Learn LinkedIn business tips - how to use LinkedIn for leads generation

1. Interact and engage more than you broadcast

It’s easy to engage when people comment on your content. It’s much harder to make a habit out of engaging with other people’s content – especially when it feels like there’s no direct link to sales.

The thing is that the more you engage with other people, the more relationships you’ll build. This building of trust and offering value is key to doing well on LinkedIn and generating more leads.

TRUST IS BUILT THROUGH ENGAGING WITH YOUR NETWORK ON LINKEDIN

The people that read your comments and see that you liked their post are more likely to click your profile and engage with you. This is especially true as people start to notice you’re offering value without asking or taking.

It also makes it easier to message people you’ve engaged with and connect on a deeper level.

You should be spending at least as much time engaging like this as you spend writing and promoting your own content.

2. Pick a clear sales strategy and stick with it

AVOID MESSAGING PEOPLE WITH A DISGUISED SALES PITCH

One of the problems with marketing on LinkedIn is that everyone that contacts people out of the blue is either trying to sell something or recruit someone. After the first few times, people rightfully get turned off by people contacting them.

But what if you actually have something to sell that the people you’re contacting would actually benefit from?

Even if your product just happens to be the next thing since sliced bread - no one likes being spammed with sales pitches. If your goal is to find the few people that don’t mind being spammed through a scalable campaign, realise it’s a completely different strategy to a warm introduction.

The tactic is to be conscious of this tendency to try to go halfway with sales. Trying to be both a friend and a salesperson comes off as sleazy – so make sure you pick and stick with it. Failing to do this will make people ignore your message and lost trust. Because so many people fail to realise this, most people wrongly assume that LinkedIn doesn’t work.

3. Design a cold-message offer campaign

A legitimate strategy is to create a very brief, yet compelling sales pitch and make it a numbers game. You’ll burn some bridges but the conversions if done right may be worth it. This is short-sighted in most cases for the reason that even if it works, nobody likes being contacted this way.

There’s no guarantee that you’ll get leads or customers. But there is a guarantee you will give yourself a bad image to people that are part of your target market.

IT’S A QUICK, SCALABLE SOLUTION

On the upside, it’s scalable – especially if you use an automated tool to add and message your target audience. You’ll also want to make sure that you have a landing page offer attached to either a lead magnet, a discount or invitation for a sales call linked to Calendly.

4. Build trust over time by posting valuable content

The alternative is to put extra effort upfront into choosing the people that would add the most value as contacts. Your targets should be mostly potential customers, but also partners and influencers.

The way to do this is by offering value to the community. This is a long-term approach, so you have to decide if you’re willing to stick with it and develop an actual strategy to generate a lot of leads through trust.

But be honest, if what you need is quick leads right now, this is not the right way.

HIGHLY-EFFECTIVE CONTENT IDEAS

·      Quotes, opinion post, and predictions

·      Videos and photo galleries

·      Giveaways and tool reviews

·      Slide share presentations

·      White papers and company news

5. Pay for sponsored content for your high-engagement posts

Once you create a company page and attach it to your profile, you can create sponsored content.

Split testing is important here since you don’t want to put a lot of money into a post that just doesn’t engage.

One way to test is to post organically to your existing network and see which ones get the most likes and comments. Another is doing the same thing, except putting a small amount of money to each post.

This is often necessary if your account is new or you don’t get enough views organically to make a decision.

Once you identify the content that is performing well, you can put more money into it and repeat your tests with fresh content. This way you can keep adjusting your ads to the best performing posts over time.

Note: This post is written by a guest blogger who wants to remain anonymous.

You can connect with me on LinkedIn: Petra on LinkedIn