Note: We wrote this blog for eSpark Marketing and have included it here as part of our blog writing portfolio. Most original article links have been removed.
If you could target up to 500,000 million business contacts at any moment, knowing they had 2x the buying power of the average web audience and would convert 3x more than other major ad platforms, would you do it?
That's precisely why 94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn lead generation! It gives them access to a captive business audience that includes executives from all Fortune 500 companies, just for starters.
If you're not leveraging the power of LinkedIn to grow your leads, you're missing out.
Read on to learn about some of the most effective strategies.
What is a Lead?
Simply put, it's when a consumer -- in this case someone representing a business -- shows interest in your products or services. The goal of attracting new leads, of course, is to convert that prospect over time into a paying customer.
But not all leads are created equal. Some will stumble upon your company randomly, and others will specifically be seeking your services out. This latter group constitutes more "qualified" leads, and they are the real targets of your lead gen efforts!
The Best of LinkedIn Lead Generation
Like most other social media channels, you can acquire LinkedIn leads through both owned (unpaid) media and paid media.
First, we'll cover owned media.
Engagement & Reconnaissance
You can use LinkedIn's robust set of contacts to mine prospects suited to your product or service, send them an InMail and wait for a response.
You can also do extensive networking by joining groups, commenting in discussions and posting your own original content.
You can even track who's viewing your profile and follow-up with them in the hopes they are actually genuinely your services.
All of these strategies can pay dividends, but they tend to be time-consuming and have low conversion rates.
Paid advertising on LinkedIn, on the other hand, holds great potential. There are multiple methods available for matching your target audiences' profiles with marketing campaigns. You choose which is right for you!
Account Targeting
Instead of hunting and pecking for individual contacts, you upload a list of your target companies and they are matched against eight million Company pages on LinkedIn. Now, you can reach multiple targets in a given company versus approaching individual decision-makers.
Target them with InMail email campaigns, sponsored ads, call to action buttons, sponsored videos, or product lead forms.
Website Retargeting
Another approach to lead generation is to market to LinkedIn users who visited your website. You can break down website visitors into different segments, depending on what pages they visited, and then create custom, product- or service-based content in line with their interests.
Contact Targeting
A third option is to target contacts that match a specific profile -- by geographic location, current company, school, industry, job title or non-profit interests. With LinkedIn, you’re not just hitting a generalized demographic of individuals. Once you've identified your custom audience, you upload or integrate your lists of contacts with those on LinkedIn.
Tips to Maximize Success
Build a complete LinkedIn profile, optimized for SEO
LinkedIn advises to post up to 20 times per month, which will allow you to be seen by 60% of your company followers
Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays right before work (7-8 a.m.) and right after work (5-6 p.m.) are generally the best times to post
Cross-promote your content across social channels
Use LinkedIn's dashboard to analyze your conversion rates
And, finally, post good, meaningful content with intriguing headlines