Choosing the right LinkedIn subscription is a crucial question that many professionals ask themselves, and rightly so. Every professional has specific needs, which means that one type of subscription may be more suitable than another.
As a result, each subscription offers specific features that can optimize your efforts, whether you’re recruiting or prospecting.
LinkedIn Subscriptions for Prospecting
At MirrorProfiles, we’ve found that the majority of our customers use our services primarily for **prospecting**.
Here’s an analysis of LinkedIn subscriptions specifically tailored for this purpose:
- Free LinkedIn account: This basic option lets you create a profile, connect with other professionals, receive messages, apply for jobs, join groups and view other users’ profiles.
- LinkedIn Premium Career ($39.99/month): This subscription is ideal for job seekers.
It offers the ability to see who has viewed your profile, send direct messages to people outside your network, and view job offers to which other candidates have applied.
However, it is not recommended for prospecting. - LinkedIn Premium Business ($59.99/month): Aimed at professionals and businesses, this subscription offers tools to grow your network and business, such as company analytics, online courses, and the ability to contact people outside your network.
However, it doesn’t add advanced search filters, making this subscription limited for targeted prospecting. - LinkedIn Sales Navigator Professional ($99.99/month): A must-have prospecting tool for salespeople.
It provides lead recommendations, advanced search features, company information and the ability to contact people outside your network.
Indispensable for effective prospecting. - LinkedIn Sales Navigator Team ($149.99/month): In addition to the features of the Professional version, this version enables teamwork with team reports, synchronization with CRMs and lead tracking tools for multiple users.
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator Enterprise (Custom Pricing): The most advanced version for large companies, it includes all the features of the Team subscription, plus lead tracking for an unlimited number of users and advanced functionalities.
For quality **prospecting**, Sales Navigator is a must.
Premium Business offers few additional benefits.
It makes more sense to invest in a more expensive, but higher-quality subscription.
The main advantage of Sales Navigator is the increased number of **filters available**.
Without this subscription, it is impossible to use advanced techniques such as **double filtering**.
The double filter technique :
Double filtering** is an advanced search technique enabled by the LinkedIn Sales Navigator subscription.
It consists of using **combined search filters** to refine results and more precisely target prospects or accounts that best match your qualification criteria.
For example, you can first filter results by industry and company size, then apply a second filter to select only decision-makers within these companies.
This gives you a highly relevant and qualified list of prospects, optimizing your **prospecting** efforts.
Without the Sales Navigator subscription, LinkedIn does not allow you to apply multiple filters simultaneously, which limits the precision of your search.
For a better understanding of the technique, read this detailed article.
The importance of effective segmentation :
Effective **segmentation** is crucial to maximizing **prospecting** and marketing efforts.
This approach makes it possible to target potential customers more precisely, by grouping them according to various criteria such as industry, company size, geographical location, and specific needs.
This helps to personalize messages and offers for each segment, increasing the chances of success.
What’s more, **effective segmentation** saves time and resources by concentrating efforts on the most promising and profitable segments.
It’s also worth noting that invitations without notes are now limited to 200 per week, while invitations with notes are reduced to just 100 per month.
This reduction is a strong incentive to opt for a LinkedIn Premium subscription to get around these new restrictions.
By using the Sales Navigator subscription, you’ll have access to features such as integration with CRMs and ATSs, enabling you to optimize your workflow and improve collaboration with your sales or recruitment teams, which is essential for effective **prospecting**.
Finally, don’t underestimate the powerful impact of the Insight Tags and lead generation forms included in the Premium Business plan.
These tools provide you with detailed information about your visitors and enable you to capture leads directly from your LinkedIn page.
In short, choosing the right LinkedIn subscription is crucial to aligning your tools with your prospecting and marketing objectives.
For advanced prospecting, Sales Navigator remains the best option, while Premium Business can greatly help improve engagement and network quality.
Subscriptions for recruitment
Some of our customers use MirrorProfiles accounts primarily for recruitment purposes. They’re not necessarily looking for a high volume of prospecting, but rather a way to secure their talent pool. When recruiters use their own LinkedIn account, they create a specialized network based on the positions they need to fill.
By using MirrorProfiles accounts, our customers can organize their networks according to business sector (an account for developers, an account for salespeople, etc.) and secure their talent pool if a recruiter leaves the company.
The majority of our customers choose the Recruiter Lite subscription for several important reasons.
Before detailing these reasons, it’s crucial to understand that, in the context of **recruiting** on LinkedIn, there are primarily two subscriptions to consider:
- The Premium Career subscription is often considered less suited to the needs of professional recruiters.
While it offers some useful features for job seekers, such as the ability to see who has viewed their profile or to send direct messages to people outside their network, it lacks the advanced tools needed for effective, targeted recruitment. - On the other hand, Recruiter Lite is specially designed for recruitment professionals.
It offers a range of advanced features that enable recruiters to search for and interact with potential candidates in a more efficient and organized way.
LinkedIn Recruiter Lite ($2,399/year): Aimed at recruiters, this subscription offers tools for finding and contacting potential candidates, managing candidate relationships and posting jobs.
It lets you view the full profiles of candidates outside your network, send direct messages to potential candidates and manage your applications, which is essential for **effective recruiting**.
LinkedIn Recruiter (from $8,999/year): This is the most comprehensive version for recruiters, with advanced candidate search and management tools, team collaboration features and advanced analytics.
Here are some of the key features of Recruiter Lite that make it particularly attractive to recruiters:
- Unlimited profile searches: This feature allows recruiters to search the vast number of profiles available on LinkedIn without limitation. This is essential for identifying a wide range of potential candidates for **recruitment**.
- Advanced search filters: Recruiter Lite offers specific filters for **recruitment**, enabling recruiters to refine their searches and target candidates who precisely match the criteria required for a given position.
- Create candidate lists: This function lets you create lists of candidates, called “projects” by LinkedIn, making it easier to manage and track potential candidates throughout the **recruitment** process.
- Search for similar candidates: This feature enables you to find candidates with similar skills and experience to those already identified as potential candidates of interest for **recruitment**.
At first glance, it might seem a good idea to opt for Sales Navigator, but Recruiter Lite’s filters are far more relevant when you have a clear idea of the candidate profile you’re looking for.
These and other features make Recruiter Lite a preferred choice for many professional recruiters.
What’s more, the Recruiter Lite subscription is also less expensive than the full Recruiter subscription, making it more affordable for small and medium-sized businesses or independent recruiters.
Here is a complete list of Recruiter Lite filters:
Thanks to these 5 accounts, with an acceptance rate of 20%, you’ve gone from adding 400 people to 1,386. This represents 70% of your prospect file, compared with 20% previously! Of course, it all depends on your photo, title and, above all, whether or not your profile is consistent with your target audience. Let’s take a concrete example:
Hivebrite has 1 alternating profile, with a 25% acceptance rate, unlike David B., who has a 10% acceptance rate. In 1 month, Delphine will be transformed into a Business Developer profile and will be able to send messages directly to her network.
By diversifying your approach, you maximize the chances of getting a positive response from your prospect. If our target is not receptive to a certain profile (young Business Developer), perhaps it will be to another (Senior Sales Representative). The gender of the profile can also have an impact, as can the language spoken.
If you’re looking to automate part of the sourcing process, most of our customers are supported by a leading agency in this field, Stepward.
Choosing the right LinkedIn subscription is essential to optimize your **prospecting** and **recruiting** efforts.
For **prospecting**, Sales Navigator is clearly the most effective option, thanks to its advanced search and automatic lead generation features.
For **recruitment**, Recruiter Lite is the preferred choice of the majority of our customers, as it offers features specifically designed for recruiters, at a more affordable cost than the full Recruiter subscription.
Automation is playing an increasingly important role in **prospecting** and **recruiting**. Technologies like ChatGPT can not only help automate tasks such as more precise targeting of candidates or prospects. In addition, **prospecting** automation tools, such as those offered by Stepward, can help secure your talent pool and automate part of the sourcing process, which is crucial to optimizing **recruitment** and sales processes.
To go further in understanding and optimizing your prospecting and recruitment efforts, we recommend the following articles:
- Prospecting: The Sales Machine on LinkedIn
- Recruitment: How to maintain a constant flow of candidates
Ultimately, the choice of LinkedIn subscription depends on your specific needs and budget.
We recommend that you carefully examine the features of each subscription and assess whether they match your needs before making a decision.
If you are looking to automate part of your sourcing process, most of our customers are supported by one of the leading agencies in this field. Stepward.
