LinkedIn Lead Generation: Strategies to Drive Sales Leads
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Generating sales leads that convert quickly is more important than just generating more number of leads. LinkedIn helps you to do that. LinkedIn Lead generation enables you to target & generate the right business leads. That is why B2B companies use LinkedIn lead generation strategies to drive sales leads. Studies reveal that more than 80% of the B2B leads generated from social media are from LinkedIn. Therefore, LinkedIn lead generation is not optional anymore. It is one of the most successful lead generation strategies to generate leads for B2B companies.
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LinkedIn Lead Generation Benefits
LinkedIn is the only social media platform that can connect with 700+ million professionals from around 200+ countries in the world. There are 55+ million companies and 2.9 million groups on LinkedIn. More than a billion interactions happen every month on LinkedIn Pages. Therefore, B2B marketers can certainly tap into this huge source to generate targeted B2B leads based on industry, location, skills, title, experience and many such criteria. LinkedIn lead generation can help B2B companies to generate targeted leads that they can’t get from anywhere.
LinkedIn Basic Vs Premium Vs LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn has many versions such as the Basic, Premium and Sales Navigator. You would be wondering which version to choose. If you want to generate leads from LinkedIn, you need to go with LinkedIn Sales Navigator. LinkedIn Sales Navigator has advanced lead and account search filters that help you to efficiently narrow down your search and find decision makers & target accounts. It has many more features that makes LinkedIn Sales Navigator as the best choice for sales prospecting and get outstanding results.
Spruce up your Profile for LinkedIn Lead Generation
Let us look into some of the steps to spruce up your profile for LinkedIn lead generation.
Optimize & Update your LinkedIn Company Profile
Grow your LinkedIn Network
Engage your Audience
Target Decision Makers
Join LinkedIn Groups
- Create a LinkedIn Showcase Page
Optimize & Update your LinkedIn Company Profile
Your LinkedIn company profile is out there in public for all your prospects, clients, companies & candidates to see. Therefore, ensure that you have an impressive LinkedIn profile that includes relevant company information such as the name, company logo, cover image, tag line and website URL. Also, add the industry, number of employees, locations, address and contact information. Mention what you do & offer in your company overview. Share the latest events, product releases or updates on your company page. You need to keep your LinkedIn company profile updated. Make sure your LinkedIn company profile is SEO friendly to rank in search engines. Optimize your profile by using search terms that are relevant to your industry. When a prospect searches using those search terms, your profile should show up in the search.
Grow your LinkedIn Network
A great profile alone will not ensure your success on LinkedIn. It is just a beginning. You need to grow your LinkedIn network. The more you grow & expand your network; chances are more that you are connected with your prospects & leads.
One of the ways to grow your network is to import your email contacts. It helps you to send connection invites to the people in your contact list. You can also send a personalized LinkedIn connection request to people. It helps you to mention who you are and why you need to connect. You can identify LinkedIn Open Networkers (LIONs) and send connection requests to them. They are the people who will immediately accept your connection invites.
Another way to grow your network is to check your “Who viewed your profile” section on your LinkedIn profile. It displays the people who have viewed your profile. The reason why they visited your profile might be because they are interested to connect with you or your profile would have showed up in the search results or in the People you should follow tab. Whatever be the reason, you can just click on the Connect button. Chances are that they might accept your request. In the same way, if you visit other’s profiles or your prospect’s profiles, chances are high they might send you a connection request. It helps you to connect with targeted prospects. You can share your LinkedIn profile in other networks and have it in your email signature to grow your network.
Engage your Audience
Publishing articles on LinkedIn Pulse is one of the ways to engage your audience. Content that addresses problems or issues related to a specific industry will attract prospects to follow you. Answering to your prospect’s queries and comments builds trust among your followers including your prospects. It also shows you as an expert and people will reach out to you whenever they face a problem. Your content gets shared with your connections and their network. People who are not your followers or connections might also follow and connect with you.
In addition to articles, posting updates on a daily basis can do a world of good for you. It helps you to stay on top of your connections’ mind and helps you to interact with your audience every day. You can post content that is of value to your connections. You can share your blog post links, industry news & events, tips & tricks, questions, opinions, polls, etc. Engaging with your audience on a daily basis helps you to stay active and attract your targeted prospects as well.
Target Decision Makers
If you are in B2B sales, then decision makers should be your primary focus. LinkedIn has millions of decision makers and C-level executives. These are the folks who decide whether they need to buy your product/service or not. LinkedIn helps you to target decision makers based on location, industry, title, company size and many more filters. It helps you to narrow down your search based on your criteria and find the list of targeted list of prospects. Once you have the list, you can reach the C-level decision makers.
Join LinkedIn Grohups
LinkedIn groups are one of the best places to generate B2B leads. LinkedIn groups, spread across different verticals, bring like-minded professionals together in a forum. The conversations and the ideas exchanged are very informative. However, there is a limitation that you can join only a maximum of 50 groups. Therefore you must pick and join the groups wisely. You can also start your own group in LinkedIn.
All LinkedIn groups have idea exchange discussion forums and they are a goldmine of leads. Members of the group post their questions related to lead generation, strategy, pipeline development and management. They also ask opinion about a service provider and call for suggestions about a service or a product. Stats reveal that people who participate more on LinkedIn groups get more profile visits than those who doesn’t participate.
A referral to your business on these forums is best when given by your existing customers instead of your own sales reps. It always helps to have a handful of socially savvy customers who can vouch for you on these forums to build credibility and send warm leads to your website.
LinkedIn groups also highlight the top contributors for their engaging comments and lively discussions. This enables a “Pull” strategy instead of a “Push” strategy. The highlighted section will drive traffic to your profile and engaging content will get them to connect & contact you.
The more you are active and contribute & engage meaningfully to these discussions, people from your target market would like, connect and eventually end up buying your service or product. You can get started with meaningful conversations today and let the leads start flowing.
Create a LinkedIn Showcase Page
LinkedIn showcase pages help you to promote your products, services and initiatives that are unique. It is just an extension of your company profile and gets added under Affiliated Pages. You can create up to 10 showcase pages. You can use LinkedIn Showcase Pages as a part of your LinkedIn lead generation strategy. LinkedIn Showcase Pages enable you to target prospects from a niche industry segment. You can engage with your prospects by sharing content that is tailored for your target audience. You can have discussions and questions on showcase pages to drive more engagement. Showcase pages not only help you to connect with your target audience but also enables you to provide value to your prospects. You can use the LinkedIn analytics tool to measure engagement.
LinkedIn Lead Generation Strategies
LinkedIn Lead Generation for Niche Markets
LinkedIn lead generation strategy comes in handy when you want to generate B2B sales leads for niche markets. Since LinkedIn enables you to narrow down your target audience based on many search criteria, you will be able to find prospects with specific needs, wants & preferences. Therefore, it is essential that B2B companies use LinkedIn for B2B lead generation in niche markets.
Generate Leads from LinkedIn Likes
In today’s world, prospects love to consume personalized content. It is not just addressing by name, title or company name. Email personalization has now evolved a lot and it goes deep into the minute details of the prospects’ likes, interests, curiosity and so on. When you know such details of your prospects, it will help you to tailor your marketing message based on those interests, which will get you more click through rates and responses. LinkedIn is a platform where you can get to know the likes and interests of your prospects. It also helps you to find other prospects with similar interests also. This LinkedIn lead generation strategy can help you to leverage LinkedIn likes to generate new sales leads.
Generate B2B Leads from LinkedIn Events
LinkedIn Events is a new feature that enables people to create and join professional events such as seminars, meetups, online workshops, etc. You can join those communities, engage and grow your business. It is a new source of leads for B2B companies looking for LinkedIn lead generation. You can view the attendees of all events that your prospects are attending. LinkedIn Events helps you to get the attendee list with contact information for any event.
Generate Leads using LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn Groups is another great source to generate targeted B2B leads. To generate leads from LinkedIn Groups, you need to have the knack of joining the right groups that are relevant to you, follow the best practices; know how to engage with your prospects using various ways, etc. It also helps you to become a thought leader in your domain. If used efficiently, you can reach your target audience, engage with them, build relationship & trust and generate leads from LinkedIn groups.
Conclusion
I hope the above tips will help you to use LinkedIn lead generation strategy to generate the right leads.
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