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LinkedIn is a gold mine for lead generation – if you use it correctly.
If you’ve been avoiding LinkedIn for lead generation, you’re missing out. It sometimes gets a bad reputation, but, if you’re willing to invest time and energy into the platform, it’s going to generate qualified leads for you.
Your ideal customers are on LinkedIn. Over 1 billion people are using the platform. No matter your industry and target market, you can find and engage with people who match your ICP (Ideal Client Profile).
But if you’ve been relying on strategies like paid ads, or cold email, LinkedIn can feel like a challenge to get started with.
How should you approach it?
Which outreach strategies work? Which don’t?
What best practices and secrets should you know about?
We’re going to answer all of those questions, and more, for you in this guide.
Why Generate Leads on Linkedin?
If you’re already successfully generating leads for your business or your own clients using tactics like cold email, then LinkedIn will likely work for you.
It’s always worth expanding your reach and having multiple channels available for you to ensure you hit your targets every month.
Who Does LinkedIn Lead Generation Work For?
Before you start connecting with and reaching out to thousands of people on LinkedIn, you’ll need to decide if it’s right for your business.
Like cold email, it works if you can quickly prove to your potential clients that you understand their problems and can offer a solution to those.
To get results, you’ll need a specific focus and value proposition.
LinkedIn lead generation is particularly effective for B2B (business-to-business) companies, sales professionals, recruiters, marketing agencies, and consultants.
For B2B companies, LinkedIn provides a platform with a vast network of professionals and decision-makers in various industries, making it easier to identify and engage with potential clients.
Sales professionals benefit from LinkedIn's advanced search and outreach capabilities to target prospects, build relationships, and close deals.
Recruiters use LinkedIn to find potential candidates by filtering through professional backgrounds and skill sets relevant to open positions.
Marketing agencies leverage LinkedIn to identify potential clients, showcase their expertise through content marketing, and network with industry peers.
Lastly, consultants can use LinkedIn to establish thought leadership, connect with other businesses, and generate leads for their consultancy services.
There Are No Shortcuts to Good Targeting
You can’t just be targeting people with the job title “Head of Sales”. You’ll need to be more specific.
For example, instead of Head of Sales, add more criteria like:
Company size: 20-50 employees
Funding level: Series A or beyond
Location: San Francisco
If you run an agency, tailor it to your target niche. For example, telling a SaaS company CEO that you run a “marketing agency for SaaS companies” will be more effective than saying you work with all kinds of companies, from eCommerce to SaaS to manufacturing.
The more granular and specific you are with your ICP, the better.
It’ll let you tailor your value proposition to match their pain points more effectively than if you were trying to write a message that appealed to people in any industry.
If you don’t put in the effort during this stage, your LinkedIn lead generation won’t deliver results.
Take the time to refine your targeting and understand your ideal customer.
If someone clearly doesn’t match your ICP, don’t reach out to them. They’re not going to be interested, and you’ll waste your time and theirs.
Optimizing Your Profile: Treat It Like a Landing Page
Treat your LinkedIn profile like a landing page.
The two key things that your profile should highlight are:
What you do
Who you do it for
People will visit your profile if you message them. Taking steps to optimize your profile will improve your message response rate, and the number of leads you generate.
But, what does a well optimized LinkedIn profile look like?
Clear Profile and Cover Photo
Use a clear, professional profile picture that aligns with your personal brand. Opt for a cover photo featuring a custom graphic with a headline and your company logo, which can easily be designed using Canva or similar software.
For example, check out Gary Vaynerchuck’s profile and cover photos.
His photos are fundamentally simple, but they look professional, highlight his companies, and would make a good first impression if you’re landing on his profile for the first time.
Use a Benefits-Driven Headline
Like you would on your company landing page, use benefits-driven copy in your headline.
Instead of a purely descriptive headline, tell people what you do. Let’s see what this could look like in action:
Option 1: CEO at Advertising Agency
Option 2: I help SaaS founders get more customers with Facebook Ads
See the difference that makes? Option 2 will resonate with your target customer, and instantly conveys the value you can provide. If someone you connect with is in the market for help with their Facebook advertising, they’ll be happy to have a conversation.
Here’s an example:
Source: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahdjohnston/
Instantly, we can see that Sarah helps people find ‘amazing jobs’, write resumes, and improve their interview skills.
A clear and compelling headline can be the difference between someone accepting your connection request and ignoring it.
In your work experience section you can link to your LinkedIn company page, but your potential customers will care more about how you can help them than what your company is called.
Finding Your Prospects
Effective LinkedIn lead generation is all about narrowing down your target audience. You’ll need to figure out who you’re going to be connecting with and messaging and build a list of prospects if you want to use LinkedIn for lead generation at any kind of scale.
So, how do you find good prospects?
Use Sales Navigator
If you’re running lead generation campaigns on LinkedIn, you need a LinkedIn Sales Navigator account.
With that, you can run searches to find people that meet all of the criteria for an ideal customer. Sales Navigator also helps you run hyper-targeted LinkedIn ads to get new leads that way.
LinkedIn offers powerful advanced search filters that let you find people by criteria like:
Job title
Seniority level
Company size
Listed on Fortune 50/100/500
Department size
Leads following your company
Leads mentioned in the news
Leads with recent job changes
Leads with recent LinkedIn activity
And much more
Source: Filter Your Search Results in Sales Navigator
With those filters, you’ll be able to quickly generate a list of target prospects and accounts who you can then start to reach out to.
LinkedIn will show up to 2,500 lead results (people) and 1,000 account results (companies) at once.
To bypass this limitation, run multiple searches with similar but not identical terms (e.g. “VP Sales” as a job title instead of “Sales Director”), export all your contacts to a spreadsheet, and remove duplicate rows.
If you want to find easy conversation-starters, you can also use search features including:
Shared Experiences (e.g. went to the same college or worked at the same company as you)
See if someone changed job in the last three months
Find companies that were mentioned in the news
They’re simple ways to narrow down your search and ensure you’re engaging with prospects in the right way, at the right time.
Build Lists from B2B Databases
Another shortcut is to build your target list from contact databases like ZoomInfo or BuiltWith.
Use these to input all of the criteria that your target accounts need to match, and they’ll give you a list of people and companies that match them.
You’ll have to pay for access, but they can speed up your prospecting time by a big margin.
Once you have their LinkedIn details, you can start connecting with them.
Enrich Existing Data with Phantombuster
One of the best tools for automating your LinkedIn prospecting is Phantombuster.
It lets you automate prospecting tasks including:
Finding LinkedIn profiles from a list of emails
Extract LinkedIn group members
Find emails from a list of LinkedIn profiles
If you’re serious about LinkedIn, Phantombuster is definitely worth trying. You’ll be able to quickly build qualified lists of prospects with minimal effort.
That said, it’s important to always check how automation tools like this will interact with LinkedIn before using them. There’s always a potential risk that your account could get suspended, so be careful.
Speed Up LinkedIn Marketing with QuickMail
You can also use QuickMail to speed up the outreach process right inside LinkedIn.
First off, you'll want to set up sequences that include LinkedIn tasks. These are sequenced actions that keep you on track without stepping over LinkedIn's connection limits. With QuickMail, you're not just spamming invites; you're building genuine connections to boost your network.
No need to send each message individually. Set up multi-channel campaigns with natural connection flows. For example, view someone's LinkedIn profile, send a personalized connection request, then follow up with an email.
It's all about making those meaningful connections smoothly and smartly. With QuickMail, you can reach out right without getting lost in the shuffle.
Building Your LinkedIn Lead Generation Strategy
Once you have your list of prospects, it’s time to connect with them.
Let’s see how to do it.
Connecting with Prospects
Direct outreach by connecting with someone and sending a message is the simplest, and arguably, most effective way to generate leads on LinkedIn.
But, people are going to be quick to ignore you if you come across as being inauthentic, or too sales-driven early on.
Like with cold email, your connection request needs to come across as authentic and demonstrate why they should accept it.
Here are some example connection request notes that could work for you:
Example 1:
Hi {{prospect.first_name}}, saw your talk at {{conference}}, thought it’d be good to connect as we’re in the same industry. I run {{growth/sales/marketing/etc.}} at {{your company}}.
Example 2:
Hi {{prospect.first_name}} – really liked your blog post on {{topic}}. I share content on similar topics here, so thought it’d be good to connect.
The trick is to keep it simple, but aim for enough personalization to show you actually know something about your prospect. Highlight their pain points, responsibilities, or things they’re proud of, such as content they’re putting out.
Show you’re a real person, and people will be happy to accept your connection request.
Follow Up and Increase Your Response Rate
When you send a connection request, it's not about sparking an in-depth conversation right off the bat. Rather, it's about making a memorable impression, setting the stage for future interactions.
As you follow up, highlight how your expertise or services can benefit their needs. It's all about demonstrating value – and if your proposal is customized to address their specific challenges, they'll be more inclined to engage in a dialogue.
Remember to keep your messages concise and clear. Your goal is to make it easy for them to grasp what you're proposing without getting bogged down in details.
Here are some example follow up messages you can use to start a conversation:
Example 1:
Hi {{prospect.first_name}},
Thanks for connecting – was wondering if you’re currently using Facebook Ads to generate more sales at {{company}}?
I recently helped {{similar company}} increase their ad CTR by 15% with a few simple campaign tweaks.
Interested in seeing how we did it?
{{your name}}
Example 2:
Hey {{prospect.first_name}},
Loved your podcast episode on {{topic}}. I help podcast publishers get more listens by optimizing their podcast distribution. Is that something that you’d be interested in learning more about?
{{your name}}
The key is not to overthink it. Make sure your follow-up messages are highly relevant to your prospect. Do your research on them.
Show real examples of how you can help them, and explain the benefits they can expect from working with you in simple terms.
Your Call to Action is Key
You’re not going to see results if you ask people to become customers in your first message.
Your main goal should be to get a reply and start a conversation.
Depending on your business and sales cycle, your call-to-action could be something like:
Is that something you’d be interested in?
Want me to send you some examples/case studies of work we’ve done?
Want to learn more?
Keep it as simple as you can without being vague. Don’t ask “Yes or No” questions that can quickly end a conversation. If your targeting is good, qualified prospects will be happy to reply if your pitch is relevant to them.
See more call-to-action examples in our guide here.
If you’ve written a sequence of messages you’re going to use but aren’t sure if they’re going to work, ask yourself:
Is my offer something that this person will probably be interested in?
Am I making it clear what I can help them with?
Is my CTA easy to respond to?
If the answer is yes to all three, then your message is probably good enough and you don’t need to painstakingly analyze every word of your message to improve it.
How Many Follow Up Messages Should You Send?
Like with cold email, not all prospects will reply to your first message.
They might not check their LinkedIn inbox, they might miss your message, or they might simply not have time to reply, and because they don’t know you, replying isn’t a priority.
Like with cold email and other outbound lead generation strategies, you need to be patient.
Send 3-5 friendly follow-up messages.
To help make each one different, use a variety of call-to-actions.
For example, someone might not want to jump on a call with you, but they might be open to seeing a case study, or replying to an open-ended question.
Aim to space out your follow ups by at least three days. There’s no firm rule on this, but you’ll look like a spammer if you’re sending messages every day.
What about Sponsored InMails?
You could try using Sponsored InMails for your LinkedIn outreach, but just because you pay for it, doesn’t mean you’re going to see results.
If you send an InMail to someone, people know you’re paying for it, so there’s a risk that they instantly write you off as a salesperson.
That said, if your targeting and messaging is perfect, InMails will still generate results for you.
Outreach to LinkedIn Leads using Cold Email
Another path you can take is to use LinkedIn for your initial prospecting to identify prospects, then reach out to them using cold email.
Most B2B decision-makers are likely to check their email every day.
After you've made a new connection on LinkedIn, email is an effective means to follow up.
To do so, you'll need their email address. Check if it's available under the "Contact Info" section of their LinkedIn profile.
Most people, however, won’t.
So, how can you find email addresses from LinkedIn? Let’s take a look.
Finding and Exporting Email Addresses
We’ve written previously about how to find business email addresses to use in your outreach – you can read that in full here.
From a simple Google search to signing up to their newsletter, there are a variety of effective options.
But, if you want to automate part of the process on LinkedIn, try Phantombuster’s profile scraping automation.
If you input a list of profile URLs, Phantombuster will scrape the data from them, including their business email address.
Your data will be outputted as a CSV and you can then import that into QuickMail using the Import Leads feature.
I’d also recommend verifying your emails. This will help improve deliverability and reduce your bounce rate.
You can do this automatically in QuickMail with any of our 6 verification partners.
Next, you’ll need to write, personalize, and schedule your emails.
Sending Personalized Cold Emails
Once your prospects are inside QuickMail, it’s time to write and schedule your emails.
For effective emailing, apply the same principles as LinkedIn messaging. Ensure relevance for better response rates. Use attributes in QuickMail for personalization, and add custom details like introductory sentences in a dedicated CSV column.
For example, add a column called “Introduction” in your CSV where you write a custom opening sentence. At the start of your email template, add an {{Introduction}} tag that will automatically fill with your custom opening line, perfectly tailored to every prospect.
Once your emails are ready you can start your prospects on your campaign and watch your leads roll in.
Inside QuickMail you’ll be able to create complex campaigns with ease. Send your follow-ups automatically, and collaborate with other members of your team on campaigns.
Once your campaigns are running, you’ll be able to track your metrics and see what’s working.
Combining LinkedIn with email outreach is a great way to ensure that prospects don’t miss your message, and you’ll get more replies. Start your free trial here.
Contacting Leads in LinkedIn Through QuickMail
QuickMail’s latest functionality includes the ability to send messages within LinkedIn as well as reach out to new leads with connection requests. You can manage an omnichannel approach to outreach by sending a connection request, then an email, then an SMS, for example.
How To Get the Best LinkedIn Outreach Results
To optimize LinkedIn outreach, craft a personalized value proposition that aligns with their professional challenges or goals, demonstrating a clear understanding of their industry.
Engage with your prospect’s content beforehand to gain familiarity. Keep initial messages concise, focusing on the benefits they'll gain from the interaction.
Offer insights or solutions rather than pushing for a sale. Follow up with a gentle reminder if no response is received, but avoid being overly persistent to maintain professionalism.
Of course, measure response rates and adapt strategies accordingly for continuous improvement in outreach effectiveness.
