Marketing outreach has been an effective way to promote businesses and get leads for many years. What about LinkedIn outreach? With the popularity of LinkedIn, it has become crucial for B2B and B2C companies to find and reach business partners or potential customers.
Besides, LinkedIn outreach proved to be a universal tool, applied not only for lead generation but for promoting a product, nurturing, creating an image, and even networking.
Read on to learn how LinkedIn outreach works and get some outreach tips that may help you interest your LinkedIn prospects.
How to Use Linkedin for Business Development
Before jumping to the principles of LinkedIn outreach, you should consider the unspoken rules used by LinkedIn marketers, specialists, and experts.
This social media aims to provide an environment for specialists where they can communicate, share insights and seek business solutions. Therefore, to develop your business, handle a LinkedIn sales strategy, or be able to do cold outreach on Linkedin, you should:
Work on credibility
First, create a profile or page to present you, your product, and your operation. Try to fill as many sections as possible, including the summary sections and those relating to your experience, skills, and role.
Focus on expertise
Also, it is crucial to show that you are an expert, a professional that can provide solutions, insights, and recommendations. The expertise contemplates that you have experience and know how to solve issues.
The impression you project when presenting or promoting your product would contribute to the solution you are offering.
Be flexible
LinkedIn offers great opportunities if you are flexible enough with its tools. Thus, use ads, post materials, find Linkedin emails and send invitations. LinkedIn significantly depends on networking and building relationships.
For instance, you can use an automated LinkedIn outreach to get to the leads within your LinkedIn sales strategy. You can also comment on an expert’s piece, get their reaction and use it as an occasion to start cooperation that later will result in higher coverage or visibility.
Apply automation
Do not hesitate to use different tools and automation software. Sales Navigator will likely add to your operations, offering advanced filters and additional InMails effective for cold emailing on LinkedIn.
Also, you can use LinkedIn scapers or email finders. Here is an excellent example of the latter:https://getprospect.com/linkedIn-email-finder-chrome-extension. It allows getting corporate emails from people’s pages and LinkedIn searches.
Connect with people
Other than that, finding occasions to enlarge your network and build relationships is crucial. Why? The more connections you have, the better your access to other leads. In particular, the profiles of specific decision-makers can only be seen if you have 2nd or 3rd connections to them.
It is vital for LinkedIn outreach, as to get to them, you will need to get access to their connections first.
LinkedIn Outreach: How to Reach out to Someone on Linkedin
Now, as you are aware of the main principles for any marketing operation on LinkedIn, it is time to switch to the steps on how to handle the LinkedIn outreach strategy. You can use it to get leads, promote your products, contact influencers, or get backlinks.
Define the goal
You can see that this tactic can be very flexible. Usually, it is used by B2B marketers to promote products by providing offers, guides, and recommendations. However, there are other objectives that a business may want to reach: cooperation with experts, guest blogging, polling, or networking.
Before any LinkedIn outreach action, ensure that it adds to the ultimate goal. From there, you can define the target audience and design templates.
Study the target persona
The next step is to determine an ideal profile of a prospect you are to target. You should consider what people do, where they work, how they can contribute to your operation, and what value you can offer to interest them.
Based on that, you can find LinkedIn prospects suitable for your strategic goal.
Gather data
Next, before contacting LinkedIn targets, you should browse their profiles and collect the data that can be useful for reaching out. It refers to the information mentioned in their posts, profile details, or contacts, like an article, occupation, or email.
For instance, you can reflect on their post in the outreach message or mention their issues in a new position. Use the data for personalization and finding common subjects to connect.
Pick the way to contact
After you have all the data, select the most appropriate way to connect with Linkedin prospects. You can use a direct message, send an invitation with a message, or use an InMail (the latter has limitations for use).
Lastly, you can find people’s corporate emails or extract them with the Linkedin email finder mentioned above.
Each of these ways is suitable for different goals. For instance, if you want to launch a bulk email cold outreach on LinkedIn, you will need an email. If you decide to follow up, InMail will be a great option.
Have an explicit CTA
Lastly, ensure that your concluding lines encourage the person to answer you. Importantly, your outreach sequence needs a straightforward CTA referring to the goal of your outreach.
If you want to sell a product, end with a line asking to arrange a demo. If you seek cooperation, ask what the prospect thinks about your offer.
How to Prospect on Linkedin
Before writing or emailing LinkedIn targets, you should find them first. Much depends on the techniques and concepts used in prospecting on LinkedIn. In other words, to make your operation effective, you should first find your LinkedIn prospects.
What are the outreach tips in this regard?
Apply advanced search
The platform offers various filters allowing you to search by position, company, location, and keywords. That way, you can look for CEOs or managers of targeted companies or those attending or studying at specific events or institutions.
Use the “people also viewed” or “people who..” functions
Another tactic to find your targets is concerned with certain LinkedIn functions. When you browse a person’s profile, you will be shown a section on the right side with similar profiles.
If you are doing targeted cold emailing on Linkedin, it can grant you people falling under your customer persona category. Also, if you look for a lead by a keyword, you will be shown popular people who talk on a certain topic/keyword in your search below the main bar.
It is a way to find the experts you need for cooperation, promotion, or content production.
Research via Groups
You can join groups where your LinkedIn prospects are likely to hang out. If you interest them with comments or posts, they can write to you and connect with you.
Also, you can do social listening there to improve your understanding of the target audience and find new people who may need your solutions.
Target new roles
Lastly, you can target people in new positions. If you are seeking a person for B2B cooperation, your automated LinkedIn outreach should target people who get new roles, primarily executive or managerial.
They are likely to seek new products and solutions for their businesses, and they can find room for your product or service.
How to Use Linkedin for Sales Leads
In the end, even though LinkedIn lead generation usually uses lead magnets, lead ads, and content marketing to attract leads, cold on LinkedIn remains an important tactic used by lead generation specialists.
Incorporating the outreach into any Linkedin sales strategy requires you to:
Have a good-looking profile
Make sure you have a structured and appealing profile that states who you are and what you do. Besides, it would help if you defined how you relate to the company and products you represent.
Post frequently
You need to post facts and insights often if you want to use a LinkedIn profile as a starting point for your cold email campaign. That way, you engage with the people and become visible.
From there, they become more interested in your product or you, meaning it will be easier for you to approach them. Also, posting means that you have an active profile, adding to your credibility and image.
Try to get people out of LinkedIn
When you are about to reach out to the leads, try to get people into your sales cycle. It can start on LinkedIn, yet, if the LinkedIn prospects subscribe to your email newsletter, you will have more of their attention.
That’s why some experts extract email addresses from LinkedIn and send emails directly to the corporate inbox, using LinkedIn as an occasion to introduce themselves.
Some say that in terms of the email vs LinkedIn message debate, InMail messages offer greater open rates. Well, it may be true. Yet, they are limited and get to the personal inboxes that people check at home and, thus, can be ignored in regard to the click-through stage.
In the end, if you have a long message, use email. If not, write a direct message and get straight to the point.
As a result, these outreach tips will help you to create a worthy image, find the right targets, make a good impression before contacting LinkedIn targets, and increase the chances for successful communication.
Yet, do remember that the choice of the right message depends on the goal you are pursuing.
Author BIO
Vlada Korzun
+4 years I have been working in content marketing mainly in B2B, international market. I’ve already had experience with 10 long-term projects (both freelance and full-time). Now I work in a SaaS for salespeople and take side projects. I mentored 3 people, and continue sharing my knowledge in various forms.
