How to generate leads through LinkedIn [video]

LinkedIn’s core proposition remains: get found and get recruited. Keep your CV up to date on LinkedIn. Make it look pretty. Recruiters find you. Job offers come. That’s essentially their proposition. If that’s the case, LinkedIn surely is the most up to date database on the planet for accurate contact information about prospects. How do we tap that rich, up to date database to generate great B2B leads through LinkedIn?

Watch the video above where I show you step by step how to use Lead Builder to get your list.

Start with your target market

The first question we need to ask is whose contact details do we want? That leads us to look at a couple of things. What problem do you solve and who most has that problem? These are big strategic questions that I’ve talked quite a lot about on other shows.

Once we’re clear on the kind of business and the role within the business that we should be targeting, we need also to look at one other thing. That is the ideal client profile. What does a good prospect look like? How big are they? How fast are they growing? How are they structured? And anything else that distinguishes a really good prospect from a not so good prospect for your business. Let’s get really clear first about who we’re targeting.

Use Lead Builder to filter on B2B demographics

Geography
Industry
Size
Roles

If I want to find leads through LinkedIn, I can use Lead Builder inside Sales Navigator, and, look for those businesses who are my ideal clients. As an example, in the above image I’m choosing people from Australia with a Marketing role who work in the Computer Software industry and Information Technology services. I don’t want the tiny companies, but I’m willing to deal with quite small businesses.

Let’s say I’m going to take companies from 51 employees, right up to big enterprises with thousands of employees. Now, if I want to serve such a broad market, I obviously want to be having a product that can scale like that. Then, I search. This is the list I’ve got:

So, what kind of leads through LinkedIn could I not get with a half decent list provider?

I can get the people who have moved. Out of those 3,700 people, even just within Australia, there are 289 of them who’ve recently changed jobs. That’s kind of key, because if they’ve changed job, they probably have a new mandate that makes them great prospects for me to target. Particularly, if I can target them in a way that makes it really clear I’m adding value to their newness in the role.

But if I go back to my filters, I can be even really more micro. Let’s say that I’ve previously done work with SAP. And, I now want to deal with people who are working at IBM. These are former SAPers now working for IBM. Now, there are none of those in Australia, but if I broaden my market, I’ve got five people now in the US who used to work for SAP and now work for IBM. Now, if I had a good reputation with SAP, chances are great that I can target those individuals at IBM using our past relationship, or their knowledge of our product even if I don’t know them personally.

I can get fancy with ifs, ands, and ors. Boolean searches stringing together a really long statement like “this industry or this industry” and “this role or this role.” I can string all that together into a really complex search, and that’s beyond the scope of today’s very short show, but if you ask me really nicely in the comments on YouTube about this LinkedIn post, I might go really deep on showing you Boolean search. Let me know if you’re really interested in that level of depth. I’m going to assume not for now.

Where and when to use LinkedIn to generate leads

Volume

Getting together a large list for your outbounds for VBR (valid business reason) emails. They are outbound emails with purpose. Check out my other blog on VBR’s to give you some great detail on Miller Heiman’s thinking on VBR’s.
Getting a great list together for outbounds for SDRs (sales development reps).
Nurture emails

Value

Now the value answer is obviously movers. Not just people who’ve recently changed role, but people who used to work at target companies and are now working at companies that we’d like to do business with.

Final Thoughts

Well, the target market is only a part of your strategy, and whilst leads through LinkedIn might be a great name acquisition tactic, it’s only a part of the tactics. You need Sales and Marketing to come together and agree on all of the strategy and all of the tactics to get aligned. To do that, the best tool that I know is Funnel Plan.

If you’ve already got a Funnel Plan, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. Get your sales and marketing folk together and build out the strategy, the objectives, the velocity, and the tactics together. If you don’t already have a funnel plan, get a free one. Go to funnelplan.com and get yourself a free funnel plan now. There are paid versions, and there’s a lot more functionality in the paid version, but for now just check out the free one.

Well, I hope you got great value about generating leads through LinkedIn from today’s show. I had a lot of fun pulling it together for you. Lot’s more lined up for next week, and until then may your funnel be full and always flowing.

Our thanks to:

You for watching this week’s show
John Ang for video production
Lisbeth Peña for blog production
Hugh Macfarlane for scripting and presenting this week’s show