How to Get Started with LinkedIn B2B Lead Generation

LinkedIn B2B lead generation

For years, LinkedIn was a bit of a paradox for B2B marketers.

On the one hand, you absolutely had to have a presence on this social media platform. It was the one place online you could be sure your prospects visited. Everyone has a LinkedIn account, even if they’re not incredibly active on it.

On the other hand, LinkedIn’s advertising platform used to seem as though it was designed as some kind of cruel practical joke. Even though the site had all of your leads listed with a ton of valuable information about them, ads featured next-to-no helpful features and costed a small fortune. You would have been better off paying for a billboard outside your prospect’s office.

Fortunately, that’s changed. Today, if you know what you’re doing, LinkedIn B2B lead generation could easily be one of your company’s best investments.

3 Tips for Getting Started with LinkedIn B2B Lead Generation

Over time, you’ll learn how to modify your company’s LinkedIn B2B lead generation strategy to best serve your unique goals.

For now, concentrate on just getting started by using the following tips. The sooner you are able to put a strategy into place, the sooner you can turn it into a force multiplier for your marketing budget’s ROI.

1. Focus Your Company’s Page on Lead Generation

This may be a beginner’s tip, but it’s also one that 99% of companies seem to miss completely.

If you look at most company’s LinkedIn accounts, it’s as if they’re trying to put you to sleep. A lot of them are literally the About Us section from their website cut-and-pasted into the account. It’s all accurate information, of course, but who cares? If it’s not generating leads for the company, it’s not making any difference.

Do not make this simple mistake.

Instead, turn your company’s profile into a lead generation machine.

Use your header image to show off what you do. Include engaging content like testimonials or even advertise that you have case studies in your profile.

Follow through with your company description. Use this space to pitch what your B2B business has to offer. Remember, only about the first two lines are displayed until a lead clicks, so make them count.

2. Use Content to Gain Social Proof

Content marketing isn’t just for your B2B company’s blog. You can also share those posts on LinkedIn. In fact, you should be sharing them and even creating unique posts on LinkedIn as much as possible.

There are two reasons for this.

First, if your post resonates with a lead, that may be all it takes to have them visit your website and reach out about possibly becoming a client.

Second, the more your posts generate interests from your LinkedIn following, the more likes, comments, and shares you’re likely to receive. Not only will that feedback help to increase the exposure of your piece, but it will also go a long way toward building up your social proof.

When it becomes clear to prospects on LinkedIn that your company is viewed as an authority, LinkedIn B2B lead generation will become much easier.

Also, keep in mind that you don’t have to limit your efforts only to content you’ve actually created. Unlike your actual blog, you can share others’ content on your LinkedIn account and simply offer a few sentences of commentary.

3. Create Separate Showcases for Each Segment

Another tragically overlooked opportunity for LinkedIn B2B lead generation is their showcase pages. Even though they’ve been around since 2013, most companies don’t take advantage of them.

In short, these are subpages you can add to your company’s profile to promote any subsidiaries. However, even if your business doesn’t have any official subsidiaries, you can still use showcase pages to market your company’s different initiatives and business units.

For example, if your accounting-software company serves the needs of small businesses, medium businesses, and enterprises, you could create a showcase page for each. This specificity will draw more interest and automatically segments your audience right from LinkedIn.

LinkedIn B2B Lead Generation

LinkedIn B2B lead generation could become one of your company’s highest ROI investments, especially because all of the above tips are free. So, even if you’re still not ready to dedicate any amount of your budget to LinkedIn ads, this social-media platform could still be a goldmine.

For best results, add Hushly to the mix. Use LinkedIn to drive traffic to your site and then let our software turn those visitors into qualified leads. We’re so confident in what we’ve built that we actually guarantee lead generation and ABM conversions will increase by at least 51%.

Contact us today to see how.

How to Improve Your PPC Lead Generation Quality

PPC lead generation

Every B2B company should be actively investing in PPC lead generation.

While there’s a lot to be said for organic traffic and building a following on social media, PPC often offers the best possible ROI. If nothing else, it’s a great way to generate leads while you’re working on that social media following and impressive Google ranking.

Of course, even if you’ve already been investing in PPC, there’s always something more you can do.

3 Ways to Improve Your B2B Company’s PPC Lead Generation

It’s tempting to rest on your laurels when your PPC lead generation strategy is returning impressive results, but if you implement the three tips below, you may be surprised by how much better you’ll do in a very short period of time.

1. Try LinkedIn Ads

Despite the fact that LinkedIn is an absolutely essential social media channel for B2B companies, in the past, its advertising platform left a lot to be desired. While B2B marketers would use LinkedIn to share posts and build their network, they would generally take their budgets to Google Ads.

LinkedIn used to lack custom audiences, had almost no metrics whatsoever, and didn’t offer goal-based pricing. Twitter and Facebook’s advertising platforms have offered these for years.

And, on top of all that, LinkedIn ads used to cost a small fortune.

Fortunately, LinkedIn Ads have improved a lot over the last year. Now, they do feature account-, web-, and contact-targeting, and sponsored InMail campaigns.

Of course, these features are made all the better by the fact that LinkedIn is a social media platform dedicated solely to business. No matter what industry you’re in, your leads are most likely on LinkedIn.

So, if your PPC lead generation budget isn’t producing the ROI you want, one easy solution may be simply reallocating some of your funds to the new paid advertising powerhouse that is LinkedIn.

2. Focus Your Ads on Securing Email Addresses

B2B and B2C ads don’t work the same way.

If your company was B2C, you could probably just run paid ads right to your product, service, or landing page. In fact, you may not even need to invest in a PPC lead generation strategy. Your buying cycle would be so short that you could simply sell someone right from an ad.

This is almost never going to work in B2B. For one thing, B2B buying cycles have actually increased in length over the past five years. Then, there’s the fact that the average B2B company has to convince 6.8 decision-makers before they can close a sale.

All that is to say that if you’re trying to close deals with a PPC ad, you’re probably not seeing success. Instead, use those ads to secure leads’ email addresses. Bring them to a page where they can download the advertised lead magnet in exchange for their email address, and then use that address to continue your marketing efforts.

3. Pay Attention to Your Most Successful Times

There is no shortage of metrics you can monitor in order to improve the success of your B2B company’s PPC ads.

Unfortunately, most marketers miss one of the most important, especially in the world of B2B: the time-parameters when your ads will be displayed.

In Google Ads, this is known as “ad scheduling.” Facebook offers scheduling-by-time, too. Unfortunately, as far as LinkedIn has come, it doesn’t offer time-specific parameters for ads, but hopefully, that will change soon.

The reason this metric matters so much is that your prospects are probably most susceptible to your ads’ offers during certain times of the day. For many of you, this will mean 9-5, Monday through Friday, when they’re at work. During their personal lives, they might not care as much.

On the other hand, your market may be so busy that the only time they can ever consider their options is when things slow down outside of normal business hours.

More likely than not, you’ll find that your openings are even more specific. For example, Mondays and Fridays might be busy, and mornings may not be good. So, you’ll find that your PPC lead generation efforts work best Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays in the afternoon.

Always check back to see during which times your ads are most successful and then schedule them accordingly. 

Turning PPC Lead Generation into Easy Conversions

Implement those above strategies ASAP and your PPC lead generation strategies will begin paying off more than ever before.

Of course, many of your fellow B2B marketers have discovered another shortcut to the results they want. Our platform is so good at earning conversions, that we actually guarantee a 51% increase in lead-generation and ABM conversions.

Want to see how?

Contact us today for a free demo.