According to reports, 90% of C-level executives say they never respond to cold calls or email blasts.
Want to know what they do respond to? Timely, personalized outreach and meaningful interactions on LinkedIn.
Study results show 75% of B2B buyers and 84% of C-level executives use social media in their buying decisions.
Additionally, the buyers using social media in the buying process were more senior, had 84% bigger budgets, and made 61% more purchasing decisions than those were didn’t use social media to support their purchasing process.
So what does this have to do with lead generation through LinkedIn Groups and Events?
LinkedIn is built for business networking. Business networking is a core strategy for generating high-quality leads.
Besides this, the people using LinkedIn are decisions makers. LinkedIn states that 4 out of 5 users drive buying decisions.
But how does one go about using features like LinkedIn Groups and Events to boost your lead numbers?
If you are new to LinkedIn, or have yet to test drive these features, keep reading to find out how you can leverage Groups and Events in your social media lead generation endeavors.
Why You Should Be Utilizing LinkedIn Groups and Events In Your Lead Generation Campaigns
Before we get into how to use LinkedIn Groups and Events for lead generation, let’s take a look at why these are important LinkedIn features to take advantage of.
Like we said above, LinkedIn is home to decisions makers and professionals with buying power. Most salespeople know this, and if these individuals fit into their target audience, they will concentrate a lot of resources and time on LinkedIn lead generation.
According to stats, 96% of B2B salespeople use LinkedIn for organic marketing.
Because there are so many sales people using LinkedIn for lead generation, it can be hard to stand out from the crowd. No matter how many prospects you find on LinkedIn, these won’t be worth much unless you can demonstrate that you have the solution they need.
Two primary ways to do this are by building trust and establishing yourself as an authority. LinkedIn Groups and Events can help you achieve both of these objectives.
LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn Groups can be a lead generation goldmine, not just for finding prospects, but also for establishing trust and positioning yourself as an authority.
LinkedIn Groups gives you the opportunity to listen to conversations between prospects, and to get involved in these. If you can contribute valuable, helpful input, this will help to build trust.
It will also show prospects that you know your industry, your niche, and are the expert. If and when you reach out to these prospects, they will be much more likely to respond to your sales outreach efforts.
LinkedIn Groups can also win you extra exposure. Your interactions will be there for everyone to see, which is great for brand building and establishing relationships.
LinkedIn Events
LinkedIn Events are also a great tool for both prospecting and establishing trust and authority. Depending on the types of events you create, they can also play a pivotal role in drawing leads down your sales funnel.
By creating an event on LinkedIn, you can garner extra exposure for a virtual event you already had planned. For instance, let’s say you have been planning to host a webinar. By creating a LinkedIn event for it, you can direct your connections on LinkedIn to the event and drum up extra attendance.
At the same time, creating a LinkedIn event is also an impactful way to reach new audiences on LinkedIn, and solidify relationships with your current connections.
With LinkedIn events, you can target existing leads and connections. You can also make your event open to any user, which means you might be able to organically attract attendees.
How to Leverage LinkedIn Groups
If you are unfamiliar with LinkedIn Groups, it is similar to groups on Facebook. Here, users can interact, ask questions, and reach out to each other for free (up to a limit).
By joining LinkedIn groups related to your industry, you can get access to a wide range of potential leads. By participating in LinkedIn groups you can also engage in thought leadership and build your reputation as an authority in your niche.
Besides this, if you want to reach out to specific members in a group, LinkedIn gives you the ability to send up to 15 free one-on-one messages to group members each month. Usually, you can only do this if you are a first-degree connection.
The two main ways to leverage LinkedIn Groups are by joining ones in your industry and creating your own groups.
Join Groups
Start off by looking for groups on LinkedIn that are related to what you offer or your industry. The key is to zero in on groups that contain users who fit into your target demographics.
Once you have done this, you can listen in to what your target customers are saying. You can take note of their pain points, questions, and needs.
Besides this, there might also be times when you can interact and offer your advice. Just make sure you aren’t overly self-promotional during your interactions.
Additionally, you can also privately message group members, even if you aren’t connected to them. Just make sure you keep things topical and helpful.
Create Your Own Groups
Besides joining LinkedIn groups, you can also create your own group.
Creating your own group on LinkedIn can allow you to build a list of ideal, ready-to-buy prospects, directly on LinkedIn.
Once you have created a group, you can send invites to your connections. You can also sort through any groups you have joined for potential members for your own group.
Once you have identified these, you can then send out invites. A top tip is to send out personalized invitations. Personalized invitations are far more effective than generic invites, as recipients are more likely to feel that you genuinely think they will benefit from joining the group and that they aren’t being spammed.
What’s more, you can still leverage automation for tasks like this in LinkedIn. If you have the right LinkedIn lead generation automation tool, like Salesflow, you can personalize interactions while optimizing efficiency and reducing manual outreach efforts.
Tips for Making the Most of LinkedIn Groups
When utilizing LinkedIn Groups in your lead generation, make sure you keep all your interactions topical and helpful. You want to make sure you are always providing value. Don’t hard sell and don’t spam group members.
LinkedIn users don’t take kindly to hard-selling and spamming, and doing so will erode any trust or authority you have built up.
The tone to take is not “Buy our stuff,” it is—”We see you have a problem, and we wonder if this offering might be helpful to you.”
This type of approach might take more time to cultivate and mature, but ultimately it leads to higher conversions and better customer relationships.
How to Host LinkedIn Events
When it comes to events, LinkedIn is the perfect platform to spread the word about live, virtual events you want to host.
Are you planning on doing a product demonstration? Why not make a LinkedIn event out of it. This way you can notify your connections on LinkedIn and gain more exposure and more attendees.
Creating LinkedIn events is also trust and authority building. It shows you are active on the platform and gives you a chance to provide value to your target audience. It is also a perfect opportunity to educate your audience and create an emotional connection as participants are able to see you in video format.
Create an Event
To create a LinkedIn event, all you have to do is navigate to the home page of your profile. Then, locate the Events menu at the bottom of the sidebar on the right.
Click the plus sign next to “Events.”
Now you will be able to customize your event.
Make sure you use an image that is compelling and related to your event. Also, ensure that you make the description as detailed as possible, and utilize related keywords, both in your description and in the event name.
Then pick a suitable timezone and date. Give yourself ample to prepare and promote your event. If you have external speakers who are on LinkedIn, you can add them.
You will also need to choose between using a LinkedIn registration form or creating your own. If you opt for a LinkedIn registration form, you will need to add a privacy policy.
Choose Between Doing a LinkedIn Livestream or Utilizing Another Platform
The last step in creating a LinkedIn event is to choose between doing a LinkedIn live stream or supplying a link to another platform such as Zoom.
The best option will depend on you. If you are already planning a Zoom conference or a YouTube live stream, then you can direct event invitees to these links.
On the other hand, if your event is solely targeted at LinkedIn users, you can also choose to do a LinkedIn live stream.
LinkedIn live streaming has been gaining a lot of traction recently, with stats showing that live streams on LinkedIn have increased 89% since March.
Tips for Making the Most of LinkedIn Events
Like with LinkedIn Groups, the top tip to keep in mind when creating LinkedIn events is serving your audience and target customers.
The more value you can provide in your events, the more attendees you will attract. Before you know it, you might even have invitees sharing the link to their connections, who pass it on further, which not only increases exposure for the event, but also for your brand.
Using an Automation Tool In Conjunction with LinkedIn Groups and Events
As you can see LinkedIn Groups and Events can be valuable sources of prospects and help boost your lead generation efforts.
However, online marketing and sales is a big enough job as it is. Chances are, you’re probably posting content (either on LinkedIn or your own platform, or both), conducting social media marketing for other platforms, and much more.
Joining LinkedIn groups, creating your own groups, and creating events is going to take even more time to accomplish. This is why you need to also leverage automation.
Lead generation automation is a must in this day and age, and can significantly improve your lead generation numbers. Stats show that salespeople who utilize automation enjoy a 541% increase in leads.
By investing time into LinkedIn Groups and Events andimplementing automated outreach, you can level up your lead generation efforts on LinkedIn significantly, and win back time.
This is a winning combination that will net you more leads, greater reach, and analytics features.
With a LinkedIn lead generation automation tool like SalesFlow, you can automate outreach efforts and gain access to real-time metrics to see how your outreach campaign is going.
To get an idea of how this might work in conjunction with something like LinkedIn Groups, let’s say you join 15 groups in your industry. After interacting on the groups and providing value, you can choose to reach out to members.
Instead of doing this manually, you can save time with automated outreach.
The best part? With a revolutionary LinkedIn lead generation automation solution, you have the capability of hyper-personalizing your messages. With SalesFlow, your prospects won’t even know that you weren’t personally writing your messages to them.
Curious to know if LinkedIn lead generation automation is worthwhile? Check out our handy ROI calculator to see how SalesFlow can directly boost your bottom line.
Want to Automate Your LinkedIn Lead Generation? We Can Help
LinkedIn is one of the top platforms for quality lead generation. Leveraging LinkedIn Groups and Events is a powerful way to reach your target customers and establish a connection.
What’s even more powerful is being able to automate the outreach process. Manually reaching out to prospects on LinkedIn takes time. By automating outreach, you can win back time and fine-tune your online lead generation strategies.
SalesFlow is designed specifically for automating LinkedIn lead generation. With SalesFlow you can create and schedule multiple campaigns, hyper-personalize your messages, schedule unlimited follow-up messages, and get live insights into your campaign.
Curious to know how it all works? Contact us to schedule a free demo today and start supercharging your LinkedIn lead generation.