20 Actionable Ways to Generate Quality Leads From LinkedIn

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Are you leveraging the power of LinkedIn to generate leads? Is LinkedIn helping in your business growth?

2019 is the year of LinkedIn. It has more than 500 million users and the #1 channel B2B marketers use to distribute their content.

What’s your top marketing challenge?

Quality Lead Generations, right?

There are a lot of social media channels out there to target your audience. But if you’re talking about high quality leads, who’s the winner?

No, it’s not Facebook. It’s LinkedIn.

Wondering?

Access these three stats:

• 80 percent of B2B leads generated on social media come from LinkedIn.
• 58 percent of B2B advertisers like the ROI on LinkedIn ads.
• LinkedIn generates 3x more conversions than Twitter and Facebook.

Awesome!

The BIG question is: How to Generate Quality Leads From LinkedIn

In this article, you’ll discover 20 actionable ways to generate quality leads. Let’s dive in:

1. Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile

Yes! Your LinkedIn profile plays an important role in connecting your targeted audience. Let’s say, a prospect comes to your profile and see an unprofessional pic (selfie) and two lines summary. S(he) will bounce from your profile without connecting.

The bottom line: If you want to connect with your prospects you don’t know, you must optimize your profile first.

How can you do it?

Here’s a checklist for you:

• Upload a professional picture (don’t forget to show your smile).
• Make your headline attention grabbing and compelling (NOT a dry job title). Tell how can you help them.
• Spend some time to write a descriptive bio and profile summary.
• Customize your profile URL.
• Add your experience with a complete description of your responsibilities.
• Optimize your skills and add your accomplishments (act as social proof).
• Add your contact info: Email, Twitter profile, and website/blog URL.

You can check out how your profile rate on LinkedIn social selling index. It suggests you ways to make your profile (and presence) better. Something like this:

2. Create Your Own LinkedIn Group(s)

Creating your own LinkedIn group can help you strengthen your presence and generate some potential leads. The best part?

You have complete control over the group (Its content and reach). Use this group to share valuable content and engage with your audience — It makes a difference.

Decide your group’s niche, its audience, and rules. It’s easy to create a group on LinkedIn.

Just click on “Work” on the top menu and click “Groups”. Then click “Create a new group” and a form will open. Fill all the fields and click on “Create” button.

3. Find Your Prospects and Make a List

Start finding your current and past contacts. Conduct a quick search on LinkedIn and make a list of prospects you have lost touch (and new ones). Start reaching out to them and offer some value. LinkedIn is all about building a relationship.

Attended an event or conference? Got business cards from people there. Go to LinkedIn and start searching for them and send a connection request to them.

The fun part? You can also import your Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo contacts and start connecting with them here on LinkedIn.

The beauty of LinkedIn is?

You can learn everything about your prospects — What they’re sharing, what event they’re attending, new product/service they just launched, their recent activities, even what book they’re reading.

Just follow them and find how you can help them.

4. Be Consistent With Your Updates and Articles

How to popping up in your prospect’s newsfeed?

One Line Answer: Be consistent with publishing updates on LinkedIn.

Make sure to post once a day. Not too much! DON’T SPAM!

Try to add value in your every post. Share relevant news articles, industry trends, and tips. You can also share the content of industry influencers. Try to provide a solution to a specific problem.

Check out this post that Neil Patel shared on LinkedIn. He provides a solution to a specific problem in his every post and he’s consistent with his posting frequency.

Have you published a blog post on your company blog? Share it on your Company’s LinkedIn page and your personal profile as well. The benefits?

• It will create engagement with your targeted audience. And
• Drive some quality traffic to your website.

LinkedIn also provides a publishing platform where you can publish a full-length article Or republish your existing article.

5. Target the Decision Makers and CMOs

Being specific while targeting is what gives you that extra edge. Let’s talk about how you should target people who really matter i.e., the decision makers and CMOs on LinkedIn.

Why?

Because getting to connect with the people in higher authority helps you to nurture healthy relations and close deals quickly. But searching them from (roughly) 550 million users on LinkedIn can be tedious.

Here is how you can reach them efficiently:

• Search for specific keywords like: Vice president, director, CEO, Manager, etc.
• Use company pages to find decision makers. This also brings to your notice the people who work in that company so you can contact them too.
• Use InMail to effectively get your message across people who are not in your connection.

Stats reveal that 40 million LinkedIn users are in decision-making positions.

Crazy! Start targeting the decision makers right now!

6. Follow Up With Old Leads First

If it didn’t work the last time, there has to be a reason behind it. One smart move you can make is to not approach them the same way you did earlier.

The best move you can opt for is by providing them with some value. As you would know them from the previous conversations, there would be something they could be interested in.

Therefore, you can begin by sharing some useful resources like PDF, video content or basically anything that would be of value.

Here are some tips to spark your conversation with your old-leads:

• It is advisable to not be too casual but approach in an appropriate manner.
• Another great way could be to introduce them with any new changes that you have made in the past. Also, let them know how valuable you could be for them.
• If they have had any complaints in the past, try to not take that negatively, instead, smoothen that out. Try approaching them with solutions and you might score another chance.
• You can warm things up over coffee. When leads go cold, you would want to re-engage them instead of forgetting. Best place to spark conversations is over a meetup; that way, you can bring everything clearly on the table.

So follow these tips to connect with your old leads (they are precious!).

7. Reach Out to Prospects With an Engaging Message

Prospects usually have an inbox full of people screaming to get their attention. Your first move should not be to pitch, instead, build a relationship with them.

At the same time, your messages should be engaging.​If initiating a message seems intimidating and you do not want to make it awkward, you should first try to warm the conversation; then move to pitch about your product or service.

Now, if you and/or your prospects don’t have time to wait for the messages to be read and replied to, and you directly want them to jump on the boat, here is how you should go about it:

• Begin with an engaging first line/subject (they get clicks quickly)
• Next, you want to introduce yourself, tell them what you can bring to the table and how it can be beneficial for their business.
• In the end, call them to take action.

Keep it short, crisp, and to the point.

This way, you have provided value, made everything clear and have increased your chances of getting a positive response.

8. Use InMail

If you are skeptical about reaching out because that would reveal your information, then InMail is just for you.

It secures your privacy and allows you to reach out to potential buyers/clients without any hassle. It is a powerful yet underestimated tool by LinkedIn.

However, for this feature, you need credits.

Now, what are credits on LinkedIn?

Since InMail is a precious feature, you need to have a premium account if you don’t already have one. In a premium account, you get limited credits (as per your premium plan) that you spend on sending InMails.

But, let us see what makes it all worthy: A renowned SaaS company Replicon saw 11 times more response on their InMail compared to email.

Check out this InMail which I got from Red Bull:

The best part, you get to watch the analytics on the InMail! Also, if you get quick responses from the recipients, i.e., within 90 days, you will be awarded more credits and you don’t have to wait for monthly renewal.

Here are the monthly plans to get you started:

• Hiring Plan: 30 InMail messages per month
• Sales Plan: 20 InMail messages per month
• Business Plan: 15 InMail messages per month
• Career Plan: 3 InMail messages per month

Based on your requirements, you can pick the best and leverage LinkedIn InMails.

9. Join Groups Where Your Ideal Clients Live

Groups are a closed space where you meet like-minded people. With that, you get to connect with mentors and clients and have a healthy, insightful conversation. Here is how you can maximize a group’s benefit:

• Ask questions and get apt answers to them straight from industry experts
• Post relevant posts and grab eyeballs of people in your niche
• Find potential clients
• Exhibit your work in a space it is appreciated

For every 3 posts, 1 that converted had questions in the headline.

Apart from this, you can also share your information and showcase your proficiency. This will make you come across as an authentic and credible person in your niche.

Now, you would be wondering how do you actually get to these groups.

Here is a simple path:

• Go to the search box and type in a relevant keyword. For say “digital marketing”
• And hit search.
• Then, click on more > groups
• It will show you all the relevant groups you can join.

See this:

Click on any one of them, read their instructions and hit “request to join”.

When you are allowed in the group, send a post expressing your gratitude and get started.

10. Use Dux-Soup Tool to Boost Your Conversion Rate

So the next one on the list is a tool that lets you level up your efforts of connecting with recruiters on LinkedIn.

It simplifies your time-consuming steps and does all the work on your behalf. It includes viewing prospect’s profiles, endorsing their skills, interacting with the activity as well as sending them a personalized message.

Now, this makes your work a lot easier. All you need to do is focus on closing deals!

Apart from this, you can leave notes on the profiles that interest you and next time you view them, you can see your notes there. Add to it, it lets you download the profiles and share it with your colleagues.

This tool cuts the tedious task and does all the work for you at an affordable price ($15 a month). You can even start free and when you start to see the results and like the tool, you can pay a minimal amount each month.

Another brilliant feature of the tool is that it is available in 9 languages.

11. Send an Announcement to All The Group Members

Now groups have many people (obviously) and to make your voice heard you have to get their attention. One great way to do that is by sending announcements. The only thing you need to know is that you can only send one message per week, so make the best use of this opportunity.

Now another reason that announcements work is that they send a notification to each user.

People are naturally curious to know what is new today. Also, sending messages makes you connect with people and actually have a conversation after that announcement.

So curating a great message and sending out as announcement is what you should definitely be including in your content marketing strategy.

12. Sponsored Content to Deliver Your Brand Message

Sponsored content is a great way to drive traffic to your company page. It lets you increase awareness and target your audience who are not aware of your brand.

That is to say, sponsored content is sent to targeted people on their feeds who are outside of your connections.

This way, you reach new people and increase brand visibility. The look and feel of sponsored content is similar to that of regular content which lets the audience interact with it.

With sponsored content, you can:

• Get real-time analytics
• Set metrics for targeting a specific group of people
• Set your budget
• Leverage conversion
• Bring people to your page

If you have been posting organic content regularly (which you should) you would have created a buyer persona. This persona will help you create sponsored content and engage with the targeted audience.

See how Elementor does this:

91% of marketing executives list LinkedIn as the top place to find quality content.

Sponsored content is a great way to position your brand and come up as a thought leader.

Now, if you are unsure of what works and what not, you can run an A/B testing campaign. For this, head to the LinkedIn Campaign Manager​tool to run multiple campaigns to see what works. Not to forget, you can change only one variable at a time in A/B testing.

Another option you can opt for is to use Direct Sponsored Content​which lets you publish content without making it show on your company page. This is yet another way to gauge the performance of your content.

13. Use LinkedIn Automation Tools

Automation tools are great for leveraging LinkedIn while reducing the time taken for mundane tasks.

While automation tools do every possible task for you, one thing that you should keep to yourself is — building relationships as that remains the core of sales.

Leveraging LinkedIn automation tools​gives you the liberty to focus on more important tasks on hand. Here are some other benefits of LinkedIn automation tools:

• Stay organized
• Carry out your marketing strategy smoothly
• Connect with prospects
• Send well-curated messages

Apart from this, LinkedIn automation lets you build your social presence and enhance your brand.

14. Build Relationship With Influencers

Networking is all about striking a chord, building relationships and nurturing them. Social networking goes a long way in making your brand stand out and grow immensely.

Having good terms with the influencers is one such approach to get more eyeballs to your brand.

Stats show that LinkedIn brings 3 times more conversions than Facebook and Twitter.

Here is what you can do:

• Connect:​send out a connection request to influencers in your niche
• Build relation: spark a conversation and stay in contact
• Engage:​by engaging with influencer’s posts, you increase your chances of being noticed. Like, share and comment on their posts. And through comments, try to add value to the post and reader.
• Mentions:​Once you have built good terms with them, mention them in your post.

15. Optimize Your Company Page

Optimizing your company page for conversions is REALLY important. Your LinkedIn company page is your first introduction to people who are not familiar with your brand.

The question is: How can you optimize your Linkedin Company page?

Here are a few simple things that you can do:

• Create hyperlinked banners which include a call to action. And measure how many people clicked on your banner.
• Be consistent with your branding — Same color palette, typography etc.
• Optimize your description. Tell your story in the first two lines: Who you are and What you do.
• Link to a dedicated landing page.
• Post educational material and industry updates once/twice in a day.
• Keep an eye on your page notifications. Track how many people like, share, and comment on your page updates.

Check out Hubspot’s fantastic LinkedIn page:

16. Build Showcase Pages

Never heard about the showcase page?

Well…

Showcase pages are an extension of your LinkedIn page. It allows you to promote your individual products/services. You can create dedicated showcase pages of your each product. And share unique content to a niche audience. Highly targeted.

Just go to your LinkedIn page and click “Admin Tools” from drop down menu and create a showcase page.

Decide your page name and enter the information. And start creating content for your audience. You can create up to 10 free showcase pages.

“Why do I go for showcase pages?”

• Showcase page has a larger banner image (Hero).
• Two columns newspaper like layout makes content interactive.
• No careers, products, or services page. No distractions.
• All showcase pages tie with your business page.

Big brands like Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, and Adobe are successfully using LinkedIn showcase pages.

Check out this Microsoft’s showcase page “Microsoft office”

17. Use Advanced Search Filter

LinkedIn advanced search is a great tool to find your prospects. You’ll find a number of fields here that you can use to find your ideal audience. Magic in your hand!

Have you ever noticed that big White Search box on top of your LinkedIn home page? This is your advance search tool.

Use this tool to connect with your prospects. Here are some hacks that will help you to target your audience.

Use quotes to find targeted results for your search term >>> Search “[Your Term]”

Search “[Your Term 1] AND [Your Term 2]” to find profiles for two different search terms.

Search “[Your Term 1] OR [Your Term 2]” if you want to combine results for two different search terms.

Search “[Your Term] NOT [Exclude Term]” if you want to exclude a specific term.

I believe this advanced search filter tool will help you to target your ideal clients!

18. Meet Offline With Your LinkedIn Connections

Why do you use LinkedIn?

Finding, connecting and then starting a conversation with people who are in your target market. Right?

How to engage and invite people?

Search for your target audience and start liking and commenting on their posts. Now reach out to them and send a connection request and start building a relationship.

Now Get off of Linkedin.

What?!!

Yes.

Start meeting your connections OFFLINE — Face to Face.

How can you do this?

• Host local meetups and invite your LinkedIn connections.
• Let your connections know when you are traveling to their city and ask for a little chat over coffee. They will appreciate it. (I do this often).

It will strengthen your relationship with them :)

19. Reach Out to People Who Viewed Your Profile

So, you’re on the lookout for new prospects. Well, LinkedIn can be your best mate. Someone viewed your profile recently? Just go through their names and…

The Marketing Manager of the company you were trying to connect looked at your profile.

Bingo!

What does it mean? It means he or she is interested enough in your materials/content. Now, what’s next?

Now you can send them a connection request with a message (you don’t need to mention that he/she viewed your profile). And take the conversation to the next level.

Where can you see your profile views?

Just click on “who’s viewed your profile” on the home.

And you’ll land on a page where you can see who viewed your profile. You can see up to 5 results if you have a free account. You need a premium account to see all the results.

20. Turn Connection Requests Into Conversations

“I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.”

Most boring English words!

The conversation starts the time you’re sending a connection request to your prospects.

The point is: Write a custom and engaging connection request.

What to include in your message: Politely introduce yourself, what you do, and how you help people. You can also put some mutual interests.

Spend a few minutes writing a custom message.

What to do when you get a connection request?

Send them a message saying something like: “Hey [Name], Happy to connect with you. How’s the work going on? Love to know about you”

Last Words!

Undoubtedly, LinkedIn is one of the best platforms for lead generation. And, you just accessed 20 proven ways to generate leads from LinkedIn.

If you use the right strategies and target the right people, you can end up with quality leads and prospects. You need to put your efforts and time.

What tactics do you use to generate leads through LinkedIn? Or do you have any questions? Just drop your views here.