How to Get Leads from
LinkedIn

October 24, 2024
1:33 PM

For sales reps and marketing heads, generating qualified leads for their team is a highly challenging task. Although LinkedIn provides advanced analytics and tools to reach the right kind of prospects, many still overlook these resources, just like you did.

Yes! That’s true. LinkedIn is one of the most well-known networking platforms for professionals or business owners who want to network, increase their lead counts, and create profitable business opportunities for their company.

With 900+ million users worldwide, LinkedIn helps organizations in engaging with targeted prospects and partners across various industries and locations. However, like any other platform, LinkedIn needs strategic and careful techniques to produce sales qualified leads effortlessly.

This comprehensive guide will provide you with actionable plans and strategies to find LinkedIn’s possibilities for effective lead generation campaigns.

Let’s get started!

Why Utilize LinkedIn for Lead Generation?

Before jumping straight into strategies, it’s important to comprehend why LinkedIn excels among other social media platforms for lead generation. Let’s look at them:

Advanced Targeting Capabilities

LinkedIn has a wide range of audiences which makes it easier to target potential prospects based on specific criteria, such as geographical region, business size, job role, industry, revenue size, and more.

This enables you to connect with key professionals and stakeholders who are in the position of making procurement or buying decisions.

Reach Business-driven Audiences

LinkedIn is a platform mainly for decision makers and professionals. Contrary to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram which has both personal and professional content, LinkedIn is aimed for business-related and professional networking.

Individuals here are expected to engage in business opportunities, market insights, industry trends, and professional development, making it perfect platform for hassle-free B2B lead generation.

Allows Content Sharing to Establish Authority

LinkedIn provides an opportunity to share various types of content, such as articles, posts, and videos, enabling professionals and company decision makers to demonstrate their products and services, and establish themselves as key thought leaders.

When you use this platform to share expertise of your business and services, you can produce qualified leads from prospects who are genuinely interested in what you offer.

Maintains Trust and Credibility for your Company

LinkedIn is designed for professional networking. Therefore, when an individual approaches you with an interest in partnership and collaboration opportunity, it helps to establish trust and credibility.

Consequently, your potential prospects are more likely to respond to business inquiries and effectively engage with your brand compared to other social media platforms.

Try LinkedIn Sales Navigator for Driving Leads

LinkedIn provides exceptional and high-quality tools such as Sales Navigator, which is designed especially for generating leads.

It offers advanced search filters, InMail messaging, and lead scoring, enabling businesses to connect with potential prospects for nurturing and converting them into qualified leads.

Now that you understand why LinkedIn is the best choice for generating leads for your business, let’s explore the top ten strategies on how to do so:

10 Ways to Generate Leads on LinkedIn

Set-up Your LinkedIn Profile

The LinkedIn profile is the focal point for attracting your targeted prospects. Hence, it’s essential to enhance it – whether for yourself or your company profile – to leave a strong impression on your clients. Think of your profile as a landing page, consider designing it to convert visitors into leads without any effort.

Here are several steps to set-up your LinkedIn profile:

Add Professional Photo: First impression always matters. A high-quality, professional profile picture with suitable resolutions can increase your connection requests by up to 21%.
Use Engaging Headings: Rather than just listing your job role in your profile, try to use creative and engaging headings or taglines to emphasize the value you provide. For example, instead of “Marketing Manager,” try using headlines such as, “Helping companies to scale profits and business growth.”
Include a Brief Summary: Add a clear and effective summary regarding the company, the services you offer, how your products help customers, and more in the LinkedIn profile. Moreover, ensure you include a strong call-to-action (CTA) at the end, encouraging people to contact you and explore new business opportunities.
Showcase Your Skills: List out your skills and expertise that are significant to your industry in the profile. This provides you with an opportunity to showcase products and services to customers, thereby boosting your brand visibility in the sector.

Build and Expand Your Network

Having a LinkedIn network is the groundwork for producing qualified leads for your sales team. The more relevant connections you have, the better your chances of reaching potential prospects.

Here’s how you can build your network:

Connect with Industry Leaders: Join relevant LinkedIn pages and groups related to your industry and effectively connect with business leaders and key stakeholders. Providing market insights, sharing your ideas and thoughts on discussions can help you reach a wider network.
Send Personalized DMs: You can expand your connections and reach target prospects by sending personalized DMs. However, ensure when sending connection requests to new individuals, always design a tailored message that includes industry insights, market trends, and ask contact information in exchange of these information.

Leverage LinkedIn Search Filters

LinkedIn has one of the most advanced search functionalities, which enables you to find highly specific prospects based on various criteria, including company, job role, location, and more. By identifying and reaching these prospects you can generate quality leads for your sales team.

Here’s how you can use LinkedIn search effectively:

Define Target Audience: Having a clear understanding of your target audience before searching gives clarity on the following questions – Who you are looking to reach? What industry do they belong to? What are their struggles and challenges? Are they in a decision-making position? This helps to narrow your search process, rather than using a scattergun approach.
Record Your Searches: You can save up to 3 searches on LinkedIn, this helps you notify when new individuals matching your criteria show up.
Try Boolean Search for Accuracy: You can utilize Boolean methods, such as AND, OR, and NOT to further refine your search process and gain more accurate results.

Deliver High-Quality Content to Your Audience

In the contemporary world of digitalization. Content is the only way to position your business as a thought leader in the industry. Also, publishing quality content helps you to attract potential leads.

By regularly delivering valuable and insightful content on LinkedIn, you can stand out among the crowd and showcase your expertise.

What types of content can you share on LinkedIn to drive leads?

Here are the various types of content you can share on LinkedIn to generate qualified leads for your sales team:

Articles: Sharing articles that contain in-depth insights, market trends, case studies, industry knowledge, and more can attract good amount of traffic and engagement to your profiles. As these articles remain forever on your profile and are searchable, eventually they provide long-term value for your LinkedIn portfolio.
Video Content: LinkedIn has an option to share your thoughts and ideas through audiovisual content. You can utilize video to showcase customer reviews and testimonials, explain complex information and ideas, or provide a glimpse of your company. This helps you build trust and credibility among your prospects.
Short Posts: Uploading short posts is an excellent way to reach your audience, as they provide quick ideas, insights, market trends, industry news, and more without consuming your prospects’ time. Reaching out to your audience through quizzes, polls, and questions allows you to boost response and engagement, thereby nurturing a significant volume of leads for your company.

However, just uploading content won’t increase the response and engagement. There are several tips and tricks you should follow before posting. A few of them are listed below:

Consistency: Regularly posting helps you stay on trend with your audience. Therefore, it is advisable to post atleast once a week.
Reply to Comments: By actively engaging with comments on your posts, you can expand your network and drive response and engagement.
Include a Strong CTAs: Including strong and relevant CTAs at the end of your posts encourages readers to connect, engage, or learn more about your company, thereby allowing you to drive more leads.

Join LinkedIn Groups & Forums

LinkedIn provides extensive opportunities to reach decision-makers and professionals within your field. By actively engaging in groups, forums, and discussions where your potential audience spends most of their time, you can easily generate qualified leads for your sales team.

Here’s how you can utilize LinkedIn groups for generating leads:

Reach Industry-specific Groups: Find and reach groups that are relevant to your industry. These groups and forums are usually filled with individuals who are genuinely interested in your service and offerings. By reaching such groups, you can easily nurture and generate qualified leads.
Build Strong Networking: By consistently engaging with your target audience, you can gain the customer’s trust and position yourself as a key thought leader in the industry, which eventually results in attracting more prospects.
Engage Actively: Instead of sending messages that are overly promotional. Focus on delivering marketing content that offers value, including answering questions, sharing thoughts, insights, and engaging in discussions.

Utilize LinkedIn Sales Navigator to Reach Cold Prospects

The LinkedIn sales navigator is an excellent tool built especially for generating qualified leads for your sales team.

It provides cutting-edge features that exceed LinkedIn’s conventional search functionality, allowing you to easily reach and connect with potential prospects.

Here are several key features of LinkedIn Sales Navigator:

Sales Navigator provides comprehensive search options, enabling you to reach audiences based on specific criteria such as industries, company sizes, job titles, and more.

InMail: By using LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator, you can send personalized direct messages to individuals who are not in your connection, thereby increasing your chances of reaching out to cold leads.
Lead Suggestions: LinkedIn has a feature that recommends potential leads based on your previous interests, preferences and searches.

Reach out to your Audiences with Personalized Messages

After successfully locating the potential lead, the next step is to outreach. However, reaching out to prospects with generic content or messages are more likely to be ignored. Therefore, it’s important to personalize your outreach.

Here are several tips for effective outreach:

Customize Your Message: Refer something specific about their company, latest activity on LinkedIn, or profile. This enables them to gain traction in your business and realize that you are genuinely interested in collaboration.
Offer Unique Value and Interests: Before presenting your product and service, provide valuable insights. This might be an article that explains industry trends or case studies on how your solution helped a similar company to overcome the challenges.
Create a Short and Clear Message: The decision makers and professionals are busy people. If you send them long and complex messages, they are less likely to respond. Focus on delivering messages that are concise, clear-on-point, and provide an exact reason for engagement.

Engage With Your Target Audience’s Content

Actively engaging with your prospects’ content is the most subtle yet effective way to stay in their radar. By regularly liking, commenting, and sharing their posts, you can improve your presence and build connections over time.

Here are the tips on how to engage with your audience:

Thoughtful Comments: By leaving meaningful comments, instead of just liking their posts, you can add value and build strong connections.
Tag Prospect’s in Posts: Try tagging your target audiences in your posts that are directly related to their industry or company. By mentioning them in your post, you can capture their attention.
Share Your Audience’s Content: Consider sharing your audience’s posts within your network while giving them credit. This approach helps you reach closer to them for building meaningful connection.

Try Utilizing LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn Ads can be an effective tool, if you’re looking for a hassle-free lead generation. LinkedIn provides various formats of ads, such as message ads, sponsored content, dynamic ads, and more.

What are the LinkedIn Ad Formats?

There are several types of LinkedIn Ad formats. Some of them are:

InMail Ads: You can use InMail Ads to send personalized messages, discounts, and invitations. These ads are delivered directly into LinkedIn users’ inboxes, and they tend to have high open and click rates.
Sponsored Ads: You can use this format to send ads about your organization to audiences in nearby areas. This can be helpful for attracting prospects within the targeted locations.
Lead Generation Forms: By using this format of ads, you can include your contact form within LinkedIn, making it easier to attract more leads.

Track and Improve Your Efforts

It is crucial to measure your lead generation strategy for continuous improvement. LinkedIn offers a variety of analytical resources and tools to assist you in tracking the performance of your content and outreach efforts.

Here are several key metrics to track:

Track Profile Views: Measuring profile view is essential because a higher number indicates that more people are interested in your products and services.
Check Connection Requests: Find out the number of connection requests that are accepted. Having a high acceptance rate indicates that your profile outreach is effective.
Measure Engagement Rates: Track the engagement rates of your articles, posts, and videos in terms of likes, comments, and shares.
Track InMail Response Rates: Measure how many people respond to your InMail messages in LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

When used correctly, LinkedIn can generate a significant number of qualified leads for your sales team.

There is no doubt, LinkedIn is an excellent platform for reaching potential prospects. However, because it can be time consuming and expensive, it is not always a great choice for generating leads. Want to know why? Keep reading!

Why is LinkedIn Lead Generation Strategy Not Always a Great Choice?

Although LinkedIn is an excellent platform for professional networking and lead generation. There are several reasons why it may not always be the best choice for every business. A few of them are listed below:

Limited Reach: LinkedIn’s user base is smaller compared to other platforms, which may limit your exposure to potential leads.
High Competition: With many companies looking for attention, it can be challenging to stand out from the crowd and engage potential leads.
Time-consuming: Building meaningful relationships and generating leads on LinkedIn requires consistent effort and time, which may not always yield immediate results.
Expensive: Many advanced lead-generation tools on LinkedIn, such as InMail and advanced search, require a paid subscription, adding to your cost.

While LinkedIn offers its own advantages, an alternative solution for businesses seeking more targeted and efficient lead generation is turning to renowned B2B data service providers, such as DataCaptive.

DataCaptive’s Top Quality Email List: An Optimal Choice for Lead Generation

LinkedIn offers valuable opportunities for building a strong business network. However, it may not always deliver consistent lead generation. In contrast, using a curated B2B company email list from DataCaptive’s offers more direct and targeted results.

You can access a database containing verified email addresses of decision-makers across various industries, allowing you to reach your exact target audience through multi-channel marketing efforts. This method ensures that your outreach is precise, allowing for higher engagement and a greater chance of conversion.

Additionally, DataCaptive’s list of B2B companies email addresses is customizable, enabling you to filter leads based on specific criteria such as industry, job title, and location. These contacts are then validated through a 7-level verification process with a combination of AI and human checks, guaranteeing accurate and high-quality data.

Key Features of DataCaptive:

Verified business contacts
Constantly updated email addresses
95% data accuracy
100% opt-in contacts
85% email deliverability rate
10+ segmentation options
40+ customizable attributes
Strictly adheres to data privacy laws (GDPR, CCPA, CAN SPAM Act, and more)
Available in .xls and .csv formats for seamless data integration
Email lists at an affordable price
Offers FREE sample list upon request.

Acquire FREE Sample of Business Email Lists Today!

Don’t miss out! Access a sample business email database to evaluate the quality and accuracy of contacts before making a complete purchase.

How did a Healthcare Supplier Improved Lead Counts by 3X?

If you’d like to learn more, explore the case studies to see how DataCaptive’s verified and high-quality list of B2B healthcare email addresses helped a medical supplier triple their lead count and achieve higher conversions.

Without further ado, let’s dive in!

Introduction:

This case study focuses on a well-known healthcare supply company selling various products and services to medical institutions. Their target audience includes hospitals, clinics, diagnostic labs, and other clinical entities, across various regions.

The organization needed to enhance their outreach to potential clients in the highly competitive environment. This case study showcases the medical supply company’s partnership with DataCaptive, which helped them achieve significant improvements in lead generation and conversion rates.

DataCaptive’s specialized B2B healthcare email list enabled the medical supply firm to overcome its outreach challenges and boost their lead generation by 3X.

Challenges:

Despite relying on LinkedIn marketing strategies, the medical supply organization struggled to expand its reach and generate qualified leads.

The primary obstacles faced were:

Limited reach on LinkedIn due to the platform’s oversaturation

Low conversion rates from LinkedIn outreach efforts

Time-consuming engagement process with potential leads

Difficulties in targeting decision-makers at hospitals and clinics

The health supply firm invested considerable resources in LinkedIn outreach, but the returns did not justify the time and effort involved.

The Solution:

In search of a more effective solution, the organization turned to DataCaptive. After assessing the supplier’s challenges, DataCaptive provided a highly customized and verified healthcare email database.

The tailored list included contact details specifically targeting decision-makers in hospitals, clinics, and other medical institutions, such as:

Hospital/Clinics Full Names

Contact Person Names

Job Titles (Nurse, Physicians, C-level Executives)

Business Email Addresses

Phone Numbers

Number of Employees

Locations

Revenue Size

This approach allowed the healthcare supply organizations to bypass LinkedIn’s lengthy engagement process and directly connect with the key players in the industry.

The Result:

By implementing the customized email list in their marketing strategy, the medical supply company achieved significant improvements in their lead generation efforts. Key outcomes included:

Increased email open and click rates

Higher response rates from targeted decision-makers

3X boost in qualified leads within three months

20% higher response rate compared to LinkedIn outreach

Improved conversion rates, reaching 15%

Enhanced client acquisition and improved ROI

This case study demonstrates how leveraging a well-curated email list can help healthcare supply firms enhance their outreach efforts, save time, and drive more meaningful engagement with their target audience.

Conclusion:

Generating leads from LinkedIn requires a combination of thoughtful profile optimization, targeted outreach, and consistent engagement with your network.

LinkedIn offers an incredible range of tools and opportunities for professionals to generate high-quality leads, build their network, and grow their business. However, it’s important to diversify your approach.

DataCaptive’s B2B email lists can help you cover all bases—reaching prospects both through professional networks and direct email outreach. By leveraging both channels, you can create a robust, multi-channel lead generation strategy that ensures your message is delivered to the right people at the right time.

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Amberlynn Adam

Blogger, Content Developer & Editor. Amberlynn is a Content Marketing Professional and is an integral part of DataCaptive since its inception. She holds a passion for tracking new changes in the ever-evolving business world and putting them down in the form of blogs to encourage intelligent discussions & thought exchange. Apart from writing, reading fiction and thriller novels are her major interests.

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