Linkedin is a great resource brands use to generate leads, nurture them and convert them into customers. Many businesses and even individual business owners have used Linkedin to get more customers for their business products or services.
Linkedin has a great feature called sales navigator. This article will give insights into how you can use the feature to generate more leads and customers for your business.
Using Linkedin sales navigator
There are various ways the sales team can use Linkedin sales navigator for their prospecting and reaching out to target customers and get them to engage and convert to customers. Here are ways in which sales navigator helps to acquire customers.
Use advanced search filters
The sales navigator search feature gives unlimited searches to brands where the sales team can search for their target customer and engage them in their business. You can leverage LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s enhanced search features to connect with more prospective clients. Many users don’t maximize the search function to find new leads and personalize their sales messages to potential customers. Here is what Nat of Clio Websites says about this feature.
The Spotlight category has dynamic filters that help you find active users who posted in the last 30 days, had a recent career change, or shared experiences with you. It provides valuable insights and data you can use as icebreakers and make more meaningful connections by reaching out to other users on LinkedIn.
You can also use the advanced search features to identify users who engage in content from your industry or niche or with shared connections with you. It’s an excellent way to start a leads list to maximize your prospecting in LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
“Our use of Sales Navigator isn’t really about sales. It’s about building and nurturing a relationship. We often don’t prospect and engage our relevant buyers to add them to our sales pipeline. Instead, we might share a blog or an ebook that we know will add value to the buyer and will help us build rapport. Or sometimes it isn’t even about sharing our brand material. We might ask them about their experience or their opinion on a matter. Everyone loves to share their expertise, which provides a basis for a healthy and engaging conversation.” (Vivek, hopstack.io)
Send personalized connection requests to prospects (inmails)
Linkedin sales navigator gives you 50 inmails per month that you can use to connect with target leads and start building a relationship as you nurture them and get them to know your business.
Hear Sahil’s thoughts on inmails for lead prospecting on sales navigator.
Sales Navigator provides the ability to send InMail messages to prospects directly, even if they are not connected. This feature allows business owners and sales teams to personalize and send targeted messages to potential customers, introducing their products or services and highlighting the value they offer. Also, crafting compelling and personalized InMail messages can significantly increase response rates and initiate meaningful conversations with prospects. (Sahil, CEO WebSignals)
Create target customer buyer personas
Sales Navigator has a new feature the sales team can use to engage ICP (ideal customer personas) and filter leads based on the personas you want to target for your business marketing. With the Sales Navigator sales persona tool, you can create personas based on location, functionality, etc.
You can also narrow down your persona by specifying the unique job titles of your leads. Use the buyer intent feature of the tool to find the right accounts you can reach out to and engage.
People who show intent to use your products or services for their pain points. Since they show intent in what you offer it will be easy to nurture them and convert them to be customers for your business.
Use social listening
You can use social listening to get insights into how your target customers engage with your brand on Linkedin. It also gives you insights into your competitor’s marketing strategy as you know how your target customers say or engage with your competitors on social media. For businesses looking to boost local engagement, monitoring social sentiment can be supplemented by tools that extract insights from reviews. Consider using a tool to extract reviews from Google Maps, allowing you to gather detailed client feedback about businesses in your vicinity or even competitors, delivering an edge in customer acquisition strategies.
Monitor and study your competitors’ activities using Sales Navigator’s insights. This allows you to gauge their content strategy and understand what gravitates the audience toward them. You can also explore their connections to discover potential prospects and industry influencers that align with your target market.
Knowing your competitors’ moves helps you identify gaps in the market and enables you to fine-tune your products. It also lets you engage with your competitors’ connections through thoughtful interactions. This makes your business a viable alternative and captures potential customers looking for better solutions. (Riva Jeane, Nadrich & Cohen )
Have personalized communication with your prospects
Your leads will not just make sales from you. You need to nurture them through the buyer stages and get them to know what you offer and how it can help them. The data from the sales navigator gives you the right target audience that matches your brand.
It gives you ideas that you can use to start and personalize your communication such as the mutual connections you share or the groups you both participate.
Use those points of connection to build your relationship with the leads and get to know them better to understand their challenges and how to give the best solution to their challenges. You can also use the experiences you share with the lead, get them to know how experienced and resourceful they are, and draw them close to your brand.
Find company decision-makers
With the sales navigator, it’s easy to find the decision-makers of the brands you want to connect with. You can use the different filters to make your search process easy such as:
- The previous employers
- The number of years they have worked in the company
- Their current position
- Years of experience in the market niche, etc
Source: Linkedin Sales Navigator
Since you can access their information and know their engagement trends on Linkedin, you can quickly get them to engage your brand as you give content that shows the value of your business, content that drives revenue. Since they are the ones to make purchase decisions, it becomes easy to convince them to use your business offers to solve their challenges.
Create lead lists and save searches
You already know the specific target audience you want to reach. You can easily use a sales navigator to filter the leads by the company size, the number of employees, niche market, their past clients, etc to make it easy to create a list of leads you will be prospecting for your business.
With the saved search tool, you will be notified when new leads match your searches. It will be easy to reach out and engage them as they fit your list of potential customers who can use your business products or services.
We fully leverage the “Saved Search” feature. This tool allows us to identify potential leads who have recently joined LinkedIn or seen a change in their job position. These leads are particularly important; they are often the ones open to adapting to new tools and platforms, including the ones we offer.
We ensure complete integration between LinkedIn Sales Navigator and our CRM. This integration offers a seamless shift of data and insights from LinkedIn to our sales record. Combining Sales Navigator with CRM data allows us to customize our approach to each lead, enhancing our conversion rates. (Daniel, CEO https://purplefire.io/, PurpleFire)
Ensure you engage those new leads as soon as you onboard them to get them to know more about what you offer and how you can help solve their challenges. The more you delay, the lesser your chances of conversion.
Hence utilizing LinkedIn Sales Navigator features efficiently is key, and my experience of over a decade in the eCommerce space resonates with this sentiment.
The objective is to create a personalized sales approach that resonates with potential customers’ needs and requirements. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is an excellent tool in our arsenal, enabling us to connect with the right audience and deliver the right message at the right time.
Use alerts from the engagement of your leads to follow up
You can use the engagement alerts from the tool to follow up with leads and nurture them through the sales funnel. These alerts include:
- The content they engage, share, and enjoy more on Linkedin
- What they say about your brand
- Their job change or the new companies they join
With these alerts, you can know how to keep publishing the right content to engage your leads more as you show them the value they will get from your business.
With LinkedIn sales navigator, you can bookmark alerts from your leads that you can refer to as you create your engagement strategy with them on the site. Here is an example of those alerts.
Source: Social Media Examiner
Leads will go through several circles of nurturing before they convert to customers. Since the sales navigator gives all the information about the leads and the best ways to engage them, you can use use the information to nurture the leads. The best practice here is to export your leads to a third party tool where you can use data enrichment to better understand prospects.
Also, use the data you get from social listening tools as you know what they say about your brand and what you can offer them to nurture them as you prepare to sell them your products or services.
Here at Ling, we use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to nurture leads. Because Ling is taking steps to become a full SaaS, we need this tool to connect better, engage, and build good professional relationships with our B2B prospects. Most of our leads are globally expanding businesses, requiring more profound language learning knowledge and skills.
We search leads based on the job title, industry, location, and other relevant parameters. With its integration capability, we keep our customer relationship management (CRM) system up to date. Ling was able to close deals with Green Tomato Media LLC and Albert AB in 2021 because of our robust sales and marketing efforts, including using LinkedIn Sales Navigator for lead nurturing. (Simon Bacher, CEO at Ling App)
Target leads with open profiles
The sales navigator gives you just 50 inmails per month. This amount is low as you want to reach out to many potential customers to get them to engage with your business and convert to customers. You target leads with open profiles and reach out to them.
You can use the LinkedIn premium feature to contact a premium member for free even if you’re not connected to them. Since you will not be connected to all your leads, it will make it easy to engage leads who are not already in your network and start building relationships with them as you nurture them for your business.
Create content leads engages with
As target customers search for brands, they also look for content that entertains, engages, and informs them on how to solve their challenges. Having a great content strategy and promoting content prospects love and engage is vital for your brand engagement.
Although the sales navigator is not connected with the Linkedin ads manager, you can use the information you got from the sales navigator about your leads and use it to create engaging ads for your brand marketing on Linkedin.
An approach that’s been greatly successful for us is to complement cold connections with insightful content sharing. We regularly draw attention to topics of particular interest to our prospective customers, amplifying our visibility as thought leaders in grant management software. Over time, this has led to higher engagement rates and meaningful conversations that eventually convert into clients. (Will, Instrumentl, )
Your leads need to know that you’re an expert in your market niche and that they can trust your brand. Since you know your leads well, be consistent in creating content that they love and engage with.
Use the metrics alerts, and sales triggers from the tool to create content that engages leads more and keep them close as you nurture them and prepare to convert them into customers.
Wrapping up
Utilizing Linkedin features well can help you reach out to the right target audience and get them to connect with you and convert them. If you haven’t been using sales navigator effectively use these tips to drive more engagement and acquire new customers for your business products or services.
