People used to believe that Linkedin is a corporate Facebook until they discovered how much it has evolved for a B2B marketplace now.
And the belief became so strong in Q3 2020 that the content sharing on Linkedin improved by 50 percent.
Meanwhile, many users are still unable to decide to jump on the content sharing bandwagon, but those who understand Linkedin are already leveraging it to their best.
And if you’re ready to dive into the domain of Linkedin and lead generation, we’ve got your back. We will discuss what’s necessary to leverage Linkedin, from optimizing your company’s page to measuring the metrics, but before that, let’s start with the basics.
What are B2B Leads?
Before understanding B2B leads, let’s understand leads first.
A lead = A potential buyer!
A buyer who shows the intention to buy your product/service is a lead. And when there are businesses dealing with other businesses, we call the mesh B2B i.e., Business to Business.
So, whenever there is a potential buyer, i.e., a business showing intentions to do business with another business, the intentional business is termed a B2B lead.
Now you know what B2B leads are, let’s understand why Linkedin is home to it.
Why Choose LinkedIn for Lead Generation?
Linkedin is like a goldmine when it comes to B2B lead generation, and while you might be thinking how it is — allow us to explain.
Imagine a networking event in an open sky where approx 500 million business professionals like CEOs, founders, marketers, and entrepreneurs are present. And the fantastic thing about the event is there’s a virtual display over each of their heads listing their ventures, skills, corporate achievements, and a brief bio about them.
It’ll be so easy to network with the people of your choice — to learn from them and to build a connection. Moreover, who knows if you find a long-term client for your business there.
Fit this entire situation into an app now — we’ll name it Linkedin.
Now you understand why Linkedin is good, actually best, for B2B lead generation.
And while you might feel the imagery is not convincing enough, here is what stats say about the same.
A HubSpot study showed that Linkedin is 277% more effective in b2b lead generation than other social media networks.
So now you believe in the power of Linkedin, let’s explore how to use Linkedin to get leads.
How to Get Leads Using Linkedin — 4-Step Formula
Getting leads on Linkedin isn’t a rabbit hole. With the right strategy and profile optimization, any business can generate quality leads on the platform.
So, let’s see how you can start optimizing your company page and create content that will invite leads to you automatically.
Step 1: Work on Your Linkedin’s Company Page
When it comes to generating leads on Linkedin, a great place to start is your company page. We expect you to create a company page by yourself — it’s as easy as creating a Facebook profile. However, we have shared a few tips on how well you can optimize your company page.
Update Your Photo: While working on your company’s page, your page’s profile photo is the first thing to consider. You must use your company’s logo, without a doubt, but make sure that your picture is clear and detailed.
The required pixel for a company page profile picture is 300 x 300 pixels, whereas the recommended size of a cover photo is 1400 x 425 pixels.
And while you must be wondering about deciding on a cover photo for your company page, here’s what we will suggest.
You must keep your cover photo as simple as possible — just like Salesforce did it. Too many illustrations can steal the appeal of a cover photo.
Company’s Title: Coming to the second most crucial element of your company’s page, page title or headline, here’s how you can shape it.
Think of the easiest way possible to explain what you do in as little as 80 to 150 characters.
Company’s Description: After your profile picture and headline, your company’s description gets the most eyes. But what to write in it can be confusing at times. Here’s a formula that can help you win the game.
You don’t need to write a lengthy description of your company’s mission, goals, and office locations. Your website is there to do that job. All you need to do is to tell visitors who you help and how you do it.
Again, Salesforce is a good example here.
Step 2: Connect With Your Target Audience
Remember the example we gave of a networking event, in the beginning, it’s time that you leverage that event at its best.
Linkedin is all about networking with like-minded people, and networking is a part of lead generation for every business. While it can be time-consuming, less controllable, and intimidating to attract your target audience by posting content initially, you can get a head start with these tips below.
Define Your Target Audience: If you are at a point to think about generating leads from Linkedin, you might already know your target audience well. All you need to do is list the professionals whom you want to attract/potential leads — in the hope of working with them in the future.
For example, you are a content marketing agency, and your target audience is SMBs. Then, your targeted professional will be Digital Operation Managers, Founders, CEOs (as they are likely to wear many hats in small businesses), Marketing Managers, and Digital Marketers of the companies.
Network With Them on Linkedin: After getting a list of corporate professionals, you need to search them on Linkedin and send the connection request.
The goal is to focus on relevant leads here, and when your 1st and 2nd-degree connections are relevant to your prospects, you’ll likely attract more potential leads. Therefore, there will be less effort in converting them.
The people who are directly connected to you (you or they have sent a connection request) on Linkedin are your 1st-degree connections. And people who are connected to your 1st-degree connections will be your 2nd-degree connections.
Coming back to networking, you must keep one rule in mind while starting on Linkedin — don’t be salesy. People don’t like when someone hard sells them.
To level up your networking game, you can leverage Linkedin’s advanced search feature. It allows you to search people and companies of a specific location. There’s more; you can even network with former employees of a specific organization or can search companies with a particular company size using advanced filters.
You can also search people depending on what content they share specifically and build strong connections via networking with them.
But the problem is that you cannot send connection requests or messages or ask users directly to follow your company’s page. So how are you going to deal with it?
Here’s a strategy that will help you;
- Create an honest personal profile (for the role you have in your company) and complete all of the elements we discussed above — the more, the better.
- Now send connection requests to the list of professionals you created with your personal profile.
- You can use ‘personal invites’ if you won’t see your requests getting accepted. Keep the invites exciting and unique, though.
- After a few conversations or e-meets, you can invite those people to follow your company page. This way, your brand won’t have to begin in the darkness.
- You can also like your company’s posts with your personal profile so that the company’s posts can appear on your connection’s feed.
Step 3: Publish Content Consistently
The challenge with company pages is that they have a lower reach as compared to personal profiles. And that’s why your content needs to be truly engaging and compelling to overcome the challenge.
Moreover, if your content isn’t good enough for your target audience, even your effort with a personal profile won’t bring fruits.
You can create a content strategy solving the challenges of your target audience and create an inbound mechanism that will draw potential leads into the system.
The tools that you can use in your Linkedin content strategy can be;
- Linkedin Text posts
- Carousel posts
- Video Content and
- Linkedin Pulse
You can use Linkedin pulse to post original articles and create thought leadership, or you can even republish your articles on it to drive more traffic to your blog site.
Once you create a strategy, you can plan your content calendar accordingly to focus on other things than just creating Linkedin posts. To make content publishing even easier, you can use social media scheduler tools like Hootsuite and Publer.
Step 4: Measure the Metrics and Improve
Content creation and publishing remain a hobby when there is no goal attached. And measuring the metrics is an accurate way to identify whether you can achieve your goals or not.
And meanwhile, it could be hard to understand what metrics to measure for your Linkedin lead generation campaign, here’s what can help you.
- Views on your Linkedin posts
- Business queries generating per post
- Leads closing per week or month
- Existing clients and new clients ratio
Unfortunately, Linkedin doesn’t have such a dashboard that could tell you these metrics, neither do we have any tool to refer to, and that’s why you have to work out on it by yourself. You can create an excel sheet with these entries and keep a check once in two weeks or a month.
If your Linkedin posts gather over 3000 views per post but don’t generate any business queries, then maybe your content isn’t building trust or authority among your audience. Therefore, you must keep an eye and keep improving your strategy.
Conclusion
We didn’t cover Linkedin ads here because they have been found too costly for businesses, and very few companies used them in their lead generation strategy. However, linkedin offers ample benefits via its organic model, and that’s more than enough for any business to start.
As you’ll develop your lead generation game on Linkedin, you’ll find there’s a pool of freelancers and businesses following the same route and generating great results. The idea is to fill your company page’s cup with your personal profile because a company page has some limitations for itself.
If you’re not familiar with Linkedin and don’t understand what works there, you can always consult us. You can book a consultation call on our website — it’s free!