How to jumpstart your LinkedIn lead generation strategy

For B2B businesses, now’s the time to iron out your LinkedIn lead generation strategy. While you may already be marketing on LinkedIn to build awareness, leveraging its full marketing capabilities can significantly enhance lead generation efforts

Recent social media statistics note that a quarter of all LinkedIn users interact with brand content daily, if not more. It also generates nearly 300% more B2B leads for marketers versus the likes of Facebook.

LinkedIn lead gen doesn’t happen by chance. Rapid network growth means you need to understand LinkedIn best practices to stand out from competitors. With a combination of paid and organic strategies, you can use LinkedIn to bolster your marketing funnel and build out your leads. We’ll explain each with examples from Sprout’s own LinkedIn strategy

Optimize your LinkedIn profile for engagement

There is no “silver bullet” for attracting LinkedIn leads. It requires a combination of strategies to establish your brand on the network and get in front of your target audience.

The first of these is optimization, which means tweaking your profile for the best chance of success.

LinkedIn company page

Your LinkedIn business page is often the first page a potential lead sees on LinkedIn. It should succinctly explain what your business is and why it’s the better choice.

Optimize your business page by creating an eye-catching banner and including a high resolution image of your logo. Write your “About us” section using industry keywords; it should explain what your company does, and highlight key growth or exposure milestones. For example, a SaaS About page might include how many users a solution has. Or, a global logistics company might list how many countries they’re operating in.

You should also post content on your company page regularly. We’ll share some popular content strategies below.

Depending on your business type, it might be worth building out new pages to further support your main company page, like a LinkedIn product page or a LinkedIn career page. A product page is useful for outlining a specific solution your brand offers. A career page is effective for establishing your employer brand and attracting new hires.

Make sure all of this is tailored towards making a great first impression on your leads. Here’s what Sprout’s company page looks like as an example. Our banner clearly promotes Sprout’s award for being the #1 best software product for nine consecutive years by G2, and our About section explains what Sprout is with relevant keywords.

Professional profiles

Potential leads may find a personal profile before they find a company page, so it’s important to enable employees to build their personal brands on LinkedIn. Especially so for sales, executives and leadership teams, who often serve as the face of a company.

Encourage employees to build out their personal profiles. Think of ways to help them build out their LinkedIn profile, such as organizing LinkedIn profile workshops to improve their About section. Share guidelines on how to create an elevator pitch summary of who they are as a professional, coupled with relevant keywords that make their profiles discoverable via search.

Social media guidelines can be helpful to demonstrate how employees should represent themselves and the company. It also encourages employees to share content that’s on brand and true to them.

But remember not to try and force anyone to change their personal profiles; these pages promote your employees as individuals, and should always be managed by the employees themselves.

Maintain a consistent presence

To ensure that your profile is seen by as many people as possible, you need to know how the LinkedIn algorithm works.The short of it is this: the best way to rise in the algorithm is to be an active participant on the platform.

That means publishing content, posting comments and reacting to posts on a regular basis.

The upside of LinkedIn is that you don’t have to write walls of text or spend hours on the network to be considered “active.” Even something as simple as saying “congrats” or giving a post a thumbs-up is enough to increase your profile’s visibility to people who aren’t following you.

Posting updates and content during peak times also improves visibility. But make sure to balance quantity and quality. Think about topics that you can add value to, and fresh perspectives you can add to conversations with other thought leaders in your industry.

This recent post by Sprout’s Solutions Engineering Leader, Jackie Baum, promotes one of our new series focused on the healthcare sector.

Share lead magnets in a social-first way

LinkedIn doesn’t restrict the reach of posts that lead people off of the network, making it a prime channel for distributing your latest blog posts, lead magnets and webinars.

Video content is particularly important; video is among the most-shared content on social, and should therefore be part of your LinkedIn lead generation strategy.

Sprout’s recent post is a good example of how to use a lead magnet in LinkedIn content. We shared key stats from our detailed Total Economic Impact study, tagged our partner Forrester and included a link to the full report.

Partner with LinkedIn Influencers

Partnering with LinkedIn influencers on sponsored content can further the reach of your LinkedIn marketing efforts, so you can capture more leads.

You also benefit from the authority and trust each influencer has earned from their followers. When working on sponsored content, make it clear to followers that the content is a paid partnership. Sprout’s social team does this by creating a unique hashtag for sponsored posts.

We recently worked with Corporate Natalie on a video promoting our Social ROI toolkit. Her use of the hashtag #SproutSocial keeps us transparent about our partnership.

Invest in LinkedIn lead gen advertising

Several LinkedIn lead gen ad strategies exist on the network today, the first being dynamic LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn ads are made with lead generation in mind. Marketers can target professionals based on specific parameters such as industry, job title and company size. Note that many LinkedIn lead generation ads center around downloadable reports and other lead magnets.

Sponsored InMail messages are another approach. These direct messages communicate to potential leads directly, and can be used to promote specific products, features or deals.

LinkedIn also offers LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms for InMail ads and sponsored content. These allow you to add targeted CTAs to content, automatically connect messages to potential leads and measure the impact of lead gen campaigns.

Use these paid strategies to support your overall content strategy and maximize your efforts to attract more leads.

Participate in LinkedIn Groups to build relationships

Scoring more connections, either actively or passively, is a way to signal that your brand is an active participant on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Groups are a valuable way for your company to stay active on LinkedIn, and to find other brands working within your industry. By using these groups, you can learn more about how your competition uses LinkedIn, as well as what your audience expects from content on the network.

Encourage your senior executives to join and contribute to relevant groups as well, positioning themselves—and your brand—as thought leaders.

Before sharing content, always review a group’s rules to ensure promotional posts are allowed.

Boost reach with employee advocacy

Another big benefit of LinkedIn is that you can instantly increase the reach of your content with the help of other employees. Through employee advocacy, you can boost the content of your colleagues and company.

Use employee advocacy programs to boost the reach of any company posts and encourage employees to share branded content. Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social helps you empower colleagues to share company updates and wins, and track the performance of their advocacy.

By promoting advocacy among your executives, they’ll be equipped to promote the brand and their thought leadership. This builds their presence and extends the reach of your brand. This support is a win-win for companies and executives attempting to grow on LinkedIn. Because in short, greater reach means more opportunities to gather leads.

Here’s an example from Sprout’s CEO Ryan Barretto, who shared an article written by Sprout’s VP of Social, Content and Brand.

Measure, optimize, repeat

Finally, dig into your data to assess your LinkedIn performance and lead generation efforts. For example, do you know which types of posts gain the most traction? Which pieces of content score the most clicks to your lead magnets and landing pages?

To figure out what’s working and what’s not, make use of social media analytics tools.

Sprout’s suite of LinkedIn management tools is equipped to break down your company’s performance data. Tracking clicks and engagements, you can make the connection between your organic content, LinkedIn ads and new leads.

By using a dedicated solution, you can visualize data and optimize your strategy in one place. With Sprout, reporting data is available right next to where you plan and schedule content, which can create a more streamlined feedback loop for LinkedIn content. Viewing and adapting based on this information regularly will enable you to generate more leads on the network.

Maximize ROI with LinkedIn lead gen

LinkedIn is an essential network for B2B marketers, but that doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed leads by virtue of just managing an account.

Generating leads on LinkedIn requires a strategy. The tips above can better position your brand to maximize awareness and conversion among your target audience.

Use our LinkedIn strategy worksheet to map your strategy to clear business goals, so you can grow your account effectively.

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