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5 Reasons Why Marketing On LinkedIn Is Key For ChineseManufacturers
You're creating great products and you have a demand for them from abroad. But where are the best places forChinese manufacturers to market in order to be seen more often by foreign customers?
The answer could be LinkedIn.
Why?
LinkedIn is a FREE professional networking site with a huge global user base where everyone comes together toshare relevant industry information, network, offer their services and products, and discuss industry news ingroups. Marketing on LinkedIn is also your secret weapon to getting more overseas sales!
Keep reading as Oxygen 2.0 take you through 5 reasons why it's time to start using LinkedIn...
1. LinkedIn Is Available In China
Many of the social networks that can be used to help you market your products are unfortunately not readily availablein China.
Giants such as the following sites are currently blocked:
YouTube
There are ways around this, but ultimately it is a lot easier for Chinese companies to use tools which are alreadyavailable.
LinkedIn is available in China for everyone!
Not only that, but it is also available in Chinese, meaning that your colleagues or staff will be easily able to navigatearound the site even if they do not have a very strong grasp of English.
2. Marketing On LinkedIn Has A Huge Reach Among Professionals
There are more than 347,000,000 registered members on LinkedIn worldwide. These many people aren't really therefor 'fun' either (not that LinkedIn can't be fun), because it is a professional network.
If your goal is to introduce yourself to more potential customers, then what better place to be than a network that'scommonly used by people for work? You can be assured that people who're searching for your industry or productsare probably very interested indeed, whereas on social networks like Facebook and Twitter where there is not abusiness focus, many people are simply there for fun and will ignore you.
This huge number of professionals who are available to you is important, because you know that if your company isactive there then it is opened up to a larger international audience than before. The more people globally who can beintroduced to you, the more sales you're going to get (as long as you're sharing good quality content with them).
Some of these markets may not be of interest to manufacturers in China, but if your key potential clients areWesterners then you can see that LinkedIn is widely used in areas such as Europe, North America, and Australasia.
Not only does LinkedIn assure you of reaching the right foreigners, but it's also popular with them, meaning thatthey will be online there regularly:
"40% of LinkedIn users log in every day." >> (Tweet this stat) <<
3. LinkedIn Users Have Many Ways To Find You
Not only is LinkedIn a place where your company can have its own page and post interesting content to attract newcustomers, but by having a presence there both your company and staff can be found quite easily!
It all starts with the search bar at the top of the page.
Anyone can search for something that they're interested in. Take the example below, a search for "Solar PanelManufacturer" returns more than 20 options!
They can also be filtered using the options highlighted in the red box:
People will be able to find your company, staff, and relevant groups within LinkedIn, and so this is more compellingevidence to suggest that you must consider setting up a page at least, because if you're not there then people willnever find you.
4. LinkedIn Offers Great ROI On Your Time & Effort
If we know that professionals use LinkedIn to help them achieve their business goals, some of which may be findingnew suppliers or products, and it's easy to be found there if you have a presence, then the only piece of the puzzle leftis to answer if it returns a good ROI on your time and effort.
According to B2C:
"Recent studies show that LinkedIn referrals were responsible for 2/3 of all social media traffic tobusiness websites (64%); Facebook followed with 17% and Twitter with 14%.">> (Tweet this stat) <<
This demonstrates that LinkedIn is overwhelmingly business focussed, and that its users really are paying attention tocontent there and actively share it and click on links.
Not only is there more traffic coming from LinkedIn, but according to Hubspot it also returns more leads (those beingpeople who have expressed a firm interest in yourself or your products) than other major social networks too:
5. You Can Advertise Relatively Cheaply On LinkedIn
LinkedIn also offers Chinese manufacturers the ability to reach out actively to potential customers by advertising.
Building LinkedIn ads is easy, and below you can see a typical template:
Not only is it easy to build ads, but it'salso easy to target them to just the rightaudience that you need:
As you can see, there are a vast array of options that help you narrow your ad down to people from a certain industry,job title, and even city should you wish.
You can do similar on Facebook or Twitter, however since these networks are primarily used for fun and not businessyour ad will not be relevant to a huge number of people there; but on LinkedIn you know that the people you aretargeting are professionally relevant to your company and its products, and so should be interested in your ads.
Advertising costs will vary, and tend to be more expensive than on Facebook for instance, however if you can gainnew customers for just a few US dollars each, is that not something that your company would see as worthwhile?
Ready To Start Marketing On LinkedIn?
By now hopefully you can appreciate that using LinkedIn, which is free unless you choose to advertise there, is apotent weapon for Chinese manufacturers looking for more foreign sales.
One of the issues that many Chinese companies have is that they're unsure about how to go about finding newforeign customers.
Now that you know that LinkedIn is available in China, and offers you a portal to foreign potential customers who maybe interested in your industry and company, there's really nothing to lose by setting up your business page there.
The next step? Read this blog to learn how to set up your account and start using LinkedIn toincrease sales.
If you want to move forward with turning your business into a brand online using channels like LinkedIn but need helpdoing that, what can you do?
Oxygen 2.0 can help, as its our mission to help manufacturers become brands! Click below and get started on yourjourney to becoming a brand by getting a free website, branding, and marketing assessment where we'll examineyour site and send you a FREE report followed up by a phone or skype call if you'd like to discuss it.
By using this free advice you can learn how best to get started on marketing yourself as a brand and improveoverseas sales:
Posted by Adrian Leighton on Fri 10 Apr, 2015
Adrian has been in China for 7 years! He is experienced in all things inbound marketing, social media,blogging, and SEO. When at play he enjoys weight-training, reading, watching TV shows with his wife,and baking!
Topics: Social Media • chinese manufacturers • linkedin
