LinkedIn marketing is potentially highly powerful as a tool for networking and marketing and if you follow the advice in this book, you’ll find that the possibilities are endless.

The question you might be wondering then, is whether it’s worth upgrading to LinkedIn Premium? And whether or not you should use LinkedIn ads? As the platform is already so powerful, might it not make sense to invest some money into it and potentially amplify that potential?

What You Get With LinkedIn Premium

Everything that is listed in this book, you can already do with a ‘regular LinkedIn account’. In other words, you can use all the techniques suggested in these pages so far without spending a dime. You certainly do not ‘need’ a LinkedIn Premium account in that case. And probably, you shouldn’t think about spending any money until you have at least implemented some of these strategies.

But if you’re having success with LinkedIn already and you’d like to get a little bit more out of it, LinkedIn Premium does offer some interesting incentives. These include:

Advanced Search

Advanced search allows you to search specific LinkedIn members using a number of advanced filters and fields. Specifically you get an additional 8 fields to search by which are: company size, seniority level, interests and Fortune 1000. This means that you can quickly find a contact you want to work with, rather than sifting through everyone you know.

Who’s Viewed Your Profile

Another great way to make connections on LinkedIn is to see who is viewing your profile and then to add those people back. This is a useful tool because it allows you to see how well your

account is working as well. Normally you can see a few of the people who have recently viewed your profile, but with Premium you can see everyone.

Search Keywords

You’ll also be able to see who found your profile using which keywords. This is very useful because it allows you to monitor the effectiveness of your LinkedIn SEO.

InMail

Everyone has InMail for connections and for 2nd and 3rd degree connections. But with Premium, you’ll be able to send an InMail to anyone on LinkedIn which you can use as a way to ‘prime’ people to accept your offer to connect rather than just contacting them out of the blue.

LinkedIn Ads

Finally, you have LinkedIn Ads. And what these are is essentially a PPC network (Pay Per Click) that works similarly to Facebook or Google AdWords. That is to say that you only have to pay when someone actually clicks on your ads (though you can also pay per impression). You’ll generally only pay a few cents for each click but the more you pay, the more often your ad will appear. You also set a minimum daily budget, with the minimum being set at $10.

This is very effective because it means you don’t have to pay anything if your ad is ineffectual and doesn’t generate any traffic whatsoever. Likewise, again like Facebook Ads and Google AdWords, LinkedIn allows you to carefully target who sees your ads and this is fantastic for B2B organizations as it lets you specifically market to decision makers within your industry. What’s more, LinkedIn Ads also work incredibly well for recruiting.

The exposure you’ll get from LinkedIn Ads is of course not as great as what you’d get from Facebook but for the right business model this is definitely worth experimenting with. And in some ways, the slightly less popular nature of this platform can work in your favor as there will be less competition.