Business To Consumer
There are many social networks that can help you and your business to consumer grow. Many of these social sites provide you with the traffic and features that can help you create a better exposure for your business. One of these social media sites is known as LinkedIn. At first glance, you would think that LinkedIn isn’t as popular among your friends and family. In fact, isn’t Facebook twitter or even YouTube better for your business? Well little did you know that LinkedIn is a rather special breed in the social media world…
If your business to consumer is a B2B (business to business) in nature instead of the popular B2C (business to consumer) kind of business than you are in luck. So if you are you thinking of promoting your B2B business you must definitely take a look at LinkedIn. You will surely find it as a unique gem that will rock your world.
What is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is a business social network that was created for business, employers and employees alike to socialize and connect with each other. In other words, it is a very focused and business oriented kind of social network that can be used to your business’ advantage. If you are a business to business kind of business then you can utilize LinkedIn as a source for traffic or clients for your business. If you are in a business that deals with a business to consumer, then you can use LinkedIn as a way to connect with other business owners within your niche and create a partnership to help each other out. This kind of connection can be very helpful to grow your business.
Take for example, a B2B business can use LinkedIn’s feature to search for people or businesses that might need your product or services. You can then engage them slowly and get to know your potential customers more. You can even use it as a market research tool to try and befriend your customers first before trying to sell anything to them. When you are able to effectively communicate with them you can then try to ask if they are having any problem in their business or you might want to address some issues that your business might be able to solve for them.
For a Business to Consumer Company, you can look for stronger partners in your field and try to get to know them. They could be your competitors but you know what they say, ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’. So try to network around within LinkedIn and introduce yourself. LinkedIn can be a strong resume that you can use because people within LinkedIn who have worked with you before can actually endorse you can recommend your work within your profile. A good and strong looking LinkedIn network can help you get instant credibility where it can be you’re a part of your resume and portfolio.
Besides that if your LinkedIn profile shows that you are very well connected, you might even get a lot of people approaching you with big opportunities. In fact, there has been any LinkedIn success stories in the past that indicates how powerful LinkedIn can be and how beneficial it can be to any business owner.
Who are using LinkedIn?
The people who use LinkedIn are those who are looking to connect and grow their business so you can be sure that they are very ready to receive communication from you. It’s like having the permission for you to engage people within LinkedIn without having them to think about you as a salesman. This is a giant leap to a lot of B2B companies. Prior to LinkedIn you will have trouble getting other business owners to listen to you because once they know you are interested to sell them stuff, they will just shut you down. With LinkedIn you can slowly approach them subtly and then highlight the problems other businesses are having.
There are many ways to do this but one thing is for sure, LinkedIn has helped to reduce a lot of rejection and this is mighty good news for most. Besides that, you can even reach the ‘decision makers’ within a company with ease without having to go through lower tier workers who will just put you on hold because they could not make decisions. With LinkedIn, as long as the decision maker has an account in there you are in luck and you will be able to reach them with very little limitation. The only thing you will need to take note of is to be careful not to mess it up and you should be good to go.
Advertising on LinkedIn!
LinkedIn also provides an advertising platform for you to reach more people within LinkedIn in a targeted manner. The targeting system is very accurate the say the least and you will be able to reach your target market very easily. The only downside here however would be the cost to advertise via LinkedIn is quite high. The good news is that you will be able to reach people in a speedy manner and you will be able to get much targeted leads for your ads. The best way to approach LinkedIn as is to make sure that you can profit after all the advertising cost and they may require you to sell a higher priced product. If not, you might want to stick to the free method and you should be alright.
When business to consumer is used properly, LinkedIn ads can be much more effective than other forms of advertising because of the focus of the people within LinkedIn and the focus would seem to be on the business avenue instead of what you see in Facebook where people are there to socialize, play games and hang out. Use LinkedIn wisely and you will definitely find new light inside it.
