Generating Leads Through LinkedIn
Social media marketing can help you identify your customers on the social networks where they access information. Finding them, getting them to notice you, to follow you, and then to transact business with you takes time and thoughtfully applied tactics.
Here are five ways to enhance how you’re using LinkedIn to cultivate warmer leads and potentially generate more sales.
1. Leverage your Profile and Company Page
Optimize and utilize your professional Profile and Company Page on LinkedIn to lay a strong foundation for connecting with customers and prospects. Make sure your presence on LinkedIn is complete with clear descriptions and other key information as well as eye-catching visuals including videos.
Get even more out of your account by being active which includes:
- Commenting on, liking, and sharing posts from your connections
- Publishing regular posts to the LinkedIn feed
- Joining and participating in LinkedIn Groups
- Publishing articles on your Profile
Be prepared to generate and post relevant content on a regular basis to attract attention and showcase your brand.
2. Deep dive with advanced search and referrals for better connections
LinkedIn has a variety of options to narrow down your searches and identify potential customers. You can search by job title, location, or industry. Once you identify prospects, seek out an introduction or warm referral from one of your contacts who may be connected to them.
A tool that can help you make more fruitful connections on LinkedIn is the "Ask for an Introduction" feature. While you can receive messages from any LinkedIn member via LinkedIn’s InMail, to send out messages directly to someone who is not one of your LinkedIn connections requires paying for a premium feature.
Asking for an introduction to someone who is not one of your connections, however, is a free feature. LinkedIn shows you which of your connections are connected to the person you are trying to reach. You can then select the connection you’d like to approach with a request for an introduction. Personal referrals are warmer leads that are more likely to lead to a transaction.
3. Up your reputation in LinkedIn Groups
Today’s networking isn’t limited to Chamber of Commerce meetings and industry trade shows. Online groups and forums can be the perfect virtual places to showcase your expertise and connect with potential customers.
The key to online networking in LinkedIn Groups is to get familiar with the tone and content shared in them and then offering relevant information to fellow members. This can be in the form of sharing news items, offering general tips or advice, or responding thoughtfully to other posts.
If and when appropriate, invite other members to be first-degree connections with you on LinkedIn to continue conversations and begin building new relationships that can turn into sales.
4. Pay for LinkedIn social ads
If you have a budget to pay for ads, LinkedIn ads could help boost your lead generation. Similar to Facebook, LinkedIn offers a self-serve ad management tool, LinkedIn Campaign Manager, and provides a variety of ad options based on your business goals. Those options include brand awareness, engagement, website conversions, and, more specifically, lead generation.
Select the lead generation ad and you’ll see an option for Lead Gen Forms. Using this feature, you can collect quality leads with a pre-filled lead form that populates a person’s information so they can easily respond through your ad. Lead Gen Forms are available for display and message ads as well as sponsored content on LinkedIn.
5. Invest in LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator
Another fee-based service on LinkedIn is their Sales Navigator product. Paying for a subscription gives you access to tools such:
- Lead Builder which filters data from LinkedIn to identify qualified prospects
- Saved Leads to store prospects to reach out to them at a later time
- Relationship Explorer to visualize the connections between different contacts within an account
- Relationship Map for a visual representation of connections to show how they are linked to one another
The Sales Navigator also provides enhanced InMail and Advanced Search.
Sales Navigator is an investment with prices starting at $99 per month for their Core plan or $149.99 per month for their Advanced plan. Eligible nonprofits can subscribe to Sales Navigator at a 75% discount.
Social media tools and paid ads aside, applying some "old fashioned" networking techniques on LinkedIn can also generate leads, including regular follow ups and check ins with connections and making introductions between your connections to generate good will. When it comes to lead generation, don’t limit yourself to finding new customers. Use LinkedIn to identify vendors and strategic partners, both of whom can be fruitful sources of warm leads.