How to Use LinkedIn If You Are Selling in the Manufacturing Industry

By Madeline Miller, Business Writer

LinkedIn is a brilliant platform to form secure connections with customers. It is an online space designed and targeted at sales acceleration and initiating collaboration. Statistically speaking, using social media platforms is one of the most boosting moves to take for the customer success of online businesses.

However, with all industries moving fast with their sales tactics and success, the manufacturing industry has been known to move slower than its counterparts. LinkedIn is a leading form of B2B social media, and this article discusses efficient strategies that you should incorporate. These will maximize both brand presence and conversation.

Simple Profile Tips to Boost LinkedIn Success:

• Add certifications

List honors, awards, degrees, online courses and so on, with brief descriptions that will flesh out your education section.

• Feature articles and blogs that you have written

It is even better if these are relevant to your brand itself, though even if they aren’t, articles and blogs advertise a variety of character (which is great for business).

• Use visual content in summaries

Many users skip straight to summaries when reviewing profiles quickly. Have visual content that will make your profile pop out even from the little details in a summary.

• Ensure your profile photo is professional

Firstly, profiles without photos are significantly less likely to receive responses. Use a photo that shows how professional you can be. This should be recent and high-resolution.

• Don’t have jargon in your profile

“An overuse of jargon will make your profile more difficult to read and will push readers away,” says Doris Hunter, Project Manager at Subjecto and Simplegrad.

Here are three key ways you can increase sales in the manufacturing industry with LinkedIn.

Event Organization

LinkedIn can be used for searching for corresponding groups. These can be similar to your brand’s representing group that will attend events. The importance behind this is having contacts before you actually attend events. Businesses can pre-introduce themselves and know each other when they arrive. Additionally, appointments and meetings can be organized in advance using LinkedIn, and events at which your brand will be represented can be promoted too. Once contacts have been met and formalized, find each other on the platform to construct important business relationships.

“On LinkedIn, there is also the useful option to categorize customers and prospects with tags. Simply review the connections you have and when the cursor is overhead the option to tag them will show itself,” says Claudia Sharp, Marketer at UKWritings and Custom Writing. This tip can be a great tool to boost how targeted your brand communication is, simply through organization.

Prospects Are Just as Important for Prospects as They Are for Customers

Try to connect with prospects following when you first make contact with them. This will increase rapport due to the idea of punctuality and reliability. Trust is one of the most important ingredients of business relationships: moves like this make big differences.

Use LinkedIn’s keyword search to personalize and build your target audience and widen your list of prospects. Follow the ones your brand has high interest in, though try not to follow too many (follow this rule for customers also). This filtering will enable news updates to remind you more easily of potential opportunities, aiding your B2B selling efforts in conversation with your prospects. Another reason not to over-connect is LinkedIn’s penalization scheme when accounts attempt to connect with a certain number of others that have rejected them.

Connection can be via email. Email responses can even precede connections; both strategies are effective. Respond to emails that you feel are useful connections via email if that is how they first contacted you, then remind them of that email in your connection request.

Use LinkedIn for Better Insight into Your Business

The platform is wonderful for understanding brands’ true interests and challenges. It is a space other than the real world where customers will arrive at your brand for prospects. Involve everyone on the team to welcome new customers online and make efforts to see how they find your product after they have made a purchase. If they have their own company, make efforts to connect with their companies. This opens routes into longer term business partnerships through gathering an understanding of fellow businesses.

LinkedIn is a great way to get your brand involved in new-age social selling. Brands, especially manufacturing brands, often focus on other social media platforms and neglect LinkedIn. However, it can spark amazing business-focused conversation and boost sales success.

Finally, a LinkedIn profile is one of the best ways to invest your social sales efforts to become a social seller. You can significantly and easily increase your customer and prospect database. Stay on top with the help of this guide.

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Madeline Miller, Business Writer
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About the Author

Madeline Miller

Madeline Miller, a business writer at Paper writing websites reviewed and writer for Assignment service, is involved in many business projects. Madeline enjoys identifying project problems and finding solutions for these, and her goal is to improve the effectiveness communication. She also writes for Top essay writing services blog.