Lead generation is vital for any B2B business. Each lead is a prospect for profit and a contributor to business growth.
LinkedIn is a powerhouse when it comes to B2B lead generation. This career-centric website accounts for over 80% of B2B leads from industry leaders, corporate players, and other professionals.
However, successful LinkedIn lead generation is often far from easy. Nowadays, the platform is overcrowded with businesses all vying for the same prospects' attention. To cut through the noise, you need a well-thought-out approach that draws prospects into your sales funnel.
In this article, we’ll share a LinkedIn lead generation workflow that has proven effective in securing qualified B2B leads and driving sales.
What is LinkedIn Lead Generation?
Let’s get back to the basics—what exactly are leads?
Leads are individuals or organizations that have shown interest in your business’s products or services.
Simply put, they are “potential customers” who might have shared their contact information, signed up for your email list, requested a meeting with your sales team, or inquired about your offerings. Basically, they’ve taken an action that signals their potential to become customers in the future.
Meanwhile, LinkedIn lead generation uses the platform to connect and engage with these potential clients to convert them into qualified leads for business. This “conversion” process allows you to nurture these prospects so they’ll reach your sales funnel.
Here’s a practical example:
Imagine a SaaS company posting an insightful LinkedIn article to grab its audience’s attention. At the end of the article, a call to action invites readers to sign up for the company’s email newsletter to stay informed about the latest product releases.
Readers who sign up become leads. The company can nurture them by continuously delivering valuable content that will eventually encourage them to purchase its SaaS products.
5-Step LinkedIn Lead Generation Workflow
For starters, LinkedIn lead generation can be daunting. How do you even start? Should the approach be content-based or outreach-based? Are promotional ads necessary?
Fret not if you can’t answer these questions. Here’s a tried-and-tested LinkedIn lead generation workflow you can adopt to capture high-quality leads for your sales funnel.
1. Build a Compelling LinkedIn Profile
Your LinkedIn profile serves as a window into your business. So, it must clearly convey your brand’s identity, goals, and offerings to catch people’s attention from the moment they visit.
Prospects are more likely to provide their contact details or sign up for your forms if your profile exudes professionalism, credibility, or authority.
To create an impactful LinkedIn profile:
- Use a Professional Profile Picture: Choose a photo that shows you in professional attire or use your business logo. You might need to resize your photo to fit LinkedIn’s preferred photo size.
- Design a Professional Banner: It could feature your brand’s tagline or any image that reflects your business’s core values or services.
- Craft a Strong Headline and Summary: Write a headline that clearly defines what your brand stands for. If you need inspiration, tools like HighPerformr’s AI LinkedIn Headline generator can help you create a compelling one in seconds.
- Include a Clear Call to Action in Your “About” Section: Encourage visitors to take the next step, whether it’s sending you a message or visiting your website.
2. Expand Your Network To Your Target Audience
All leads you generate will come from your audience or in LinkedIn’s lingo—connections. So, it’s vital to grow your network to pump up your qualified leads.
Here are some ways to grow your connections:
- Start by sending connection requests to your IRL friends, colleagues, and acquaintances on LinkedIn.
- Use LinkedIn’s search feature to find profiles that match your target audience’s demographics (e.g., location, interests, industry).
- Join LinkedIn groups related to your industry or areas of interest and engage in discussions to build relationships and increase your visibility.
3. Use Content To Get Your Audience’s Attention
Content is key to making your business memorable and turning connections into leads.
This is the content-based approach to lead generation, or, simply put, the process of posting high-quality content to establish yourself as a credible professional in your industry.
Regularly sharing valuable content keeps your audience familiar with your business and more likely to reach out to you.
Say a reader was impressed by your lead generation article. So, they send you a direct message asking for tips to outperform their competitors’ lead gen strategy.
There are many ways to create social media content, including blogs, articles, infographics, images, and videos. Focus on providing information, advice, or solutions that your audience finds valuable so they see you as an expert they can trust.
LinkedIn content creation involves several crucial steps:
Conceptualize the Content
Decide on the type of content and the message you want to convey. The failproof approach is to go for content that will resonate with your audience’s needs and interests.
If your audience is primarily marketers, a good content idea would be informative blogs, articles, or tutorials that help them improve their digital marketing strategies.
Prepare a Draft Post
Give flesh to your content idea by writing a draft incorporating all the information you want to share. Make sure to inject your brand’s tone and personality to make it authentic and distinct.
Consider HighPerformr’s Social AI to help you save time writing draft posts. This tool can generate content based on your ideas, prompts, and keywords, as well as customize its writing style to reflect yours. You can also generate multiple drafts for a single post and pick the one you like most.
Refine Your Draft
Check the grammar, structure, and tone of your draft post. As LinkedIn is an online hub for professionals, your content must be polished before publication. You can also use Highperformr’s Social AI to fix your draft’s spelling and grammar or modify its writing style to be professional, creative, or casual.
If possible, share your draft with colleagues or friends for feedback. HighPerformr also offers a dynamic workspace where users can draft and edit posts together.
Post Your Content
Once the content is ready, you can post it immediately or schedule to post it later. If you have several posts ready, it’s wise to queue them accordingly so you won’t miss publishing them.
Highperformr’s scheduling feature lets you pick a draft post in your content calendar for an available date/time. It also provides a real-time tracker to see which posts have already been published or are in the queue.
4. Add a Clear Call To Action
Every LinkedIn post must have a strong call to action (CTA) that compels people to engage with your business. When prospects respond to your CTA, they move one step closer to becoming clients.
Your CTA could direct users to visit your website, sign up for your newsletter, share your content, or visit your LinkedIn profile.
Remember, a great CTA only works if it’s paired with compelling content. So, make sure to ace the third step of this workflow before crafting your CTA.
5. Leverage LinkedIn Lead Generation Form Ads
Steps 1 to 4 turn your audience organically into leads. But what about prospects who have yet to approach your profile or respond to your CTA? Or those prospects who are is still beyond your reach?
You can still capture them through LinkedIn Ads.
LinkedIn Ads are paid B2B ad campaigns that allow you to place your content directly in your target audience’s LinkedIn feeds. The ad can include a single image, a carousel, or a video.
Integrated into LinkedIn ads are lead generation forms that collect customer information if a user clicks on the ad. These lead gen forms enable your prospects to seamlessly provide contact information without leaving LinkedIn. All data collected by the forms will then be transmitted to your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform.
Of course, people will click your ads if they’re persuasive. So, pay attention to its content. Be sure to use visual elements like images or videos, as 73% of consumers are more inclined to connect with businesses that use high-quality visuals.
Needless to say, your ad copy should be just as striking. Be direct, but don’t oversell. Showcase your industry reputation and expertise and how you can solve their problems.
You can enlist the help of AI, such as HighPerformr’s free AI writer, to draft convincing ad copies that match your writing style and tone.
Here’s an extra tip: keep your lead gen forms short. People are hesitant to share too much information, so only ask for the most essential details.
What’s Next? Nurture Your Leads With Highperformr
Great! You’re now ready to maximize your leads using this workflow. But remember, this is just the beginning.
To convert your leads into sales, you need to keep them engaged and interested in your brand. Consistently posting high-quality, valuable content is key to maintaining their attention.
Achieve all of this and more with Highperformr. This tool can double the speed of your lead generation with its AI-powered content creation, post automation, workspace collaboration, and data analytics features.
Join Highperformr today and start maximizing your leads without the hassle.
