LinkedIn Marketing: What It is and How to Start

LinkedIn marketing means using LinkedIn to get your business in front of professionals who could buy, hire or partner with you. It covers free work like your profile, a company profile and posts, plus paid ads. This guide on LinkedIn marketing explains every part in plain terms and ends with a first week plan, using LinkedIn's own articles read on 29 October 2026.

What is LinkedIn Marketing?

Marketing on LinkedIn is the set of actions a business takes to build awareness, generate leads and form partnerships. LinkedIn names those three aims in its own marketing article. Profiles count as much as brand material because people do business with people.

Three parts make up the work. Your personal profile shows who you are and a company profile shows the organization. Ads reach people who do not follow either one yet. Your numbers sit in analytics, and how to see your LinkedIn analytics lists where. LinkedIn's own reach figures are listed in LinkedIn statistics.

Organic and Paid Options

Organic work costs time and paid work costs budget. Here are the four differences that matter on day one.

Four ad types are on the advertise article, which are Sponsored Content, Sponsored Messaging, Dynamic Ads and Text Ads. Sponsored Content is the one that appears in the feed. Our ads setup guide walks through the campaign steps.

How to Use LinkedIn for Business: Profile or Company Profile?

Both, and they do different jobs. LinkedIn Help says a profile represents a person and a company profile represents an organization. You cannot represent your business with a personal profile.

Help adds a warning. If you try, LinkedIn can log you out automatically, and repeat violations can restrict the account. If you already did this by mistake, the fix is to rename the profile with your real name, create a company profile and add yourself as admin.

You also need the personal profile first. Help says you need a profile to create a company profile, and you cannot convert one into the other. Our company profile guide covers the setup in detail.

How to Start LinkedIn Marketing in 7 Steps

Start with the free parts. This guide trims the marketing article from LinkedIn to the seven steps below.

1. Define your audience and goals. LinkedIn's example is raising awareness among members with a title like social media manager.
2. Refresh your personal profile. LinkedIn says to aim for close to 100% completeness and to add skills and recent work.
3. Create the company profile. It is free, and you need a LinkedIn account.
4. Add keywords to the About tab overview so people searching for your service find you.
5. Invite your connections to follow, and tell employees about your most important posts. LinkedIn also suggests a Follow button on your website and mentions in emails and newsletters.
6. Publish a first post and a second post in a different format.
7. Check analytics, then decide on ads.

Create the Company Profile on Desktop

Help gives six steps on desktop. Click the For Business icon in the upper-right corner of your LinkedIn homepage and scroll down to the option that creates a company profile. Choose the type, fill in the details and tick the verification box before you click the create button.

Creating a company profile works on desktop and on an iOS device. LinkedIn Help says Android does not support it.

What to Post for LinkedIn Marketing

Salesy content does not perform well, says LinkedIn. It says a fresh idea is what members find engaging, and thought leadership is named as a strong way to grow an audience. It also suggests sharing insightful content from others as well as your own.

Five formats appear in the marketing article.

• Images, which LinkedIn says earn over six times more engagement than text-only content.
• Collages of 3 to 4 images in one post.
• Video of about 1 to 2 minutes with subtitles. LinkedIn adds that live video generates 24x more comments than regular video.
• Documents like PDFs or PowerPoints.
• Kudos and team moments that name colleagues.

Those figures are LinkedIn's own claims with no date printed. We do not treat them as tested. Our content strategy guide helps you choose a posting rhythm.

When Paid LinkedIn Marketing Makes Sense

Add ads after the free parts work. LinkedIn says Campaign Manager lets you set a budget, choose a goal between clicks and impressions and control the timeline. Cost comes from an auction in which you place bids, and you can start, stop or change ads at any time.

Another option is to promote your strongest content with Sponsored Content, and conversion tracking to count leads from ads. For the money side, read how much LinkedIn ads cost before you set a budget.

What is Still Unconfirmed

Nothing here comes from a real campaign or a company profile we built. The label is Checked and not Tested.

Neither LinkedIn article shows a date. We cannot say how fresh the audience size and the engagement figures are.

Two audience sizes appear. The marketing article says over 660 million professionals and the advertise article says 1 billion+. We found no article that explains the gap.

The articles do not name a posting frequency that works for every business. We do not give one.

Where This Guide Fits

Starting out is one part of the wider LinkedIn Marketing for Business topic in the LinkedIn section. When the profile is ready, tune the company profile for search.

Not on LinkedIn yet? Open an account before step one. Our editorial policy explains why this guide is Checked.

Sources

• LinkedIn Marketing Solutions: How to market on LinkedIn, read 29 October 2026, no date printed, the ten ways LinkedIn lists for marketing.
• LinkedIn Marketing Solutions: Marketing and advertising on LinkedIn, read 29 October 2026, no date printed, ad types, the audience size claim and the minimum daily budget.
• LinkedIn Help: Create a company profile, read 29 October 2026, updated 1 year before reading, the desktop steps and device limits.
• LinkedIn Help: Profile and company profile differences, read 29 October 2026, updated 7 months before reading, why a profile cannot represent an organization.

This guide is labelled Checked. We compared every claim with the four LinkedIn articles above and did not run a campaign or create a company profile. How we label guides explains the three labels.