Using LinkedIn to raise brand awareness & generate sales leads

Quite simply, it’s where it’s at for B2B social media marketing – LinkedIn is 277% more effective at generating leads than Facebook and Twitter.**

But how can you make the most of the lead generation opportunities LinkedIn has to offer? Here are the three levels of activity we know make a difference.

Basic – have an active company page

Your first step is to make sure you have a company page. Then, you need to be active on it. Share company updates and post your job vacancies on there. Invite relevant connections to follow the page so you can start to build your community.

An active company page isn’t just good for brand awareness on LinkedIn either, it will also boost your visibility in search engines.

Better – get your employees’ profiles working for you

Once you’ve got your company page working for you, it’s time to get your employees’ profiles working for you too.

Encourage customer-facing employees to make sure their LinkedIn profiles are up-to-date. From a company brand awareness point of view, these are the key points to remember:

• The headline should include the person’s job title and a snappy summary of the benefits they deliver.
• The photo needs to be professional – you could consider including corporate headshots as part of the onboarding process when a new employee joins.
• The banner image also needs to be professional – you could create a suite of them for people to use and change out regularly.
• Recommendations offer good social proof, so encourage employees to request them from happy customers.
• The profile should include information about the individual and about your company too – consider creating template content about your business that people can use.
• Most important of all, make sure there’s a call to action and contact details so it’s easy for prospects to get in touch.

Best – encourage employees to prospect effectively on LinkedIn

When customer-facing employees’ profiles are up-to-scratch, they’re in a good position to start prospecting.

Quality and quantity are the key words. Quantity provides a wider third-line reach. Quality provides better business relationships.

For quality connections, you need to know:

• the types of people who are your potential customers
• the types of people who are good business partners or referrers.

You can use these insights to search for people (using the search box, which is on the top left hand side of the desktop version, or there’s LinkedIn Sales Navigator if you are happy to pay for a more detailed search and prospecting tool). When you ask to connect with someone, always include a short, friendly, non-sales-y message. Explain how you’re connected (if you are) or what they’ll gain from connecting with you.

LinkedIn Groups offer opportunities to strengthen connections with like-minded individuals in exclusive forums. Consider joining and being active in:

• groups with your potential customers in
• groups with your potential business partners in
• groups that relate to your own industry.

Helping you make the most of what LinkedIn has to offer

Ultimately, it’s important to show up and be active on LinkedIn, but always remember that LinkedIn only opens the door – normal sales follow-up rules still apply. Avoid sales pitches or advertising. Instead, focus on open questions, asking people for their opinion or offering insight, information or advice. When you do this, you’re in the best possible position to leverage what LinkedIn has to offer.

This blog post started life as a much more in-depth workshop we deliver to clients and their teams. If you think your company would benefit from training like this, get in touch.

Reference

*   https://about.linkedin.com/

** https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/30030/linkedin-277-more-effective-for-lead-generation-than-facebook-twitter-new-data