Are LinkedIn groups the missing link for B2B marketing ?

While talking about the impact of social media on growing sales sometimes I get the feeling that LinkedIn gets the short shrift. Despite that I have always found that LinkedIn groups are a great resource for targeted marketing of your products / services. By definition group members are highly motivated individuals with a confirmed interest in the area – for instance if someone joins a group of Trainers it stands to reason that they have an interest in training & by making the effort to find & join the group they have also provided evidence of their drive.

It is possible to perform several activities within the confines of the group:

1. Promote your services / products – no one likes being "sold to" so take care to not do this in a direct manner but subtly, for eg. seeking people’s opinion on a feature or asking them for their wish list of requirements from a product / service of this nature. You have to genuinely care - I can't emphasise this enough !
2. Promote a webinar / conference & invite the members to join - remember the topic / content has to have the potential of delivering real value.
3. Actively participate in on-going discussions & take the opportunity to project thought leadership through your responses.
4. Monitoring discussions for people posting specific live requirements or seeking to solve some specific real life problem that can be addressed with your product / service. These people often expect to be contacted with potential solutions so go ahead & reach out to them ! 
5. Seed discussions – start threads soliciting views in an area of relevance to the product / service. 
6. Promote your other web properties – website, whitepapers, blog etc. - again these have to show potential to deliver real value to those taking the pain to visit.
7. Several groups allow the posting of PRs & Job opportunities as well in specified areas - remember to scrupulously follow the rules of the group.
8. This is in addition to other back-end activities like identifying target customers, contact discovery, industry data & information, competition watch etc.

It is also possible to create one’s own group for the express purpose of being able to carry out a set of targeted activities within its confines. There are a structured set of steps that can be done to start the group & to grow its membership. The advantage here is that the group will be completely within one’s own control & the attendant disadvantage is that it takes time to build up the membership to a reasonable level – if one is willing to invest this time & effort then the returns are definitely worthwhile. The key here is that the activities of the group must at all times put the needs of the members first. 

There are several success stories out there & working business models built entirely on the capability of the product / service to leverage Linkedin - there's no reason why your own story cannot join that list !

PS : I would welcome the opportunity to connect on Linkedin. I am at sanjeevnambudiri@gmail.com !