You can follow the steps below, or you can book our LinkedIn training and we’ll come and teach you all of the tips and tricks. Plus, we'll create a personalised activity plan, rewrite your team's profiles so they become their own lead magnets, keep your team motivated and on track, and loads more. Book a LinkedIn strategy call with me
Recently, one of our LinkedIn training clients generated 5 new leads in their first two weeks:
"I can't believe how much value you gave us in a few hours. The team knows what to do and feels confident enough to go and generate leads on LinkedIn. After two weeks we've already generated loads of interest - a lot more than we had in the years before the training." — Hassan Peymani, Head of iGaming, CreateFuture
My 6-step strategy for creating 19 leads per month from LinkedIn
The world of B2B is changing. Email providers are great at spotting cold outreach. So are phone providers. Teams don’t go to that many networking events. Even if you have the capacity to create a lot of content, 1 in every 8 Google searches results in a click (vs. 1 in 2 in 2015). For ChatGPT that shoots up to 1 in 250.
So we need something different. We need to be where our clients are hanging out. Here’s how to be there:
Create your plan
First, let’s figure out what you should be doing in your 30 minutes a day on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn has an algorithm. The algorithm’s job is to show you content you find interesting. It’s pretty good at that. What it isn’t good at (yet) is understanding who your potential customers are, and who’s on your list. So you end up distracted by irrelevant posts (even the interesting ones), rather than working towards your goals.
You need a plan that works:
- Write 15-25 comments on other people’s posts per day, roughly split into:
- 25% potential clients
- 25% current clients
- 10% partners/potential partners, or people who hang out with your ideal clients
- 20% LinkedIn ‘influencers’
- 20% thought leaders in your industry
- Post your own content 3-5 times per week (more on this later)
- Reply to comments on your post
- When potential clients are ready, send them a personalised DM, offering them a lead magnet, webinar, or something else valuable
- Keep track of all of this in a spreadsheet, or use The Lime One (it's much easier)
Know who to target
Everyone is on LinkedIn. 44.6 million people in the UK. And over 1.1 billion globally. That’s a lot of people you could waste your time targeting.
- Choose people who are active on LinkedIn and in your target audience first (the low hanging fruit)
- If you can’t find people who are active on LinkedIn, find the people you have in common and build relationships with them through commenting
- Send cold DMs - make them personal, and add a lot of value
- Go to their activity feed and select Comments or Reactions and you’ll see if they are active - from here you can follow them around LinkedIn and build a relationship with them
Turn your team’s profiles into their very own lead magnets
Now you have a commenting and content strategy, your tagline is acting like an ad all over LinkedIn. Here’s how people get to know you on LinkedIn: Profile picture > What you say (your comment or LinkedIn post) > headline > profile > buyer.
Most people treat their LinkedIn profile like a glorified resume. The smart ones make theirs a lead magnet. Here’s how:
- Before you even start, think about what you want the visitor to do next. Everything in your profile should funnel customers towards that
- Your profile picture is the first thing people see about you. Make it look approachable, high res, professional, and have a bit of your personality in it. No cropped group shots with a random shoulder floating in the periphery!
- Your headline is next. Make it title case (Capitalise Every Word To Help It Stand Out). Begin with what you do in an easy way to understand, no jargon words like ‘innovative’, ‘unique’, ‘digital transformation’. Try to mention your clients or their industry. If you can add data or trusted brand names too, put them in here, or your banner if you run out of space. And short client testimonials work well too. Or, hire us and we'll do it for you
- Don’t waste space in the Featured section with posts. Clients don’t need to see you’re capable of getting 100 likes. Instead, add banners and links to three resources you want your clients to buy or consume
- Your About section should speak to your customers’ pain points. Start by addressing one. Show you understand your clients by walking them through it for a few sentences. Then let them see there’s a way out, and that way is working with you. Sprinkle in a few personal details at the end to boost the know, like and trust vibes
- Your work section should have data - what have you achieved in each of your roles? Why should people trust you?
- Ask for recommendations from previous clients
Here's an example headline from one of our favourite clients:
P.S. If you feel stuck on creating a profile that generates leads, our LinkedIn training includes profile rewrites for all of your team - from me and my business partner (we’ve worked for the likes of TED, Experian B2B, Booking.com, LexisNexis and Boots. Book a LinkedIn strategy call with me.
Keep it consistent
LinkedIn rewards consistency. As you know, so do leads. Keeping yourself consistent is one challenge. Keeping your team consistent is an even bigger one.
Here’s how we do it:
- Give them a personalised activity plan
- Measure activity on LinkedIn alongside leads generated so you know what’s working
- Train the algorithm by unfollowing content from people you don’t want to see in your feed every 1-3 months. Show the algorithm what you like by engaging with the right posts
- Or, forget the algorithm and just use your list of people to follow up with instead
- Share case studies of people who are doing well on LinkedIn (and make time for your team to share best practices with each other)
- Provide weekly tips and encouragement until using LinkedIn well becomes a habit
LinkedIn content formula (even if your company doesn’t create content you can share on LinkedIn)
- Create a list of publications, people, and social media accounts who share interesting content related to your industry
- Develop your own ideas and opinions on these topics
- Write posts with one thought or idea at a time (don’t cram loads of value in, even though it seems helpful to your potential clients - this isn’t how people consume content anymore)
- Add a selfie or picture (selfies or pics of yourself perform best. We can help you build the confidence to do this!)
- Add a hook - this is what will make people click Read more
- Add an ending question to help people engage with your post (for more impressions, and to open up the conversation)
- Add one personal post per week - if you don’t know what to write about, spend some time reading other people’s content and take inspiration from that
- Add one sales post per week using our LinkedIn sales post formula
- Write a list of all the customer problems you can think of relating to your service/product (you should be able to get to 80 or more)
- Mark off all of the problems you solve
- Next to these, flip the problem around e.g. ‘I don’t know how to keep my team consistent on LinkedIn’ turns into ‘How to keep your team consistent on LinkedIn’
- Create a three month content calendar so you’re never stuck for ideas again
Bonus: Apart from making leads directly from LinkedIn, you’ll also be able to build your personal brand, which means speaking opportunities (if you want them), networking opportunities, and useful contacts.
Does this all feel a bit overwhelming? Our LinkedIn training takes you through step-by-step, builds you an activity plan, and sets you up for years of LinkedIn lead generation. You won't feel overwhelmed once we've got you started.