5 Advanced LinkedIn Strategies for B2B Marketing & Lead Generation
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Most of you, the amazing people who will read this article, probably already know that LinkedIn is one of the most popular social media networks for business professionals.
And obviously, when used correctly, it can be a great tool for generating leads and building relationships with potential clients. However, a lot of people in the B2B lead generation area don’t know how to use LinkedIn effectively for marketing and lead generation. Like everything else in this world, there’s a trick to it.
In today’s article, we will discuss six advanced strategies for using LinkedIn for lead generation and boosting your business.
Tested, proven, and with #NoBS!
So let’s start.
Why B2B Tech Companies Need LinkedIn
In a blog post, best-selling author Neil Patel says that the world is shrinking. The level of separation between one person and any other person on the planet has diminished from 6 levels in the 1990s to 3.5 levels now.
The number of degrees of separation is going down because the world is getting more connected. In other words, when it comes to how many actions and recommendations you need to connect to somebody, due to the internet, social media, and growing networks, the number is going down.
That has a significant impact on all efforts related to lead generation for B2B tech companies. In the past, you could generate leads by working your way up through personal relationships, networking events, traditional and more expensive media buying, and so on.
But now, with LinkedIn, if used correctly (yes, once again, I am looking judgmentally at you, spammy people who use LinkedIn in the wrong way, with a low conversion rate and a lot of noise around you), you can get leads much more easily and quickly.
What Are The Advantages Of Using LinkedIn To Generate Leads?
A. It’s Made Up Of Professionals With Purchasing Power
LinkedIn is not like other social networks. It’s not a place where people go to waste time or procrastinate. Oh, well, maybe it is a bit. Just a bit, but not as much as other social networks.
The people who are active on LinkedIn are there for a reason: to connect with other professionals and to generate business opportunities.
According to Business Insider, LinkedIn is reported to have 822 million registered users as of Q1 2022, and although there is no official number, it is believed it has over 310 million MAU (Monthly Active Users) in over 200 countries. More than three million companies have a LinkedIn Company Page.
These are people with purchasing power, or at least the ability to recommend you to the perfect person with whom to discuss business opportunities for their company.
B. LinkedIn Lead Generation Is A Less Expensive Way To Get More Leads For Your Business And It Can Be More Effective
Not only can you do LinkedIn lead generation for free, but even if you opt for a paid strategy, you could end up saving a lot compared to running a similar ad campaign elsewhere. Although at first glance it might look more expensive, if you keep in mind the quality of the leads, and the conversion rates as well, at the end of the day, the cost per user acquired might be lower.
HubSpot found that LinkedIn Sponsored Content has a higher cost-per-click than Google Ads or Facebook ads, but it also has almost double the conversion rates.
And if you generate leads using the InMail feature, HubSpot also reports that the conversion rates are more than double compared to email cold outreach campaigns.
C. LinkedIn Messages Have A Higher Reply Rate Than Emails
The average reply rate to cold emails is 10%, while the average reply rate to LinkedIn messages is 25–30%. If done correctly (and there is a BIG IF here), if you connect, nurture, and create value for your prospects and you don’t make the entire intro message and the conversation that follows about yourself but make it about them, chances are you will get a higher reply rate, and a much higher number of discovery or demo calls booked.
Moreover, because LinkedIn is a platform made for business networking and building relationships, the leads you generate on LinkedIn are usually of higher quality than the ones you generate with other methods.
If used incorrectly, LinkedIn can quickly become a huge time sink with little to no return on investment. So, how do you generate leads using the true power of LinkedIn the RIGHT way?
Keep reading, because the juicy part starts now! However, before we dive in, if you need help with your lead generation, send us a message at [email protected] and we will put all our experience to work for you.
1. Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile
Your LinkedIn profile is one of the first places potential customers or clients will go to learn more about you and your business. Make sure you take the time to craft a well-written and informative profile that makes a good impression.
You can think of your LinkedIn profile as your personal social media landing page.
Your profile headline, image, cover photo, experience, and the content you post are the first things people will see when you send them a connection request.
Make sure to take your time to optimize the elements that are visible on the connection request:
I. Your profile picture:
Make sure to use a professional image, but one that cuts through the noise too.
II. Headline:
Use a headline explaining clearly why your prospects should accept your connection request.
The person you want to connect with is likely to check your profile to dig a little bit into who you are.
So you would want to:
a. explain your value proposition in the LinkedIn profile banner
b. have a good profile picture
c. use a clear, punchy, and short headline
d. detail your value proposition in the About Section
e. give details about your job experiences
Anyone reading should understand what your proposition value is in no more than 5 seconds spent on your profile.
2. LinkedIn Lead Generation Through Cold Outreach
The main reason people leverage LinkedIn is for networking, so take advantage of this by using it to get leads. LinkedIn is a great way to connect with both current and potential customers. You can learn about their connections to see if they could be beneficial for you as well.
Additionally, asking your clients for referrals or references is a great way to get more business. This way, when you connect with new leads using warm outreach methods, you can make propositions that relate to their interests and provide value to them right away.
If you cannot get referrals or references, don’t worry, there are other strategies you can leverage for LinkedIn outbound lead generation.
Here is our approach:
2.1 Set Up Your Offer, Process, Messages, And Channels
The first step is to gain clarity on what you sell, to whom, what their pain points are, and to have the answer to one of their most important questions: “How can you help me and why should I buy from you?”
If you cannot answer this question in a clear and simple way, then you do not have a lead generation strategy. You just have an “I hope someone buys from me” strategy.
Once you know what your offer is, it’s time to put together the process and the messages you will use for your LinkedIn outreach campaign.
There are a lot of things to consider here, but the most important are:
a. Your offer: what are you selling and how does it help your prospects?
b. Your process: how will you reach out to your prospects? What is the sequence of your messages?
c. Your channels: where will you reach out to your prospects?
2.2 Create Your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile):
The next step is to create your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile). This will help you understand who your target customer is, what companies they work for, what their job title is, and other important information.
Some things to consider when creating your ICP:
a. What companies do you want to target?
b. What job titles do you want to target?
c. What industries do you want to target?
d. What size companies do you want to target?
e. What location do you want to target?
f. In what business stage are they?
g. What are their biggest pain points?
h. What are their objectives and aspirations?
2.3 List Building And Saving Searches In LinkedIn
LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator comes with a really good search engine for you to find the right prospects. We’ll dive more in-depth on this subject in another post, but we can say for now that you can filter Accounts and Leads by many criteria.
Here are some of them, to help you find the right LinkedIn profiles:
- Connection degree (1st degree, 2nd degree or 3rd degree) – you will want to focus on 1st and 2nd degree connection)
- Geography
- Industry
- Years of experience
- Profile language
- Company headcount
- Current job title
- Function in the current company
- Seniority level
- Activities (focus on finding the active people who posted at least once on LinkedIn or changed jobs recently)
- Company headcount growth
- Company job opportunities
When you are creating a highly specific and targeted ideal customer profile, you’ll want to save it so you don’t have to enter the details each time. Saved searches allow you to stay engaged with your prospects.
You already know that generating B2B leads is a long-term endeavor. So why not make your life easier and better and save your Lead & Account searches?
2.4 Nurture
The biggest mistake most people who try doing cold outreach on LinkedIn make is that they jump straight into connecting with potential clients. And they start sending them salesy messages as soon as they accept the connection request.
The best way to use LinkedIn to generate leads (or anywhere else, for that matter) is by providing value first and nurturing the relationship over time. Nurturing your prospects means sending them helpful articles, and helpful resources, inviting them to webinars or events and building trust over time.
Please do not forget: Only after you have built a relationship with your prospect should you start sending them sales messages.
And even then, you should focus on how you can help them, not on how they can buy from you. If you keep that in mind, you will be successful in generating leads on LinkedIn (or anywhere else).
We Recommend The Following Approach To Nurturing Leads:
- Create lists
- Nurture them for at least 7–10 days
- Send connection request
- If they accept, nurture them for 10–15 more days
- After the second nurturing step, don’t rush into pitching them what you do but start a conversation about them
Don’t try to sell them anything just yet, but a 15 to 30 minute call in which you can further nurture the relationship.
If you want to find out more about our process, with templates, scripts, and everything you need to start implementing it today, you can check out this useful material we have available on Gumroad, here.
3. Post High-Value Content On LinkedIn At Least 2-3 Times Per Week To Create Authority
Some people might even recommend posting once a day, but from our experience, this might be a bit too much. We always recommend posting only highly relevant and useful information, and not posting for the sake of it. This is not a numbers game. And low quality content will bring no benefits to your account.
The first step, and maybe the most important, is to design 2-3 content pillars that are relevant to your prospects and your expertise.
Once you do this, you can start generating content focused only on those content pillars. And since we want to make your lives easier, below are some post idea frameworks.
Content Frameworks:
Contrarian: Something you believe contradicts the status quo
Innovative: An idea or approach that no one else has thought of yet
Relatable: Is this something other people will be able to relate to?
Cross-referenced: How can a concept from another industry be applied to yours?
Story: Is there a story behind the idea you can tell?
Emotional: Does this idea have a strong emotion tied to it?
Empowering: Inspiring people to do something;
List: A list of top topics, advice, resources, people to follow, etc;
Observation: Something you observed in your own life that others would benefit from hearing;
Present vs. Future: How things work today vs. how you think they’ll work in the future;
Analytical: Pull back the curtain on a concept, company, process, or idea;
Procedural: How people do something step-by-step;
Celebrations: Celebrate a milestone for your company. People love success stories;
How-to’s: Publish a tutorial with the necessary steps to achieve a specific result.
4. Engage In Relevant LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn groups are a great way to generate leads because you can connect with potential clients that you wouldn’t have access to otherwise.
The key is to join relevant groups and be active in them. Don’t just join a bunch of random groups and start spamming people with sales messages. That won’t get you anywhere.
Instead, focus on providing value to the group members. Share helpful blog posts, answer their questions, and start building relationships. If you do that, you will be able to generate leads from groups in no time.
Here Are A Few Things To Keep In Mind When Engaging In LinkedIn Groups:
– Make sure the group is relevant to your business
– Only join a handful of groups so you can be active in all of them
– Don’t spam the group members with sales messages
– Focus on providing value and building relationships
If you follow these tips, you will be able to generate leads from LinkedIn groups in no time.
Leverage social listening, follow the posts that community members are posting in those groups, and give super amazing answers.
This way, you will establish yourself as an authority, but you will also start conversations in the chat, organically.
You can also use the content framework from above and generate dedicated content in the groups. But please make sure you don’t spam and that you aren’t salesy and spammy in your approach. Otherwise, you risk being kicked out of the group and damaging your image.
5. Sponsored Content To Generate Leads On LinkedIn
After you’ve successfully implemented the points above, you are ready to start investing money in paid ads.
If you prototyped, tested, and improved all the above, starting with what you sell, your Ideal Customer Profile, B2B lead generation process, messages, content generation, and content distribution, now you should already have enough information so you can start LinkedIn paid ads.
The best way to generate leads with LinkedIn Sponsored Content is to create a lead magnet that’s relevant to your target audience. A lead magnet is something that’s valuable enough that people are willing to exchange their contact information for it. For example, if you sell software that helps businesses automate their social media marketing, you could create a lead magnet that’s a step-by-step guide to setting up your first social media campaign.
Once you have your lead magnet, you need to create a landing page where people can download it. On the landing page, you should also include a form where people can enter their contact information.
Another way to use LinkedIn marketing through paid ads is to promote your website articles. If you have written a blog post that’s relevant to your target audience, you can use LinkedIn Sponsored Content to promote it. But don’t forget your call to action in the ad and in the article, so people know what you want them to do. For example, you could include a call-to-action to sign up for your newsletter or download your free guide, or whatever suits you best. The objective here is to onboard your prospects in the first step of the sales funnel.
When it comes to LinkedIn marketing through paid ads, there are two main objectives: brand awareness and lead generation. You can use either one or both objectives, depending on your goals. If you want to generate leads, make sure you’re clear about what you want people to do. Include a call-to-action in your ad and on the landing page or article that you’re promoting. And if you’re focusing on brand awareness, make sure your ad is creative and eye-catching. LinkedIn is a professional platform, so your ad should be too.
There are a lot of different ways to generate leads on LinkedIn. But if you want to be successful, you need to focus on providing value and building relationships. Only then will you be able to ace the LinkedIn lead generation game.
Enjoy and start implementing today. There is a lot of work to be done, but it is worth it. Sooner or later, you will generate a lot of leads through this process, and your business will thank you.
We hope our content will help you optimize your lead generation efforts and ultimately get more leads into your funnels.
If you have any questions or want to learn more about lead generation and mapping a good ideal customer profile, feel free to contact us.
We’re always happy to help!