Table of contents:
- What is LinkedIn Outreach
- How to Outreach on LinkedIn
- LinkedIn Outreach Tips & Tricks
- Four Things to Improve Your LinkedIn Outreach
- Outreachly for Automated LinkedIn Messaging
About 94% of marketers use LinkedIn to share their lead generation content, making it the top social media channel for B2B marketing. In addition, companies who leverage LinkedIn outreach say they get 80% of their leads from the platform. It is not something B2B marketers should overlook.
However, converting a sizable number of the millions of decision-makers on the platform requires skill. This comprehensive guide defines LinkedIn outreach and goes deeper to teach strategies and best practices marketers can leverage for success. You will also find LinkedIn outreach message templates for different use cases.
What is LinkedIn Outreach
LinkedIn outreach is the process of cold messaging potential leads on the LinkedIn platform. The LinkedIn InMail messaging feature facilitates direct communication with other users, specifically those who are your connections. Hence, even though a LinkedIn page for your company is needed to establish yourself as an authoritative business on the platform, you can also use your account to connect with potential leads.
What kind of outreach is necessary for proper lead generation?
As previously mentioned, LinkedIn outreach is all about messaging the right people on LinkedIn InMail. If you are using a free account, the scope of your reach will be limited to the following:
- Your connections
- Your connections’ LinkedIn connections (referred to as 2nd connections)
- Members of your LinkedIn groups
- Other employees at your organisation
This leaves you with two options: sending connection requests to potential leads or signing up for LinkedIn Premium, the paid version of the platform which allows you to message anyone on LinkedIn.
Using LinkedIn for prospecting new clients means adding it to your sales funnel. Hence, you need a well-thought-out strategy to establish your brand, present your offers, and pick out the right connections.
LinkedIn cold outreach can generate a good ROI if done right. You will also need to know how to get email from LinkedIn. To do this, go to the user’s profile and click on the “More” button under their name and profile details. You will get a pop-up with the email and social media information. Suppose you already have email addresses you want to use for LinkedIn outreach. In that case, you can leverage the LinkedIn Sales Navigator for Gmail extension to go directly to the prospect’s LinkedIn account.
How to Outreach on LinkedIn
Now that we have covered what you need to undertake LinkedIn outreach let’s discuss the strategy. Overall, you need to:
- Identify who your target market is
- Lookup LinkedIn users who meet the criteria
- Engage with potential leads and build a relationship
- Send connection requests and engage through InMail
- Send offers through direct messages and qualify leads
- Follow up to convert leads
You can read a detailed guide on connecting with people on LinkedIn here. It shares step-by-step instructions with screenshots.
LinkedIn Outreach Tips & Tricks
Build relationships first
One of the most effective tactics in LinkedIn lead generation is building relationships with potential prospects. You can build a relationship with another user in several ways, not limited to interacting with their posts, sharing insights, and showing appreciation when they do the same. It helps people warm up to you, making it easier to convert them later compared to simply sending them a message out of the blue.
Use personalisation
Impersonal copy and paste messages can put off your connections. You need to make them feel special and show that you care about the problem you want to solve for them. Personalising your messages is quite simple. You can use the recipient’s name, include something that may interest them, and capitalise on the common ground like mutual connections or mutual LinkedIn groups.
Do your research first
LinkedIn takes spam very seriously and limits the number of accounts you can send connection requests a day. Therefore, you must plan out who you will approach and send messages to.
Make a clear value proposition
The outreach message wording influences response rates. Your focus should be on what value the prospect gets from the deal. Hence, expand more on use cases for their industry, considering company size and geographical location.
Use multimedia content
In addition to text, you can also send illustrations to help leads visualise what your offer will mean for them. You can include pie charts with statistics and your research. Some marketers even make personalised videos to help sell their idea to the prospect.