Many believe that LinkedIn is the social network for B2B marketing. However, getting the results you want from the platform is not as easy or straightforward as you’d think. Filling out your company page and sending out a few invitations to people to like your page isn’t enough for the magic to happen.
LinkedIn is a social media platform dedicated to connecting the world’s professionals. If you want to generate valuable B2B leads for your business, you need to put in the work. In this post, we’ll show you some tried and tested ways to use LinkedIn for B2B lead generation.
Benefits of using LinkedIn for lead generation
Before we get into it, here are the benefits of using LinkedIn for lead generation:
- Decision-makers – LinkedIn is the most-used social media platform among senior-level influencers, decision-makers, and employees of Fortune 500 companies, which means that your target audience is most likely already there.
- The place for professionals – The average LinkedIn user might use the platform to stay informed about what is happening in their company, industry and network. If your company is offering a solution tailored to their needs, LinkedIn is probably the place where you can attract that attention and get the sale.
- Active user base – Out of 700 million total users, over half of them — around 310 million users — use the platform every month. This should give you a great opportunity to engage with them regularly.
- B2B targeting audience — LinkedIn advertising platform’s ads allow you to get granular about the audience you want to target. Even though some of the competitors, such as Facebook, allow you to target users by their job title or current employer, reaching the ideal target audience on LinkedIn is much easier, as it features a lot of targeting options.
LinkedIn lead generation strategy
Now that we have covered why you should use LinkedIn to hunt leads, here are the tactics to include in your LinkedIn lead generation strategy.
Use your LinkedIn company page to generate B2B leads
If you want to generate B2B leads on LinkedIn you must stop using your company page as a page to simply display your business in the digital space. Instead, what you want to do is turn your company page into a lead generation page that will inspire people to engage with your company page and your brand.
You need to show what you can offer to your audience. Make sure that your page clearly shows to visitors an offer right as they enter your page. This is the first thing your visitors will see which is why it is important to grab their attention.
Create showcase pages to segment your LinkedIn leads
To promote your different products, brands, events, or any other aspects of your business to a specific audience on LinkedIn, use LinkedIn Showcase Pages.
Think of them as affiliated pages — you can use them to create and promote content specific to each of your target audiences. They can help you segment your B2B leads on LinkedIn more efficiently and then use those pages to target the audience with content that is relevant to them.
Use the LinkedIn groups feature
One of the best ways to generate leads on LinkedIn is to connect and engage with people and build your presence on the network. In addition to having a large network of connections, joining LinkedIn groups is a great way to connect with people, as high-quality groups are the perfect places to get noticed.
In addition to joining various LinkedIn groups, you should also consider creating groups of your own. However, you should not do this right away, instead, wait until you have built a solid collection of high-quality connections first. Only when you establish yourself as a thought leader and an authority in your industry can you start thinking about creating a group. Your LinkedIn group should be a trustworthy source of valuable knowledge and discussion.
Build quality connections – lots of them
Having plenty of connections on LinkedIn is important. However, you need to ensure that your connections are of a certain quality, as that is the only way you will be able to actually generate leads. Low-quality connections are hardly going to become B2B leads.
Getting leads starts with LinkedIn prospecting and prospecting can only happen if you have relevant connections. The more relevant your LinkedIn connections are, the more likely they will be to share and engage with your content. This will allow you to grow your presence on LinkedIn and then use your network to generate leads.
Create and share content daily
If you want to achieve anything on LinkedIn these days, you need to be active. Take some time out of your busy day and create and share content that will bring value to your connections.
Even if you do not have the time to create content, sharing high-quality articles, images, and videos while adding your thoughts to them will give you a medium to express your company’s position and engage with users.
If you do have the time to create content on LinkedIn — you should definitely go for it. Creating your own valuable and share-worthy content on LinkedIn will help people take notice of what you have to say and it can help you generate leads or just buzz about you and your business.
Businesses want to work with other businesses that have expert knowledge and insight into the industry. These days things change quickly in almost every industry and companies want to listen to experts that can help them prepare for what is next. Make sure that you are that expert.
Whatever you do — always add value
In the end, the most important thing you need to do is to ensure that every piece of content you write or share on LinkedIn actually brings some kind of value to the readers. Keep this in mind when you are working on your LinkedIn lead generation strategy.
Whenever you are about to write or share a post, ask yourself what value this is going to bring to your connections, the group you are sharing to or any other audiences you are targeting with the content. If you cannot answer this question with confidence, you should rethink if that piece of content is strong enough.
If you want to build an organic presence and generate B2B leads for your business, your content does have to bring actual value to your audience.
Final thoughts
Over the years, LinkedIn has built a reputation as the ultimate source of B2B leads because of one major reason — it is the best network that connects professionals from all over the world. While yes, other networks also work for a certain niche or geographic area, LinkedIn is the place where all professionals go. Most of them are interested in doing business in some form or another.
If you want to stand out on LinkedIn, you have to be different from the millions of other businesses that are using the platform as their marketing channel. To be successful in generating B2B leads on LinkedIn, you need a lot of hard work and patience and you will get the results that you want.
