The Ultimate Guide to Using LinkedIn to Generate Leads

Linkedin digital marketing lead generation guide

What is the most difficult obstacle that any aspiring entrepreneur, business owner, or freelancer faces? The majority of them have difficulty generating high-quality leads that can be converted into loyal customers.

With the introduction of the internet and digital marketing, lead-generating strategies have evolved as well. You can no longer rely on tried-and-true methods like cold calling and advertising SMS.

Instead, you should concentrate on generating leads through other social networking sites such as LinkedIn. Since its debut in May 2003, LinkedIn has expanded in leaps and bounds.

Initially, it was considered a tool for professional networking. It has, nonetheless, steadily evolved into a highly effective instrument for brand building and leads generation.

LinkedIn has more than 612 million users from 200 countries throughout the world, which is unsurprising.

We’ll go through some of the most effective LinkedIn lead creation strategies later in this post. But first, let’s look at what makes it different from other lead generation strategies and social media platforms.

The True Potential of LinkedIn

LinkedIn isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when it comes to social media marketing. This professional networking site, on the other hand, provides a goldmine of B2B marketing opportunities.

According to the Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn, LinkedIn generates 80 percent of social media B2B leads. This is because top-level influencers, decision-makers, and industry thought leaders frequently use LinkedIn.

You can capture their interest and expand your business with the correct plan. You can also utilize LinkedIn to drive more visitors to your website and strengthen your brand’s trustworthiness.

The infographic below, created by LinkedIn, sheds more insight on its effectiveness as a marketing tool:

A well-thought-out LinkedIn lead-generating strategy can help your company reach new heights. However, promoting your business on LinkedIn might be difficult. You must seize the spotlight without coming across as excessively promotional.

Let’s look at some of the most effective methods for generating LinkedIn leads:

Complete Your LinkedIn Profile

A full and up-to-date profile is one of the most important parts of LinkedIn lead creation. It gives potential clients and recruiters a first look at your abilities and services.

As a result, it must be captivating enough to leave a lasting impact. This is particularly critical for entrepreneurs and freelancers seeking new projects and assignments.

Your LinkedIn profile should include a wealth of information about you, such as your work experience, job titles, academic background, professional accomplishments, and so on.

Mention the projects on which you’ve worked and give a detailed description of your role and contribution. To increase the trustworthiness of your profile, ask your colleagues and employers for recommendations.

You should also create a Company Page for your business/brand in addition to your personal one. Provide detailed information about your business, including its size, location, years in business, products/services, and so on.

Your brand will appear more trustworthy and professional with an up-to-date Company Page. To increase brand exposure, include your firm logo and website URL.

Don’t Ignore Optimization

Search engine optimization ( SEO) isn’t just for Google anymore. In reality, the same techniques may be applied to improving your LinkedIn profile and Company Page.

It ensures that when someone searches for items or services linked to you, both on and off LinkedIn, your name or brand appears. As a result, it is incredibly effective for generating LinkedIn leads.

The first step is to choose the keywords you want to rank for in your profile. This requires a knowledge of the most common search queries and phrases used by your target audience. You may improve your profile for long-tail keywords, just like SEO, to attract more precise prospects.

Let’s pretend you’re a Chicago-based fashion photographer. When someone searches for a “fashion photographer in Chicago,” you want your LinkedIn profile to come up top.

If you want to increase traffic to your website, include the URL in your LinkedIn profile. As a result, new business chances will open up as you connect with potential clients.

After you’ve decided on your keywords, you’ll need to incorporate them into your profile. These keywords can be used in the job title, description, skills, and other parts.

You may also look at the top profiles on LinkedIn by searching for these keywords. Examine how they’ve employed keywords in their profiles and try to imitate them on your own.

Make sure your Company Page is optimized for relevant keywords if you have one.

Connect with Profile Visitors

Every time your profile receives a visitor, LinkedIn sends you an email that says, “Someone has visited your profile.” The majority of individuals ignore such notifications. When it comes to LinkedIn lead creation, meanwhile, these emails can provide a wealth of information.

When someone looks at your LinkedIn profile, they are most likely interested in your products or services. It is recommended that you use the email notice to locate them.

Alternatively, you can use the “who’s viewed your profile” part of your LinkedIn profile’s “Profile” drop-down menu. This can assist you in reaching out to more potential clients and, as a result, grow your business.

Publish Engaging Content

By customizing your profile and Company Page with relevant keywords, you make yourself more discoverable on LinkedIn. However, to keep profile visitors’ attention, you must publish high-quality, unique, and relevant information.

This can help you establish yourself as an expert on certain topics and enhance your reputation as an industry thought leader. As a result, your LinkedIn lead creation will improve.

You must understand why senior-level executives choose to spend their time on LinkedIn while generating content for the network. They aren’t looking for blog postings that are repetitious or common.

Instead, they’re looking for information that will educate them and keep them up to date on the newest industry advancements.

As a result, you should make an effort to generate material that focuses on industry trends and thought leadership. Ensure that each piece of material reflects your unique perspective.

You should use eye-catching headlines, images, videos, presentations, statistics, and other elements in your posts. Avoid publishing self-promotional articles too frequently. Take a peek at the graph below to see what kind of material does well on LinkedIn:

You should publish frequently in addition to creating engaging content. It’s a good idea to make a content schedule that outlines the themes and posts you want to produce over the following few months.

This will keep your LinkedIn page from seeming boring and can help you generate more prospects and interaction.

Create Conversion-Friendly Posts

You should use beautiful captions, bullet points, and visual features like emojis in your LinkedIn updates in addition to high-quality information.

You should also include suitable calls-to-action and links in these posts. This helps you generate more LinkedIn leads by delivering more traffic to your website, blog, or landing pages.

Make sure your posts aren’t filled with self-promotional jargon. Instead, you should provide additional materials to your audience that will assist them in learning more about you and your business.

Take a look at General Electric’s LinkedIn Company Page, for example.

The information on GE’s LinkedIn profile isn’t overly promotional. Instead, they are shown fascinating articles with links to the company’s website. This is a clever technique to increase website traffic and, as a result, generate legitimate leads.

Seek Help from Your Colleagues and Employees

On LinkedIn, your company’s employees can be one of your most powerful brand supporters. Encourage them to share your content on their individual LinkedIn profiles.

This will help you broaden your reach and connect with their LinkedIn networks. As a result, brand awareness rises, brand reputation rises, website traffic grows, and LinkedIn lead generation improves.

Furthermore, make sure that all of your coworkers and employees have finished their LinkedIn profiles. You can also request that they include your company as their employment and include a link to your Company Page in their profile.

Every time someone visits their profile, your brand is brought to the fore.

Join LinkedIn Groups

Joining all relevant LinkedIn groups is a great means of broadening your audience and speeding up the LinkedIn lead creation process. Don’t limit yourself to groups that are specific to your industry or area.

Instead, broaden your horizons by joining organizations that are even vaguely relevant to your industry and can assist you in growing your firm. Check out LinkedIn’s guide to finding and joining the best groups.

Once you’ve joined a group, make sure you participate in the discussions by adding relevant content. To improve website traffic, you can even incorporate links to your blog entries or landing sites.

It establishes your brand as an industry authority while also developing new contacts. To avoid being removed by LinkedIn’s spam filter, make sure your comments aren’t filled with self-promotional information.

Make use of LinkedIn’s ad options.

If you want to expand the reach of your content beyond your existing connections and followers, you should start looking into LinkedIn’s numerous advertising alternatives.

The most straightforward method is to write sponsored posts based on your most engaging and valuable content.

LinkedIn allows for very specific targeting, allowing you to reach out to the right people. HubSpot, for example, used LinkedIn Sponsored Content to create 400% more leads than conventional lead-generating methods.

It has also been discovered that the quality of leads obtained through LinkedIn is considerably superior to that obtained through other methods.

In addition, you can use sponsored InMail campaigns to help you generate LinkedIn leads. With InMail, you can send a customized message to your potential clients’ LinkedIn inboxes.

You may utilize InMail to provide your target audience with top-rated content or future offers.

Conclusion

LinkedIn, particularly for B2B marketers, provides a wealth of lead generation alternatives.

You may quickly capture the attention of potential clients if you use the appropriate method. You must optimize and keep your profile up-to-date in order to achieve this. Effective LinkedIn lead creation, more than anything else, requires a comprehensive understanding of your target audience.