With over 1 billion registered accounts, LinkedIn has become a gold mine for finding professional talent and businesses. Because of this, you may be wondering what the best ways of generating leads on LinkedIn may be and how you can turn these high-quality leads into clients. In this step-by-step guide, you will learn the best practices of identifying leads and how you can expose yourself to even more businesses on LinkedIn.
Step 1) Build and maintain your network:
LinkedIn at its core is all about networking. Connecting with like-minded businesses and individuals is a great way to expose your business on LinkedIn.
How to build your LinkedIn network:
Building your LinkedIn network is all about consistency. Consistently posting and engaging with your followers not only keeps your connections entertained, but also exposes your business to other potential leads. Businesses would be more interested in connecting with a business that regularly posts compared to a blank or dormant profile. If you have multiple employees, also asking them to advocate for your business by sharing your posts on their personal accounts grants even more business exposure.
How to maintain your LinkedIn network:
Much like when building your network, maintaining it is also dependant on your consistency. Connecting with past clients and regularly sharing your current plans as a business or sharing your achievements can create various high-quality leads by installing trust in the reader’s mind. Also make sure to reply to any comments or messages that you receive as these messages and comments can quickly turn into a loyal client.
Basically, consistency is crucial when building your LinkedIn network. Always take some time out of your day or week to post and engage with your audience.
Step 2) Optimise your brand LinkedIn account:
Optimising your LinkedIn account is vital, as first impressions are everything in business. Having an unoptimised or bland looking profile can omit your business from the search engine and put off potential leads.
How to optimise a LinkedIn profile:
When optimising your account, make sure all sections of the profile are fully completed, including commonly missed sections like making a custom URL and banner image. Also, is it vital you incorporate correct SEO terms and keywords relevant to your business throughout your profile, as this will help boost your profile within LinkedIn search. With more people and businesses discovering you through search, the more likely you are to generate more leads. It’s also important to remind you of the importance of first impressions, as these leads can quickly slip away due to an unkempt profile.
How to optimise a LinkedIn company page:
When optimising a LinkedIn company page, you can adopt most of the tips and good habits covered above for personal profiles. Company pages, however, will need some extra changes to increase your chances of lead generation. Here, it is vital you have a strong "About me" section, and fill it with links to your other social medias and also your websites or landing pages. We recommend linking to your landing page as this can condense all the important information of your company website into one page, which can make it easier for leads to sign up compared to having to navigate a whole website.
Once optimised, your business will reach more people and with a professional looking profile, you can hopefully create more leads within LinkedIn. Struggling with optimising your profile? Get in touch with us and we can go over how you can promote your business more effectively on LinkedIn.
Step 3) Utilising LinkedIn Ad's:
Making use of LinkedIn Ad’s is a fantastic way of promoting and growing your business within LinkedIn. Within LinkedIn, however, it can be quite overwhelming at the start with so many steps and keywords, so here is a quick rundown of LinkedIn Ad’s.
What is LinkedIn Ad's?
LinkedIn Ad’s are a powerful paid advertising system that allows businesses to reach a specific target audience using various types of ad formats. The targeting that LinkedIn offer is very specific and can boost engagement on LinkedIn if used and implemented properly. Demographic research is essential when creating LinkedIn Ad’s as incorrect ad targeting can waste time and money into ads that aren't seen by the right people, so make sure you know your target audience intently before creating any LinkedIn ads.
How to use LinkedIn Ad's:
Firstly, you need to decide on an objective. You have 3 to choose from: awareness, consideration and conversions. Awareness is all about making potential clients and businesses aware of your business, consideration is enticing leads and conversions is turning those potential leads into clients. After selecting your objective, you can then target your intended audience. LinkedIn’s targeting is very in depth, and you are in the driver’s seat throughout the entire time. From here, you can choose where your ads should land using specific job title filters and geographical information.
Once you have gotten your target audience, now you should think about how much money you’d like to invest into the ad campaign. Here you can set your own budget, or you can use Budget Optimisation which hands over the reigns to the LinkedIn algorithm themselves. With that in mind, you should not designate hundreds of pounds into an ad campaign that doesn’t resonate with your target audience, so this is why target demographic research is key.
Once budgeted, you can decide what format of ad campaign you’d like to run. There are multiple formats you can choose from ranging from single image to video and text based advertisements. Here, you are in control, and you should refer to your demographic research as much as possible to maximise your generation of leads.
This is naturally an initial introduction of LinkedIn Ad’s, so don’t worry if you feel overwhelmed. If you need a more in-depth explanation on how utilising LinkedIn Ad’s can impact your business, book a call with a marketing expert and we can provide tailored advice personal to your business.
Step 4) Be active!
This might seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how barren some LinkedIn profiles can be. Throughout the blog, we have highlighted the importance of remaining active on LinkedIn, but when starting out, you might be wondering what type of content you should post on LinkedIn.
What should you post on LinkedIn?
There are many things you can post to your LinkedIn. A good mix of friendly or casual and professional posts is ideal as you don’t want to seem too “corporate”. People and businesses appreciate it when they can see the real person behind the account. In terms of what to post to entice potential leads, one of the best things are case studies. Case studies offer the opportunity to show off the positive impacts your business has had on other people in the past, which will undoubtedly increase lead generation. Make sure to include the challenge the past clients had and how your business alleviated this problem.
Other than case studies, brand achievements are an excellent way to portray your business in a positive light while also remaining active. If you can’t think of any recent achievements, discussing your next plans as a business is an alternative option.
To sum up, remaining active and promoting a positive business to your connections and any new viewers is an easy and effective method of generating leads on LinkedIn. You should also remember to check your message inbox as this is where the majority of leads will contact you on LinkedIn.
Step 5) Join relevant LinkedIn groups:
LinkedIn groups are a great way to find likeminded individuals and businesses that are similar to yours. Individuals often lurk in these groups to find businesses that can fix or help with a problem they are currently having, so that’s why it’s important you join and remain active within these groups.
How to find relevant LinkedIn groups:
Searching for terms that are relevant to your industry will produce a list of profiles, groups and posts related to your search terms. Within LinkedIn’s search, you can filter the search results by ‘group’ and from that you have a list of all groups relevant to your industry. For example, if you run a Digital Marketing business, search terms like ‘B2B Marketing’, ‘Content Marketing’ and ‘SEO’ will produce a list of marketing groups, once the group filter is applied. Scroll through each of the groups and check if they are active, and not ‘spammy’, and join the group or request to join if the group is private.
It's also important to note to keep a look out for past clients or connections within these groups as they can provide opportunities for rekindling relationships, offering referrals, or collaborating on new projects.
How to find leads in a LinkedIn group:
Finding leads in LinkedIn groups shouldn’t be too much of a guessing game, as everyone within them should be relevant relevant to your industry. Engage in group discussions and post relevant media such as articles or case studies to get people and businesses aware of the services you offer. With that being said, it is important to note that you shouldn’t come off as too professional or corporate sounding in your posts, as this may come off as detached or insincere, making it harder to find genuine leads within the group.
LinkedIn groups are an opportunity to share your business in a more casual setting without sounding overly promotional. Make sure to stay active and check the groups often for any possible inquiries from leads.
Step 6) Generate leads on LinkedIn today with the Marketing Advice Centre:
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