individuals, post and share articles, and comment on posts.
Have A Clear And Professional Photo
Your profile photo should be clear, simple, and show just you. It’s best to use a head/shoulders shot. The photo doesn’t have to be a professional portrait but it should represent the impression your looking to make with your customers. Using a photo that clearly shows your face will help you be relatable and help to humanize your posts.
Your Personal Profile Headline Should Be Focused On The Customer
Your headline has a few roles in your LinkedIn efforts. First, it will be a quick way for folks to understand what you do and if it’s of interest to them. Second, it plays a role in LinkedIn’s search feature, so using words that matter to your business and your customers will pay dividends. Out of the gate, LinkedIn will put your latest job title in the headline for you. While that is factually accurate, it’s not that interesting in terms of helping you stand out.
Hubspot has an excellent article on creating effective headlines. The basis of their direction is quite simple: [Job Title]: Helping X do Y. The ‘helping X do Y’ approach is a way to show your potential customers the value you bring to them. Another excellent point from that article is to be sure to use words familiar to your customers. Stay away from industry speak if you can.
Using Your Summary To Share Your Story
Your profile needs to be more than just a resume. Use this as an opportunity to share your experience and expertise to help potential customers choose you. Write for your customer. Share what kind of businesses you work with, what specific value you bring to those businesses, and be sure to highlight proof that helps reinforce your value. Make the copy easy to read by using bullets and headlines for easy skimming.
Be sure to add a little personal detail in your summary to help make you relatable to others. You want people to get to know you and develop trust and confidence in you as a person. Revisit this area on Linked a few times a year to keep it current. Why? New conversations and experiences often provide new perspectives or ideas on what folks should see and will be looking for.
LinkedIn Posts Don’t Always Get Instant Responses
Unlike other social media tools like Facebook, the reaction and interaction to LinkedIn posts you share will be less than perhaps you’re used to.
To increase your reach and interaction, be sure to comment on others’ posts often, share content from others that your customers would find interesting, and tag folks in your post using the ‘@’ feature.
If your LinkedIn activity is not getting you as many engagements as you’d like, that’s perfectly ok. Over 95% of website traffic to a typical business page will never let you know they were there.
The same is true for LinkedIn. It’s normal to have less activity than you think you should have on LinkedIn.
Find Aquaculture Sales Prospects Using LinkedIn Search
Once you’ve set up your profile, it’s time to find prospects. This may be one of the most important features of LinkedIn. The robust search tools allow you to find companies specific to your industry and target market. By finding companies, you can also find the people in those companies that are the best for your sales efforts. Reaching out directly through LinkedIn can be highly effective. Just remember your basic sales process – reaching out cold and trying to sell immediately will most likely turn prospects off. Remember to connect, engage, and share value.
Closing Thoughts
LinkedIn is a powerful and opportunity-rich platform for finding prospects and engaging with referral sources and potential customers. If you do get active on LinkedIn and start reaching out to find prospects, it’s a great place to do it, and many have found it a solid lead generation platform.
But if you don’t work LinkedIn to the max from a sales point of view, it can still play an effective role in your business development efforts.
The key is to look the part and be ready to impress so that when prospects are in the mindset to do business, they like what they see when they do come looking.