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LinkedIn Lead Automation Pros & Cons and a Checklist to Follow
LinkedIn lead generation is trending as the platform currently generates 3x more conversions than Twitter & Facebook. Linkedin also beats Google Ads by up to 28% on Cost per Click. So if you’re not using LinkedIn for marketing and lead generation, you’re leaving a tremendous growth opportunity on the table.
Lead generation with Linkedin can be manual or partially automated. With LinkedIn lead generation automation, you use specific digital tools to automate lead-generation activities on the platform – finding leads, sending connection requests, sales, follow-up messages, etc.
Many businesses prefer this approach because it seems to save time and effort. But there are still debates amongst marketers on whether to automate marketing completely and what level of automation is suitable for LinkedIn.
This article will help you decide whether or not to automate interactions with high-value customers on a professional B2B platform like LinkedIn. You’ll learn about the pros and cons of manual/automated LinkedIn lead generation and find a checklist to ensure you do everything right.
Manual Versus Automated LinkedIn Lead-Gen: Pros & Cons
What does it take to get a lead on LinkedIn? If you do your LinkedIn marketing manually, here’s what it may look like:
- First, you’ll search for leads based on your target criteria/audience.
- Then you’ll send connection requests along with enticing invitation messages, explaining why you’d be a value-add.
- Next, you’ll create and send marketing messages, sales offers, or advertisements to your existing connections, one after the other. Linkedin allows up to 30,000 connections, so that’s some work to do!
- Create engaging, professional content to get the attention of prospects.
- Now you can prepare and send follow-up messages to your potential leads to keep the conversations going.
The results are sparkling, but the work seems too much for the average marketer. Yet is this enough reason to run towards LinkedIn lead generation tools?
Let’s find out.
Pros & cons of manual LinkedIn lead-gen
| Pros | Cons |
| Build personal relationships: Manual LinkedIn lead-gen allows you to connect with current and potential leads, building warm, solid relationships. | Monotony equals time wastage: Sending the same LinkedIn invitation, promotional messages, or self-introduction to hundreds of thousands of potential leads is strenuous, monotonous, and time-consuming. |
| Learn about your target audience: Manually researching and looking for leads on LinkedIn forces you better understand who your audience is and what you can offer them in exchange for their time or money. | Time-consuming: Manual lead generation with LinkedIn is time-consuming. To get a single lead, you’ll have to go through the entire cycle from finding them to retaining their interest in your business. |
| Personalisation is critical in marketing. With manual lead generation, you have the opportunity to personalise all your messages to hit your audience where it matters. | Requires too much effort and know-how: The manual lead generation activity can be overwhelming if you start with LinkedIn marketing. You’ll have to learn how to find leads, send connection requests, promotional messages, etc. |
| Leaves room for creativity and flexibility: Manual lead generation encourages you to master LinkedIn inside out. You may even discover hidden tactics and best practices to increase your results. | |
| Connecting with high-value customers: Speaking to high-value customers, especially in the B2B space, requires human intuition, respect, and common sense. Manual lead generation means you can have one-on-one conversations with the customers that make a difference. | |
Pros & cons of automated LinkedIn lead-gen
There’s a common misconception about LinkedIn lead automation, particularly with newbie marketers. LinkedIn automation software doesn’t mean that you’re doing nothing except watching your numbers go up.
You’ll be actively involved in picking the right tools for different tasks, defining your target audience, writing your business invitation requests, and creating your marketing messages or sales offers. Besides, automation opportunities in LinkedIn are limited on the platform’s side, so you won’t achieve full automation and bulk messaging.
| Pros | Cons |
| Saves time and effort: Automating LinkedIn lead generation completely removes the repetitive processes of identifying prospects, sending connections requests, and promotional messages. It reduces the time and effort required to get a single lead. | Risk of getting banned: LinkedIn has policies, and when you’re automating, you might violate them. Therefore, finding a service provider who considers LinkedIn’s best practices is essential. |
| Increases Reach: LinkedIn automation tools allow you to reach a wider audience with your messages. It is almost impossible for the average marketer to send thousands of promotional messages to prospects. LinkedIn is ideal for increasing your reach. | Hard to personalise: Personalising LinkedIn messages when using LinkedIn lead generation tools is tricky. Advanced tools like Outreachly help you narrow down your audience according to demographics, but the result may feel like forced personalisation if not done right. |
| Precise targeting: With the help of LinkedIn lead generation software, you can target specific audiences. | Costly: Although cost-effective when using the right tools, Automated LinkedIn lead generation still requires a cut from your budget. |
| Tracking analytics: LinkedIn automation tools provide you with much more valuable, detailed insights on the performance of your content and LinkedIn campaigns. | |
Common concerns related to automated communications
Personalisation is the biggest concern and challenge with automated communication. How do you speak to a mass audience while maintaining the feeling of a one-on-one conversation?
The working solution to this is the concept of a target market. Split your audience into small categories based on demographic and other features. Then send targeted messages to each category. LinkedIn lead automation with AI capabilities makes it easy to narrow down target demographics.
Which Areas Benefit the Most From LinkedIn Lead-Gen Automation?
Here are areas of your lead-generation campaigns and strategy that will benefit the most from LinkedIn Automation:
- Researching and finding potential leads
- Sending connection requests
- Promotional messages, sales offers, etc.
- Data Analytics
These smaller bits of your lead-generation process gain the most from LinkedIn automation tools.
5 Reasons Why You Should Automate Your LinkedIn Lead Generation
You should automate your LinkedIn generation if:
- You do not want to manually and repetitively connect and interact with present and future leads.
- You want to increase your chances of getting new leads by carrying out mass campaigns without sacrificing personalisation. Platforms like Outreachly allow you to narrow your audience according to demographics, so your messages are relevant.
- Get better statistical insights about your marketing efforts’ impact through detailed charts and reports.
- Experiment with different templates for connection requests and follow-up messages to discover which ones garner the most responses, making A/B testing easier.
- Integrate your LinkedIn lead generation to other marketing tools to bring a truly omnichannel approach to your LinkedIn marketing.
A Complete Checklist for Successful LinkedIn Marketing Automation
Here’s an essential checklist to consider for your Automated LinkedIn lead generation efforts:
- Build a fundamental understanding of how LinkedIn lead generation works.
- Find tips and tricks to get effective results.
- Set goals and KPIs
- Pick the right tools – Ideally, one that does it all
- Integrate your LinkedIn lead generation software to other marketing services you use.
- Research your target audience and build your target demographic.
- Split your audience into small specific categories.
- Prepare your templates for connection requests and promotional messages
- Prepare your templates and formats for LinkedIn posts.
- Track your KPIs and make adjustments.
Why Use Outreachly to Optimise Your LinkedIn Campaigns
So you’ve decided to invest in LinkedIn lead generation automation to optimise your team’s performance and maximise your returns. Choosing the right automation tools at the right pricing is not easy. You also want a complete solution that puts everything together.
We strongly recommend Outreachly – A complete and efficient LinkedIn marketing automation tool.
Outreachly is a LinkedIn automation tool driven by AI for lead generation. It is a social automation platform that uses artificial intelligence to simulate human behaviour online by selecting the optimal LinkedIn connection message based on your prospect’s profile. We can scale your leads and help you get more sales discussions through higher response rates for your content and messages.
Outreachly can also handle the complete lead generation process as part of our done-for-you solution.
Schedule a demo at outreachly.ai right now!
Final Thoughts
Even though you can do a lot with manual lead generation on LinkedIn, automation tools open advanced optimisation and sales opportunities.
With a complete LinkedIn automation tool like Outreachly, it’s easy to see how most marketers are winning at lead generation using the world’s leading B2B marketplace. Get in touch now for a free demo of the Outreachly LinkedIn lead generation software.
