With 25 million LinkedIn profiles viewed everyday, LinkedIn is one of the best means of networking and generating new leads. Especially those in the B2B business sector have well identified the prowess of Linkedin. So much so, that 89% of B2B marketers view LinkedIn as the most sought after tool.
One of the best ways of harnessing the latent power of LinkedIn is through LinkedIn groups. These are a great way of networking your way with like minded targets to convert them into prospective leads.
The following article is your go to guide on how to best generate leads from LinkedIn groups.
1- Make sure you join the right LinkedIn Groups
Yes you can always form a LinkedIn group and become an admin. However building a fruitful group this way might take a long time. Hence, joining an existing group of like minded members seems like a better strategy at the outset.
Begin by identifying your target audience. This will depend on what you wish to market and who are most likely to be interested and prospective customers. Then, identify groups that cater to similar communities of people. To do so, you can search keywords that relate to your prospects’ job titles and click on the ‘Groups’ tab to filter your search for groups. Read a group’s description thoroughly to ensure that it includes your target audience.
Once you find the right groups for you, you can ask to join them. While some might have a screening process, others might allow you to join right away.
2-Become an active member of the group
Post having joined a relevant LinkedIn group, spend some time observing the type of content that is shared on the group, the kind of discussions that are had and the questions that are asked.
Then, instead of blatantly sharing ads for your business, share similar, relevant content that will be of use to the members. This will allow you to build a rapport amongst them. Start discussions and take out the time to answer questions. Commenting on active discussions is a great way to draw the attention of group members towards you.
If you’re a member of multiple groups, you might have some members overlapping in the groups. To ensure that you keep up your presence as an involved and valuable member in each group, make sure to share carefully curated content best conditioned to the climate of the specific group and refrain from sharing the same content in each group at all times.
3- Share relevant content
The content that you share on the group can make or break your image in the group. While helpful content can help earn you the members’ trust, irrelevant content can alienate the group members.
When creating content in the group, create content with questions in mind like what type of people does this group consist of and what area and topics attract the attention of this group’s members. This will set you up for maximum engagement with your content and maximum piquing of interest of the group’s members into what you have to offer.
4-Take your time to get familiar
Once you’ve become a respected member of a LinkedIn group, you can go ahead and run a filtered search of the members of the group based on location, job title, or industry. This can ease the process of identifying prospects for you.
Take your time in evaluating who in the group can be most valuable to you and most relevant as a lead. Instead of sending messages to all members, this is a more efficient approach for lead generation.
Other than LinkedIn invitations, you can also try to find business emails of your targeted members to send them emails informing about your products and services.
5- Create subgroups
Subgroups are a great way of accumulating a few of the members of a group to discuss topics that might not interest a majority of the people in the group. This is also a great way to better understand the specific interests of the members of the groups. This can allow you to better target those members with the niche areas that interest them to have better chances of converting them into leads.
6- Utilise your rapport for connections
Now that you’ve gone through the best practice motions of LinkedIn groups, you can start using them to your advantage and begin building connections.
It is a much more effective means to filter out the best suited candidates as prospective leads and then send them a carefully thought out invitation, so that should be your aim.
Ensure that the LinkedIn invitations you send out are personalised and to the point for a better impression and a higher chance of reversion. Include why you’d like to connect, and how it could benefit them. Once you’ve connected, you can start educating them about your services. You could also try and schedule a call sometime for better chances of a more lasting business relationship or a confirmed sale.
What to refrain from doing
- Refrain from joining groups where you won’t be able to make worthwhile contributions.
- Do not over advertise or focus only on advertisements either. While your main focus should be sharing relevant content on the group, you can add links to your website in the same rather than performing blatant self promotions.
- Do not start discussions and then become inactive in the group. Make sure you respond to your fellow members and answer their questions and queries.
- Do not spam members with direct messages. Keep it classy and engage with members that you know you can be of use to.
Wrap up
LinkedIn groups are a great means for like minded people to create spaces to interact and mutually benefit each other. While LinkedIn groups and LinkedIn in general is mainly a social tool meant for engagement and building your email lead list using Email finder tool, in today’s day and age where most professionals are on the platform, LinkedIn and LinkedIn groups in particular can be a great way of forging meaningful business connections as well as generating leads.
In a gist, ensuring that you add meaning and value to the group as a member while smartly identifying, connecting with and then targeting members of the group that are most likely to become quality leads is the mantra to generating leads from LinkedIn groups.
