How to Generate Leads with LinkedIn: B2B Marketing Tips That Work

LinkedIn has surged to become one of the most utilized B2B platforms. With over 1 billion members and 67 million companies, the audience potential is vast, giving you access to key decision-makers, ideal prospects and more. As the platform has grown, so have the opportunities. As increasing lead generation is top of mind for many, companies are turning to LinkedIn to make this happen. But the question arises of how to generate leads with LinkedIn, and how to do so efficiently. We have the answers for you in this complete guide to generating leads with LinkedIn. Let’s dive in.

Make Your Company’s LinkedIn Page Shine

Your company’s LinkedIn page holds all the information a prospect needs to learn about you. There are a few things that are important to do with your company page to ensure it delivers a pleasant experience and acts as an avenue to generate more leads.

• Update your company page information frequently. This ensures anyone who visits your page is reading accurate information and current messaging.
• Take advantage of lead generation features. For example, you can add a call-to-action button on your LinkedIn page so people can contact you directly from LinkedIn. Include a link to your website also, but having a button with a form that opens directly in LinkedIn reduces barriers to conversion.
• Post and share relevant content consistently with your followers. Share content that highlights how to alleviate prospect pain points and challenges. Share content that showcases your expertise. This helps you grow your thought leadership status and reliability in the industry and community. Mix in company content that displays your team’s latest event or celebration at the office. Finding the balance of company content, thought leadership and third-party articles ensures your audience has a variety of information to consume.
• Encourage employee advocacy of your brand. Employees who love the company they work for and show it is a positive signal for prospects. Employee advocacy can be sharing a recent LinkedIn post. It can also be a post with a team member wearing a company t-shirt or hat. Anything that can help promote your brand, product or services, straight from team members, adds value.

Participate in LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn Groups are one of the most underrated features on LinkedIn and can be used to generate leads. There are both public and private groups on LinkedIn. Private LinkedIn groups appear in search results on LinkedIn but posts within the group cannot be seen by non-members. Public groups appear in search results and any person can view the group and its contents. It is instrumental to identify the groups that are relevant to you. Whether it be industry-related or job-related, there are many groups to choose from and join. Upon joining the groups, engage in discussions. Ask questions, add comments and provide insights as necessary. Aside from participating in group discussions, share relevant content. Providing valuable information to others can be meaningful and showcase your status as a thought leader. Do not be afraid to send LinkedIn connections to those within the group. If it is someone you have interacted with in the group and they are a solid prospect, send a connection request. It could result in a meeting and eventually a lead.

Create and Promote Events on LinkedIn

Events are a key component of lead generation. It is an ideal way to meet prospects, engage with customers and even generate new opportunities.

• In-person events take place in a physical space, such as a conference or tradeshow. You can promote your event on LinkedIn by posting about it and building awareness or by driving to a page on your website that encourages signups.
• Virtual events can be handled in two ways on LinkedIn. You can use the LinkedIn Live platform or use LinkedIn as your promotional platform.
  • LinkedIn Live events are streamed on LinkedIn, in real-time. To utilize LinkedIn Live, you must have access to LinkedIn Live and a third-party streaming tool. If your streaming tool is compatible with LinkedIn Live, it can be a great avenue to facilitate an event. Then you can treat it like any other event, driving registrations via LinkedIn and obtaining a list of those in attendance to follow up with after the event is complete.
  • The other way to use LinkedIn for virtual event purposes is to promote it and drive registrations. Doing this in addition to promoting it on your website or through email gives you another audience to reach and engage with.

Once the event is over, you can send a follow-up to your registrants and attendees with additional information. It is also worthwhile to add them to a nurture cadence to continue providing information about your product or service to maintain their interest. This nurturing can support ongoing lead generation efforts.

Utilize Paid Features Such as LinkedIn Ads and Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Ads and Sales Navigator are two powerful tools LinkedIn offers to generate leads. Here is an overview of each and a few tips to ensure you use them effectively to target the most accurate prospects and engage them to become a lead.

LinkedIn Ads

To get the most from LinkedIn Ads, the target audience must be representative of your ideal customer. Here are a few tactical points to consider for an effective ad campaign and generating leads with LinkedIn.

• Leverage a sufficient audience size for optimal ad delivery. Try aiming for these audience sizes in your campaigns.
  • LinkedIn recommends a target audience size between 30,000 and 50,000 to drive optimal results. If you are running a sponsored content or messaging campaign, aim for an audience size of 300,000 members.
  • If you are running a text ad or image ad campaign, look to have an audience size between 60,000 and 400,000.
• Diversify and test your ad copy and creative. Testing helps your team understand what messaging and designs are driving the most results. Whether it is the greeting in a messaging ad or the illustrations in an image ad, start by testing one variable and move to the next once it is clear which variant is performing better. The more an ad resonates, the more lead generation opportunities.
• Allocate your budget strategically to get the most of your ad spend. Aim for these daily budget goals for specific ad objectives to get the highest ad delivery.
  • Minimum of $50 per day for ad campaigns with an awareness objective
  • Minimum of $50 per day for ad campaigns with a consideration objective
  • Minimum of $100 per day for conversion-focused campaigns
• Ensure the duration of your ad campaigns meets recommendations. When testing, your campaign should run for at least one month to obtain statistically significant data about which version is performing better. After that, it is important to monitor the delivery of your ad to your audience. If performance starts to dip from what you typically see, that could mean your ads might have exhausted your target audience. If this is the case, adjust the targeting. Whether it is the job titles or size of the company, narrowing or opening to a broader audience could give a boost to your ads.

Sales Navigator

Sales Navigator is a powerful, paid LinkedIn feature that lets you search for and find ideal leads. Before exploring the Sales Navigator tools, ensure you create a persona that matches your ideal customer profile. This will make it easier for you to find leads. Aside from that, here are a few tips to use Sales Navigator to your advantage to generate leads.

• Use Advanced Lead Search to find the most representative audience for your prospects. This feature allows you to use filters such as function, seniority or title to find leads. This is especially useful if your target audience is a specific job function or seniority, or both, so you can filter for these aspects and find the most quality leads.
• Set alerts for specific saved prospects, leads or account activity to stay up to date. You can set alerts for account news, account updates, career changes, buyer intent and more. These updates inform you of any changes with your prospects or accounts, especially if they interact with your page or content. This can be an indication for you to send a message or email to them while your company is top of mind.
• Use InMail effectively. InMail is a way to directly reach out to prospects and spark up a conversation, with hopes of gaining their interest and converting them to a lead. Be concise with your message and remember to personalize it. Focus on their persona characteristics and their pain points. The conversation is about them and showing that you care and are interested in helping resolve their challenges can go a long way.

Now that we’ve covered how to generate leads with LinkedIn, it is time to take the next step. Contact us today or request a free marketing consultation to learn about our marketing services in Austin and how we can help you leverage LinkedIn and other marketing tactics.