How to Generate Leads from LinkedIn Marketing?

The Internet has been growing ever since its inception during the 1960s. The foremost feature it provides that could be stated as the major reason for its growth is connectivity. 

Initiating with basic websites that provided information, it started promoting threads where people could discuss their opinion. And this was the beginning of online networking.

The beginning of the 21st century however saw an extensive growth in social networking with several networking sites onboarding the World Wide Web. Orkut, MySpace, Facebook just to name a few revolutionized how people connected with each other. 

A person could now connect to thousands of people from around the globe and have a quality time together online.

These being just some platforms for having recreational fun once in a while, proved extremely business oriented later to start promoting themselves over these channels to find more clients. 

For obvious reasons, it turns out to be a fair strategy for an organization to tap into websites with millions of users and to promote itself. The sheer volume of visitors significantly increases the chances of acquiring new customers.

However, the nature of mentality the users generally have while visiting these social networking sites makes it a tough task to engage the audience especially, finding those who can seriously be converted into customers among the huge crowd. 

After all, people tend to avoid advertisements when their purpose is to spend the time recreating with friends.

LinkedIn came into play in order to make it convenient for people who want to professionally interact with other people and businesses on the globe.

Launched in 2003, LinkedIn is just like any other social networking platform, the difference being that LinkedIn unlike other social networking platforms makes professional networking possible.

The main idea behind the incorporation of LinkedIn was to provide a space where companies and job seekers would interact. People would exchange CVs and get hired. 

However, it also provides opportunities for the businesses to connect to clients and thereby grow their network where there are significant customer engagement opportunities.

Businesses are in a constant look-out for leads that can be followed and converted, and that makes them market their profession in every channel possible. 

LinkedIn makes it possible for businesses to gather good quality leads due to the professional nature of the platform. And for these reasons, it has proved to be a profitable marketing avenue.

Here are some ways to market on LinkedIn to generate leads:

1. Profile Optimization

The first task for anyone to start working with LinkedIn is building a profile. This may seem quite obvious but a proper profile is of utmost importance to start connecting with people. 

A bland and dull profile will instead of bringing in connections, ward off people who might be interested in doing business.

Upload a decent profile picture, and enter a proper title, a headline which shall convey your professional motive or something that will make the connection understand your role. 

Enter the qualifications, achievements and so on. These will develop trust within the connections and improve the chances of quality enquiries and lead generation.

2. Target the right people

Businesses have their own ways of targeting their clients who differ as the type of businesses. 

While a B2C business will target clients individually, as every person among a suitable demographic is a potential customer, it isn’t so in the case of B2B businesses. A B2B business needs to find suitable people to initiate deals.

The main decision makers that need to be targeted in such cases are the HR directors, Marketing director, or the Sales director. These people will essentially take the deals forward without making it a purposeless scenario of waiting for confirmation.

3. Follow up

Lead generation takes significant efforts. Landing a sale takes targeting a lot of customers before finding the one customer who is converted as a lead. 

Even if a business puts forward a lucrative proposal worth taking, situations where customers leave it unattended are inevitable. 

Following up previous leads is of utmost importance, efforts must be laid to finalize a situation with every customer and to not give up on any of them.

4. Use content marketing

The job of a sales team is definitely not an easy one, and every once in a while people tend to think of them as bothersome. Content on the other hand is the best way to ensure customer engagement and to bring in more leads automatically. 

LinkedIn Pulse provides a way where news and blogs are fed to the users, and this can be properly used to publish relevant content from time to time.

This ensures that the leads are genuinely interested in subscribing to your offer, and it also removes the hassle of contact initiation, customer targeting and needs identification.

5. Avoid Cold Leads

Cold lead is the biggest issue that a marketing team faces. This leads to unnecessary efforts and a waste of valuable time. 

LinkedIn provides the feature to export email lists from the followers and this is used to send mass emails regardless of the need that these people have. 

Other times, people target other people based on their basic characteristics- their professions for example.

Not being properly specific while targeting customers makes for cold leads. Filters should be used to sort out customers with very specific needs and characteristics. The target volume will be small but will be refined and worth the efforts.

6. Send A Convincing Message

Starting a proper conversion plays a big role in deciding where the deal will proceed. Small talk is quite effective in kicking on an engaging conversion. 

While sending a connection request on LinkedIn, the character limit is 300 words, so a short and crisp message will work just fine. 

One can mention something that is mutually relatable to induce interest. Being crafty and optimal is the key.

7. Premium Membership

LinkedIn provides several plans according to the needs of the user it hosts- be it a career driven person, an entrepreneur who seeks business growth, a sales oriented account, or a user whose principal motive is to hire people. 

Every plan provides specific tools designed for the purposes of the user. 

Apart from the specific features, it provides InMail features to send messages to people who aren’t connected, advanced search provides extensive filter features, and profile view options lets the user see all the people who have visited the account in the past. 

These features can be utilized to increase lead generation efficiency.

8. Join Groups

While LinkedIn hosts a plethora of users from different backgrounds, pursuing different professions and with different objectives, LinkedIn groups further provide opportunity to engage with people of a similar interest. 

A group search for a relevant industry segment, or interest will result in specific groups made for the relevant users. One can make his/her own group to build a suitable user base as well.

Connecting to specific groups ensures that the user base of the group is relevant to the business needs. It can also be used to generate quality leads apart from other useful opportunities that the connection may bring.

Conclusion 

LinkedIn is a platform which makes it possible for people to connect with each other to reap professional benefits out of their network. And it has proved to be very useful for businesses in terms of leads and sales generation. 

Working optimally with the right strategy to develop appropriate engagement in the LinkedIn network will result in fruitful leads.

If you need help to better track your marketing results, look into this Sales & Marketing Results Tracking Dashboard that includes a prediction tool.

Harikrishna Kundariya.

Harikrishna Kundariya Harikrishna Kundariya, a marketer, developer, IoT, ChatBot & Blockchain savvy, designer, co-founder, Director of eSparkBiz Technologies, A Mobile App Development Company. His 8+ experience enables him to provide digital solutions to new start-ups based on IoT and ChatBot. You also want to publish on this blog? This way!