Why insurers should target LinkedIn and tips for boosting posts

LinkedIn is rated the No. 1 platform for B2B lead generation, and that title is well deserved. This network of more than 830 million members across 200 countries is a powerful tool for meeting and exceeding virtually any marketing goal in today’s global climate. Yet for many, the recipe for leveraging this tool is a bit mysterious.

With a focus specifically on insurance marketing integrated media selection, the following LinkedIn factoids are impressive considerations:

• 58 million companies are represented on the platform.
• 4 in 5 LinkedIn members are involved in company decision-making.
• 40% of B2B marketers said using LinkedIn is the best way to drive high-quality leads.
• Audiences are six times more likely to perform a desired action that is encouraged by an ad if they’ve seen your brand before on LinkedIn.

Instead of asking why insurers should utilize LinkedIn to reach decision-makers, we’ve found the real question that companies grapple with is, “How can we maximize our LinkedIn marketing results?”

We have answers, and this is just a lead into some of the deep understanding and experience we’d like to share with you.

In this article, we’ll cover the following three topics:

1. The marketing objectives that can be best accomplished through LinkedIn
2. Why having an effective organic (or unpaid) content strategy is the first step toward success
3. Best practices for boosting LinkedIn posts in the insurance industry

Which insurance marketing goals is LinkedIn best designed to achieve?

If you’re wondering what it means to boost a post on LinkedIn, you’re not alone. The term “boosting content” simply means to increase the reach of one of your LinkedIn posts by turning it into a paid advertisement.

Advertising via boosted posts on LinkedIn is valuable for insurance entities of all sizes, from corporate giants to individual insurance agents.

Here’s how boosting content on LinkedIn can help meet your marketing objectives.

Brand awareness

If your insurance company’s goal is brand awareness, or getting your brand positively presented to as many decision-makers as possible, LinkedIn can help. Boosting your content will help you cut through all the noise to gain a larger voice in the industry – and a larger share of sponsors.

Boosted posts can help ensure the right people see your ads consistently enough to become aware of your brand. They also build trust among your audience and help potential sponsors find you by greatly expanding your reach.

Boosting posts on LinkedIn should not exist in a silo, however. The best way to build brand awareness is to develop a diverse integrated media strategy.

Engagement

The most important part of insurance marketing is to convince people to choose you over a multitude of other options. With boosted posts on LinkedIn, you can:

• Achieve more post shares and followers
• Stay top of mind
• Establish your company as a thought leader in the industry
• Expand your reach, as content that receives regular engagement, or interaction, is shown to more people

All of this can be done by boosting timely, informative and/or engaging content. This could include company or industry news, sharing one of your senior leaders’ thoughts on a high-profile problem affecting the insurance industry (inflation, anyone?) or a promotion of your offering’s newest or most competitive features.

Conversions

Ideally, all this awareness and engagement will lead to a large quantity of high-quality sponsors. A conversion happens when someone sees your boosted post on LinkedIn and performs a desired action. This could be visiting a specific landing page on your site, filling out a quote calculator with their information or scheduling a consultation, among other things.

Why is an organic strategy important for boosting content?

When you boost a post on LinkedIn, you’re boosting content you’ve already posted to your account. That’s why having an organic, or unpaid, content strategy is needed.

Before you begin to boost posts, you should conduct an audit of how your insurance company is currently using LinkedIn. A few questions to ask yourself include:

• Have we optimized our company page with keywords, a compelling summary, a call to action and complete information?
• Are we posting regularly on LinkedIn?
• Is a specific content format, such as a short video or shared blog post, getting more engagement than other types of content?
• What are our best-performing posts?

All of the above are important factors to address before boosting content. If you have a solid organic content strategy, you’ll be able to see what types of posts receive the most engagement or furthest reach. This will inform your boosting strategy.

What are best practices for boosting posts on LinkedIn?

Now that you know why LinkedIn is such a powerful tool, here’s your how-to guide for using it most effectively in the insurance industry.

Boost your best-performing posts

This is where your organic content comes into play. One of the best LinkedIn marketing strategies is to boost the posts that your audience has been most interested in to expand their reach.

Pay attention to your metrics

LinkedIn advertising is like buying a plant – it needs to be consistently nurtured to thrive. Keep an eye on your post analytics and compare your organic posts to see which content and CTA resonates best with your audience.

Create content that is focused and direct

Busy senior-level executives don’t have time to read novels. Always remember that LinkedIn is a professional network, which means clear, concise and direct communication is key.

Capitalize on audience targeting

Through LinkedIn’s marketing tools, you can narrowly target your audience through filters like job title, seniority, industry, job function and more to get in front of the people who are most likely to convert. While you don’t want a broad target audience, LinkedIn advises not to keep it too small, either.

When boosting content, you should aim for an audience of at least 50,000 members and only use two or three targeting criteria.

Know what you want to achieve

LinkedIn marketing is highly measurable. That’s why you should establish which metrics you’ll use to determine a campaign’s success before its launch. This will help drive better boosting decisions in the future and make sure you’re staying on track.

Enlist the help of a digital marketing agency

When it’s correctly managed, LinkedIn marketing can be a full-time job in itself. It requires you to:

• Create and maintain a regular content calendar
• Have a content strategy
• Write engaging post content
• Develop graphics and videos
• Schedule posts
• Boost posts
• Track campaigns
• Update audience targets
• And more

The best way to ensure these tasks are done with the attention they deserve is to hire outside help. TruStar Marketing specializes in helping insurance companies handle organic and paid social media content, develop an overarching strategy for all their digital channels, increase lead generation and more.

Harness the power of LinkedIn by getting started today. Contact us or get answers to your LinkedIn marketing questions by calling 615-371-6112 and asking for Paula Milam.