LinkedIn B2B lead generation could be one of the most valuable tools businesses can use to generate fresh and consistent sales opportunities in today’s competitive world.
When asked about the most significant challenges faced in the B2B world, companies consistently cite lead generation as a major issue for their brands. For years, brands selling to other businesses have struggled to not only generate leads but ensure they’re targeting the right consumers for sales.
Unfortunately for these companies, lead generation is one of the most important tasks for any organization. Without a consistent stream of reliable leads, businesses can’t hope to compete in an evolving market, maintain a good cash flow, or pave the way for growth.
Social media channels like LinkedIn could be the ultimate solution, offering immediate access to convenient targeting capabilities, a multitude of marketing methods, and various tools for nurturing potential prospects. Here’s what you need to know about LinkedIn B2B lead generation.
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What is LinkedIn B2B Lead Generation?
Lead generation is essentially the art and science of cultivating potential prospects for a company’s products or services. In the B2B landscape, the focus is on consistently attracting warm, qualified leads to the sales funnel through a combination of advertising and content marketing.
With LinkedIn lead generation, brands focus exclusively on using the unique features and tools offered by LinkedIn to qualify and attract leads. Currently, around 94% of B2B marketers say they use LinkedIn as a content distribution channel. A further 80% of marketers also say they use paid advertising on LinkedIn to boost their results.
Why Use LinkedIn for B2B Lead Generation?
Simply put, LinkedIn is the best place to find other business buyers ready to engage in relationships with your brand. The social media platform is the most-used solution for B2B selling, relationship-building, and content sharing.
With around 160 million active users in the US alone and 740 million users worldwide, LinkedIn offers a reliable platform for business leaders looking to attract other professional buyers. In fact, 40% of B2B marketers say LinkedIn is the most effective channel for driving high-quality leads.
Four out of five LinkedIn members have the capacity to drive business decisions, like purchases. Around 180 million users are senior-level executives, which means you can cut a lot of the work out of finding the right people to generate sales for your business.
LinkedIn is also an excellent platform for building thought leadership. Companies can create and distribute content that demonstrates their expertise and credibility, boosting trust among potential buyers. Over 80% of B2B buyers use LinkedIn to research purchasing decisions.
On top of that, LinkedIn’s lead conversion rates are up to 3 times higher than other major ad platforms. Plus, lead generation forms on LinkedIn can convert customers at a five times higher rate than traditional landing pages.
LinkedIn Tools for B2B Lead Generation
Part of what makes LinkedIn B2B Lead Generation such a fantastic option for business leaders is there are various fantastic tools already baked into the platform. Like Facebook and Instagram, LinkedIn offers a range of targeting tools to help you find the right customers, as well as useful educational resources and insightful analytics.
Some of the key tools used for lead generation include:
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator: The LinkedIn Sales Navigator makes it easier to find the right leads for your customers. There are highly accurate and customized filter options, so you can search through potential leads and find the people or companies with the right experience. There’s also a one-month free trial so you can test the functionality before you dive in.
- Sponsored Posts: LinkedIn Sponsored posts help you give your content a boost via a simplified version of the LinkedIn ad environment. Whenever you boost a post, you can create a quick campaign in the LinkedIn Campaign Manager, where you’ll be able to make changes to your targeting strategies and content.
- LinkedIn Campaign Monitor: The LinkedIn Campaign Monitor makes it simple to create ads set to display on LinkedIn. You can create custom ad campaigns for specific audiences, manage multiple strategies at the same time, and access useful insights. There are various performance reports and conversion tracking tools available too.
- LinkedIn Ads: The LinkedIn ad manager comes with a multitude of options for creating powerful and engaging advertisements. You can set up ads for LinkedIn Messaging (formerly sponsored InMail), conversion ads, and on-platform lead generation ads.
- Lead Gen Forms: LinkedIn has its own specialist lead generation forms. These are excellent for collecting information from your target audience. When a customer clicks on an ad, they fill the form with valuable profile data, so you can determine which leads you want to connect with. You can even sync your forms directly with your CRM and use hidden UTM fields to track information about where certain leads came from.
- LinkedIn Pulse: A daily newsfeed solution, LinkedIn Pulse provides insights into some of the most valuable content shared by relevant brands. You can submit content to the Pulse ecosystem as a way of gaining credibility and respect among potential customers. It’s also possible to follow news channels and topics on Pulse for research purposes.
8 Top Tips for LinkedIn B2B Lead Generation
All social media channels have their own unique features and functionality, specially designed to help companies generate leads and sales opportunities. When you’re building a B2B lead generation campaign, it’s important to plan how you can make the most of the available capabilities.
Here are some of the top tips to help you get more from your campaigns.
1. Develop a Strong LinkedIn Presence
When you’re developing any social media strategy, it’s important to first ensure you have a strong presence on your chosen channel. This ensures you can organically attract followers and boost your credibility when reaching out to prospects. To build an impressive presence on LinkedIn, you need more than just an optimized page for your business.
Your executives and business leaders also need to have their own LinkedIn profiles, complete with valuable information about their expertise and background. Executives on LinkedIn can attract a lot of attention and boost the thought leadership of your business. For instance, the CEO and co-founder of Ellevest, Sallie Krawcheck, is constantly active on LinkedIn, updating her followers with useful information and guidance relevant to her industry.
Once you’ve developed a strong set of profiles for your executives, you can start to work on your LinkedIn Business page. This is where you’ll list your employees, provide information “About” your company, and keep followers up-to-date with recent announcements and information.
LinkedIn Pages are free to make and use, and they’re one of the best places to showcase all of the content you have to offer, including details about your products and services.
2. Post Relevant, Valuable Content
Any effective lead generation strategy needs to include a strong content marketing campaign. Content is how you connect with your potential leads, demonstrate your value, and give people a reason to follow you online. You can share content directly from your executive pages as well as your central LinkedIn Business page.
The key to success is making sure you’re consistent with your content strategy. Plan a schedule for how you’re going to promote different types of content for unique purposes. You might use videos and online events to showcase your latest products or services. Or you could share articles and insights to demonstrate thought leadership.
HubSpot’s LinkedIn page is constantly brimming with new and engaging content about the marketing landscape, designed to entertain and inform followers:
Not only does this relevant content provide business buyers on LinkedIn with useful resources, but it also helps to identify your company as a source of value. The more great content you share, the more customers will trust your business and be more inclined to learn more about it.
3. Be Active on LinkedIn Groups
There are various ways to find and convert potential leads on LinkedIn, from reaching out to prospects directly through messaging to creating Lead capture forms. One of the best ways to expand your reach to relevant customers is to join groups connected to your industry.
Groups are environments within LinkedIn where users can discuss relevant topics and ideas. For instance, if your company sells software for advertising to other brands, you can join marketing groups to highlight your products and showcase your expertise.
For instance, the LinkedIn Digital Marketing Group has over 2 million members who constantly discuss new marketing ideas and subjects. Joining these groups gives you a chance to reach new prospects while also collecting valuable insights and research about your target audience.
Remember, when you’re engaging with groups, don’t just post advertisements. Look for ways to answer common questions asked by brands with references to your product or service. Your goal should be to inform and educate rather than to simply sell.
4. Leverage Paid Ad Options
Companies with limited marketing budgets can often feel nervous about paying for ads on social media. However, the right campaigns can give your business a significant boost and improve your chances of attracting the most valuable leads. Once you’ve built your LinkedIn pages, you need to find ways of attracting customers to them as often as possible.
LinkedIn gives business leaders a range of ways to effectively promote their products and services. You can choose to have an ad displayed directly within the LinkedIn news or home feed. Alternatively, there’s the option to create text ads, which appear at the top or side of the LinkedIn page, or messaging ads, to connect with customers via direct messaging.
According to a survey in 2022, around 42% of customers and brands consider single-image ads to be the best solution for standing out on LinkedIn. However, video ads can also get a lot of attention, with 32% of companies choosing these as the most valuable LinkedIn tool.
The LinkedIn Campaign Manager will allow you to create and monitor your ads in one convenient place, so you can experiment with different strategies.
5. Use Lead Generation Forms
The average conversion rate for a Lead Generation form on LinkedIn is around 13%, making it an excellent choice for collecting buyer data. The reason why these tools are so popular is they make it extremely easy for customers to share their details with the companies they’re interested in.
When you add a LinkedIn Lead Generation form to your campaigns, the form will automatically populate itself with the right information about the prospect when they click on the ad. This means all they need to do is enter an email address and click “submit.” These forms are also extremely easy for mobile users to access.
You can set up Lead Generation forms by signing into your Campaign Manager account and clicking on the “Assets” tab to access Lead Gen forms. You can also determine which sections of information you want to be automatically completed on each form.
Companies can also link LinkedIn generation forms to lead magnets like downloads and free eBooks, which can significantly increase your chances of conversion.
6. Connect your CRM
Most B2B lead generation tactics require a commitment to not only capturing but nurturing leads for long-term relationships. This means it’s important to be able to keep track of all the information you collect from each of your customers. Fortunately, LinkedIn Sales Navigator and other advertising tools can connect directly with a range of CRM solutions.
The LinkedIn CRM Sync technology allows you to gain access to a range of functionalities, like data validation, champions lists, and ROI reporting tools. While you will need a premium Sales Navigator plan to access this functionality, the benefits can be astronomical.
You can validate the information collected about each of your leads and measure the value of each lead automatically. There are also tools for boosting your pipeline quality, so you can quickly identify opportunities and risks for your sales team.
The Contact Creation tool also gives businesses the opportunity to create a contact record in their CRM directly within Sales Navigator.
7. Experiment with Audience Targeting
Like most social media tools for lead collection and nurturing, LinkedIn offers a range of valuable ways for business leaders to home in on the leads they really want to reach. There are a multitude of ways to target the right audience, including a “Matched Audiences” feature.
The Matched Audience option allows companies to retarget previous visitors on your website and connect with specific companies or decision-maker accounts. You can also upload a list of contacts you want to focus on. This is great for account-based marketing strategies.
Outside of Matched Audiences, you can also access company-focused marketing options and specific contact targeting to help you reach the right audience. Plus, LinkedIn comes with a powerful LinkedIn Audience network, which helps you to find customers related to other people who already follow or engage with your LinkedIn Profile.
8. Leverage Reporting and Analytics
Finally, one of the easiest ways to make sure you’re getting the best ROI with your LinkedIn B2B lead generation strategy is to take advantage of the reports and analytics available from the platform. There’s conversion tracking built into the LinkedIn ads manager, so you can see how your ads are driving registrations, purchases, and leads.
You can also compare metrics like social actions, impressions, and clicks between different campaigns, so you can pinpoint your most effective campaigns. There’s even access to insightful campaign demographics available for each ad. This shows you traits like job titles, industries, and company names connected to your most valuable customers.
As an added bonus, you’ll also be able to leverage the Company Engagement Report on LinkedIn to measure the engagement customers have had with your brand across your business and executive pages, as well as your website.
Assessing your analytics and using your reports to make intelligent decisions about your future marketing campaigns will boost your chances of valuable results.
Using LinkedIn for Lead Generation
Using LinkedIn B2B lead generation techniques is one of the best ways for business leaders to connect with an audience of engaged, valuable prospects. The wide range of tools available within the LinkedIn platform, combined with its excellent reach, makes it a must-have tool for any company trying to track down relevant leads.
What’s more, like most social media channels, LinkedIn is constantly growing, so you can consistently experiment with new technologies and strategies to boost your ROI. If you’re struggling to launch your own LinkedIn marketing strategies, you could access some professional guidance and help from your own freelance marketing manager.
Contact Growth Collective today to find the ideal LinkedIn specialist to enhance your marketing strategy and boost your leads.
