How to Use LinkedIn for Inbound Prospecting

How to Use LinkedIn for Inbound Prospecting:

One of the most important things your sales people can do is to focus on their high value deals. Daily attention to them in the form of calls, emails and monitoring will ensure that any surprises are flagged up early and can be dealt with before they become a target-busting problem.
Many sales people do this to the exclusion of all else and so, when problems arise they are left with an unfillable hole in their forecast. The best thing they can do to avoid this unwelcome scenario is to continue to include prospecting in their time allocation as they are guiding their deals over the line.
Anthony Iannarino made this point well in his piece “The Two Sales Activities That Must Dominate Your Time”.
As I mentioned in my review of The State of Inbound Marketing Report 2012, LinkedIn remains the most important channel for inbound prospecting in the Business to Business (B2B) sector.
Much of the existing LinkedIn best practice guides are about getting found or networking etiquette but I would like to offer four tips on how I have used it for effective inbound prospecting:
1. Research the personas most likely to buy from you – industry, sector, company type, company size, location, digital engagement.
2. Establish six touch points before requesting a connection:

• Identify the influencers in their network and connect with them.
• Follow them and their company on Twitter and re-tweet the best stuff.
• Go to their company’s website and complete their calls-to-action (CTAs), such as downloading a white paper or registering for a webinar.
• Join their industry LinkedIn groups and participate.
• Read their company and/or personal blogs and leave a comment.
• Send a personal and insightful introduction request to one of your connections.

3. Use LinkedIn ads by selecting the group you want to target and craft a super-relevant ad to engage them. It will appear on their LinkedIn home page and some will notice and click on it.
4. Send anyone who clicks on your ad to a dedicated landing page. What’s the point inviting your well-defined targets to engage in something that interests them if you don’t capture that they are responding? How can you hope to approach them if you don’t know that they have expressed an interest?
Happy inbound prospecting and let me know if you have other tips that you have tried that work.