LinkedIn is a very powerful tool for generating new business. When LinkedIn first began, it was primarily formulated for individuals to expand their professional network. Now, not only can individuals seek out connections in the online world, but companies can use LinkedIn to expand their client base as well. LinkedIn not only allows you to share information about your services directly with potential clients, but you can also research them, increase your company’s visibility and most importantly — generate leads!

Get Noticed!

With so many social media platforms at your disposal, making sure you utilize all the tools is sometimes overwhelming. To make it simple, you can start by exploring LinkedIn’s capabilities and personalizing your profile. If you create a public link that is easily searchable, the easier it will be for people to find you. Also, by joining groups that relate to your industry, you can connect with people that you know will be interested in your company.

Get the Conversation Flowing

Building online rapport with potential customers can help you cultivate relationships with them. Relationship building is a LinkedIn strength and will lead to referrals and business. One great tool for starting conversations with potential clients is to take advantage of the questions and answers section. The more you answer people’s questions here, the more visibility you are creating for your company as an authority and the more likely they will be to use you in the future.

Furthermore, the first step in cultivating a relationship with potential clients is by sharing information. Get to know potential clients by researching their profile and offering some useful insights to get the conversation started. You can also start discussions in the groups you belong to, and say that if they have more questions they should visit your website.

Utilizing Tools

There are tons of applications on LinkedIn that many of us don’t know about. Most people only generate a profile with the standard sections that include previous experiences, but many don’t know that you can also add your blog to your LinkedIn page or connect your Twitter account. If you post an update on LinkedIn, it will be shown on your Twitter feed as well.

Additionally, LinkedIn also offers an advertising program that helps generate more traffic for your company’s website or LinkedIn profile. You can create a simple advertisement and then bid on how much you are willing to pay LinkedIn for each click that you get. The more clicks you get, the more potential business you are likely to receive.

Devise a Strategy for Lead Generation

Outlining a plan of how you are going to generate leads can ensure that you take advantage of everything LinkedIn has to offer. By connecting with a certain amount of new people each week, you can make sure that you are keeping your company’s name fresh on people’s minds. If they or someone they know needs your services, they are more likely to think of you first.

It’s also important that you strengthen your company’s online presence by joining a lot of groups each week. You should remain active in the groups by regularly starting or engaging in discussions that directly pertain to your industry. People are more likely to trust those who are knowledgeable and helpful when it comes to choosing one company over another.

Consistency is Crucial

Keeping your company’s name high on the LinkedIn radar will guarantee the interest of potential customers. Consistency is the key to generating leads, so the more you stick to your LinkedIn connection plan, the more successful your company will be. Even though this may not happen instantly, if you use LinkedIn correctly and continuously, you may be surprised just how quickly people will be asking about you.

You can’t avoid it. Everywhere you turn, everyone is talking about mobile—with the business world abuzz over mobile tools, technologies, and channels.

But even as B2Cs have been diving into mobile at a frenzied pace, B2Bs have been falling behind. Whether because they’re skeptical, or they’re waiting for others to move first or they’re paying attention to other media, B2Bs are missing prime opportunities to reach and engage their business audiences by not integrating mobile into the marketing mix.

The Mobile Revolution & B2B lays out the business case for how emerging mobile media can uniquely engage business audiences, not just consumers. And it outlines a set of recommendations for B2B marketers—chief among them, to elevate mobile to a priority in the marketing mix.

Based on that guide, the following six questions and answers provide B2B mobile insight, examples, and advice.

1. Why is mobile particularly prime for B2B companies and audiences?

The best way to answer this question is with a question. Ask yourself, When was the last time I saw a business executive without a mobile device?

The statistics are nothing short of mind-blowing: There are 5 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide, with 72% of the US workforce already mobile and 64% of decision-makers reading their email via mobile devices. Mobile phones aren’t merely nice-to-have communications devices; they are must-have business tools to which today’s business audiences are always attached.

Mobile is prime for business audiences because it comprises the one set of media most used by business professionals. Therefore, if B2Bs want to be where their audiences are, they should set their sights—and budgets—on mobile.

2. Why refer to mobile as a revolution? Isn’t it just a new medium?

The real story on mobile isn’t the nifty new devices, such as smartphones and tablet computers. Those are just the screens. What is most important—yet not widely understood—isn’t that we’re changing our technology, but that this technology is dramatically changing us. More than just an exciting new medium, mobile is driving an entirely “new normal” by revolutionizing the way we communicate, connect, work, and live.

Due to the pervasive and instantaneous nature of anytime-anywhere media, consumer and business audiences now have significantly higher expectations and lower thresholds. And they now expect more control and exhibit much less patience.

So if we’re witnessing a sea change in our market’s behavior—a revolution in the way our audiences work and live—then we, as marketers, must revolutionize our companies, too.

3. How is mobile different from other media, and why is this important for B2B?

Mobile is the consummate one-to-one medium that marketers have forever sought. After all, what is more personal to you than your mobile device? It’s always switched on, always on your person, and it’s personally customizable in every way—from the ringtones you choose for each caller, to the apps that you download for work (and play), to the alerts that you set to organize your personal and professional activities.

Moreover, between their impressive processing power and myriad features, today’s smartphones have morphed into personal computers that “just happen to also ring.”

Mobile’s unique one-to-one nature is particularly important for B2B because, unlike B2C, our business environment is punctuated by high-priced offerings, long sales cycles, and complex contracts. And thus, B2B success has always been a function of how adeptly B2B companies build and maintain strong relationships with their buyers.

The key takeaway is that B2Bs can make use of this highly personal medium to build and improve those critical relationships with their buying audiences.

4. What are some good examples of B2B mobile programs?

Companies in various industries have used mobile to reach and resonate with their business audiences. Among them:

• USA Today partnered with location-based check-in service Gowalla to deliver its region-specific travel content to business travelers at the exact time that they need it most, such as when they land at the nation’s busiest airports.
• To stand out from competitors at its industry’s leading tradeshow, interactive health education company ClearPoint combined high-buzz content (healthcare reform) with high-interest mobile platforms (iPads) to engage event attendees with interactive quizzes that fostered two-way conversations vs. one-way pitches (like the tradeshow’s other exhibitors).
• JPMorgan Chase Bank has made banking better, faster, and easier with a transformative app that lets business customers deposit checks from anywhere via “point-shoot-click” quick-photo bank deposits.
• And cloud-based software provider Brainshark has developed a mobile app that enables professionals across Sales, Marketing, and HR to easily search, browse, view, and share media-rich content in real time from their mobile devices, as well as to track the views of their presentations via mobile alerts.
• USA Today partnered with location-based check-in service Gowalla to deliver its region-specific travel content to business travelers at the exact time that they need it most, such as when they land at the nation’s busiest airports.
• To stand out from competitors at its industry’s leading tradeshow, interactive health education company ClearPoint combined high-buzz content (healthcare reform) with high-interest mobile platforms (iPads) to engage event attendees with interactive quizzes that fostered two-way conversations vs. one-way pitches (like the tradeshow’s other exhibitors).
• JPMorgan Chase Bank has made banking better, faster, and easier with a transformative app that lets business customers deposit checks from anywhere via “point-shoot-click” quick-photo bank deposits.
• And cloud-based software provider Brainshark has developed a mobile app that enables professionals across Sales, Marketing, and HR to easily search, browse, view, and share media-rich content in real time from their mobile devices, as well as to track the views of their presentations via mobile alerts.

5. How should B2Bs start “going mobile”? What are the priorities and steps?

1. Marketers need to optimize all their Web content for mobile environments, across their websites, landing pages, e-newsletters, and thought-leadership campaigns. What is paramount to grasp is that B2B audiences are increasingly accessing content through their mobile devices, so all marketing content must be optimized for all the devices that they use—smartphones, tablets, or laptops.
2. B2Bs need to review all their current and planned initiatives to identify how they can improve success rates by integrating mobile tools, components, and channels. For example:
   • If you’re running print advertisements, could you include a call to action for your audience to “text for more information”? The idea is to provide a stream of opt-in SMS alerts to your audience and institute a new channel of communication.
   • If you’re exhibiting at a tradeshow, why not include mobile barcodes in your signage and collateral? Your audience can scan them with their mobile cameras to get more information on your company, or to save your contact information to their mobile devices.
   • If you’re publishing in-depth articles as part of your thought-leadership initiatives, how about also turning those into a series of brief pieces that are more easily read over mobile devices?
   • Can you take the content that you’re delivering in text form (such as the thought-leadership pieces), and produce a set of short videos or audio podcasts that can be much more easily consumed by your audiences in the mobile environment?

    

3. B2B marketers (along with their leadership) need to assess and determine strategies for how mobile can enhance their current set of offerings or advance their overall business, or both. This is where B2Bs can wield mobile technologies to extend the core value proposition of their brands into the mobile environment.

Make no mistake, these mobile strategies work to improve B2B ROI, but, equally important, they ensure B2B’s relevance in a newly mobile world.

6. What is your biggest advice for today’s B2Bs?

Stop viewing mobile as purely B2C media, and start elevating it to a priority in all of your B2B marketing communications, strategies, and programs.

Remember, mobile is set to trump PCs as the “first-screen” device for all Internet activity by as early as 2013, according to research. And with more mobile subscriptions than PCs, landlines, and TVs combined, mobile already stakes claim to the most sweeping set of media of all time.

Therefore, it’s not that business professionals are going mobile, they’ve already gone mobile—and now, it’s B2B’s turn.