How Professional B2B Marketers Can Use LinkedIn to Generate Qualified Leads. by Sam Langsley

How Professional B2B Marketers Can Use LinkedIn to Generate Qualified Leads:
When you or your sales agents have finally found a company that has all the characteristics of an ideal client, much of the work has been accomplished. That’s because generating the qualified lead that brought someone to the table in the first place required a lot of resources and a great deal of planning. With that in mind, it’s important to look for any tools or methods for lead generation that can improve your chances of meeting future clients.
Some marketing gurus will tell you that social media is the ultimate tool for this. There’s no denying that platforms like Facebook and Twitter are useful for staying in touch with contacts and sharing information with potential leads, however, B2B inbound marketing is sometimes such a scattershot activity that Facebook and similar services can often be a waste of  valuable time.
According to research by HubSpot, most inbound marketing professionals agree. In fact, respondents to their survey reported driving 277 percent more leads when they focused their efforts and resources on LinkedIn instead of Facebook, Twitter and other platforms that truly embrace the “social” in social media.
The reason for this isn’t necessarily that you can drive more leads on LinkedIn – it’s that the service’s leads are of a much higher quality than on other websites. As a result, you should think long and hard about changing up the way you perform lead generation online by trading up for a LinkedIn profile. Here are some invaluable tips for doing so.

Actively search people out

Anyone who’s tried to use Facebook for B2B lead generation knows that it can be extremely hit or miss. You can spend hours combing the profiles, timelines, groups and commercial pages in search of the right group of customers only to find that people aren’t interested in what you have for sale. Even company profiles exist more for customers than for attracting B2B marketing opportunities.
However, LinkedIn is a completely commercial environment. Everyone who has created a page does so strictly for business purposes. Therefore, every user is primed for sales pitches and is probably going to be more receptive to any offer you have to make straight off of the bat. Therefore, you can search freely knowing that any group you encounter will be more receptive to your lead generation overtures and will return much better rates of success for your efforts.

People and organizations

LinkedIn is about creating interconnected networks of both people and organizations. You’re just as likely to encounter a company’s CEO as you are the company itself if you search for it on LinkedIn. This allows you to quickly gain an appreciation for the hierarchy and structure of any company that you want to make a sales pitch to.
Consider that for a moment. Unlike a cold call you might have made in the past, which was set up only because of the most basic research you could do on the internet, you had no idea who was going to answer the phone, which position was responsible for approving what you had for sale and where your call might be directed. With LinkedIn, you can establish who the VP for acquisitions is or determine how large the accounting department is and whether or not they have a full time manager. This makes lead generation efforts not only easier – it ensures that they’ll always be more effective.

Inbound marketing

In addition to helping you and your sales team make pitches to the right people, you’ll also succeed on LinkedIn thanks to B2B inbound marketing activities. Instead of needing to prove your value and experience to every company or client you call that has never heard of you, it’s simple to direct their attention to your own LinkedIn page.
First, they’ll be able to find out more about your organization. They can read the recommendations that existing clients have written about the company, and they’ll see lists of accomplishments, products and services.
Next, they’ll move on to investigate particular employees. If you’ve established rich profiles for yourself and your staff members, a clear picture of your organization emerges. Make sure to encourage workers to answer pertinent LinkedIn Questions to demonstrate expertise and have them flesh out their pages as much as possible. Explain to them that they’ aren’t just representing themselves on the internet – they’re functioning as a small part of a larger entity.

Go on the road

LinkedIn provides great inbound marketing opportunities, but it’s important to remember that it also works amazingly well for face-to-face meetings. If you ever have to make a sales pitch in person, attend a trade show, meet with clients or have simply run into a potential client by happenstance, LinkedIn is your best friend. All the aforementioned benefits will be available to you, and the impression that you make will extend to the real world. Make sure to get the LinkedIn smartphone app so that a quick bump between two Bluetooth-enabled devices will add each person’s profile to the other’s contacts.

Stay timely

When companies are performing online research to find the best clients with which they can do business, they’re not going to be interested in organizations that are behind the times. Make sure to treat your own profile, that of your business and those of your staff members, like living, breathing entities by feeding them content, updates and contemporary information.

Putting business first

Social media is an undoubtedly important part of modern inbound marketing, lead generation and even SEO campaigns. However, most of the praise heaped on those sorts of services has largely been reserved for consumer sales. With LinkedIn, companies can take advantage of that same power while applying it to B2B marketing in a way that specifically addresses the challenges of business-to-business promotion and lead intelligence. Socialize commercially on LinkedIn the same way that you’d meet people and communicate with them in a commercial setting and prepare to expand your existing pool of leads and clients.
How Professional B2B Marketers Can Use LinkedIn to Generate Qualified Leads is a post from: B2B Marketing and Lead Generation | Optify