Perhaps one of the most vital parts of a business is lead generation. It helps you drive traffic to your business site and attract new customers which in the long run, can lead to an increase in sales.
Having a pool of leads is an effective way for you to gain paying customers. However, it is not as easy as it seems. Generating leads is actually one of the most challenging marketing tasks as it requires continuous effort and time.
Luckily, there are a lot of platforms that you can use to acquire potential customers. The most powerful one is LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is the best choice if you want to generate high-quality leads. To get started on this social media platform, you would need to get LinkedIn Accounts.
Did you know that more than 80% of business to business leads are sourced from the platform?
LinkedIn is a very useful tool to reach out to your market, most people are just not aware yet. Here’s how you can generate leads through LinkedIn:
Table of Contents
Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile
First things first – create a profile that stands out. It is crucial that your profile summary and headline should capture your market’s attention. Make sure to include all the necessary information so that potential customers can easily contact you. You can also add external links to your business website and social media accounts. LinkedIn has a great tool called Social Selling Index that gives you suggestions on how you can improve your profile. To get more visibility for your profile on this platform, you can use services to get shares on LinkedIn.
Connect to your market
Whenever you find new businesses or potential clients, you can instantly search for them on LinkedIn. You can invite them so you’ll be constantly updated with one another. LinkedIn also allows you to import your existing email contacts for a faster setup.
Apart from new clients, you can also connect with previous customers so you can keep in touch with them. It’s important that you do follow-ups with them so you can develop customer loyalty. Connecting with them through LinkedIn is very easy, all you have to do is shoot them a message or comment on their recent activity. Little actions like these can lead to partnerships and business transactions in the future.
Check Out Your Customer’s LinkedIn profiles
Knowing your market’s interest and experience can contribute to the formulation of your marketing plan. Through LinkedIn, you can visit various customer profiles to see what events they have attended, posts they have liked, and even their current work experience. This can help you learn more about what influences and captures the interest of your customers. Once you’ve gathered sufficient information, you can use it in making a business plan backed up by concrete observations.
Join LinkedIn groups
Just like other social media platforms, LinkedIn allows you to join groups with members from the same industry. Through its Advanced Search feature, you can easily find groups that share information relevant to your business needs. By joining groups, you can get more insight from your potential market and widen your reach as well.
Aside from joining existing groups, you can also create your own. You have the option to open it to several users, or you can also limit your audience. This is a great tool to disseminate information about your brand without having it taken as a hard sell.
As a bonus, LinkedIn also provides tips for managers and consultants like you on how to use the platform to grow business, enhance expertise, and widen the network.
Send direct messages or emails
You can use LinkedIn or emails to send direct messages for a more personal approach. If you use LinkedIn, you immediately gain access to view customer profiles and know their interests. This can help you to write a warm, personalized message to them. It’s also better to connect with them through LinkedIn because your credibility and experience can be backed up by your profile. Also, you need to make sure you follow up with your potential customers. You can refer to this article on how to write a follow-up email.
Respond to inquiries
Most members use LinkedIn to discuss topics with different people. What’s great about LinkedIn it also allows users to have a forum to exchange information with one another. Be on the lookout for discussions that’s related to your business and see if you can contribute something. Respond to inquiries that you have expertise on to build your credibility and presence. Many users will appreciate this and will be enticed to know more about your business.
Create relevant content on LinkedIn
Create content that is relevant and relatable to your market. It’s better to keep it original and casual so your network can easily engage with you. These include links to your blog, business articles, quotes, publication materials – any information that can serve as a helpful resource. Be mindful in creating content and make sure it doesn’t sound like a sales pitch.
Publish updates regularly
To keep your momentum, it’s best to post updates regularly whether it’s daily, every other day, or once a week. It can be a simple update on your business or you can even share an article, video, blog post that is relevant to your business and network. Seeing your business profile pop regularly up in the LinkedIn dashboard can help your network remember your brand. You can also use the “Pulse” feature which notifies users of your content that’s related to their industry and interests.
Being active on LinkedIn also adds value and engagement to your profile. It may kick start conversations with people from your network which may lead to potential partnerships, sales, and projects.
Leads generation is not a one-time process, it should be done regularly in order to increase your return time. Invest at least 30 minutes a day in using LinkedIn so you can develop consistency in your efforts and make sure you are leaving a lasting impact on your market. You also have to constantly adapt to it, as the platform is continuously evolving. LinkedIn continuously adds more features and being aware of these enhancements can help you improve your leads generation as well.
LinkedIn is the perfect tool to connect with potential customers as it is very accessible, easy to use, and multifunctional. If you’re not using LinkedIn yet, it’s high time that you utilize it for your leads generation. The results are going to be remarkable for your business.