The social networks may be particularly helpful for those marketing activities with which you address the masses – with qualitative leads, however, the Xing platform, which is geared towards the DACH area, and the international platform LinkedIn is particularly helpful. We’ll show you some simple basic rules that you can use to best prepare for generating leads and customers on LinkedIn.
ALIGN YOUR OWN LINKEDIN PROFILE WITH THE CUSTOMER
Every work in business networks begins above all with taking care of your own pages. Everything revolves around visits, up-to-date information and of course, the skills that are imparted through the relevant networks.
To do this, you first have to describe who your customer should be. This means: If you are looking for customers who work in the medical field themselves, it is of course not appropriate if you include numerous activities in the construction industry in your profile. By the way, you can follow this very closely because you can always see who has viewed your profile:
Achieve visibility
Increase your memorability with a specific, repeating profile picture or slogan. This includes professionally made logos or profile pictures that are recognizable. You can discover more data on this here in our blog.
uSE THE KEYWORD RESEARCH
It is crucial for LinkedIn lead generation that you specify the relevant activities. These can be found by searching the individual members and are therefore the most important basis for a successful blind search of potential customers and partners. The same principle naturally applies to company profiles, which must contain all relevant information for optimal lead generation.
Since a search within LinkedIn can only display what you have released for the search, this also requires your own drive. Make use of all possibilities to accommodate content. It affects every job you’ve ever had. So state everything and write down exactly what you did. You can also use the small text fields, for example, in the “Summary” at the top of the profile.
The pulse contributions function is also helpful. Write technical articles yourself on LinkedIn. Here you can see exactly who is reading your articles and thereby optimize it for the customer:
USE RECOMMENDATIONS AND THUS DEMONSTRATE COMPETENCE.
Other users can confirm their top knowledge. Of course, a potential customer is more willing to buy your product if numerous other customers have already confirmed their competence: When all of this is in place, you can “go all out”. Convert your content into compelling LinkedIn updates, optimize your landing pages and create suitable lead-gen forms. How to successfully start your lead generation on LinkedIn.
According to the classic Wikipedia definition, a lead is a qualified prospect who is interested in a company or a product, and who gives the advertiser his address and similar contact details (lead = data record dialogue further dialog building and therefore with a higher rate Probability becomes a custom high-quality high quality leads is a fundamental task in acquiring new customers.
In practice, it generally looks like 70% of the sales cycle has already run before a potential customer even speaks to a salesperson. Your content can help your customers to discover your products, to take a closer look at them or to compare different offers.
WHY USE LINKEDIN FOR LEAD GENERATION?
LinkedIn is the network for professional purposes; nowhere else are there so many professionals represented. This means that LinkedIn is simply THE network for lead conversion, i.e. converting a contact into a real customer. According to a study by our partner Hubspot, the chances of conversion on LinkedIn are 2.74%. On Twitter, on the other hand, it is only 0.69% – and on Facebook, at 0.77%, it doesn’t look much better.
CONTENT THAT ENABLES LEAD GENERATION
Customer acquisition always starts with finding the right content for your target group and making it available in the right format. Offer the reader added value that might interest them.
“You have to GIVE an incentive to GET value.”
(quote from the LinkedIn whitepaper Driving Quality Leads with Content )
First of all, ask yourself: What do my customers always ask about at some point? Then answer these questions with Big Rock Content
What is Big Rock Content?
This should create added value for the measures just mentioned, which is why your audience likes to exchange contact details. Which includes:
- Subject guides and e-book
- Research reports and studies
- Webinars
Content that experience has shown is well-received (evergreens) and that you can repurpose.
The B2B marketing expert Doug Kessler recommends one Big Rock content per quarter. You can find a practical example here on LinkedIn.
Always note that the rule that you eat with your eyes also applies here: the more visual content you can incorporate, the better. If you already have a whitepaper and it’sits not going as you hoped, convert it into a visual e-book or SlideShare presentation.
Once you have defined your Big Rock content, you can split it up (for example, a survey among your customers) into smaller pieces or parts, which can then be divided individually. Turn it into a small infographic that summarizes the facts, plus a SlideShare presentation with the most important quotes and insights from the survey and an editorial or blog post that contains the results and tips for action.
TURN YOUR CONTENT INTO COMPELLING LINKEDIN UPDATES.
DOS:
- Make use of strong thumbnails. If you don’tdon’t like what the automatic link preview shows, upload your own image.
- Develop compelling headlines.
- Address your users directly: Use the “you” or “you” and explain what is “in it” for the reader.
- Use numbered lists, statistics or numbers that are clear.
- Move away from positioning yourself to mentioning professional luminaries or personalities who fit well here.
Don’t’ stents:
Classic sales techniques or hard sell:
Concentrate on the added value to be offered in order to get users to go to your site to access further content.
Long texts:
Write short, concise intros that are similar in length to a tweet, but without using hashtags! Because: You don’tdon’t want the CTA to be buried “more” behind a link.
Blurry photos, dark pictures:
Use light optics, especially if you can see people in the picture.
LinkedIn_Targeting.jpgOf course, if you want to promote your updates, targeting also plays a crucial role. Different functions require different targetings. These can be determined by visiting the advertising area on LinkedIn.
We have compiled the distribution on LinkedIn for most industries and their membership numbers in Germany as well as the proportion of newcomers .
OPTIMIZE YOUR LANDING PAGES: MORE THAN JUST A CONTACT FORM
If you were able to arouse the interest of your readers with a convincing post, then inspire them with an optimized landing page and make the use of your content a positive experience for the visitors. The focus is on the seamless transition from post to a landing page. To do this, you shouldn’t just include a contact form, but explain why this content is valuable enough to give you personal information – with a prominent call to download all of the content in order to get that added value.