10-Step LinkedIn Strategy For Lead Generation With LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social media platform focused on business and careers. While most people use LinkedIn as a way to stay in touch with former friends and colleagues, there’s so much more that you can do with this professional networking site.

For many business owners and entrepreneurs, LinkedIn is just an obligatory profile that they need to create as part of their internet presence. Most businesses don’t know how to use LinkedIn to enhance their online networking efforts and generate more leads.

For savvy entrepreneurs, this business-oriented social networking site has become a proven way to generate high-quality leads and create a steady stream of prospects.

In fact, if you learn how to use LinkedIn well, it can become a potent and limitless lead-generation tool. In this article, you’ll learn about LinkedIn leads and how to create a LinkedIn strategy for lead generation with LinkedIn.

The backbone of every thriving B2B business is the high-quality leads they obtain through their marketing campaigns. LinkedIn is a social networking site that many B2B businesses, coaches, and consultants use to generate leads.

If you’re unable to attract the right kinds of prospects willing and ready to buy what you’re selling, you’re going to have a difficult time generating the cash flow your business needs to survive.

If you don’t have the budget to afford LinkedIn advertising costs or LinkedIn marketing solutions such as paid LinkedIn promotions, then organic LinkedIn lead generation is your best option.

But, in order to gain the highly-qualified LinkedIn leads that your business needs to increase sales and profits, you’ll need an effective LinkedIn strategy.

LinkedIn Marketing Strategy For Lead Generation With LinkedIn

Here are 10 steps for creating an effective LinkedIn marketing strategy for lead generation with LinkedIn.

1. Start with LinkedIn Optimization

Trying to find LinkedIn leads before being fully prepared can hurt your marketing efforts. You won’t be able to tap into LinkedIn’s robust platform capabilities if you don’t have the fundamentals in place.

To get the most out of LinkedIn when connecting with people you don’t know, you have to start with LinkedIn optimization of your personal LinkedIn profile and company page.

The most important thing on your LinkedIn profile is your profile picture. This needs to convey your professionalism and what you stand for. You also need to make sure that your profile, including your LinkedIn About (formerly called Summary) and contact information, are filled in and available to new connections.

When you create a professional profile with a high-quality headshot and an engaging biography, your prospects are going to want to know more about you and what you can offer them.

Make sure your LinkedIn profile, headline, and skills are optimized with keywords and terms that your customers would use to describe you. Also, remember that the key to a successful LinkedIn profile is making sure there’s plenty of “What’s In It for Me?” built into your profile.

2. Engage with Visitors on Your LinkedIn Profile

As you become more active on your LinkedIn profile and company page, you’ll find more and more people visiting your profile. You should be checking your profile on a regular basis to see who has viewed it and reach out to them to connect.

At the very least, you need to be communicating with people who are relevant to your industry and who comprise your target audience.

3. Create a Targeted LinkedIn Content Strategy

Creating and sharing hyper-targeted content can help you reach specific niche audiences on LinkedIn. These are the kinds of individuals that would otherwise be hard or impossible to reach otherwise.

To generate tangible results fast on LinkedIn, be sure to work on a targeted LinkedIn content strategy and publish updates about your company daily, create weekly posts, and repost your content to LinkedIn groups.

4. Publish Long-Form Content on LinkedIn Pulse

LinkedIn allows you to publish and republish long-form content in LinkedIn Pulse. While this strategy might not provide you with the largest audience, it does have the power to get you in front of a very targeted audience of prospects and influencers in your industry.

Not only will your post be shared with your contacts and followers, but other people will also be able to find your content via a search on LinkedIn or other search engines.

Publishing long-form content on the LinkedIn Pulse publishing platform is part of a good LinkedIn content strategy as it offers a valuable way to share your expertise while garnering greater exposure for your LinkedIn profile and company page.

When you publish on Pulse, it ties directly to your profile or company page. Having insightful posts about your industry in the Featured section at the top of your LinkedIn profile or page can help you expand the conversation while also demonstrating to prospects that you’re a credible authority in your niche.

5. Create Your Own LinkedIn Group

Another powerful way to generate more leads is by creating your own LinkedIn group. Not only will this help to attract more prospects into your sphere of influence, but it will also establish you as a thought leader in your industry.

While starting a LinkedIn group is easy, growing and maintaining your group will take a bit more work. Before you can start adding contacts to your group, you need to be sure to have some content ready to publish.

If you don’t have the time to create useful and engaging content, you should hire a LinkedIn marketing service or Virtual Assistant who can help you update your LinkedIn profile and company pages regularly.

6. Engage with Your LinkedIn Group Members

The next step for generating more leads with LinkedIn is to start engaging with your LinkedIn group audience. You need to pace this step and spend several months building a good rapport with the members of your LinkedIn group.

Work to become known as an influencer and industry leader by regularly publishing content, reaching out to those who need help, and offering free advice to those who need it.

Generating leads to increase sales is a time-consuming process, and it can take months before you start to see results. If you don’t have the time or inclination to do this yourself, you can outsource it to a Virtual Assistant or LinkedIn marketing agency.

7. Create a List of Potential Customers

Once you’ve created your LinkedIn group and have some content to publish, you’ll want to start building a list of potential leads. Use the LinkedIn search box at the top of the website to scour over 800+ million members for relevant contacts.

The advanced LinkedIn search feature (available with premium memberships) will allow you to conduct a search based on job title, company, seniority level, and more, to create a highly targeted list of prospects.

These filters on LinkedIn people search will help you shortlist the best leads for your business. But, for this strategy to work, you must have a clear idea of who your target audience is and a knowledge of the right keywords to find the right people.

Another way to begin generating leads on LinkedIn is to collect leads from LinkedIn company pages where you can find the names of decision-makers, headquarter locations, website addresses, company size, and more.

Input all your LinkedIn leads into an Excel sheet or hire a Virtual Assistant to help you do that, so you can better understand the organizations you’re trying to target and tailor your connections with them.

8. Start Connecting with your Prospects

After you have your list of prospects and have identified the most promising ones on your list, you need to start reaching out to them by sending personalized requests to connect.

This process is the most time-consuming aspect of the LinkedIn networking process but will be the most rewarding. You don’t have to send an elaborate message; a short, succinct message will do just fine.

When creating your message, be sure to include how you know the person, what you have in common, or even what you find interesting about the person. Avoid using the boring and generic invitation that LinkedIn provides.

Focus your attention on people in your industry who are roughly at the same level as you. Instead of promoting your business to your prospects right away, invite them to join your LinkedIn Group instead, so they will get used to seeing your content and brand in their feed.

If you’re a sales professional, you can expedite the LinkedIn sales process with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, a paid tool that helps you tap into the power of LinkedIn’s 800M+ member network to help Sales professionals find and build relationships with prospects and customers.

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9. Ask Your LinkedIn Contacts for Referrals

If you’ve been struggling to generate new leads for your business, you may be overlooking the fact that leveraging your existing LinkedIn network is the fastest way to find new leads.

Most entrepreneurs have no problem asking their real-life friends for referrals or introductions for their business but often forget about asking their online connections for referrals.

To leverage the potential of your LinkedIn contacts in generating leads, send them a message telling them more about your business and ask if they know of anyone who would be interested in what you’re selling.

You can use LinkedIn people search to find prospects that you would like to be introduced to and then figure out if there’s anyone in your current network that can make an introduction. Start reaching out to common contacts and ask them to introduce you.

If you’ve never been a “people person” and are a shy behind-the-scenes type, you can still learn how to build your own powerful and authentic network rapidly and grow into a brilliant networker as Keith Ferrazzi, the world’s No. 1 networking coach, coaches you with the tools and insights that he uses to train the world’s most successful and connected people.

Click here to sign up for this Free Masterclass

10. Create a Lead-Magnet & Follow-Up Sequence

After your invitation to connect has been accepted, one of two things will happen. Either the new connection will reach out to you and express an interest in learning more about your company, or they will wait for you to reach out.

You’ll have to decide how you want to move forward. Will you reach out right away, or will you wait for a few days or weeks before following up? The ideal option is to reach out right away while your connection is still fresh in the mind.

The important thing is that you do follow up with your new connection. The best way to reach out is to offer something useful by creating a lead magnet or offering something free in exchange for subscribing to your email updates.

You can create a unique landing page for LinkedIn users only and send it to your LinkedIn prospects so they can subscribe to your list and access your lead magnet.

Whether you’re offering them a free course or eBook or discount coupon, you can use the Free Hubspot CRM to turn your sales process into a state of the art, revenue-generating machine.

The free HubSpot CRM tracks customer interactions automatically – whether they’re in an email, across social media, or on a call. Sync with Gmail or Outlook using HubSpot Sales, and capture every call, email, or meeting as it happens.

Every interaction with a lead is stored in a tidy timeline, including calls, emails, meetings, and notes. Get started 100% free of charge with the lightweight and powerful Hubspot CRM.

Learn how to write and send a sequence of follow-up emails that will convert your LinkedIn leads into customers with these free email marketing tutorials.

You can never have too many ways of generating new leads. By creating a LinkedIn strategy for lead generation with LinkedIn, you can diversify your customer base and build healthy customer relationships for years to come.