Are you looking to attract eyeballs from investors? Are you a business looking for enterprise customers for your SaaS product? Are you seeking freelancing work from startups? Maybe, you are an instructor who is looking for learners who wants to up-skill? If you answered YES to any of these, or if you are looking to grow your business, it will be an edge if you know how to generate leads on LinkedIn.
Content Outline:
Why LinkedIn is a must try platform for businesses who are looking to grow?
As of September 2022, LinkedIn boasts a staggering 851 Mn+ user base.
I wish, my blog gets those many views someday 😀 But that’s not possible without your support. To help me get there, you need to share my insights in your friends & family circles.
Aarghhhh.. why do I do this, always. Barely did I talk about “how to generate leads from LinkedIn” and I’m already pitching you to subscribe to my FLAME newsletter. Disgusting. I should stop doing this, immediately.
Being salesy in the very first line is such a big turn-off. It’s not a good way to generate leads on LinkedIn. We must first deliver value and then ask for rewards. BASIC.
First, deliver value. Then ask for rewards.
Anyways, when I said, 851 Mn+ LinkedIn members – did you get water in your mouth? Did you get excited? …thinking the prodigiousness of the opportunity LinkedIn avails for the marketers and esp for those who are into lead generation?
If you answered “YES”, then this insight on “how to generate leads from LinkedIn” is for you.
I’ve curated the best ways to generate leads on LinkedIn for B2B businesses and freelancers.
Read-on to find out some common, but not so common tips to get leads from LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is a goldmine for lead generation
In addition to 851Mn+ professionals, it also has 59Mn+ listed businesses, 2.2Mn+ networking groups, 125K+ Schools & universities, 75K+ scheduled events, and whatnot.
Guess the real bombshell among these all – LinkedIn gives you access to 51.7Mn+ founders, business owners, CEOs, presidents and investors.
Crazy good!! Right? It’s literally a goldmine for lead generation.
Now, the big question – how do you mine LinkedIn for leads?
In simpler words, how to generate leads from LinkedIn?
Like any other social platforms, there are two ways to generate leads on LinkedIn–
- Inbound lead generation on LinkedIn
- Outbound lead generation on LinkedIn
You may need one of these or both. In general, it’s not about categories & methodologies or frameworks to generate leads on LinkedIn. A random strategy marketed as a game-changer framework may not work for you. Esp if it is way too generic. What you need is a sharp strategy that is personalised to your business and the people who will be part of executing this strategy. The strategy itself needs to be very agile, flexible, and iterative.
Inbound or outbound, there are perks & pitfalls for each of these LinkedIn lead generation methods. Let’s explore how you can generate leads from LinkedIn using inbound & outbound approaches.
LinkedIn Inbound lead generation
When your target audience reaches out to you for business or a relevant enquiry, it is qualified as inbound lead.
What is inbound lead generation on LinkedIn?
You can get inbound leads via multiple channels on LinkedIn:
- Leads directly send you a connection request.
- Leads can drop you an InMail if they are premium users.
- Leads can also send you group DMs/InMails (15 group messages are allowed per month to anyone on LinkedIn if they are your group memebers, doesn’t matter then whether you are connected with the person or not).
- Leads can follow you or your company page, and then they maybe immediately or after a while they can reach-out to you for work collaboration & business deals.
- Leads can request for your listed-services on your profile page.
Now, how do they get to any of the aforementioned state? Of course, only when they discover you.
There are three ways your future prospects/leads can discover you on LinkedIn:
- LinkedIn feed
- LinkedIn search
- LinkedIn recommendations
So, to maximise inbound lead generation on LinkedIn, all you gotta do is optimise for discovery first and then simplify to make it easy for your leads to approach you on LinkedIn.
To generate leads on LinkedIn, OPTIMISE-
- Your personal profile page on LinkedIn
- Your company page on LinkedIn
How to optimise your personal profile page on LinkedIn to generate inbound leads?
Optimise your profile to generate leads from LinkedIn
The checklist to optimise your personal profile page on LinkedIn to generate more inbound leads:
- Profile Photo – keep it professional & human. When you show up in search results, or when your profile lands into someone’s feed. Your profile picture is what they see first. If it’s a turn-off, they ignore it. If it is professional & interesting. They click it. Bang! That’s first step towards fishing leads from LinkedIn i.e., getting them on your profile.
- Profile Name – this is easy, LoL. Just put your real name. First name and last name. You also get the option to add other names that you may have had in the past or pet name sort of stuff. People discover you often on LinkedIn by your name for reasons that could fill a thousand cells in an excel sheet.
- Profile Banner – add a profile banner. I don’t like the one in the above image. It’s way too clumsy. I do like the one on my profile, of course. A banner with a clear message of how you may help businesses, and a good CTA around why someone must connect with you is a big win to generate leads from LinkedIn.
- Tagline/Headline – consider it as your one line Linkedin profile bio. You can include some keywords here as well to make your profile discoverable for relevant LinkedIn search queries. For example – I keep “freelance SEO manager, content marketer, content strategist, copywriter” as my tagline when I need some leads. Go as niche as you can. Just make sure your prospects are searching that keyword. This is of high priority to rank in LinkedIn searches.
- Company Name – Add the details of your organisation where you are actively working. You have the option to keep it hidden as well. But I suggest. Use this real-estate to give maximum footage to everything that can interest the visitor. People often check out your org, esp the B2B guys. Boom-boom SaaS owners, you must use your org name here & you can get leads from LinkedIn company pages. We will soon talk about optimising LinkedIn company pages next.
- Location – Add your locality to get into relevant LinkedIn profile recommendations and to appear in location filtered search queries.
- Thought Leadership – If you have enabled creator mode on your profile, you get the option to choose upto five hashtags relevant to the content you create. Lot of people follow hashtags to stay abreast of the latest on social. These hashtags helps maximise the attention your content receives and in-turn the profile views you get. In short, extra channel for getting leads on LinkedIn.
- Institute/Alumni – You may consider adding your institute or college from where you received your education. Some people use schools too as filter.to find people using LinkedIn search. I never do. But there are use cases.
services & open to work
- Providing Services & open to work – these two sections are like your services page on your own website. In-fact, services section of LinkedIn profile also has a lead generation messaging funnel attached to it. Add relevant keywords & skills so that people can find you via search as well.
Feature section – LinkedIn
- Featured section – This section allows you to add external links, images, or posts from your own account. Curate it in a way so that the visitor gets charmed with your work or offering or personality or all of them. This will reflect in leads conversion rate.
About section – LinkedIn
- About section – People who are gonna consider you as work partners will definitely look at your about section. This is like long-form bio of your work history and everything. Keep it crispy but detailed. This will definitely help you convert more leads if done right. If need be take help of a profession LinkedIn profile writer to get this done. They may charge anywhere between USD 50 to USD 150 to optimise your LinkedIn profile.
creator mode – LinkedIn
- Creator Mode – This helps LinkedIn creators add a few relevant hashtags which gets them more discovery and visibility. Also, it unlocks a few features like LinkedIn Newsletter, LinkedIn Audio, LinkedIn Live, etcetera.
Work Experience – LinkedIn
- Work Experience – Here you can not just add a position for which recruiters look for but may also add one or two keyphrases in the job description section, add skills that were utilised on the job, or learnt. And you can also add links to your portfolio items related to the work. Which is a big bonus. Because now, you are not just talking but showing them the results and proof. An immediate winner — it is.
Skills section – Linkedin profile optimisation
- Skills section – As part of LinkedIn profile optimisation to get more leads from LinkedIn, you can add upto 50 skills in the skill section. This includes the list of skills you add in the work experience section. This too helps in your profile-discovery in search engine when someone performs skills related search queries.
LinkedIn Recommendations section
- LinkedIn Recommendations – Profile recommendations builds credibility. Helps the lead make up their mind.
Honors & awards – for more credibility
- Honors & awards – not everyone may have this, but if you have done enough to earn a few genuine awards & honors – do add it. Nothing bad in li’l show-off.
LinkedIn profile optimisation
- LinkedIn Profile Optimisation – Languages, resources, education, and getting a custom URL are some other sections that can help you get some eyeballs on LinkedIn.
How to optimise your company page on LinkedIn to generate inbound leads?
…like personal page you can update all the sections on Linkedin Company page as well.
LinkedIn outbound lead generation
When you segment, target, and individually or in cohorts reach out to your ideal audience by any channel of communication, and if the prospect interacts, then it is qualified as outbound lead.
What is outbound lead generation on LinkedIn?
- DM & Comments
- Sales Navigator
- LinkedIn Audio Events
- LinkedIn Groups
- LinkedIn Email Extractions
