Little Known Ways to Find New Prospects on LinkedIn

Like a chocolate factory is a gold mine to kids, LinkedIn is a gold mine to professionals looking to generate new leads in their business.

 

With over 756 million registered users and 50 million company pages, LinkedIn is the largest business directory that you can use to generate clients for your business.

Past are the times when you used mostly the phone to introduce yourself until the successful sales closing call, now LinkedIn releases you from cold calling and lets you be more personal when it comes to sales connections.

 

1) Create A Buyer Persona

Buyer persona refers to a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer. It answers the question of who is my target customer? 

What is their education level, income level, geographical location, social setting, and other unique demographic features that represent your ideal customer?

 

Consider demographics, motivations, behavior patterns, and goals when creating a buyer persona. As a general rule of thumb, making a buyer persona involves analyzing your current customers and developing a list of requirements that you feel define your potential ideal customer. 

 

The more detailed you are, the better your chances of getting the best buyer persona.

 

Follow these steps to create a buyer persona:

●  Step 1: Conduct thorough audience research. This is the first step in creating a buyer persona. The study should be based on data and not the opinions or views of your marketing team. While conducting research, consider factors like age, location, language, purchasing power, spending habits, interests, stage of life, and challenges.

 

●  Step 2: Identify the prospect's pain point. What is hindering them from achieving success? What challenges are they struggling with? You can participate in social media sentiment analysis to identify pain points to uncover these challenges.

 

●  Step 3: Identify the prospect's goals. Like pain points, objectives refer to the aspiration, vision, or accomplishments that your prospects work hard to achieve in life. The purposes identified might not tie directly to your product or service, but you might offer them a bridge to success.

 

●  Step 4: Understand how your product or service can help prospects. After understanding customer goals and pain points, outline features in your product or service that can help them overcome these challenges. Meeting customer expectations should not be about the features of your product but the benefits your prospects can obtain from using your product.

 

 2) Use Keywords To Connect With Prospects Meeting Your Buyer Persona.

After outlining your ideal customer, connect with the perfect prospect. LinkedIn gives you unique opportunities to connect with the perfect target prospect, but you must appropriately use the tools. The first is sending connection requests to ideal prospects.

 

You can identify the terms describing the people you want to connect with using advanced keyword research.

 

For instance, if your buyer persona describes small business owners, think about the words that small business owners can use on LinkedIn.

 

Examples are words like the owner, founder, entrepreneur, partner, director, and managing director. Then, using the LinkedIn search bar, type these words, and include your ideal location.

 

For instance, if you want to connect with business owners in Austin, type the words' owner Austin' on LinkedIn. LinkedIn will display all people using the title owner on their LinkedIn profile when you do this.

 

To increase your odds of connecting with your ideal buyer, include a customized message on your LinkedIn connection request message. 

According to LinkedIn, the acceptance rate for connections with a personalized message range from 74% to 85%.

 

This implies that if you sent 100 connection requests with a personalized message, you are likely to get accepted by 85 people. Draft a simple personalized message like:

 

"Hi, Eric, I learned a lot from your social selling tools; I would love to connect with you to continue learning more."

 

Your message should be personal, simple, and brief; keep it under two sentences. Remember, the aim is to connect, not sell, or invite the prospect to follow you on social media.

 

3) Use The Newsfeed To Find Warm Leads.

Besides actively prospecting on LinkedIn, you can use LinkedIn tools to get warm leads. These are some ways you can use newsfeed to connect with prospects on LinkedIn.

 

Using the 'people also viewed sidebar,' you can connect with people who share similar interests, careers, and industry or education backgrounds. 

Using this sidebar, you can clone your customers, implying that you can connect with people who have a similar profile to your best customer. To do this, visit your best customer profile and look at the right.

 

The small box showing people also viewed will show the names and titles of all people who have a profile similar to your best customer.

 

A 'prospect in a new role' is another excellent source of ideal prospects. The LinkedIn notification shows opportunities to start a new job. Most people are motivated to change their new roles to prove their competence and abilities.

 

For instance, a new marketing director might be focused on increasing the company's digital presence, which presents a digital marketer with an opportunity to sell. Don't sell on your first interaction once you identify the prospect with a new job.

 

Instead, take time to congratulate the new prospect on the new role. After congratulating them, wait for three days, and then ask something about their new role, like how do you like the current digital media strategy at the company?

 

If the prospect responds, wait for a few more days, and share a resource you feel might be helpful to the prospect. The resource can be a video, eBook, article, or a link to a zoom session. Continue nurturing the relationship until you feel the prospect is ready to hear your sales pitch.

 

Another way to use the news feed is to leverage your first-degree connection to build a network. First, using the notification bar, check who among your relationship has recently connected with someone who is a good prospect for you. Then, using LinkedIn introductions, ask your connection to introduce their new connection.

 

If the connection has the same role as you, they might pitch to their new relationship and be hesitant to introduce you. Send a connection request to the prospect and include an excellent connection request message if this is the case.

 

4) Analyze Competitors' Network

One of the lowest hanging fruits in marketing is competitor's customers. While developing your buyer persona, you will discover that this customer is already being served elsewhere by your competitors, and you must outdo competition to gain a customer.

 

To connect with a competitor's network, connect with your competitors. Browse through their networks and send a connection request to their network.

 

Most marketers consider connecting with their clients a priority on LinkedIn; this gives you access to thousands of connections already familiar with the product or service you are selling.

 

Remember, the best way to win in any marketing strategy is to focus on increasing the size of the pie, as opposed to subdividing the existing pie.

 

After connecting with your competitor's clients, this implies that you should focus on selling complementary services or stimulating a new demand instead of poaching the client from your competiton.

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