An Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn Lead Generation

[This post is directed towards people who are looking forward to finding ways to reach new customers and convert them into leads, be it small business owners, solo entrepreneurs or the digital marketers like me.]

So, "How do you generate leads for your business"?

"Do you wait for them to come to you" or "Do you approach lead generation with careful and convincing strategy"?

If you have been struggling to generate leads for your business, don’t stress. We have come up with a new and practical plan for you.

In this article, I’m going to give you a strategy that you can use to produce as many B2B target leads as you need (provided you have enough time and energy to put behind it)

But first things first... Why LinkedIn?

• LinkedIn is the hidden treasure loaded with regular users — more than 400 million of them, to be correct. What's more, it's home to more than 9 million business profiles from over 200 nations. ?
• In fact, according to B2B News Network, around half of all users are likely to purchase from a company that they engage with on LinkedIn.
• Another big secret is, on LinkedIn, you’re able to target your audience on a considerably deeper level — including geographic location, current company, past company, industry, profile language, non-profit interests, and school.

So now that we’ve established that LinkedIn is a perfect platform for marketing, let’s dive into how you can start building out your network and subsequently start with LinkedIn lead generation.

Let's get a brief description of our 5-P Strategy:

• Plan
• Position
• Promote
• Propagate
• Pursue

Step 1 - Plan

The first and the foremost step towards generating leads from LinkedIn is by having a fair idea and understanding of audience you want to target.

The key is not to treat social selling like cold calling. Stop reaching out to any random person! Instead, identify your target audience in a better way.

The standard ways of doing this are as follows:

a) Make use of 'Advanced Search'

Whenever searching for target leads, it's not essential that we know their names. But, sometimes we’re looking for connections in a specific target market. So, in this case using the Advanced Search feature may be a better use of your time when trying to generate targeted leads.

You can easily find several search filters on the advanced search page to narrow down your findings. They include Location, Industry, Company, Title, etc. ?️

Your goal at this step should be to generate maximum leads using this fantastic feature.

b) Don't forget about your 'Current Connections'

Imagine how your business would look if you received an ongoing flood of industry-specific, highly-targeted leads from within the list of your current connections only.

It would feel pretty amazing, wouldn’t it?

Therefore, to fulfill this wish, develop the relationship you have with your present customers. You should be connecting with them on LinkedIn and viewing their connections as potential new connections for you. Never underestimate the power of your current connections! ?

c) Join LinkedIn 'Groups'

Joining new groups is another spectacular thing you could do in the quest for lead generation.

The more natural way is to be active in whatever groups you join. Giving valuable advice and sharing great resources is the best way to engage with the people in your groups. Remember, not to remain silent! If you want to generate new leads, remaining silent is not going to help you anyway. ?

Step 2 - Position

It can be troublesome sometimes to keep all of your information up to date on your LinkedIn profile, however as more people look to social media to find out information about you, it's vital that your profile is current and professional.

Please note! A good LinkedIn profile provides you with 'More Opportunities to Convert'

You can refer to the images below extracted from Marc Lalonde's profile, a significant sample of an attractive Linked profile.

Take note of these elements that will get you noticed on LinkedIn:

a) Start with a compelling photo, prefer a mugshot/face focussed style avatar and Make your headline stand out

b) Describe your work properly

Answer the questions people have about your work.

c) Skill endorsement and Recommendations

Receiving endorsements and recommendations will increase your visibility within your industry and will put you in front of other professionals you may not yet have connected with.

Is there no one to recommend you?

Instead of waiting for someone to recommend you, devote five minutes a day to writing and posting recommendations for your customers and key contacts. Once your contact approves the text, the recommendation will show up on their LinkedIn account.

This will align you with your contact and make it much more likely that your contact will look for a way to return the favor. That could be either a referral or a recommendation.

Often, it's both.

Step 3 - Promote

It's time to showcase your expertise! People believe what they see, and if you want to look like an expert in your field, then you must do what the experts do.

Promote your key points using high-quality content, videos, etc with your target market on LinkedIn. You can share your content in two ways, either through Status Updates or through Articles. A white paper templates software like Venngage could be of great use for you to bring your content to life.

Instead of maintaining a cold sales pitch and spamming the walls of people with your sale posts, share content that your targets want. It will make you more approachable and trustworthy.

Step 4 - Propagate

Kudos! Once you get your prospectives talking on LinkedIn, you no longer have to rely on providing them with an email address in hopes that they’ll themselves contact you for more information.

Now you can use direct messaging to reach out to these targeted business leads and gather their information privately (asking people to leave their contact information publicly is never a good idea).

Step 5 - Pursue

Contacting your targeted leads on LinkedIn was not the last thing that you could do. You can also take the conversation off LinkedIn to develop a stronger bond.
It makes the interaction more personal and leaves an impact on a consumer depicting that you have the interest to nurture the bond.

Tip: To schedule your LinkedIn post ahead of time, start using Statusbrew today!

Takeaway!

It doesn't make a difference what your business is, LinkedIn is an ideal approach to draw in leads with regards to clients, financial specialists, business accomplices, sponsors, affiliates, and the sky is the limit from there. Spend thirty minutes a day implementing these steps above, and you will be astonished by the outcomes in the blink of an eye.