Over the last decade, LinkedIn became one of the most important business platforms out there. In the process, it became a suitable ground to create an organic presence and make your online business thrive. You will have multiple opportunities to expand your field of influence and bring unique value to the market.
Depending on your niche, you have to create an optimal strategy to drive the right audience. To do so, you need to know all the ins and outs of LinkedIn lead generation. Even more important, you need to figure out a way to get more high-quality leads.
If you are looking for a way to make your LinkedIn account work to your advantage, the following tips are for you.
1. Apply Measurable Goals to Your Lead Generation Strategy
To get quality leads, you should create a rock-solid Linkedin lead generation strategy and set clear goals. If you don’t know where to start, try defining measurable goals such as:
- Click-through rate(CTR)—Number of visitors on your Linkedin page compared to those who click on your ad on that page
- Reach and Frequency—Percentage of visitors exposed to your ad and the number of times visitors were exposed to that ad
- Impressions—Number of times your ad is shown on Linkedin
- Email open rate—Percentage of subscribers who opened your promotion email
So, if you want to get those numbers up, make a straightforward plan to achieve that. Take a good look at your position on the scale and define the way to improve parts of your business that need to be improved.
For instance, to improve your open rate, you can use Linkedin Sponsored Inmail. Your CTR will get better if you set up the right tone for your ads, keep up the consistency when you are launching new campaigns, pay attention to the time you are posting your ads, and understand your audience.
Reach and frequency improvements will have their fair share in your success as well. That is why you have to find a perfect balance between the two. Even the audience that is interested in your services may turn to someone else as your ads are constantly popping up.
Naturally, some things will not go as planned, and you should keep that in mind while setting your goals.
Questions That Can Help You Set Your Goals
The most important process you have to go through to determine your current business goals is to ask yourself the following questions:
- Does your marketing strategy include the right way to reach a specific group of professionals?
- Do you have a high convert of leads, yet they lack in quality?
- How much will this campaign cost? Will you use InMail, Text Ads or sponsored content?
- Will you rely on the support of Linkedin Marketing Partners?
2. Target a Relevant Audience
Keep in mind that targeting an audience through LinkedIn requires thorough researching, even more so if you are a B2B advertiser. For instance, you should start by using an advanced search option and target the audience through the location. Make sure you choose a location with the “busiest traffic” — the location where most of your potential customers may be.
After that, your task is to select options to define your audience. Target them by entering on the LinkedIn search the following:
- Skills listed on LinkedIn profiles of your potential leads—For instance, if you are looking for web developers, you will enter “JavaScript” or “Amazon AWS”
- Job titles that define company seniority and job function—For example, your job seniority may be “CEO” and you can enter “Marketing” as a function
- Company— Search your audience by entering specific company names, defining target industry and company size. For instance, you may enter “Advertising” as an industry and “5,000+ employees” as the size of the company.
3. Optimize Your Lead Generation Campaigns
Campaigns are an important part of your strategy to gain quality leads. To have a successful campaign, you will have to build blocks of Sponsored Content and Linkedin Ads. Most LinkedIn users will create numerous campaigns to target a person with specific job titles, job functions, and seniority.
These campaigns will help you expand your business network and become more visible. If you decide to start multiple campaigns, you will be able to measure their performance and figure out what works and how to adjust them for best results.
To optimize your campaign, you will have to:
- Gather your team and define every stage of the campaign
- Define your content and offers according to the general trends, but also interests of your audience
- Respond quickly to all hot leads
- Improve and adjust your campaign by taking into consideration rejected leads
4. Set Up Tracking of LinkedIn Conversions
To start Linkedin conversion tracking successfully, you should understand two things:
- How to add Insights Tag to your webspace
- How to assign conversions against sponsored campaigns and existing Linkedin text
You will have to place a single tracking code on every page of your website to track your LinkedIn conversions. If you don’t want to include every page in this process, place a code at a web location where you expect the conversion to happen.
You can track your conversions by using Google Tag Manager as well.
5. Understand the Quality of Your Leads
Another important thing is to understand the value of the audience your website is attracting. You should have insight into the long-term value of one lead. Also, focus on one smaller group instead of trying to get as many people as possible. We already know that quantity doesn’t mean quality.
To determine the value of your leads, you should ask yourself these questions:
- Which demographic are you aiming at?
- What is the purchase history of your leads?
- If you are operating B2B business—what is the size of your lead’s company?
- What are your leads looking for in an agency or vendor?
- What is the budget of your leads?
- Why are your new leads changing vendors or agencies?
- What are the deal-breakers for you and your leads?
Before you launch a campaign, you should determine which tool you will use to evaluate the quality of your leads.
Try Out LinkedIn’s Conversion Tracking
This is where LinkedIn’s Conversion Tracking steps on the scene. It will provide you with the following information:
- Attribution features—You can set these features to single or multiple campaigns and decide how you will credit each interaction across multiple campaigns.
- Complete metrics—You can have access to post-click and post-view conversions. That way you will know the impact of your ads.
- Deep insights—You will have access to demographic data. Here you will receive information about the audience converting on your website—their industries, companies, titles, etc.
6. Learn About LinkedIn Marketing Partners
If you need some help with your content, you should learn about LinkedIn partners. They will help you get through to the right audience and make it stay. You can also get assistance when it comes to your CRM listings, messaging continuity, and managing pipeline.
On LinkedIn, you can have content partners and technology partners.
Content Partners
These are leading content experts who partnered up with LinkedIn. They are offering help to LinkedIn users by creating posts, ads, videos, and similar content for them. Their work is based on various researches that determine which content has the most success on Linkedin, and they can adjust the service to your budget.
Technology Partners
Technology partners will help you develop your marketing strategy through the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions APIs. With their help, you will be able to activate and optimize campaigns and also measure success.
To help you discover and evaluate data relevant for your campaign, technology partners provide:
- Audience Management Analytics and Measurement
- Community Management And Technology
Keep in mind that some partners will spread their support through multiple functions and categories, while others may focus on a single category and a small number of functions.
You should choose ones that fit your campaign goals.
7. Use Visual Content
When it comes to content, videos, images, and even illustrations are quite popular means to present your service, and their popularity will not fade away soon. Using visual content is one of the best practices for ads on LinkedIn and a key for appealing Lead Gen Form completions.
You will adjust your content depending on the format you are working within. However, there is some general advice:
- Use vibrant and sharp colors to draw the attention on a feed
- Make your message creative and witty—customize it for your targeted audience
- Create a unique video, image, or other types of visual content
- Make sure the image of the product is included
Your visual content should also follow the trends, but without suppressing the unique traits of your enterprise.
Final Thoughts—It’s Time to Get Those Leads
Leads are probably one of the most valuable aspects of marketing campaigns. Marketers are constantly working on strategies to generate quality leads within their specific niche. They use tools and the help of partners to create rock-solid lead generation plans, filter and improve their campaigns and get clear results.
Linkedin offers you many wonderful possibilities to attract the target audience, get organic traffic, and increase the number of conversions.
So, if your Linkedin game got a little bit rusty, you need to gather all of the resources and start forging a perfect plan to get the leads your business needs. If possible, you can even begin with multiple projects at the same time and pick up the pace.
Keep in mind that no plan is bulletproof, and make sure you always have a backup. With so many competitors, you will have to provide value and stand out. So, pay close attention to your content.
Moreover, make sure you have the right people by your side. Though technically you can implement your marketing plan on your own, having a good and reliable team will make the plan implementation easier and more professional.
Finally, create your list with valuable tips for LinkedIn lead generation and start checking.
About the author:
Stefan Smulders is a SaaS entrepreneur and a founder of the world’s safest software for LinkedIn automation – Expandi.io. He’s enjoying his family life in the Netherlands being a proud father of a lovely 4-year old son Steef.
