LinkedIn isn’t only about recruiting new talent or building brand awareness. With the right strategy, b2b marketers can also use the platform to generate leads directly. As self-professed LinkedIn marketing nerds, we’ve gathered six top tips to help increase the number of leads you generate via your business profile. Let’s get into it!

Why LinkedIn?

First things first, why LinkedIn? In short, nearly half of all Australians have LinkedIn accounts. As of January 2020, 11.21 million Australians are on LinkedIn, or 43.5 percent, with millennials aged 25-34 years making up the largest group at 6.6 million.

LinkedIn is also the number one social media platform for b2b lead generation. Eighty percent of b2b marketing leads come from LinkedIn. In fact, 59 percent of b2b marketers say that LinkedIn generates leads for them, compared to 24 percent for Facebook. And more than one-third also said that it generated revenue for their company.

This is probably because four out of five LinkedIn users drive business decisions, so you can almost guarantee that your posts will be seen by people with buying influence in their company. Additionally, more than 50 million companies have LinkedIn profiles worldwide.

How to generate leads on LinkedIn

1. Update your company page.

If your company page hasn’t been refreshed recently, then that’s the place to start. Companies with completed profiles get 30 percent more weekly views, so filling in missing content or updating old information is essential. You should also include some relevant keywords so your page can be found on Google, as well as some industry and business-related hashtags. Check out the 11 best small business pages of 2019 for more ideas.

Once you’ve updated your page, it’s a good time to start connecting with relevant business leaders that could be a good fit for your company. A tool such as Skrapp can help you to identify business emails and build contact lists using a simple Chrome extension.

2. Share rich media content regularly.

Businesses that post weekly see a 2x increase in engagement. Images receive 2x more comments than text-only posts, while video generates 5x more engagement and Live Video 24x more engagement than non-video posts. You can even target your organic posts to specific segments of your followers for free.

3. Publish articles directly to LinkedIn.

Instead of publishing your latest blog post on your website and then sharing it on social media, try publishing it directly to the platform as a LinkedIn article. This has a number of benefits:

  • Deliver content to people where they are (ie. they don’t need to leave LinkedIn)
  • Share long-form content that isn’t appropriate for a regular post
  • LinkedIn automatically shares your article in your contacts’ feeds
  • Your article is highly shareable thanks to built-in sharing options
  • Your content is searchable within the platform and on Google (meaning you can benefit from LinkedIn’s domain authority)
  • Establish yourself as an industry thought leader and professional

This is not meant to replace your regular blogging activities. In fact, you may wish to publish the original article on your website, then a modified version on LinkedIn, granting you two opportunities to be found in search engine results pages (SERPs).

4. Join LinkedIn groups.

A treasure trove of potential leads, LinkedIn groups are a great place to network with people who already fit your ideal customer profile. Looking for Australian small business owners? There’s a group for that. What about professionals working in Australian local government? Right here. Once you’ve joined, look for opportunities to share relevant articles, offer resources or answer questions. Just avoid being spammy or too blatant in your posts - you need to build up a relationship first, offering help and information of value before spruiking any services or products. 

5. Share sponsored content with lead generation forms.

Sponsored content are LinkedIn’s paid posts that show up natively in your target market’s feeds. You can create image, carousel or video ads and target specific groups of professionals based on attributes such as job title or seniority, industry, education, company size, professional and personal interests, demographics and more.

One of the best ways to convert using sponsored content is to use LinkedIn’s native lead generation forms. LinkedIn lead gen forms have a 13 percent conversion rate - 5x higher than landing pages - likely due in part to LinkedIn prefilling the form information for users, as well as removing the need for prospects to leave the platform to accept your offer.

If you’re looking for tips on how to create the best lead gen form, LinkedIn recommends:

  • Having a strong offer
  • Using bold images, videos and messages
  • Keeping questions short
  • Keeping custom questions simple
  • Follow up leads quickly
  • Refreshing your form’s copy and creative regularly
  • Testing!

6. Send Message Ads.

Formerly called Sponsored InMail, LinkedIn’s Message Ads are another way to advertise to your target audience and generate leads. Instead of appearing in their newsfeed though, you send your message directly to your prospect’s LinkedIn inbox, where it can grab their attention without the usual clutter or character limits to worry about.

Some of the benefits of Message Ads include:

  • Personalisation - you can include the prospect’s name in your message
  • Highly targeted - send your ad to a specific prospect instead of a broad audience
  • Lead gen forms - add a lead gen form to your message and triple your conversions
  • High engagement - more than half of prospects open a Message Ad
  • It’s perfect for account-based marketing!

As with LinkedIn groups, just be sure to avoid sending spam. The Social Media Examiner recommends putting yourself in your prospect’s shoes and asking if you’d view your message as spam or a cool opportunity. If it’s the former, don’t send it. If the latter, then it’s perfect for Message Ads.

The best news is that you can actually automate much of this process using a cool tool called Dux-Soup. Not only does it automate sending personalised messages to prospects and drip campaigns, but it has a bunch of other LinkedIn lead nurturing tools as well.

So there you have it: six tips for generating leads through your LinkedIn business profile. If you’d like to learn more about how you can generate leads online, book a free exploratory call with us today.

Brand chemistry is a b2b marketing agency winning your customers' hearts and minds through inbound, brand, content, lead generation and digital strategy. Our marketing specialists achieve stellar results with the latest lead generation techniques.

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