How To Generate Leads With LinkedIn

80% of B2B leads today come from LinkedIn. This shows us how powerful LinkedIn really is. However, that’s not the reality for most of us who find generating leads on LinkedIn a drag.
Here’s how to fix the problem and generate leads on LinkedIn without wasting time. If you don’t want to do all the optimization on your own you can always hire a marketing freelancer or sales expert for doing all of this and more.

1) Optimize Your Profile to Generate Better Leads

It may seem obvious but your profile is the first place where people learn more about you. If you fail to optimize your profile well, you’ll be seen as a spammer. When people send a request for the connection you need to look at the profile from their viewpoint. When you send an invitation on the notifications bar they see a tiny preview with your name, title, and the beginning parts of your message. Since they don’t know you won’t get many accepted invitations from this alone. They will want to learn more and that’s where you need to start optimizing.

Add your name and picture. With the picture, you have the freedom to add a professional picture. A good headshot is what you need here. A professional photo helps others take you seriously. If you don’t have a good camera or professional set up here’s what to do. Find a white wall and ask your friend to take a picture of you with a smartphone.

Phone cameras have grown by leaps today. In addition to adding your name and a professional headshot to your LinkedIn profile, it's also important to personalize your profile picture. This is where the profile picture maker from Quicktools by Picsart can come in handy. With this tool, you can add filters, stickers, and other design elements to your profile picture to make it stand out and reflect your personality or brand.

Add your job title and other titles you have. Including your academic achievements, however, avoid listing non-traditional pedigrees such as LinkedIn certifications as they might get you overlooked.  Think about the people you want to connect with. Are you targeting CEOs? If you’re targeting a CEO a profile title should be Helps CEOs with this and that. A freelancer who wants new clients should optimize his profile accordingly. If you nail the above aspects, the person you invited is likely to check out the full profile and connect with you.

What they want to do is understand if you’re honest about who you say you are. Your profile should be filled out. List past jobs and what you were able to do at those jobs. Also mention that you’re open to new connections. That encourages people to act. As a result, you get more LinkedIn followers who can become your leads, too.

2) Connect with Decision-Makers

When generating leads, it’s best to focus on the entire sales cycle from the start. Understand the entire process of selling a new product or service. It begins by generating a lead to make the sale. Some of us can close the sale in a few minutes. Other, more involved products take longer, sometimes months. To shorten the sales cycle, finding and connecting with decision-makers from the start is better. Businesses always have a select few who make the purchase decisions. Direct your efforts to someone who has the authority to close the sale. To supercharge your growth you need to connect quickly with decision-makers, It may not always be the CEO.

The decision maker depends on what you’re selling, which businesses you’re targeting, and the goals. If you’re a freelancer who wants new clients, your decision maker might be the CMO of a company or better yet, the market manager, or the head of SEO. Targeting anyone else will waste your time. This is great for B2B leads. Tailor your messages and your connection requests before factoring this in. One tool that can help you connect with decision-makers quickly is linkedhelper.com, which offers a range of automation and outreach features for LinkedIn.

3) Follow Up With Old Leads

LinkedIn Lead generation feels like a numbers game and in more ways than one it is.

Target enough people and you may get sales. The quality of the leads is however important. Many people collect leads, start contact, and then don’t go any further from here. Then they start it all over again. What’s the problem with this approach?

There’s zero follow-up. If you know anything about lead generation you may know how crucial it is to follow up. Automate LinkedIn messages or set up an autoresponder series of emails to makes it a hands-off process for you.

Most sales need five follow-ups. Most of us just send one follow-up email. Your initial email may be missed. Your prospect may get busy. On social media, your message is often buried underneath so many different messages from so many people. You waste time and effort to generate leads. That begs t the question as to when is it ideal to send the first follow-up. Check in with prospects a few times.

You can also set up an autoresponder series of emails. That makes it a hands-off process for you.

4) Generate Leads on Autopilot with Content Marketing

One big and powerful feature of LinkedIn is the publishing platform it provides us with LinkedIn Pulse— its own blogging platform.

You can republish content from your business blog to it. It’s a smart way to generate new leads. It demonstrates your expertise and tells others who you are. By showing to others that you’re more knowledgeable than many in your field, you shorten the sales cycle by a big margin. If you’re educating prospects while solving problems with free content, it’s often easier to convert them.

Content marketing takes time though. The best part is you can always reuse content you have on your own blog. This works really well on LinkedIn.

Do this:

- Provide a call to action and link at the end of each post
- Publish actionable new content to readers that they can implement and find quick wins
- Promote LinkedIn articles on other platforms
- Publish evergreen content.

if you want to add the best free LinkedIn plugins to your website visit MU Plugins.

To Sum Up: Establish What You Want Your Prospects To Do

Start with a goal. You’re generating new leads. But think of the purpose and think of the next steps. You may want people to download free resources, attend webinars, schedule consults and hop on calls with you. Decide your goal before you begin the lead generation process with LinkedIn. 

Partnering with a LinkedIn lead generation agency can help you clearly define and achieve these goals more effectively. Also when you have a list, connect with the help of a personal message. Some options also allow you to enter an email address. If you connect as a friend this option isn’t necessary.