LinkedIn is an excellent resource for networking and business growth. Making better use of the social media site would be easier if you use innovative marketing tips.
LinkedIn is a social media site that can be used to increase brand recognition and customer relationships. Businesses that use LinkedIn will market to potential clients and partners by posting relevant content and participating in industry discussions.
With their professional connections and network, business owners may use LinkedIn to expand their email marketing list.
“The use of social media in sales helps salespeople to delight their prospects rather than disrupt their everyday lives with cold calls and hard-selling, ultimately turning them into loyal customers,” according to HubSpot.
Although there are several social media communities, LinkedIn remains one of the most influential business channels. According to LinkedIn, "this sales strategy allows improved sales lead generation and sales prospecting mechanism and removes the need for cold calling." It is easier to build and sustain relationships within a network that you and your customers trust.
LinkedIn is a great source of prospect knowledge for sales and outreach, but the site is so large that it can be difficult to know where to start. It can also be intimidating if you prefer a low-key approach and don't want to be seen as offensive or "sales."
If you're reluctant to join, keep in mind that Linkedin is a professional network, and people use it to make connections and build relationships. Inbound sales are an important part of developing professional relationships, so consumers expect – and even want – to be approached. In reality, “50% of B2B buyers use LinkedIn to make purchasing decisions.”
Even so, there are some dos and don'ts when it comes to LinkedIn prospecting. Even if people are expecting it, you can always bug them if you don't do it correctly – and irritated prospects are not viable prospects.
Table of Contents
- 1 What is LinkedIn Marketing?
- 2
Benefits of LinkedIn Marketing
- 2.1 1) Polish Your Profile
- 2.2 2) Find Clients & Connections that are Highly Targeted
- 2.3 3) Join & Take Part in LinkedIn Groups
- 2.4 4) Go Premium
- 2.5 5) Search More Effectively
- 2.6 6) Try LinkedIn Voice Messages
- 2.7 7) Use LinkedIn Pulse for your Content
- 2.8 8) Engage the Audience in your Group
- 2.9 9) Use the LinkedIn Inmail Tool
- 3 Conclusion
What is LinkedIn Marketing?
LinkedIn isn't just for job seekers and academics. Sure, millions of professionals use LinkedIn every day to expand their networks and careers, but you can also use it to expand your company. This social media tool exposes you and your company to millions of contacts, which you can use to establish relationships with individuals and other businesses to improve your brand.
LinkedIn is primarily a technical social network. It's all about professional growth, networking, industry discussions, and other business-related events. LinkedIn is a great place to find clients, staff, and associates.
Benefits of LinkedIn Marketing
LinkedIn, unlike other social media, is less concerned with selling or promoting your goods and services. On LinkedIn, overtly promoting your business, spamming, and apparent hard-selling are all frowned upon. This is why developing a platform-specific marketing plan is important. Since the network has a completely different audience, LinkedIn marketing necessitates a different strategy to achieve the desired results.
According to Sprout Social, companies marketing on LinkedIn produce 277% more leads than those marketing solely on Facebook. According to B2B marketers polled, LinkedIn accounts for 80% of their social media leads. LinkedIn, when used correctly, is a powerful marketing tool that can propel the company to new heights.
So, how do you maximize the value of your LinkedIn profile? Here are some strategies for using LinkedIn for sales prospecting.
Let's get straight into it.
1) Polish Your Profile
Before you consider approaching others, you can update your profile to ensure that when you do start attracting attention, it will result in the desired outcome. Writing in the first person gives your profile more legitimacy and credibility. Write your bio and other profile messages so that they clearly illustrate how your services can benefit a potential customer.
You can accomplish this by “making the connection” when writing – show visitors how the services you provide can contribute to the changes they want in their company. Avoid talking about your talents in broad strokes, otherwise, they won't understand how, for example, negotiating training will help them land bigger deals.
Follow these steps to ensure that your LinkedIn profile is active and optimized:
- Get a professional headshot. Skip the amusing images – according to LinkedIn data, photos on profiles receive 21x more views and 36x more messages.
- Create an eye-catching headline. Aja Frost, a Hubspot blogger, suggests four tips for writing a headline: adapt it to your audience, provide your value proposition, use your prospect's vocabulary, and stop hyperbole.
- Create a brief – yet impactful – bio. Keep the following four pieces of knowledge in mind, according to Hootsuite: Include your passions, how you got into the industry, what you do in your current job, and what your company does.
- Disable the LinkedIn setting that enables you to browse other people's profiles anonymously. As a result, your name will appear on prospect profiles before you conduct cold outreach to them.
- Ask for endorsements but do so with caution. Endorsements are useful but don't bombard all of your contacts with queries. Instead, wait until you've developed relationships and you're worth it before asking. If your requests aren't being answered, many LinkedIn users believe that you must offer endorsements to receive them.
2) Find Clients & Connections that are Highly Targeted
LinkedIn's targeting is unrivaled in the world of digital ads. Small companies should target the exact market, company size, and job position [of the people] they know will purchase their product or service.
For example, if you are selling customer support software to small businesses in the United States, you can limit your promotional strategies to only showing to businesses with less than 100 employees located in the United States – and within that grouping, only to executives with a customer-support title. LinkedIn helps in targeting the right customer at the right time.
3) Join & Take Part in LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn groups are an excellent way to communicate with prospects before you contact them. Conduct research to determine which classes your current customers and ideal prospective customers belong to. Create a spreadsheet that lists all of these groups, including the number of participants, the level of engagement, and whether the group is open or closed.
Then, pick two or three groups to join as active members. You can (and should) join as many groups as you want, but you can only be genuinely involved in a subset of them. It will take time and effort, but the goal is to become a thought leader in these communities, providing valuable knowledge and guidance to their members. So when you do contact them, they will recognize and trust your name.
Furthermore, being a member of the same group provides you with an excellent excuse to contact a prospect. You can easily extend your LinkedIn network by joining a community.
4) Go Premium
It is not a small investment, but upgrading to LinkedIn's premium level can be beneficial. There are four choices to choose from: Career, Company, Sales, and Hiring, each with slightly different advantages.
Prospectors who are serious about prospecting will be most interested in options such as Business and Sales, which have enhanced search functionality, more InMail messages, and better lead management tools.
5) Search More Effectively
Even without the search superpowers of a Premium account, LinkedIn's search feature is very advanced, and you'd be wise to spend a few minutes learning how to make the most of it. It supports Conditional strings and filters, and correctly using both would improve the accuracy of the performance.
You may have come across tools to automate LinkedIn searches during your study. Some will pique your curiosity, but keep in mind that they violate LinkedIn's terms of service, so use them at your own risk.
6) Try LinkedIn Voice Messages
LinkedIn voice messages are a relatively new feature that few salespeople are taking advantage of.
That is what makes it a great incentive; it is not (yet) a saturated channel, making it easier for you to stand out.
Morgan Ingram of JBarrows shared his “10-30-10” approach to LinkedIn Voice Messages at the Mailshake Sales Prospecting Summit, which gives him a 20% meeting-booked rate on cold outreach.
7) Use LinkedIn Pulse for your Content
LinkedIn publishes some of the best business news.
Many of the world's greatest business leaders, from Richard Branson to Marc Benioff, publish content on LinkedIn.
Previously, content on Pulse could only be published by influencers and opinion leaders. Anyone with a LinkedIn account can now access the website.
This is an extremely effective tool for salespeople for two reasons.
1. It allows salespeople to express their experiences through their professional identity.
2. It allows you to reach out to a large number of people in a short period of time.
Everyone in your network receives a notification when you publish on LinkedIn Pulse. That's just one more excuse to communicate with people in your industry on LinkedIn regularly.
8) Engage the Audience in your Group
Getting results from LinkedIn Groups takes time and dedication that most salespeople are unable to put in. Posting something commercial now and then can only earn you a reputation as a spammer.
To fully benefit from LinkedIn Groups, select two or three groups and concentrate on being a part of the community. Set up an engagement cadence for the LinkedIn groups in which you participate.
Participating in LinkedIn groups may be any of these acts.
- Add your thoughts to another member's message.
- Answering questions for the community.
- Inquiring about something or seeking assistance.
- Post promotional content for your items.
- Posting content from other users that you enjoyed.
To be an engaged, supportive, and valuable group member and avoid being labeled as a spammer, you must engage in a clear mix of each of these activities.
Set up a schedule for participating in LinkedIn groups so that you can do it regularly. This cadence can be as easy as commenting on other people's content every Tuesday, sharing other people's content every Thursday, and searching for ways to be helpful every Friday.
Set up a routine and stick to it, and you'll see results from LinkedIn Groups.
9) Use the LinkedIn Inmail Tool
InMail allows you to send a direct message to any LinkedIn member, regardless of whether you are related to them or not. Response rates to InMail are typically high, as long as you have a compelling reason to communicate. It should not be a standard sales pitch. LinkedIn guarantees InMail responses and will give you an InMail credit if you do not receive a response within 7 days.
Anyone in sales would tell you that senior decision-makers are a difficult group to reach. You can't blame them because they are bombarded with calls and emails every day. To secure their time, they screen calls, ignore much of their mail, and employ gatekeepers to keep unwanted sales approaches out. So, often they're simply too well secured, which is where InMail comes in.
InMail is LinkedIn's internal email system, and it enables you to send an email to any LinkedIn user without first introducing yourself. Essentially, it means that the email reaches their inbox. According to LinkedIn, an InMail is 30 times more likely to receive a response than a cold call (which, if anything, sounds conservative from my experience).
Conclusion
The overall approach you take to LinkedIn prospecting will be primarily determined by the amount of time you have available.
Given that most people have little time for outreach, you may want to integrate LinkedIn prospecting into your overall outreach and marketing strategy. After all, you need to ensure that your LinkedIn activities are as carefully calculated and strategized as your other efforts.
To begin, consider whether now is a good time to get a Premium account, while also polishing your profile and possibly deciding on a Pulse strategy.
Rather than doing aggressive prospecting, practice your approaches on people you know from other aspects of your life before you build trust in the site. Once you're more at ease, build a small prospect list and start working your way through it, perfecting things like scanning and InMail as you go.
With a little practice, you should be able to establish a routine that consistently and often adds fresh new opportunities to your waterfall.