You don't have to be a professional to start generating business via LinkedIn.
What's surprising is that LinkedIn is 277% more effective than other social networks when it comes to B2B lead generation. Whattt?!!! Yes, we’re not kidding. 😉
In fact, LinkedIn allowed us to generate over 1000 business meetings for our clients in 2020. Pretty powerful!
The question is how… What's the right strategy that works for effective lead generation on LinkedIn?
Let us be your guide. Here’s a 5-fold proven strategy that you can use right now to start generating results! Go read… 🚀
#1 Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile
We know… how obvious! But, did you know — Humans have a shorter attention span than a goldfish. You have just 8 SECONDS ⏱ to make that impression. The moment anybody lands up on your profile, that person should know who you are, what you do, and how you can help them.
Your profile is the foundation of your lead generation process. It’s the first thing people (and prospects) see. And first impressions matter. If you don’t get this right, no matter how great your message and approach might be, you’ll get ignored.
Here’s breaking down what a good LinkedIn profile looks like:
1/ Your Name
Duhhhh! But, the key point is that you do not want to make it fancy (or unreadable). People should be able to type in your name simply on the search bar and land on your profile. So, make it: “The Scalelab” and not “T#e $©@Le L/-\B”, "Youssef" and not "Ÿ0µ$$€f" or "🚀Youssef🚀".
Worried about how people pronounce your name? Here's a tip –
Go to your profile on your mobile app (doesn't work on desktop!).
Tap on the "Edit Pencil" on the top right.
Tap on "+ ADD NAME PRONUNCIATION" and record your pronunciation.
You can thank us later 😉
2/ Profile photo
People connect with faces. So, make sure you upload a picture of yourself. A clear, bright headshot with a plain or neutral background works. Upload it in high-quality. And smile 🙂 Do not upload Instagram-filtered images. Be authentic, unless you are a gremlin.
3/ Headline
Tell people exactly what you do and how you can help them. Keep it short and simple.
Include your company role, like “Chief Growth Officer at The Scalelab”. And include other details that would attract potential clients, such as your achievements or USP.
What's super-important from the SEO perspective is that you have the relevant keywords in your headline. Better chances of people finding you through the search bar. 👍
This increased visibility helps build credibility and authority in the industry, thereby boosting your chances of generating more leads.
Please note: the search results are based on your connections and are location-sensitive (unless you use a filter).
Now, if these 3 things fit perfectly in that limited 8-second impression-making span, you then have more chances of earning extra attention time.
4/ Other crucial elements of profile include:
About section
Professional / Work Experience
Educational Qualifications
Skills & Endorsements
Recommendations
Accomplishments
Aim to fill in all the sections to optimize your profile for the highest reach. And, here’s giving you a few insider HACKS to scale 🚀
Have a Banner Image.
Most people miss out on this, but this image is visible when you send a connection request to someone on mobile. 🤓
Your cover should highlight your offerings, so people who don't go on your profile know what you do.
Use the About section to highlight your skills and offerings:
Make sure it can be read by skimmers, and that you include all the relevant keywords based on your profile for better search visibility.
The Featured section is a goldmine if leveraged well.
Add customer success stories, your website links, blogs, or any lead magnet.
- a “free consultation" (lead magnet)
- a landing page link with (services offered) - a YouTube video link (social proof)
Do remember: B2B or B2C, whichever your target audience may be, real people use LinkedIn. So please, do not make your profile like a bot. Be human. That means you can smile in your profile picture and use emoticons sparingly 🙂
#2 Find the Right Leads and Connect With Them
Now that you have set up your profile and optimized it, it’s time to find your ideal customer.
1/ Where to search for leads
While LinkedIn’s search filter is good for preliminary search, it is not as advanced. Here’s what we recommend for scaling it to the next level —
Leverage LinkedIn Sales Navigator for more niche-specific, targeted search results. It helps you understand key insights, target the right buyers, and also build a personalized outreach engagement plan. The best thing? You can try this for FREE with a LinkedIn premium subscription.
You can also leverage LinkedIn analytics (Search Appearances, Who Viewed Your Profile) — to see who is searching for you and what keywords they used to find you.
2/ Look for your prospects' activities
Another way to find the right leads is through content. Enter your desired keywords in the search bar and filter the results by “posts” (and industry, if relevant). This way you will find a list of people who write and engage on a specific topic actively; get in touch with those potential leads. It is super important to have active connections! So, here’s what you can try doing:
Search posts related to your niche, e.g.: “Lead generation”.
Find the posts that resonate with you AND have enough engagement.
Extract commenters from those posts + send them personalized connection requests. (using an amazing tool, which we’ll talk about next!)
And this brings us to our next step in the LinkedIn Lead generation strategy…
#3 Personalization and Automation
This is about connecting with your prospects in a personalized way, and automating this process. No more copy paste!
1/ Personalize your message
Don’t do this 🙄
Did you read it completely? No, right?! Me neither 🙈 — Because it crosses all the boxes of things that you should not do: long, generic, impersonal, messy call to action.
Remember, authenticity is the key. Be genuine in your approach. The more real you are, the more likely you are to get responses.
Instead, here’s a template that you can use.
(you’re welcome!) 😉
Here's the text you can use and adapt to your own:
"Hi #firstName#,
I run COMPANY/NAME and we help companies like #companyName# achieve XXX.
I thought it’d be useful to connect. Are you free to chat Mon or Tue?”
Why is this great? Because the sender relates to the receiver. It is clear, personal, and generates genuine interest. It also ends with a CTA: asking to connect on a specific day – signaling that the person is genuinely interested in connecting. Who can ignore that now? 🙃
2/ Automate your lead generation and messaging process
Now, now… We know how tedious it can be to look for the right people, connect with them, and send them a personalized request every time. And you can’t be spending endless hours on this, right? This should NOT be a manual effort.
Good news!!! You can AUTOMATE all of this process 🦾🤖🥳
Which is easy, time-saving, and shows results. Now, comes in the magic tool.
Say hello to Phantombuster — a tool that allows you to automate various tasks; from sending multiple personalized invites, to accepting people with a custom message, and many more. You can even extract LinkedIn profiles, comments, and names of everyone who liked (or commented) on a specific post.
Create your custom message to send with personalized connection requests, and Phantombuster will do the rest. So cool, right? 😎
Here’s what we recommend to use Phantombuster at The Scalelab:
Do your homework, scaler! Have a clear target customer / prospect in mind (industry, company size, title, geography, experience etc.)
Search for prospects who fit your criteria and extract the search results using Phantombuster's “Sales Navigator Search Export” (or “LinkedIn Search Export” if you’re using the regular LinkedIn search).
Download the generated CSV files. Open it on Excel or Google Drive to clean it. This is to make sure that “First Name” and “Company Name” do not have any typos.
Use the “Grow Your LinkedIn Network” Phantom with the cleaned CSV files.
Type in your message with a call-to-action (CTA) triggering a reply.
And voilà! You’re all set to automate 🙂
And then, the next step — your connection should know you exist. So, be an active user of the platform.
#4 Amp Up Your LinkedIn Activity By Posting & Engaging
Connecting with your prospect is just the first step. And even if they’ve accepted your connection request, they are highly unlikely to sign up for your services – until they trust you. So, how do you build this trust with them?
1/ Two-fold prospect engagement strategy
Step 1: Engage with their posts
Share your views on your connection’s posts and interact with them in the comments section to build a professional connection. Leave a thoughtful comment and write what you think about that topic. Float your name around. Show that you exist. Be a part of their circle.
Step 2: Publish high-quality content
Post content from your profile to show your authority in the field, and why you might be the best person for said services. Post content that would interest your target audience. This will enhance your credibility in your industry as well.
⭐ Pro Tip:
Offer value (it's not about what you get, but about what your audience gets!)
Ask to interact with you (this way you also know who is interested in your niche!)
2/ How to generate engagement
Like this: Youssef has shared this post (the latest lead generation tools and tips) which is mighty valuable for his target audience 💪🏼 And can you believe, 103 people signed up within a few hours of posting this. An excellent inbound link generation strategy, we’d say.
Now, why does this work? Because by posting something that adds value to your target audience and asking them to engage if they are interested, you create "qualified" engagement. And higher the engagement, the higher the reach and the more qualified it is.
#5 Measure and Optimize Your LinkedIn Lead Generation Strategy
Social media is a number game. Whoever says it isn’t is lying. And Analytics plays a super-important role in aligning your ongoing strategies. So…
1/ Analyse your results
The simplest way is to look at trends offered via your Profile Views and your Search Appearances stats. Are you starting to get connection requests from your target audience? How many leads did you generate in the last month?
Also, see where your automation tools (like PhantomBuster) can help increase AND track these numbers. You can even extract the people who engaged on a certain post in your niche and send them connection requests.
Observe what are the average views of your post. Are you getting engagement compared to the number of views? Is it increasing over time? Check what kind of posts worked. Create more of that type of content to generate more engagement, and thus leads. Use this formula for gauging your engagement rate —
[(Comments + Reactions + Shares) ÷ Number of views] x 100
An engagement percentage of 2-3% is good! However, it can climb to 5-6% as well.
2/ Know the strength of your profile
You should analyze your Social Selling Index (SSI). It gauges your LinkedIn profile on 4 components (refer to the image), giving you a broad idea about what you need to change for a successful LinkedIn growth strategy. The higher your SSI, the more likely you are to be found and to generate leads. You want to at least reach the 70 mark, and then work towards scaling it further.
Wrapping Up…
And there we go. 5 steps with actionable tips to increase your lead generation on LinkedIn. Pretty simple, right?
These simple steps, when done consistently, have considerable (and measurable) results. And can we say, they are amazing to boost your lead generation and generate a higher ROI.
Why LinkedIn? Because 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn compared to 13% on Twitter and 7% on Facebook. And there are 55 million companies and 61 million “senior-level influencers'' to connect with on LinkedIn. So, now you know how to leverage LinkedIn to generate leads. So much potential. So much growth 🔥
Go, leverage these LinkedIn lead generation strategies and let us know what worked best. If you need any support, just comment below, and we’ll connect with you.
Happy Lead Generation!
Team Scalelab