In 2021, Linkedin’s ability to generate business leads, revenue and synergy between sales and marketing teams has taken root in the minds of many entrepreneurs. Concretely, prospecting on Linkedin has become an essential element of the B2B development strategy . You can get in touch with LinkedIn Ads Agency in Washington
Gone are the days of the old-fashioned B2B salesperson, clinging to his phone all day or driving his car, who wears himself out coping with rejections from prospects to achieve his goals.
Content at the service of prospecting: the synergy that performs on LinkedIn
The key to social selling is to convert the power of content published on social platforms into commercial performance. However, LinkedIn, due to its B2B uniqueness in the world of social networks, offers an unparalleled opportunity to combine content creation and prospecting .
The principle?
Use the publication of content on a personal profile from an “inbound” perspective , to create a qualified audience, then prospect this audience in private messages . Prospecting is therefore first through automation tools, then in an increasingly personalized way as one progresses through the sales funnel.
And, in terms of prospecting, LinkedIn has serious assets to highlight :
- It drives over 50% of social traffic to B2B sites.
- It is 277% more effective than Facebook and Twitter at generating leads.
- According to B2B marketers, it generates 80% of their Social Media leads.
- Influencers are responsible for less than 10% of the 10,000 most shared posts.
- Only 1% of the 260 million monthly users publish and share billions of impressions there.
As you will have understood, LinkedIn has everything from a B2B prospecting Eldorado. To which everyone can claim, even from scratch. But this is beginning to be known and the gold is already beginning to run out compared to the growing number of researchers. So, to take real advantage of the social selling opportunities offered by the number 1 network of professionals, you have to stand out with a quality personal communication strategy.
Social Selling and personalization: the winning combination
Today’s digital world is saturated with marketing content. All companies are waging a battle for visibility and engagement, which is increasingly turning into content inflation . The consequence is that a brand must today multiply the appearances with a target to anchor itself in its memory. We usually talk about 5 to 7 impressions needed for this.
Hence the growing interest in social selling, which makes it possible to combine recurring content and an acquisition strategy .
However, who says “social selling” says “social”, and the natural structure of social networks promotes person-to-person exchange.
Also, to get the best impact on LinkedIn, keep in mind the need to personalize the creation of content and interactions with the commercial target . In most cases, this means putting the personal profile (rather than the company page) at the heart of the strategy.
LinkedIn itself highlights the effectiveness of this approach , recalling that:
- Content shared by collaborators receives 8 times more engagement than content published on brand channels.
- Company posts are shared 24 times less often than those of their own employees.
Clearly, posting on LinkedIn with a personal profile rather than a company page gives you every chance to take your lead generation to another dimension.
The LinkedIn revolution in lead generation
This revolution concerns both the quantitative aspect and the qualitative aspect of lead generation .
And as much to tell you that, since 2016, the gap has widened further.
But, integrating social selling into your business strategy also means obtaining more qualified leads , especially on LinkedIn, where leads generated by individual employee initiatives convert 7 times more than leads generated by employee initiatives. companies (source LinkedIn).
More leads and better leads : this is what a LinkedIn prospecting strategy based on the profiles of your collaborators can bring you.
We then often feel the temptation to introduce automation into this approach to systematize it. It can be a good idea, but not in any way…
What place today for automated prospecting on LinkedIn?
If you follow the news of digital marketing, you may be aware that LinkedIn announced in May 2021 a change that had the effect of a bomb in the microcosm of social selling: a limit of 100 invitations per week has been introduced in the functionality of adding contacts.
100 invitations per week still equals 20 invitations per day, which is enough to continuously feed your salespeople’s contact book. But that’s nothing compared to the number of invitations that some companies have been able to generate in recent months thanks to automation tools .
But, all-out automation is precisely what LinkedIn wanted to limit. So, to develop effective prospecting on the platform, you will have to play the game.
LinkedIn is above all a social network and intends to remain so. Quality individual interactions must therefore remain at the heart of your strategy. For this you need:
- Create original, interesting and useful content for your target audience (the best way to receive invitations instead of having to send them)
- Interact with other users’ posts
- Target your invitations as much as possible, to create a qualified network
- Personalize your private messages
If you do that, there’s no reason to deprive yourself of adding a little automation to the wheels. Especially since there are technical means to circumvent the limit of 100 weekly invitations , “hacks”. But, we agree, we didn’t tell you anything!
An opportunity to put customer retention back at the heart of the business strategy
It’s an issue that we don’t talk about much when we talk about social selling, but customer retention is also one of LinkedIn’s strengths recently highlighted.
Naturally, when we think of “prospecting”, we turn more to the acquisition of new customers than to the retention of current customers and LinkedIn prospecting is no exception to the rule. However, we have already discussed on this blog the potential of a marketing strategy centered on Customer Lifetime Value .
Consider how posting recurring content can be an easy way to keep in touch with your customers . Through this channel, while prospecting for new contacts, you can continue to assert, month after month, your expertise with your customers, but above all inform them of new offers likely to meet one of their needs which is perhaps not yet be processed.
Posting weekly on LinkedIn is a bit like sending out a new weekly newsletter. Except that your LinkedIn posts have a real chance of being read and generating engagement!
Why not take advantage of this opportunity offered to you to build loyalty at the same time as you prospect ?
Conclusion
Even if prospecting on LinkedIn is no longer the Eldorado it could have been two years ago, it remains an unrivaled way to scale up your B2B business strategy , while maintaining a high level of personalization. Social selling on LinkedIn allows in particular to:
- Create a powerful and results-oriented synergy between your sales and marketing teams
- Combine the impact of personalization with the power of intelligent automation
- Leading acquisition and loyalty
