If you are using LinkedIn to sell and market yourself, your products or your services, it’s critically important that you narrow down your approach in order to appeal to a few specific audiences.
More than anywhere else online, the riches truly are in the niches over on LinkedIn.
It all begins with making your LinkedIn profile page what I call “client-facing.” This strategy will help your target audience find you more quickly and easily, which in turn helps you to win new business on the platform.
(Related: How To Create a Killer LinkedIn Profile.)
I’ve shared elsewhere about how to do this in your LinkedIn profile headline and summary sections, but today I am going to share another important area to make “client-facing” — and that is within the “Work Experience” section of your profile.
Client-Facing + Niche Focus = Success on LinkedIn
With nearly 500 million members in 200 countries, and adding two new members every second, LinkedIn is the world’s largest platform for professionals online. Hundreds of millions of professionals worldwide are using LinkedIn’s powerful internal search engine, and they are searching for what matters to them — not what matters to you.
Because its members use the platform like a professional version of Google, it’s imperative that you make sure your LinkedIn profile has the types of keywords and search phrases your ideal audience would type into the site when looking for someone who provides your products or services.
For example, if you are CEO of a video marketing company, don’t list your professional LinkedIn headline as “CEO, Company Name.”
Instead, it should read, “Video Marketing Services | Marketing Videos | Video Production Services” and so on.
Also, niching down your profile is key – it helps set you apart from thousands of others by framing up your expertise in a way that appeals to your exact target client. People want to feel like you “get” them, and that you have industry-specific experience, insights and strategies as well.
To expand on that concept, your LinkedIn headline could instead read, “Video Marketing Services | Marketing Videos for Dentists and Plumbers.”
So, while your product or service (in this case, video marketing) might be something anyone can use, you don’t want to set yourself up that way on LinkedIn.
Here’s why: If you’re trying to be everything to everyone, you’ll be nobody to no one!
Instead, pick 2-3 target audiences or industry niches that you want to focus on, and rework your entire profile to appeal to those specific individual niches.
Appealing to Multiple Audiences
In your profile, under the “Experience” section, you can add multiple work positions to help show where you’ve worked and for how long.
The key here is to create multiple “Experience” listings to appeal to each of your niche audiences.
For example, with your video marketing company, create one “Experience” section that says, “Video Marketing Services for Dentists.”
Use your company name and years worked there, but make sure this listing focuses on Dentists as the target audience you serve.
Talk about how you provide video marketing for dental clinics, use client testimonials from dentists you’ve worked with, provide sample videos (as media you add to the section) of dental marketing videos, and so on.
Next, create another “Experience” listing that says, “Video Marketing Services for Plumbers,” and then follow the same format as the “Dentist” listing, but instead use Plumber-specific examples, testimonials, clips, etc.
See how this works?
You can create multiple “Experience” sections to appeal to each niche audience.
Doing this helps your profile get “found” by those niche audiences when they are using LinkedIn Search.
It also makes you more appealing when you go out and invite Dentists or Plumbers to connect, because they can see that you “specialize” in their industry when it comes to this type of service (video marketing).
On LinkedIn, Go Niche or Go Home!
Using this strategy of appealing to multiple audiences on LinkedIn is very simple, yet very effective. It allows LinkedIn to be an extension of your own website, helping explain quickly and clearly who you serve and how you help others achieve their goals.
If you’re not sure which niche audiences to choose, look at where you’re already having success, and where you already have industry-specific testimonials or work samples.
That makes it easy to go niche, and once you do, the riches (on LinkedIn, at least) aren’t far behind!
