Choosing the right LinkedIn subscription is a crucial question that many professionals ask themselves, and rightly so. If you’re reading this article, it’s because you’re also wondering about this subject. Every professional has specific needs, which means that one type of subscription may be more suitable than another. Each subscription offers specific features that can facilitate the creation of more precise databases, whether you’re looking to recruit or prospect.
LinkedIn Subscriptions for Prospecting
MirrorProfiles has observed that most of its customers use its services for prospecting. Here are the LinkedIn subscriptions specifically dedicated to this use:
- Free LinkedIn account: This is the basic option for creating a profile, connecting with other professionals, receiving messages, applying for jobs, joining groups and viewing other users’ profiles. In short, you know him!
- LinkedIn Premium Career ($39.99/month): This subscription is optimal for job seekers, but not for prospectors. It gives access to information on who has viewed your profile, allows you to send direct messages to people outside your network, view job offers to which other candidates have applied, and includes a Premium badge on your profile. No way!
- LinkedIn Premium Business ($59.99/month): Aimed at professionals and businesses, this subscription offers tools to grow your network and your business. It gives you access to company analyses, online courses, the ability to contact people outside your network and all the features of the Career plan BUT, and this is why I don’t recommend this subscription, there are no additional filters!
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator Professional ($99.99/month): This is a prospecting tool designed for salespeople. It provides access to lead recommendations, advanced search features, company data and the ability to contact people outside your network. A must!
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator Team ($149.99/month): offers all the features of the Professional version, but also enables teamwork. This includes team reports, synchronization with CRMs and lead tracking features for multiple users.
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator Enterprise (Custom Pricing): This is the most advanced version of Sales Navigator, designed for large companies. It includes all the features of the Team version, plus lead tracking for an unlimited number of users, and advanced features for large companies.
For quality prospecting, Sales Navigator is really the only option. Premium Business offers very few additional benefits. It is therefore advisable to invest in a more expensive, but higher-quality subscription.
The major advantage of Sales Navigator is the increased number of filters. Without this LinkedIn subscription, you cannot use the double filtering technique.
The double filter technique :
Double filtering is an advanced search technique enabled by the LinkedIn Sales Navigator subscription. This involves 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 in 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 several filters at the same time, limiting the precision of your search. For further information, please consult this article.
The importance of effective segmentation
Effective segmentation is crucial to optimizing prospecting and marketing efforts. It enables you to target potential customers more precisely, by grouping them according to different criteria, such as industry, company size, geographical location, specific needs, and so on.
This approach makes it possible 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.
In short, good segmentation is essential to maximize the return on investment of prospecting and marketing actions.
The importance of segmentation is not limited to prospecting, it is also crucial for recruitment campaigns. It’s important to remember that LinkedIn’s original purpose was recruitment, not prospecting. This professional social network collects data on individuals, whether or not they are currently employed, making it an invaluable resource for recruitment campaigns. Let’s take a look at subscriptions designed specifically for recruitment.
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 Recruiter Lite for several important reasons. Before detailing these reasons, it is 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 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.
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.
- Advanced search filters: Recruiter Lite offers specific recruitment filters, 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 interesting potential candidates.
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 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
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Conclusion
Choosing the right LinkedIn subscription is essential to optimize your prospecting and recruitment efforts. For prospecting, Sales Navigator is clearly the most effective option, thanks to its advanced search and automatic lead generation functions. 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 recruitment. 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 for 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. It’s a good idea to take a close look at the features of each subscription and assess whether they match your needs before making a decision.
