LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional social network with over 722 million users worldwide. With its huge user base and focus on professional connections, LinkedIn offers an immense opportunity for businesses looking to generate new leads and customers. But can you really generate quality leads on LinkedIn? Let’s take a deeper look at using LinkedIn for lead generation.
What are leads?
Before we dive into lead generation on LinkedIn, let’s clarify what a lead actually is. A lead is a person or business that has shown interest in your company’s products or services. Some common examples of leads include:
– Someone who signs up for your newsletter or email list
– A person who downloads content like ebooks from your website
– Visitors to your site who spend time browsing services or products
– Attendees at events, trade shows, or webinars you host
– Customers of competitors who you want to convert
Quality leads are contacts likely to turn into paying customers. LinkedIn can be a source of both raw leads and qualified leads, depending on your approach.
Why generate leads on LinkedIn?
Here are some of the key advantages of generating leads on LinkedIn:
– **Huge audience** – With over 722 million users, LinkedIn provides access to the world’s largest professional network. This creates an enormous pool of potential leads.
– **Valuable user data** – LinkedIn profiles provide a wealth of information on each user, including job title, education, skills, experiences, and interests. This data helps you qualify and target leads.
– **Engaged user base** – LinkedIn users are there to network, find jobs, market themselves, and engage with professional content. This makes them more receptive to connecting with brands.
– **Build relationships** – LinkedIn fosters ongoing professional relationships, allowing you to nurture leads over time.
– **Syncs with CRM** – LinkedIn integrates directly with many popular CRM systems, like Salesforce, to capture leads and seamlessly transfer data.
– **Measurable results** – LinkedIn provides analytics on post reach, engagement, followers, and more. This allows you to measure your lead generation efforts.
– **Trust and authority** – A business presence on LinkedIn lends credibility and trustworthiness, which can attract higher quality leads.
LinkedIn lead generation tactics
So how exactly can you go about generating leads on LinkedIn? Here are some of the most effective tactics and best practices:
Optimize your Company Page
Your LinkedIn Company Page serves as the hub for your brand on LinkedIn. Take time to fully optimize it:
– Fill out all sections – description, specialties, location, website, etc.
– Add detailed information on your products and services.
– Use images, videos, SlideShare presentations to showcase content.
– Publish employee generated content and Company Updates.
– Encourage employees to follow and engage with your Company Page.
An optimized page establishes credibility and gives leads more reasons to connect with your brand.
Focus on quality content creation
Publishing regular, high-quality content on LinkedIn that targets your buyer personas and addresses their interests is one of the best ways to generate leads. Useful types of content include:
– Industry news, analysis, and insights
– Trend reports or guides
– Case studies demonstrating client results
– Tips, how-tos, and best practice content
– Webinars, events, and videos
– Infographics and visual content formats
– Content promoting new offers, products, or services
This content will organically attract the attention of your ideal leads.
Build your network and connections
Expanding your network of LinkedIn connections increases your reach and visibility to new leads:
– Connect with past clients, co-workers, family, friends, and others you know.
– Search for and connect with prospects using advanced search filters and saved searches.
– Join relevant LinkedIn Groups to connect with like-minded professionals in your industry. Groups allow you to message any fellow member.
– Connect with people who engage with your Company Page and content.
– Avoid spamming connection requests. Personalize invites and focus on quality connections.
Participate in LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn Groups cater to niche professional subjects and interests. Becoming an active participant in relevant Groups exposes you to targeted prospective leads:
– Join Groups related to your industry, products, location, and customer demographics.
– Engage in Group discussions by providing helpful professional insights. Become a thought leader.
– Share your content in Groups when relevant to the discussion.
– Avoid overt self-promotion and sales pitches that will get you banned.
– Build relationships and trust by contributing value to the Group community.
Utilize targeted advertising
LinkedIn advertising empowers you to target prospects based on professional details and interests. Here are some options:
– Run Sponsored Content campaigns to serve relevant content to your audience.
– Create Follower ad campaigns to grow your Company Page following.
– Target Sponsored InMail to customize 1:1 outreach at scale.
– Leverage Lead Gen Forms to generate and collect lead contact info.
– Run Text Ads to boost visibility of content, offers, and more.
– Utilize accurate targeting settings and contact form captures to only reach potentially qualified leads. Set a lead generation or conversion objective.
Sales prospecting outreach
LinkedIn Sales Navigator makes it possible to search for, segment, and reach out to relevant prospects at scale through:
– Advanced lead searches by industry, job role, skills, location, company size, and more.
– Save lead prospects into customized lists for future nurturing.
– Integration with email and CRM systems to track outreach.
– InMail messages to send customized emails to anyone, even those outside your network.
– Tracking of email open and response rates.
– Automated follow-up sequences.
Retarget website visitors
You can integrate LinkedIn’s website retargeting pixel with your website to enable retargeting of website visitors through:
– LinkedIn Matched Audiences to reconnect with past site visitors.
– Sponsored Content and Text Ads targeted specifically to those who visited key pages.
– Dynamic ads targeted based on the specific content a visitor viewed.
This allows you to generate new LinkedIn leads from your existing website traffic.
Nurture leads with content upgrades
To generate leads, you need visitors to exchange their contact information for something of value, like:
– Content upgrades, such as ebooks, toolkits, templates, studies, and guides hosted on landing pages. Offer these in exchange for opt-ins.
– Webinars and events that require registration help capture lead info and build your email list.
– Gate some premium educational content behind a contact form to exchange value.
– Multistage lead nurturing workflows that provide a series of valuable content to converts leads into sales.
Promote lead generation offers
Once you have lead generation offers and content ready, actively promote them across LinkedIn:
– Share lead gen content and offers via your Company Page, employee posts, and LinkedIn Groups.
– Run sponsored content campaigns specifically targeted to get the right people to view your offers.
– Utilize LinkedIn’s Lead Gen Forms to advertise offers natively in the LinkedIn feed. The lead contact information flows into your account.
– Share content upgrade offers, webinars, and more in targeted LinkedIn Groups centered around your offers.
Actively promoting lead gen content maximizes visibility and conversions.
LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms
One of LinkedIn’s most powerful built-in lead generation tools is LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms. Here’s how they work:
– You can natively create lead gen forms within your LinkedIn Campaign Manager.
– These forms allow LinkedIn users to exchange their contact information in exchange for an offer, content download, consultation, event registration, etc directly via LinkedIn.
– The user fills out the lead capture form right within the LinkedIn ad unit. Their information is added as a new lead in your Campaign Manager.
– You can customize the questions asked on the form such as name, email, phone number, company, job title, business needs, and more.
– Lead Gen Forms can be attached to Sponsored Content, Message Ads, Text Ads, and more.
– You can control exactly which LinkedIn audience segments are shown the Lead Gen Form ads using detailed targeting settings.
Benefits of LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms
Lead Gen Forms provide major benefits for generating quality LinkedIn leads including:
– Lead information is captured natively directly within the LinkedIn platform. Users complete the form in the trusted LinkedIn environment.
– Detailed targeting settings allow you to very selectively promote the forms only to your ideal buyer personas.
– Lead data automatically syncs with your account and CRM tools like Salesforce. No manual lead transfer needed.
– You can add custom qualifying questions to filter and qualify leads specifically for your offerings.
– Lead Gen Forms make it simple to comply with data regulations like GDPR by customizing the disclosures.
– The Lead Gen Form experience is optimized for mobile, where most LinkedIn usage occurs.
– Advanced analytics provide insight into the performance of your Lead Gen Forms.
Best practices for LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms
To maximize success with LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms:
– Offer a compelling, relevant content upgrade or offer in exchange for lead information.
– Focus on reaching your ideal buyer personas through detailed audience targeting.
– Ask only for essential lead information. Too many questions leads to drop-off.
– Send high-converting traffic to your forms, like Promoted Content clicks.
– Use clear, engaging ad creative and messaging that explains the value proposition.
– Continually test and optimize target audiences, offers, ad creative and more.
– Follow-up with new leads quickly via workflows and nurturing campaigns.
When used strategically, LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms are a turnkey method for generating B2B leads at scale.
Measuring LinkedIn lead generation success
It’s crucial to continually measure the performance of your LinkedIn lead generation efforts. Some key metrics to track include:
– **Cost per lead** – What is your true investment to acquire each lead? Calculate using spend and leads generated.
– **Lead to customer conversion rate** – Percentage of leads that ultimately become customers. Shows lead quality.
– **Open and clickthrough rates** – For outreach emails. Indicates engagement.
– **Company Page visitors** – How many visits does your Page receive? Visits can indicate interest.
– **Content engagement** – Likes, comments, shares, downloads for published content. Shows relevance.
– **Ad and campaign metrics** – Impressions, clicks, clickthrough rate, cost per click, conversions, etc specific to ads.
– **Form completion rates** – Of those shown Lead Gen Forms, how many complete? The higher the better.
– **Page followers** – How many new followers does your Page gain? Followers can become leads.
Regularly assess these metrics across your programs to determine effectiveness and optimize where needed.
LinkedIn lead generation templates
Templates and scripts can help jumpstart your LinkedIn lead generation efforts through targeted outreach. Here are some templates to adapt:
LinkedIn connection request template:
Hi {first name},
I noticed we share some common interests in {area of commonality}. I’m looking to expand my professional network of {industry} professionals, and I think we would benefit from connecting.
I am a {your profession} at {your company}, helping {who you help} to {what you do}. Let me know if you would be open to connecting on LinkedIn.
Thank you,
{your name}
LinkedIn InMail outreach template:
Hi {first name},
{Personalized compliment or introduction}
As the {your role} at {your company}, I work with {types of clients} to {what you do}. From looking at your profile, it seems like you would be a great fit for {product or service}.
{Describe what makes them a good fit}
I’d love to schedule a quick call to introduce myself and our services in more detail. Are you available for a 15 minute call on {date} or {date}?
Looking forward to connecting!
Best,
{Your name}
LinkedIn invite to download content template:
Hi {first name},
My name is {your name} and I’m the {your role} at {company}. We just published a new {content format} on {content topic}, that I think can provide some great insights for you as a {their role} at {their company}.
You can download the full {content format} here:
{content download URL}
Let me know if you have any other topics you’d be interested in learning more about! I’m happy to share any of our latest research and reports.
Best,
{your name}
Conclusion
With a strategic approach, optimized presence, high-quality content, targeted advertising, and conversion-focused execution – LinkedIn can be an immensely valuable channel for generating quality B2B leads.
Consistently invest time in building your network, engaging your audience, publishing relevant updates, monitoring performance, and optimizing your efforts. Test different tactics and find the right combination that drives results for your business.
The opportunities for lead generation on LinkedIn are immense given the size and engagement of the platform. Follow these best practices outlined to tap into LinkedIn’s potential and take your lead gen to the next level.