Introduction
Prospecting on LinkedIn is essential to a company’s sales strategy. With over a billion users, including 65 million decision-makers, this professional social network is ideal for generating qualified leads and building solid business relationships. This article presents several tried-and-tested tactics and tips for successful prospecting on LinkedIn.
We’ll learn how to be effective on LinkedIn for customer (and candidate) prospecting, the key elements for successful prospecting on this network, and advanced methods for improving results. The article will also discuss the importance of emailing as a complement to LinkedIn for multi-channel tactics. Finally, we’ll discuss the best ways to turn prospects into customers and the follow-up required to achieve this. The focus will be on creating attractive posts, a crucial aspect of social selling.
Understanding the power of Linkedin for sales prospecting
LinkedIn is a major platform for business prospecting, with millions of professional users. It brings together decision-makers, influencers and professionals for interaction and sharing. Correctly exploiting the platform can revolutionize prospecting methods, offering unprecedented business opportunities.
Success requires standing out among many professionals. This involves an optimized account, solid publishing tactics and effective use of automated tools on LinkedIn to contact and interact with targeted prospects.
Think of the network as a huge prospecting file coupled with a messaging system where you can contact anyone you like.
The ideal profile for effective prospecting
A good profile acts as a professional showcase, demonstrating expertise, achievements and added value. It should be comprehensive, professional and personalized, highlighting distinctive skills and experience. It acts like a website’s SEO: the more optimized and complete your profile is, the more you’ll appear in searches. By doing so, you’ll increase your visibility and thus your inbound marketing.
What’s more, an optimized profile is important for your outbound prospecting campaigns, as around 40% of people look at the Linkedin account before accepting it into their network.
The profile photo and banner should be professional, reflecting your personal or corporate brand. The summary must be captivating, telling your story and what you offer prospects. The use of relevant keywords improves your visibility.
Include recommendations and validated skills for added credibility, and showcase your work or projects to demonstrate your expertise. Customize your profile URL for easy sharing and to strengthen your online presence.
The importance of an engaging content strategy
It plays a key role on LinkedIn. When well designed, it establishes you as an authority, attracts leads and encourages interaction. It must be informative, useful and engaging.
Distribute articles, case studies, infographics and videos useful to your network. Consistency is crucial: publish regularly to maintain your visibility. Interact with other users’ shares to increase your reach and build relationships.
Use hashtags to reach a wider audience, and participate in groups related to your field to expand your network. Follow trends and respond to them to show your competence.
Too often, advice revolves around posts, but not everyone has the time or the ideas to post regularly. What’s more, in my case, I simply don’t like posting on Linkedin. We mustn’t underestimate comments, which are becoming an increasingly important acquisition tool. By being professional and interesting, you can easily use posts that “buzz” other Linkedin users with a punchy comment.
The 3 essential ingredients for Linkedin prospecting
Prospecting requires three key elements: in-depth knowledge of your market, targeted communication and precise interaction management. When used wisely, these elements improve quality lead generation.
1) The prospect database: hyper-segmentation
Hyper-segmentation goes further than traditional segmentation. It uses behavioral and demographic information to target very precisely. This increases the chances of conversion by accurately meeting the needs of defined segments.
With Linkedin, it’s quite possible to obtain these kinds of results, provided you know your way around the network and, above all, are able to combine different types of scraping:
- You’ll need to master the double-filtering technique on SalesNavigator.
- You can then gather further information from different sources:
- Linkedin Job: find out what position Company X is looking for. If you’re contacting HR managers to sell them a prospecting solution, it’s a good idea to have a teaser about their search for a new salesperson. Your tool can increase the efficiency of existing sales staff.
- Linkedin Post: for a teaser on company news or even your prospect’s latest Linkedin post.
- Linkedin Event
- Linkedin Group
- Etc.
By combining these multiple data sources, you’ll have enough information to automate and personalize (even more finely than a human) thanks to automated tools on Linkedin coupled with MirrorProfiles.
Thanks to hyper-segmentation, exchanges are tailored to the specific interests of each segment. This requires detailed data analysis to identify sales opportunities.
CRM tools and automated solutions play an essential role. They help manage hyper-segmentation by collecting and analyzing the information needed to create personalized campaigns. This is where MirrorCRM comes into its own.
2) Writing prospecting messages on Linkedin: rules and advice
It should be short, personalized and focused on what the recipient gains. It’s crucial to show how you can meet a need or solve a problem.
An initial message should arouse interest without being intrusive. Avoid direct sales approaches at first, and concentrate on building a relationship. Ask open-ended questions to better understand the prospect, and adjust your writing according to their feedback.
Base your proposal on data and offer a convincing reason to start a conversation. Follow-ups must be designed to add value to each exchange.
The 9 rules of Linkedin copywriting are as follows:
- Set up canvassing sequences of 5 to 7 mailings, spaced at least 3 working days apart.
- Use a natural tone rather than a sales pitch, and opt for clear, direct language. For example, replace: “At Pavageau, we firmly believe that giving promotional gifts in your corporate colors is an effective tactic for building customer loyalty while creating a memorable experience”, with: “Offering personalized promotional gifts is an effective technique for building customer loyalty. Everyone appreciates gifts, and it’s one of the best ways to promote word-of-mouth.”
- Keep it short: no more than 500 characters. You’ll see that it’s enough.
- Make sure everything is spontaneous, and remember that LinkedIn is a social network. So avoid signing your exchanges or using polite phrases like “Nice day” or “Best regards”, which can suggest that the conversation is over.
Your first follow-up message should be succinct, and can include a key, succinct argument. For example: “{{firstName}}, did you have time to check my previous message?”
- Although it may seem unusual, on a social network, it is often preferable to be on first-name terms with your interlocutor, which is not a concern for English speakers because of the nuances of the French language!
- Express yourself positively. Instead of “I’m afraid I won’t fall at the right time, you must be swamped”, opt for “When you have a moment”.
- Avoid bulleted lists on LinkedIn, as they don’t adapt well to the network’s format and make your texts longer. Use concise sentences.
- Include a clear and direct call to action (CTA). Avoid open-ended questions such as “Are you interested?
- Last but not least, before sending your message, ask yourself if you would reply to it yourself if you were the recipient.
3) Response and reminder management
Managing responses and follow-ups is essential to maintain commitment and progress in the sales process. This involves documenting exchanges, evaluating responses and adapting follow-up strategies. Reactivity is one of the keys to the effectiveness of Linkedin leads. You need to be responsive, personalized and quick to pinpoint your prospect’s exact needs. That’s why we developed MirrorChat, to make it easier and more efficient to manage responses on Linkedin. Our tool allows you to centralize all Linkedin messages from your various accounts, so that your sales representative can manage all these responses efficiently.
Personalizing follow-ups according to previous exchanges shows your attention to the prospect’s needs and your commitment to building a relationship of trust. It will take you a few seconds, but it’s a good idea to take a quick look at your prospect’s account to see if he or she has published or commented on a post recently. It’s a good point if you can bounce off this extra information.
Monitoring tools are needed to evaluate the effectiveness of your efforts and optimize your methods. Linkedin’s automated tools natively track acceptance and response rates, so here you’ll have the Macro KPIs for your prospecting campaigns. MirrorChat and MirrorCRM allow you to track the relevance of your Linkedin responses in a more qualitative way. This will let you know if target X, even if its response rate is potentially low at 20%, 50% of these responses are positive and these prospects turn into leads.
Persistence, with a well thought-out follow-up technique, is often the key to successful prospecting on LinkedIn.
Tips for further Linkedin prospecting
Prospecting on LinkedIn goes beyond creating a network and sending messages. Adopting advanced techniques is key to increasing the effectiveness of your efforts. This section explores tips and tools to improve your prospecting.
Automate Linkedin: Tools and tips
It increases your productivity on LinkedIn. Taplio lets you plan publications and analyze the posts that perform best. Hey Reach lets you send targeted invitations and manage message campaigns. In fact, I’ve put together a list of the top Linkedin automation tools, because yes, there are a lot of them out there, and you can quickly get lost. Or Phantombuster, which gives you all the scraping scripts you need to retrieve Linkedin data. They are all compatible with MirrorProfiles.
It’s important to select the right tools and use them strategically to maintain a personalized approach. Automation must support, not replace, human interaction.
Respecting LinkedIn’s policies is crucial to avoid restrictions on your account. Even if you use MirrorProfiles. In fact, using our Linkedin accounts is a good way of dividing the risk, as you’ll also be splitting the queries made on each account. These tools are designed to automate repetitive tasks while maintaining personal interaction.
MirrorProfiles for sufficient prospecting volume
MirrorProfiles lets you rent LinkedIn profiles for prospecting. This can increase your prospecting volume without compromising your personal account.
By using several accounts, you can contact thousands of people every week, beneficial for large-scale Linkedin prospecting campaigns or for testing markets.
Using InMails strategically
InMails are effective on LinkedIn and don’t require you to be in touch with the person you want to contact. Its use is therefore interesting for prospects who don’t accept your connection request. For effective use, keep your exchanges short and to the point.
Personalize your InMails according to the recipient’s profile and use them to contact 2nd and 3rd degree connections. InMails must be integrated into your communication tactics.
Complement Linkedin with emailing for multi-channel prospecting
Combining emailing with your Linkedin tactics allows you to deploy a multi-channel SalesMachine. This multiplies the points of contact with your prospects, boosting conversions. Just because a prospect doesn’t respond to you on Linkedin doesn’t mean he or she isn’t interested. He may not be active on this network, so you need to test another acquisition channel: emailing. We’ll look at how to integrate emailing after Linkedin and write effective emails.
How to switch from Linkedin to emailing
It’s important to make the transition from Linkedin to emailing as smooth as possible. Initiate contact on Linkedin, then if the prospect doesn’t accept your request for a connection or doesn’t get back to you. Then it’s time to start emailing. Don’t hesitate to remind him that you tried to contact him on Linkedin. The advantage is that most automated Linkedin tools scrape the information needed to enrich your leads to obtain the professional email address. In fact, I’ve put together a top list of email enrichment tools.
Once you’ve enriched your database, you can continue by e-mail or using cross-channel tools such as La Growth Machine or Lemlist.
Tips for email copywriting
Writing for email requires precision and creativity. Emails must inspire action. Use attractive headlines, concise text and a clear call to action.
Personalize the writing according to what you’ve learned on Linkedin. Mention elements of previous conversations to show you care.
Every email should be a plus. Information, insights or exclusive offers should enrich the relationship and encourage the prospect to move forward.
Conversions and follow-up: Keys to success on Linkedin
Conversion and follow-up play a crucial role in effective Linkedin tactics. They transform interactions into successful business relationships, and allow us to evaluate the effectiveness of our prospecting. This section covers key performance indicators, CRM tools for optimal tracking, and the best methods for managing the sales pipeline on Linkedin.
Performance indicators to monitor
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are essential for measuring the success of Linkedin campaigns. It’s important to monitor the conversion rate, the click-through rate (CTR) on publications and messages, and the cost per lead (CPL). These indicators provide information on user engagement and the effectiveness of prospecting efforts.
It’s also crucial to monitor the response rate to InMails and prospecting messages. A high rate suggests effective communication. Speed of response influences the probability of converting a prospect into a customer. The customer retention rate obtained via Linkedin indicates the quality of long-term relationships and customer loyalty. Then, as we’ve seen in this article, MirrorChat and MirrorCRM will give you qualitative indicators.
CRM tools for effective prospect follow-up
The use of a CRM tool is essential for effective follow-up on Linkedin. These tools centralize interactions, manage contacts and track prospects’ progress through the sales tunnel.
Effective sales pipeline management on Linkedin requires clear tactics and processes. Each stage of the pipeline must correspond to the stages of the prospect’s buying journey.
It’s crucial to maintain an organized pipeline, removing inactive or unqualified leads. This concentrates efforts on the most promising prospects to optimize conversion.
CRM data and analysis are useful for continuously adjusting strategy. Experimenting with different types of content, timing and personalization can reveal what works best with your target audience.
Tools such as Salesforce, HubSpot and Zoho CRM offer features for segmenting audiences, automating tasks and analyzing performance. They facilitate synchronization with Linkedin for unified tracking of prospecting activities.
Use these tools to create personalized alerts, schedule automatic follow-ups, and keep your prospect and customer database up to date.
Bonus: Creating Linkedin content
LinkedIn is an effective tool for sharing professional posts and setting up external campaigns. By maintaining your profile and disseminating the right information, you can reach a wide audience and strengthen your brand’s credibility in your sector. Here you’ll find tips for improving your method and optimizing your LinkedIn profile for creating shares.
Maximize your outbound marketing campaigns
To improve your outbound campaigns on LinkedIn, you need to understand your audience’s expectations and interests. But it also requires a certain notoriety and recognized expertise.
The better known you and your brand are as an expert in your field, the more successful your outbound prospecting campaigns on Linkedin will be.
Optimize your Linkedin profile and create content
A well-kept account is crucial to attracting attention to your shares. Your profile photo should be professional, your headline captivating, and your resume should highlight your skills and experience.
It’s also vital to produce quality posts that engage your audience. Share articles, case studies, infographics and videos that illustrate your expertise and add value to your contacts.
Finally, the use of relevant hashtags and interaction with other users’ publications are essential to extend the reach of your shares. The consistency of your publications and the commitment you show are decisive in establishing a solid presence on LinkedIn. Take a look at our comprehensive tutorials on this subject in our Linkedin guides.
Conclusion
Prospecting on LinkedIn requires a method, personalization, and the use of automation tools coupled with MirrorProfiles accounts. The recommendations provided, from account optimization to the strategic use of InMails, are designed to increase your presence on this professional network. Hyper-segmentation, targeted messages and methodical follow-up are crucial. Integrate emailing for a multi-channel solution, and use CRM tools for prospect management. It’s time to put these tips into practice and convert your prospects into valuable business partners. If this sounds complicated, we’re here to help.
FAQ
How to prospect on LinkedIn?
A complete, attractive page is crucial for effective prospecting. You also need to expand your network strategically. On a corporate scale, the deployment of MirrorProfiles accounts will become necessary in 2024.
How to target prospects on LinkedIn?
To target prospects, you need to optimize your account with keywords and participate in groups in your sector. The use of advanced search filters allows you to better target according to specific criteria.
How do I find customers on LinkedIn?
To attract customers, it’s important to optimize your profile and define your target audience. The key lies in actively engaging with your network and sharing expert information.
