LinkedIn Marketing Step-by-Step Guide and Best Practices

LinkedIn marketing is a great way to promote your business, create brand awareness, generate leads, and even sell directly to people genuinely interested in your product, service, or solution. Plus, developing a strong personal brand on the platform can help you land clients right away without extensive effort.

However, simply having a LinkedIn profile and posting updates once in a while is not enough for marketing on the platform. In 2026, marketing on LinkedIn requires consistency, a strategic approach, and the use of automation tools to connect with and engage your potential customers. 

Learn how to use LinkedIn as one of the marketing channels and why it is a smart idea to do marketing on LinkedIn. 

What Is LinkedIn Marketing?

LinkedIn marketing is the practice of using LinkedIn to promote your personal brand, products, services. Promoting content, increasing brand visibility, and building relationships with future clients. 

LinkedIn is focused on businesses looking to engage with audiences in specific professional settings. It could be a decision-maker in a B2B company or a consumer with a certain professional background looking for help in their professional life.

No matter if you want to promote a SaaS tool, offer consulting services, or run a consumer brand, LinkedIn marketing can help you achieve your goals. 

The typical marketing activities on LinkedIn include:

1. Creating professional profiles that can help build trust;
2. Writing posts that speak to specific pain points of your target customer;
3. Leaving thoughtful comments on relevant posts;
4. Running ads with clear targeting;
5. Sending personalized, cold outreach messages;
6. Publishing articles that position you as a credible and helpful resource;
7. Using Dripify LinkedIn automation tool to manage repetitive, time-consuming tasks.

How Does LinkedIn Marketing Work?

To use LinkedIn as a marketing channel in 2026, you need to understand the platform’s features and how it operates. Since LinkedIn is primarily a professional network, your audience is more receptive to business-related content.

1. Profile Creation and Optimization

Without having a profile on LinkedIn, you can’t use the platform for marketing. So, the first and most important step is to create and optimize your LinkedIn profile.

Here are some tips to optimize your LinkedIn profile:

• Use a professional photo and banner;
• Write a compelling headline;
• Add a professional summary (about section);
• Include keywords related to your industry in your profile in a natural flow;
• Add a clear call-to-action (e.g., “DM me for consulting”).

After your profile is up and running, you could create a company page for your business. This way, you can use both your personal profile and company page to do marketing on LinkedIn.

2. Content Strategy

LinkedIn marketing strategies involve creating and sharing content as a primary approach to lead generation.

A content strategy is a structured plan that provides a roadmap for what you want to share with your audience. It helps you create, share, and maintain content with a clear purpose, helping you to build a brand on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn’s algorithm prioritizes content that generates conversations:

• Sharing insights, case studies, or industry trends;
• Posting consistently (3-5 times per week);
• Using mixed formats (text, video, polls, PDFs).

3. Engage with Your Audience

Engage with your target audience in the form of reactions, commenting, and sharing their content. In doing so, make sure your comments are relevant and insightful. Participating in LinkedIn groups and discussions is also a great way to build relationships and establish yourself as a thought leader.

4. Networking & Outreach

Marketing on LinkedIn requires robust outbound networking and outreach activities. This involves searching for leads, sending them connection requests, messaging, and follow-ups. 

It is a good idea to use a LinkedIn automation tool to automate and streamline this process. The best LinkedIn marketing tools will find profiles that fit your criteria, send personalized connection requests, and even hyper-personalize your follow-up messages. All of this happens in auto-pilot mode. 

5. LinkedIn Ads

If you want faster results, consider using paid campaigns on LinkedIn:

• Sponsored Content (promoted posts) from your LinkedIn company page;
• Message Ads (direct InMail);
• Dynamic Ads (personalized banners).

These ads can help you reach a wider audience and drive specific actions, such as website visits or lead generation.

6. Use Analytics to Improve LinkedIn Marketing

The analytics and insights available within LinkedIn and Dripify sales automation tool are valuable as they help you track and improve your campaigns. Metrics like engagement rates, overall reach, conversion rates, account activity, and follower growth help you refine and optimize your strategy.

Why Is LinkedIn Marketing Important?

Using LinkedIn for B2B marketing is a smart solution because it connects you with professionals and business decision-makers, making it easier to generate leads compared to cold emails or ads on other platforms.

Plus, LinkedIn users generally have higher buying power than those on other platforms. This makes LinkedIn for B2B marketing particularly effective. But this doesn’t mean you should overlook LinkedIn for B2C marketing especially when targeting niche audiences or premium products.

LinkedIn’s user base is also relatively more active and engaged. Your posts here will have a longer shelf life than on Twitter or Facebook. A single well-crafted piece of content can keep bringing in leads for months.

A LinkedIn lead generation tool can streamline your prospecting and sales process, making it easier to find, manage, and nurture leads. 

Why Use LinkedIn for Marketing Purposes?

Using LinkedIn for marketing purposes in 2026 is essential. Check the reasons:

Be Interesting and Engaging

Posting or producing engaging content is the rule of thumb to garner the audience’s attention, regardless of the social media site you use. You’re mistaken if you think sharing white papers to drive traffic is enough. Your content marketing strategy should include more to spark conversation around the conference or an event you attend.

Sharing the latest insights you get from an industry influencer, making funny graphics about work-life balance, or adding remarks to the graphics others share on LinkedIn are also good ideas.

Be Innovative

You need to produce innovative content with something new to learn and explore. It not only makes you appear smarter and wiser, but also assists readers in professional decision-making.

Be Everywhere

More and more individuals are consuming content on various devices instead of limiting themselves to their desktop. This has been the case since the invention of the smartphone. People no longer have to sit down on a computer to get updates or new information.  A considerable percentage of people use LinkedIn on their devices and focus on visually appealing, legible, and readable content.

If your content on LinkedIn doesn’t meet these requirements, you might lose readers’ interest.

Still not sure how you should be using LinkedIn for promotion and marketing? Try the given tips to get started.

1. Build a comprehensive business page that attracts potential clients and increases their interest. Make sure you include precise service and product details. Also, your business page should look appealing.
2. Invite your clientele, colleagues, partners, vendors, and suppliers to follow the business page. You need to share recommendations and ask people to join your page on LinkedIn through word of mouth.
3. LinkedIn groups are a great networking hub and allow you to share content and make contacts. You can launch a group that is relevant to your industry: it’s one way to reach potential customers and generate leads.
4. Try LinkedIn ad campaigns to boost your marketing efforts. You can use targeted ads to reach out to the relevant audience.
5. Analyze your campaigns and the results they produce to improve in the future.

The Benefits of Adding LinkedIn to Your Marketing Strategy

Using LinkedIn for marketing gives you something other channels don’t: access to intent. The platform provides you a way into a highly engaged, professional audience that’s actively seeking solutions. With the right LinkedIn marketing strategies you can turn passive observers into active leads.

Marketing on LinkedIn works if you treat it like a serious channel where every post, every message, and every action matters. 

With the right combination of marketing strategies and a reliable LinkedIn lead generation tool to manage your outreach, you’ll start seeing results gradually.

Add LinkedIn to your marketing strategy to build credibility, share insights, and connect with people who matter. Create meaningful content, engage authentically, and use automation tools to scale your marketing efforts on LinkedIn. 

The best LinkedIn marketing tools like sales automation software will remove the grunt work, letting you focus on strategy and closing deals.