Guide to LinkedIn Lead Generation

Your audience no longer wants their attention bought -- they want it earned. This means lead generation strategies need to be revamped across the industry to better meet the needs of target markets.

LinkedIn Lead Generation plays a role in every business's marketing strategy. Think about how many connection requests that you’ve accepted on LinkedIn, never to hear from that person again. That person made the effort to capture your attention at that given time, but they failed to reconnect with you again.

The following information will guide you through a step-by-step approach to a best practice LinkedIn Lead Generation Contact Strategy. This is our tried and tested approach to building your sales pipeline using LinkedIn.

So, here’s the numbers, based on what we know:

• 25,600,000 LinkedIn Members in the UK• 100 connection requests per week• 25-50 will accept the connection• 5-10 will accept a phone call• How many from each phone call can you turn into new business?

Guide to LinkedIn Lead Generation

G U I D E T O L I N K E D I N L E A D G E N E R A T I O N 1

How-To Guide

Stage 1: PrepareAction Plan

G U I D E T O L I N K E D I N L E A D G E N E R A T I O N 2

Review Our Lead Generation Framework

This proven methodology will help you to gain some context as to where a LinkedIn Lead Generation strategy fits into your overall Lead Generation programme.

1

2

Prepare

3 Optimise Profile

4 Expand Visibility

5 Create Case Study

6 Build Your List

7 Qualify Prospects

8 Make Connections

9 Send Reply

10 Nurture

Identify Prospects

T O O L K I T R E S O U R C E

Lead Generation Framework

Stage 2: Identify ProspectsAction Plan

G U I D E T O L I N K E D I N L E A D G E N E R A T I O N 3

Conduct Persona Profiling to Identify Your Ideal Prospects

Use our Buyer Persona template to create profiles for each of the different Buyer Personas in your target audience and to identify those pain points.

A few important items to consider before you dive head first into this: Think about whether you’re going to be creating personas based on your existing Customers, Prospective Customers, both or something else; do you have enough information to create Buyer Personas or is more research required; can you identify your customer’s pain points?

1 Prepare

2 Identify Prospects

T O O L K I T R E S O U R C E

Buyer Persona Template

3 Optimise Profile

4 Expand Visibility

5 Create Case Study

6 Build Your List

7 Qualify Prospects

8 Make Connections

9 Send Reply

10 Nurture

Stage 3: Optimise ProfileAction Plan

G U I D E T O L I N K E D I N L E A D G E N E R A T I O N 4

Optimise Your Customer Facing LinkedIn Profile(s)

• Headline Optimisation: [Title], [Company Name], I help [persona], [benefits/afters]

• Summary Section: Tell a story. Talk about what [profile person] does.

• Call to Action in the footer of the summary

section: I’d love to connect with you on Linkedin. Please send me a connection request.

• Ensure profile(s) is/are receiving message and connection notifications.

• Ensure all parts of the profile(s) are publicly visible to all LinkedIn members.

2 Identify Prospects

3 Optimise Profile

1 Prepare

4 Expand Visibility

5 Create Case Study

6 Build Your List

7 Qualify Prospects

8 Make Connections

9 Send Reply

10 Nurture

Example

Stage 4: Expand VisibilityAction Plan

G U I D E T O L I N K E D I N L E A D G E N E R A T I O N 5

Expand the Visibility of Your Customer Facing LinkedIn Profile(s)

5 Create Case Study

6 Build Your List

7 Qualify Prospects

8 Make Connections

9 Send Reply

10 Nurture

1 Prepare

2 Identify Prospects

3 Optimise Profile

4 Expand Visibility

• Find suitable LinkedIn groups that your Prospects are in (identified in Persona Profiling).

• Use Customer facing LinkedIn profile(s) to request to join groups.

• Use Customer facing LinkedIn profile(s) to visit target profiles on LinkedIn.

Stage 5: Create Case StudyAction Plan

G U I D E T O L I N K E D I N L E A D G E N E R A T I O N 6

Create a Case Study Which Solves a Problem

1 Prepare

Your solution must highlight the issues that your target persona is facing right now. Let them know that you fully understand their pain points, and then show them what you are doing to solve these problems.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks when it comes to writing the perfect case study is structure. Use our Case Study template to assist you with the creation of an effective case study. This template will help with structure, and will also solve the problem of inconsistency.

Once you’ve created your Case Study, hand it to your designer to give it that “wow!” factor.

5 Create Case Study

T O O L K I T R E S O U R C E

Case Study Template

2

3 Optimise Profile

4 Expand Visibility

6 Build Your List

7 Qualify Prospects

8 Make Connections

9 Send Reply

10 Nurture

Identify Prospects

Stage 6: Build Your ListAction Plan

G U I D E T O L I N K E D I N L E A D G E N E R A T I O N 7

Build a Suspect List of Potential Customers on LinkedIn

1 Prepare

Use the advanced LinkedIn search function to find Prospects based on the Buyer Persona profile completed in Step 2. There’s no need to upgrade to a premium account to use the advanced search function.

Bulk export all of your LinkedIn search results using Dux Soup software and then import them directly into our Google Sheet LinkedIn CRM. Tag these new contacts as “Suspects” in the CRM Google Sheet.

6 Build Your List

2

3 Optimise Profile

4 Expand Visibility

5 Create Case Study

7 Qualify Prospects

8 Make Connections

9 Send Reply

10 Nurture

Identify Prospects

Google Sheet LinkedIn CRM

T O O L K I T R E S O U R C E

Stage 7: Qualify ProspectsAction Plan

G U I D E T O L I N K E D I N L E A D G E N E R A T I O N 8

Review and Qualify Your Newly Created Prospect List

1 Prepare

7 Qualify Prospects

Your sales and marketing team should now review and qualify your new Suspect list in blocks of 100, prior to making that connection request.

All observations, insights or notes about each contact should be added into the comments field. Tick the box to confirm the contact as being reviewed and OK to proceed.

• Scenario 1: LinkedIn Suspect is already a connection: Update the contact type to ‘Existing LinkedIn Connection’ in the CRM spreadsheet, change the connection status to OK and move on to the next suspect in the list.

• Scenario 2: LinkedIn Prospect is not a connection: Make a request to connect with target prospect. Upgrade the contact type from ‘Suspect’ to

‘Prospect’ in the CRM spreadsheet, mark the connection status as OK and move to the next Suspect in the list.

• Scenario 3: LinkedIn Suspect cannot be messaged via the current LinkedIn user account: Keep the contact type as ‘Suspect’ in the CRM spreadsheet, mark the connection status as ‘Locked for XYZ’, and move to the next Suspect in the list.

2

3 Optimise Profile

4 Expand Visibility

5 Create Case Study

6 Build Your List

8 Make Connections

9 Send Reply

10 Nurture

Identify Prospects

Stage 8: Make ConnectionsAction Plan

G U I D E T O L I N K E D I N L E A D G E N E R A T I O N 9

Send Connection Requests to 20 People Per Day

1 Prepare

Work top-down from the Prospect list in the LinkedinCRM and send the following personal connection message:

Key Messages:

a) Initial connection request option a:

Hi [name], I notice that we have a lot of the same connections. [Ideally, insert a key insight here], I thought it wouldn’t hurt to say hello, I’d love to connect with you if you’re open to it. Thanks.

b) Initial connection request option b:

Hi [name], I notice you’re connected to [person’s name]. [Ideally, insert a key insight here] I thought it wouldn’t hurt to say hello, I’d love to connect with you if you’re open to it. Thanks.

8 Make Connections

2

3 Optimise Profile

4 Expand Visibility

5 Create Case Study

6 Build Your List

7 Qualify Prospects

9 Send Reply

10 Nurture

Identify Prospects

Stage 9: Send ReplyAction Plan

G U I D E T O L I N K E D I N L E A D G E N E R A T I O N 10

Send an Immediate Reply to Contacts Who Accept Your Connection

1 Prepare

9 Send Reply

Once a new connection is accepted, the contact is upgraded from a ‘Prospect’ to a ‘Warm Prospect’

in the Linkedin CRM. The ‘Warm Prospect’ details are then added to the Opportunities tab in the CRM spreadsheet and marked as ‘Nurturing’.

Acknowledgment Reply:

a) Hi, great to connect, thanks! I’m looking forward to keeping in touch. By the way, this is how we solved [problem solved] by doing [solution]. It struck me that you might be interested in what they did? I’ve attached it here so you can take a look. [Now, insert your newly created case study from Step 4].

[Sign off variant b – dependant on sector, product offer and pain point].

If you’d be open to it, I’d love to set up a time to learn more about your [Pain Point] and how we might also be able to do something amazing together. I could probably do next Tuesday or Wednesday morning for a quick call?

2

3 Optimise Profile

4 Expand Visibility

5 Create Case Study

6 Build Your List

7 Qualify Prospects

8 Make Connections

10 Nurture

Identify Prospects

Stage 10: NurtureAction Plan

G U I D E T O L I N K E D I N L E A D G E N E R A T I O N 11

Nurture Relationships by Keeping in Touch, As Promised

1 Prepare

Feed the contact information from all new connections into your Marketing Automation platform, and nurture your newly created relationship.

Add contacts to a unique list and automatically drip-feed 3-4 emails [1 per week] to each new connection, when they join the list.

Make sure that you plan your additional content around the problem you’ve identified in Step 4. Don’t stray off topic and serve up your content based on their Buying Stages: Discovery, Consideration & Decision.

Use our Content Mapping tool to create a visual representation of the specific content that you plan to send each Buyer Persona based on their stage in the buying cycle.

As each contact receives, opens and clicks the information that you send to them, they will move further along the buying process stages up to the point at which they can be deemed Sales-Ready. Your contact is now ready to pass over to your sales team to arrange a phone call or face-to-face meeting.

Once a contact accepts a request for a phone call: mark the contact as ‘Phone Call Booked’.

10 Nurture

2

3 Optimise Profile

4 Expand Visibility

5 Create Case Study

6 Build Your List

7 Qualify Prospects

8 Make Connections

9 Send Reply

Identify Prospects

Key

G U I D E T O L I N K E D I N L E A D G E N E R A T I O N 12

CRM Spreadsheet Contact Types• Suspect = No connection has been made• Prospect = Connection request has been sent• Warm Prospect = Opportunity (Connect request was accepted)• Existing LinkedIn Connection = Someone who is already a 1st degree connection

Opportunity Stages• Connection Accepted = Connection was accepted and thank you email + case study sent• Nurturing = Prospect details are added to the Marketing Automation communications• Phone Call Booked = Prospect agreed to arrange a call. Phone Call Booked (Move Contact to

Main CRM)• Quote = Prospect has agreed to be sent a quote (Move Contact to Main CRM)• Customer = Contact becomes a customer (Move Content to Main CRM)

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