It is no news that lead generation is one of the most important aspects of any B2B organization that aims to get new business prospects and drive consistent revenue. Lead generation is a highly powerful process that can directly impact all the stages of the sales funnel and can easily influence the growth of your business. That is why, nowadays, most companies dedicate a lot of time and effort to improve their B2B lead generation strategies to get more prospects. If you are also trying to get leads but don’t know where to start and what channels to choose, then you are in the right place. In this article, we will specifically talk about LinkedIn, which is known to be one of the most effective lead generation channels on the market. We will discuss its benefits & tools and will give you a number of tips on how to use LinkedIn for B2B lead generation.
Benefits of Doing B2B Lead Generation Through LinkedIn
Before we dive into the details, let’s first of all, understand what are the main benefits of doing B2B generation on LinkedIn. For a long time, LinkedIn was known to be a social media channel mainly for finding new connections and jobs. However, in the last few years, this conventional label has definitely changed. Nowadays, LinkedIn is considered to be a valuable resource for job hunters & seekers but also a powerful platform for marketers and sales professionals, where they can do a bunch of different activities such as raising brand awareness, promoting business, and of course doing lead generation. With 722+ million members from the entire world, LinkedIn is known to be the largest professional networking channel on the market and the most effective B2B lead generation platform among other popular networks. In fact, according to statistics, of all leads generated from social media, 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn. Impressive right?
With so many benefits at stake, LinkedIn should be the main networking channel if you are planning on starting a b2b lead generation program. This brings us to the next section of our article, where we will give you 5 tips on how to use LinkedIn for b2b lead generation.
Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile & Business Page
Before starting your B2B lead generation program on LinkedIn, you need to, first of all, optimize your personal as well as your business accounts. Doing this will help your potential clients to easily find you and your business and also give you a chance to showcase your skills and your products in the best way possible. One of the most important things you need to remember when optimizing both your personal and business pages is to look at your profiles from your client’s perspective. Keep in mind that everything you share or publish, from headlines to professional skills or business mission should show your potential clients that you or your business services are the best fit for them. In other words, whatever you write, you need to have your ideal client in mind. Here are some additional tips to remember:
● Be consistent with your posts
● Keep it professional but don’t be too ‘salesy’
● Always include skills and recommendations (for personal profile)
● Share high-quality, relevant, and engaging content
● Diversify your content with podcasts, articles, videos, etc.
Start Building Valuable Connections and Lots of Them
Once you optimize your personal or business profiles (or both), you will need to focus on connecting to your potential leads. When it comes to B2B lead generation on LinkedIn, the most important thing to do is to build genuine, valuable connections. What this means is that instead of getting thousands of shallow connections, you need to focus your efforts on building quality relations with people who are in your target audience and who actually have the potential to become your lead or a partner in the long run. Besides that, when messaging to your potential prospects, keep in mind that they probably get hundreds of similar messages every single day, so if you want to be noticed, then you need to get creative with your messaging. While this might sound challenging, but once you start practicing, you will get the hint of it. To ease your work, here are a few effective tips on how to connect and engage with your potential leads.
● Personalize your messages and make your prospects feel special
● Don’t spam your connections with links, articles, and other sales hinting materials
● Build trust and connection through daily conversations
Show Your Future Leads Who’s the Expert
Now that you have optimized your profile and learned how to use LinkedIn groups for your benefit, it is the best time to use your voice to make an influence and win the trust of your potential customers. To do this, you need to show them that you are the expert at your job and you’re the one that they need but without being too direct about it. A great way to do this is to help people by answering questions, participating in discussions or offering advice while using this opportunity to carefully showcase your skills and expertise. The same approach can also apply to the content you write or share on your page. By showing people that you know how to help and that you’re actually good at it, you will be able to win the trust and sympathy of your potential prospects. Moreover, this strategic approach will not only help you build a reliable and reputable social media presence, but it will also improve your skills of LinkedIn B2B lead generation. So next time you pass by a question or discussion, be sure to take part in it and show who’s the expert on the market.
Use LinkedIn Groups to Target Prospects
There was a time when LinkedIn groups were highly effective for building a community and had a lot of activity going on but unfortunately, not anymore. Nowadays, LinkedIn groups are way less active and almost an outdated concept. However, it does not mean you can’t use them for your own benefit. In fact, what If we tell you that groups help you do B2B lead generation on LinkedIn? Sounds great right? Let us explain further.
So this works through one powerful tool called LinkedIn Sales Navigator which allows you to do a wide range of filtrations that are highly effective for accessing and targeting new prospects in your niche who are typically inaccessible for you. One such useful filter is the option that allows you to include members of LinkedIn groups where you are also a member or that you own. With the help of this filter option, you can have access to new prospects in your niche who are otherwise inaccessible due to 4th connection LinkedIn status which puts a lot of limitations on activities that can typically help you do effective B2B lead generation through LinkedIn. As we have already mentioned, LinkedIn groups may not offer lots of engagement and activity, but they can certainly be handy and effective if you utilize them through the Sales Navigator tool.
To sum up, as can be seen, there are a lot of different things you can do to find new prospects on LinkedIn. From participating in discussions to utilizing LinkedIn groups smartly and everything in between, will help you get closer to connecting to your leads and becoming business partners in the long run. We hope these tips will improve your LinkedIn B2B lead generation skills and will bring you plenty of new business prospects.