Introduction
LinkedIn, with more than 800 million members worldwide by 2024, is positioned as the essential professional network. Linkedin offers great opportunities to increase the activity, reputation and sales of its users.
However, the following questions arise: How can I take advantage of LinkedIn to find customers? What methods can you adopt to captivate your future customers and turn them into regulars?
This article reveals 10 key strategies for unlocking LinkedIn’s business development potential in 2024. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, freelancer, consultant or salesperson, you’ll discover how to fine-tune your profile, target your audience appropriately, exploit the tools provided by LinkedIn, master the art of social selling, generate engaging content, actively interact within your network, take advantage of premium options, optimize LinkedIn Ads, write impactful InMails and collaborate effectively with your marketing department. Let us guide you!
Optimizing your LinkedIn account
Optimizing your LinkedIn account is crucial to capturing the attention of your future clientele. Think of your account as your digital business card: it needs to be professional, engaging and convincing. Let’s explore the key points for transforming your LinkedIn account.
Choosing the right professional photo
First impressions are often the right ones, and that starts with your profile photo. Opt for a quality photo, with a genuine smile and a professional frame. Forget selfies or dark, blurry shots. Choose an image that describes you professionally and inspires confidence. According to LinkedIn, an account with a photo generates up to 21 times more visits and 36 times more exchanges than profiles without a photo.
Writing an attractive title
Just below your name, your account title should capture the essence of who you are professionally. It’s crucial to fine-tune it so that it accurately reflects your skills and uniqueness. Use specific terms rather than vague names. A well-chosen title is your first hook: for example, “Digital consultant specializing in SEO and social networks” is much more telling than “Marketing consultant”.
Preparing a convincing, up-to-date summary
The summary of your profile is your space to shine. It needs to capture prospects’ interest from the very first lines, by being direct, relevant and unique. Answer the fundamental questions: Who are you? What do you do? What is your value proposition? Include key words and figures that attest to your successes, to reinforce your credibility. The Linkedin catchphrase should be worked on like your slogan on your website. And above all! Don’t forget to conclude with a call to action, encouraging the reader to contact you.
Highlighting relevant skills and experience
Your know-how and experience are the cornerstones of your profile. Highlight the most significant skills and projects, those that resonate with your service and interest your future customers. Highlight your successes with concrete examples and testimonials. Consider adding recommendations, certifications and other proof of your skills to increase your credibility.
To take this subject even further, we’ve written a comprehensive tutorial on thetechnical optimization of your Linkedin profile. This optimization can be performed on your Linkedin account as well as on MirrorProfiles‘ fake Linkedin profiles.
Clear target definition
A crucial step in attracting customers on LinkedIn is to define precisely who your audience is. This is the group of people to whom you want to sell your products or services. An in-depth understanding of your customer enables you to adjust your communication, service and strategy to meet their specific needs, expectations and motivations. Here’s how to define your audience on LinkedIn.
a) Start by identifying their defining characteristics. This includes criteria such as age, geographical location, field, job function, income level, interests, values, and many others. These criteria can be demographic, geographic, socio-professional, behavioral or psychological. LinkedIn’s tools, such as Advanced Search or Sales Navigator, are very useful for filtering your target according to these criteria.
b) Next, it’s essential to understand your needs and issues. This means understanding what motivates her, what holds her back, what satisfies or disappoints her. Put yourself in your audience’s shoes and ask about their goals, challenges, frustrations, aspirations, fears and dreams. The sources of information available on LinkedIn, such as news feeds, articles or recommendations, are invaluable for analyzing needs and issues.
c) Finally, the creation of a persona is an important last step. A persona is a fictional, personalized representation of your ideal customer. It helps you give your audiende a concrete existence and facilitates your communication with it. To create a persona, give it a name, a photo, a description and a scenario. Online features such as persona generators can simplify this task.
Using LinkedIn tools wisely
The key is to use its many features wisely. LinkedIn offers a wide range of features designed to optimize your customer acquisition, business intelligence and communication methods. Let’s discover the essential tools to master for effective prospecting on LinkedIn.
Search filters and keywords
The strategic use of filters and keywords forms the basis for identifying quality prospects on LinkedIn. Thanks to the advanced search, you can refine your work according to detailed criteria such as name, position, company, domain, location and degree of connection, among others. The use of keywords related to your service, offer or target audience, combined with Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), will enable you to further refine your queries. For example, “consultant AND marketing AND digital” helps you find digital specialists. The use of quotation marks makes it easier to find exact expressions, such as “digital marketing consultant”.
Integration of relevant professional groups
Participating in professional circles on LinkedIn provides a framework conducive to exchange and sharing around specific themes, fields or professions. They are an effective way of identifying your future clientele, thanks to their ability to :
- Identify prospects who share your interests;
- Engage in conversation by taking part in discussions or sending direct chats;
- Demonstrate your expertise and add value to your proposal by sharing relevant content;
- And increase your network and reputation within your target community. With the possibility of joining up to 100 groups, it’s important to select them wisely, according to your audience, your department and your field. LinkedIn’s group search function can help you find the most suitable groups for your needs.
Adapting to social selling
The key to acquiring customers on LinkedIn is to master the art of social selling. This modern sales technique takes advantage of social networks to build and maintain meaningful relationships with potential customers. Unlike more traditional sales approaches, which focus on unsolicited phone calls and direct offers, social selling favors more personal, authentic contact through digital platforms.
Here are the best practices to excel in social selling on LinkedIn :
Think of yourself more as an advisor than a salesperson. Your main goal should not be to sell at any price, but rather to bring added value to your future customers, helping them to overcome their challenges. Position yourself as a trusted expert in your field, providing solutions, advice and relevant resources. It’s crucial to remain available, attentive and quick to respond, in order to build a solid relationship of trust with your contacts.
Then adopt personalized rather than generic communications. Your communication efforts must be carefully tailored to the specific needs and preferences of each prospect. Find out everything you can about their profile, their business, and their field, so you can fine-tune your communications. Personalizing your messages, by using first names, referring to specific elements of their profile, and providing a unique added value is also essential. The tone, style and language used must also be adapted to forge a human and natural bond.
Finally, couple a content-centric strategy with your direct approaches. For example, rent 5 fake Linkedin MirrorProfiles accounts to contact 1,000 prospects a week. At the same time, publish quality content on these profiles. The 2 approaches will be mutually beneficial.
Your content needs to capture your audience’s interest, be relevant and engaging. Share information that answers your future customers’ questions, demonstrating your expertise and reinforcing your credibility, while arousing their curiosity and encouraging discussion. Diversify your publication formats by exploring articles, videos, infographics, podcasts and webinars. Interact with your prospects’ published content by liking, commenting, sharing or mentioning, to further stimulate interaction and engagement.
Creating attractive content
The fifth crucial step is the creation of attractive content. Attractive content captures your audience’s attention, arouses their interest and motivates them to take action. It must be relevant, useful, informative, original and entertaining. Let’s take a look at the steps involved in creating attractive content on LinkedIn.
The first step is to clearly define the objectives of your content. You need to ask yourself about the purpose of your content, the message you want to communicate and the action you want your audience to take. It’s essential that your content objectives are aligned with your prospecting and sales objectives. For example, you could create content to :
- Increase the visibility of your brand, product or service.
- Drive traffic to your website or company page.
- Increase your reputation and credibility.
- Inform your target audience about your service or domain.
- Maintain relationships with your future customers.
- Convert your prospects into customers.
- Build loyalty and encourage people to become ambassadors.
Then choose the most appropriate content formats. Ask yourself what type of content you want to produce and what format will best resonate with your audience, based on your message and objectives. Varied formats are recommended to keep your audience’s attention and offer them a rich and varied experience. You can consider formats such as :
- Blog posts.
- Videos.
- Infographics.
- Podcasts.
- Webinars.
- White papers.
- Case studies.
- Customer testimonials.
- Quizzes.
- Competitions.
Finally, optimizing the distribution of your content is essential. Determine when and where you’re going to publish your content, and how you’re going to promote and share it. Publish when and where it’s most relevant to your audience, following these recommendations:
- Adapt to LinkedIn’s editorial calendar to choose the best publication times according to your field and audience.
- Use relevant hashtags, mentions and keywords to highlight your content.
- Engage your audience with questions, requests for feedback, polls, etc.
- Make it easy to share your content to increase its virality.
- Analyze the performance of your content using the tools available on LinkedIn, such as LinkedIn Analytics or the Social Selling Index.
Setting up an interaction and follow-up strategy
To generate new customers via LinkedIn, developing an effective interaction and follow-up strategy is crucial. This approach is essential to building and maintaining relationships of trust with your prospects and customers. It gives you the opportunity to :
- Show your interest and kindness;
- Provide valuable and relevant advice;
- Establish a strong bond and encourage commitment;
- Relaunching and building customer loyalty.
Develop an effective interaction and follow-up strategy on LinkedIn. Prospecting on Linkedin is an art, but it can be learned, and MirrorProfiles is here to help.
Customize login messages
The 1st prospecting message is your first opportunity to make an impression on your prospect. It is therefore essential to personalize them by :
- Incorporating the name of your contact ;
- Evoking a point of common interest (recommendation, group, event, etc.) ;
- Justifying the interest of the connection and exchange ;
- Including an open-ended question or value proposition to encourage a response.
It’s also important not to exceed the 300-character limit, and to avoid spelling mistakes. An example of a successful message might be :
“Hello, Paul,
I’m a digital consultant specializing in SEO and social network management. Your article on digital marketing trends in 2024 caught my attention and I fully share your analysis. I do, however, have some improvements to make”.
Continued interaction with established connections
Maintaining a dialogue with the members of your network is fundamental to consolidating the relationship and seizing new opportunities. To do this:
- Follow their news (like, comment, share, congratulate, etc.);
- Share interesting and useful content;
- Send personalized communications on a regular basis;
- Suggest telephone exchanges or meetings to deepen the dialogue.
It’s essential to adjust the frequency and tone of your mailings according to your audience’s level of engagement and interest.
For example: “Hello Paul, I hope you’re feeling well. Thank you for your positive feedback on my last article, I’m delighted that it interested you. I’d like to invite you to a free webinar I’m organizing on ‘How to optimize your SEO strategy in 2024’. I think you might be interested in this subject. The registration link is attached: [lien]. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or digital marketing needs. We look forward to hearing from you, Vincent.”
To maintain recurrence and avoid getting lost in all your conversations, I recommend MirrorChat on the one hand, and the use ofLinkedin automation tools on the other.
Using LinkedIn's premium features
The seventh key to success on LinkedIn lies in using its premium features. These advanced options, available via a paid subscription, enrich your experience on the platform by offering you additional benefits and functionalities incomparable with the free version. Here are the main advantages:
- Access to detailed data on profiles, companies and sectors.
- Use InMails to contact people outside your network directly.
- Access to optimized mechanisms for recruitment, sales and marketing.
- Online training via LinkedIn Learning.
So how do you maximize the use of LinkedIn’s premium features? Start by selecting thepremium subscription best suited to your needs. LinkedIn offers various options, each designed to meet specific objectives:
- Premium Career for those looking to boost their career.
- Premium Business to acquire essential business information.
- Sales Navigator for lead generation.
- Recruiter Lite for efficient talent recruitment.
- LinkedIn Learning for professional development through online courses.
Once you’ve subscribed, take full advantage of the premium capabilities available to you. Depending on your choice of subscription, you may benefit from the following features:
- Surf anonymously with private browsing.
- Compare your account with other candidates using candidate info.
- Contact any LinkedIn member using InMails.
- See who has consulted your account and access detailed analyses.
- Get in-depth company data with business info.
- Refine your work with advanced tools.
- Unlimited access to a wide range of courses on LinkedIn Learning.
To find out more about the features and benefits of each subscription, please visit the official LinkedIn website.
Using LinkedIn Ads effectively
The eighth key step is the strategic use of LinkedIn Ads. These paid ads enable you to promote your brand, offers or events on this platform in a targeted way, bringing you several benefits:
- Precise targeting of your audience based on professional criteria.
- Significant increase in your brand awareness.
- Ability to generate more traffic, leads and conversions.
- Options to measure and optimize your advertising performance.
Here’s how to maximize the effectiveness of your LinkedIn Ads:
a) Initially, select the type of LinkedIn Ads most relevant to your objective. Various options are available, each offering unique features and benefits:
- Sponsored Content is integrated directly into your prospects’ news feed.
- Sponsored Messaging allows you to send targeted personalized messages.
- Text Ads are visible at the top or on the right-hand side of LinkedIn pages.
- Dynamic Ads adjust automatically according to user accounts.
- Video Ads capture attention with engaging video content.
- Event Ads are ideal for promoting your events.
- Carousel Ads showcase several of your products or services.
- Document Ads share interactive documents.
- Thought Leader Ads showcase your expertise.
Compare these options and their costs directly on the inkedIn website.
b) Next, create and optimize your LinkedIn Ad :
- Use LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager to manage your campaigns.
- Create an advertising account and link it to your company page.
- Clearly define your objective (awareness, consideration, conversion).
- Choose the corresponding ad type and name your campaign.
- Select your ideal audience using the targeting filters.
- Establish a budget, a schedule, and a suitable payment method (CPC, CPM, CPS).
- Create your content according to LinkedIn guidelines.
- Launch, track and adjust your campaign in real time.
c) To optimize your results :
- Test different versions of your ad (A/B testing).
- Analyze performance to identify areas for improvement.
- Adjust your campaign according to feedback (targeting, budget, content).
Efficient InMails
Customer prospecting on LinkedIn can include: sending effective InMails. Although not mandatory, thanks to MirrorProfiles, you can send private communications to any user on the platform, even those outside your direct network. Making initial contact with potential decision-makers via InMail is a winning strategy, provided you add a personal touch to your message, aim for relevance and always remain courteous.
First of all, familiarize yourself with the rules governing the use of InMails. Depending on your LinkedIn Premium subscription, the number of InMails you can send each month is limited. So it’s essential to use this function wisely and purposefully. Concentrate your efforts only on contacts who seem to match your expectations and what you’re offering. In addition, favor personalized exchanges and avoid generic promotional content. Make sure you follow these principles, because for every InMail that gets a response within 90 days, LinkedIn gives you an InMail credit.
Personalization is your ally in capturing the attention and trust of your prospect. Adapt your InMails to the information gleaned from your recipient’s profile, including their professional interests. Keep your subject line short, intriguing and to the point. Articulate clear, appropriate and engaging content, and conclude with a professional signature. Respect and courtesy must permeate your tone.
Your InMail should aim to initiate contact rather than close a sale immediately. Stimulate your potential customer’s interest by offering a clear benefit, solution or invitation. Encourage them to respond by asking an open-ended question, soliciting their opinion or suggesting a meeting. Make it easy for them by offering several ways to reply, mentioning your availability or leaving your contact details.
Constant collaboration with the marketing department
To attract customers on LinkedIn, the tenth and final step is to maintain close collaboration with the marketing department. This interaction between sales and marketing teams is crucial to refining your Inbound Marketing approach and unifying your efforts towards common goals. This synergy allows you to :
- Exchange relevant prospect and customer information and data;
- Design content adapted to each phase of the customer journey;
- Synchronize your actions and campaigns to increase their impact and effectiveness.
Here are some ways to collaborate effectively with your marketing department on LinkedIn.
Start by using the same devices and platforms. For better communication and fluid information sharing between the two departments, adopt common resources. For example, you could use :
- The Campaign Manager, for creating and monitoring advertising campaigns on LinkedIn ;
- The Sales Navigator, to identify and contact qualified prospects on LinkedIn ;
- A CRM to centralize and synchronize prospect and customer data;
- Marketing Automation solutions, to automate and personalize your marketing and sales initiatives.
Make sure that both teams have the same functionality and access to reports on these tools.
Establish common processes and indicators. To align your actions and results, define shared processes and indicators, such as :
- Prospect and customer qualification criteria, to be communicated between departments;
- Customer journey stages, associated with specific content and actions;
- Performance indicators, to be assessed regularly ;
- The roles and responsibilities of each department, to be scrupulously respected.
Organize regular meetings to review these processes and adjust them as necessary.
Finally, develop a culture of trust. To strengthen relations between departments, promote a culture of mutual support and trust. You could :
- Set up cross-training sessions to improve understanding of each other’s roles and challenges;
- Organize friendly activities that encourage mutual knowledge and appreciation;
- Create challenges and rewards to stimulate motivation and mutual support;
- Solicit feedback and testimonials, to enhance the value of everyone’s work.
Conclusion
You’re now perfectly equipped to attract new customers on LinkedIn in 2024. To remind you, here’s a recap of the 10 key strategies we shared:
- Optimize your LinkedIn account.
- Determine your target audience precisely.
- Make the most of the tools offered by LinkedIn.
- Adapt to social selling techniques.
- Create and share captivating content.
- Develop and implement a proactive interaction and follow-up strategy.
- Take advantage of LinkedIn’s premium features.
- Make strategic use of LinkedIn Ads.
- Write and send powerful InMails.
- Collaborate with your marketing department on an ongoing basis.
By implementing these tactics, you’ll boost your visibility, strengthen your brand image and increase your sales on the world’s most popular business platform. Don’t wait any longer, start actively prospecting for new customers on LinkedIn right now! Feel free to browse our blog, we attach great importance on transparency, that’s why we share with you the best Linkedin hacks 🙂
FAQ
How do I prospect for customers on LinkedIn?
To attract customers on LinkedIn, follow these tips:
- Enhance your profile to highlight your skills and present your solutions.
- Search for and contact qualified prospects using specific targeting tools.
- Strengthen your relationship with your future customers by distributing interesting content, taking part in groupings and using InMail to engage in conversation.
How do I find prospects on LinkedIn?
- Visit the “Other page views” section of your customer or competitor profiles to discover similar users.
- To locate individuals on LinkedIn, use the query bar at the top of the page. Enter a name, company, position or other relevant key term. Then select the desired profile from the suggestions displayed, or click on “Search” to broaden your results.
How do you prospect on LinkedIn in 2023?
- Perfect your LinkedIn account to demonstrate your expertise and added value.
- Filters allow you to search for your future qualified clientele according to carefully selected criteria.
- Write personalized prospecting exchanges to capture attention and arouse interest.
- Leverage LinkedIn’s features to initiate dialogues and deliver real value to your prospects.
- Extend the relationship beyond LinkedIn to convert prospects into customers.
