In December 2018, Damien Bignon (Malakoff Médéric), said in an interview that has become famous within the small world of Social Selling that “tomorrow, all our salespeople will be community managers”. He then called into question a certain number of received ideas on the function of social networks in a commercial strategy and in particular LinkedIn.
But this “tomorrow” he was talking about in 2018 is today!
In 2021, Linked in’s ability to generate business leads, revenue and synergy between sales and marketing teams has taken root in the minds of many entrepreneurs. Concretely, prospecting on LinkedIn has become an essential element of the B2B development strategy.
At Ad Premier, we made the bet to launch, in 2019, a subsidiary entirely dedicated to this problem: Link force. In nearly two years of activity, we can say that the bet has been won and begin to draw up a concrete assessment of what constitutes the strength of this approach.
Gone are the days of the old-fashioned B2B salesperson, clinging to his phone all day or driving his car, who wears himself out coping with rejections from prospects to achieve his goals! Make way for commercial 2.0, which combines sales expertise and digital marketing tools to generate growth through social selling.
Summary
- Content at the service of prospecting: the synergy that performs on LinkedIn
- Social Selling and personalization: the winning combination
- The LinkedIn revolution in lead generation
- What place today for automated prospecting on LinkedIn?
- An opportunity to put customer retention back at the heart of the business strategy
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Why is it important for sales reps to have a presence on LinkedIn?
- How can B2B prospecting on LinkedIn help grow your business?
- Why should today’s sales reps be LinkedIn Community Managers
Content at the service of prospecting: the synergy that performs on LinkedIn
The key to social selling is to convert the power of content published on social platforms into commercial performance. However, LinkedIn, due to its SEO for B2B singularity in the world of social networks, offers an unparalleled opportunity to combine content creation and prospecting.
The principle?
Use the publication of content on a personal profile in an “inbound” perspective, to create a qualified audience, then prospect this audience in private messages. Prospecting is done first through automation tools, then in an increasingly personalized way as one progresses through the sales funnel.
And, in terms of prospecting, LinkedIn has serious assets to highlight:
- It drives over 50% of social traffic to B2B sites.
- It is 277% more effective than Facebook and Twitter at generating leads.
- According to B2B marketers, it generates 80% of their Social Media leads.
- Influencers are responsible for less than 10% of the 10,000 most shared posts.
- Only 1% of the 260 million monthly users publish and share billions of impressions there.
As you will have understood, LinkedIn has everything from a B2B prospecting Eldorado to which everyone can claim, even from scratch. But it is beginning to be known and the gold is already beginning to run out compared to the growing number of researchers! So, to take real advantage of the social selling opportunities offered by the number 1 network of professionals, you have to stand out with a quality personal communication strategy.
Social Selling and personalization: the winning combination
Today’s digital world is saturated with marketing content. All companies are waging a battle for visibility and engagement, which is increasingly turning into content inflation. The consequence is that a brand must today multiply the appearances with a target to anchor itself in its memory. We usually talk about 5 to 7 impressions needed for this.
Hence the growing interest in social selling, which makes it possible to combine recurring content and an acquisition strategy.
However, who says “social selling” says “social”, and the natural structure of social networks promotes person-to-person exchange.
Also, to get the best impact on LinkedIn, keep in mind the need to personalize the creation of content and interactions with the commercial target. In most cases, this means putting the personal profile (rather than the company page) at the heart of the strategy.
LinkedIn itself highlights the effectiveness of this approach, recalling that:
- Content shared by collaborators receives 8 times more engagement than content posted on brand channels.
- Company posts are shared 24 times less often than those of their own employees.
Clearly, posting on LinkedIn with a personal profile rather than a company page gives you every chance to take your lead generation to another dimension.
The LinkedIn revolution in lead generation
This revolution concerns both the quantitative aspect and the qualitative aspect of lead generation.
Entrepreneur Europe already insisted in 2016 on the change of scale that personal branding on social networks can introduce into a commercial strategy, stating that salespeople who integrate social networks into their sales techniques outperform by 78% compared to their peers who do not.
And as much to tell you that, since 2016, the gap has widened further…
But, integrating social selling into your business strategy also means obtaining more qualified leads, especially on LinkedIn, where leads generated by individual employee initiatives convert 7 times more than leads generated by corporate initiatives (source LinkedIn).
More leads and better leads: this are what a LinkedIn prospecting strategy based on the profiles of your collaborators can bring you.
We then often feel the temptation to introduce automation into this approach to systematize it. It can be a good idea, but not in any way…
What place today for automated prospecting on LinkedIn?
If you follow the news of digital marketing, you may be aware that LinkedIn announced in May 2021 a change that had the effect of a bomb in the microcosm of social selling: a limit of 100 invitations per week was introduced in the functionality of adding contacts.
100 invitations per week still equals 20 invitations per day, which is enough to continuously feed your salespeople’s contact book. But that’s nothing compared to the number of invitations that some companies have been able to generate in recent months thanks to automation tools.
But all-out automation is precisely what LinkedIn wanted to limit. So, to develop effective prospecting on the platform, you will have to play the game.
LinkedIn is above all a social network and intends to remain so. Quality individual interactions must therefore remain at the heart of your strategy. For this you need:
- Create original, interesting and useful content for your target audience (the best way to receive invitations instead of having to send them)
- Interact with other users’ posts
- Target your invitations as much as possible, to create a qualified network
- Personalize your private messages
If you do that, there’s no reason to deprive yourself of adding a little automation to the wheels. Especially since there are technical means to circumvent the limit of 100 weekly invitations, “hacks”. But, we agree, we didn’t tell you anything!
(Finally, do not hesitate to contact us to find out more …)
An opportunity to put customer retention back at the heart of the business strategy
It’s an issue that we don’t talk about much when we talk about social selling, but customer retention is also one of LinkedIn’s strengths recently highlighted.
Naturally, when we think of “prospecting”, we turn more to the acquisition of new customers than to the retention of current customers and LinkedIn prospecting is no exception to the rule. However, we have already discussed on this blog the potential of a Marketing for Roofing Company centered on Customer Lifetime Value.
Consider how posting recurring content can be an easy way to keep in touch with your customers. Through this channel, while prospecting for new contacts, you can continue to assert, month after month, your expertise with your customers, but above all inform them of new offers likely to meet one of their needs that may not yet have been addressed.
Posting weekly on LinkedIn is a bit like sending out a new weekly newsletter. Except that your LinkedIn posts have a real chance of being read and generating engagement!
Why not take advantage of this opportunity offered to you to build loyalty at the same time as you prospect?
Conclusion
Even if prospecting on LinkedIn is no longer the Eldorado it could have been two years ago, it remains an unrivaled way to scale up your B2B business strategy, while maintaining a high level of personalization. Social selling on LinkedIn allows in particular to:
- Create a powerful and results-oriented synergy between your sales and marketing teams
- Combine the impact of personalization with the power of intelligent automation
- Leading acquisition and loyalty
To go further and have the potential of your LinkedIn prospecting assessed, book your free audit without delay with one of our Social Media experts.