How to Generate Leads on LinkedIn

Did you know that LinkedIn is the top social media platform to find leads for your business? It gives you direct access to prospects, such as B2B decision makers and business owners, most of whom use LinkedIn actively. 

B2B marketing professionals successfully find leads on LinkedIn. Yet, there are many salespeople, especially the new ones, who don't know how to use LinkedIn for lead generation. 

This post covers proven strategies and techniques to use LinkedIn as a high-converting lead acquisition platform. You will learn how to use the LinkedIn automation tool for lead generation and convert leads into clients for your business growth. 

1. Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile

When you send a connection request or a message to a lead on LinkedIn, they’re sure to visit your profile before taking any action. A complete and well-optimized profile helps you make a good first impression, increasing the likelihood of LinkedIn users accepting your invite or replying to your message.

Optimizing your profile also gives you more visibility in search results. Adding the right keywords and phrases in your headline, about section, and other parts of your profile helps it appear to the right people in organic searches. 

Here’s how to optimize the most important sections of your LinkedIn profile:

• In your headline, mention your target audience, the problems you solve, and the results you deliver. Don’t forget to place your most important keyword in this section. Example: “Helping small businesses close more deals through automated LinkedIn outreach.”
• Use a high-resolution image as your profile picture. It should portray you as a professional and approachable person.
• Add your main keyphrase in your About section and briefly tell your professional story in a conversational tone. Highlight the challenges of your leads and how you solve them. It is also a good idea to include a call to action in this section.
• Optimize your experience section with quantifiable outcomes, results, and achievements instead of a job description. 

2. Use LinkedIn’s Basic Search Feature

After completing and optimizing your profile, you can start using LinkedIn’s basic search feature to find leads. Simply type in the keywords related to your target leads in the search bar and hit Enter to perform a search. 

Let’s say you want to find procurement directors as leads for your company. In this case, you can search with the term “Procurement Director” and then click on the People tab to specifically find your target profiles. 

To further narrow down your search, click on All filters and then use the filters available on the right side of the screen. Here, you can filter your search based on many different factors, including location, current and past companies, connection levels, school, and industry. 

Example:

Type “Marketing Director” → Click People → Filter by “United States” + “SaaS” industry + “2nd-degree connections.”

This type of filtered search will give you a list of qualified leads who match your ideal customer profile. 

3. Automate LinkedIn Lead Generation

If you want to perform lead generation at scale, consider using a LinkedIn lead generation tool. 

Also known as LinkedIn automation tools, these are basically cloud-based or browser extension softwares that let you put repetitive activities on autopilot. This way, you can speed up lead generation on LinkedIn and collect more qualified prospects. 

Plus, automating time-consuming tasks means you can spend more time personally interacting with and nurturing leads.

Most LinkedIn lead generation tools allow you to automate activities like searching for your target profiles, sending personalized connection requests and messages, endorsing skills, and messaging users in bulk. 

Dripify is a decent LinkedIn lead generation tool and comes with many useful features. 

For example, besides the basic automation, Dripify lets you create automated workflow sequences based on multiple attributes and triggers. It even integrates artificial intelligence so that you can automatically create hyper-personalized outreach campaigns. 

4. Look at People Who Viewed Your Profile

Unlike other social media platforms, LinkedIn allows you to see who viewed your profile. This is an excellent feature to find leads, as most people who land on your profile are looking for solutions that you provide (provided you’ve properly optimized your profile).

To use this feature, log in to your LinkedIn account and click on the Profile viewers link on the home page’s left pane. This will return a new page with a list of people who viewed your profile.

With a basic LinkedIn account, you can browse up to three users who viewed your profile. You’ll need to upgrade to a premium plan to see the remaining people who visited your profile. 

However, if someone browses your profile in private mode, you won’t see their names or profiles. 

5. Collect Leads With Lead Generation Forms

LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms help you capture more qualified leads at scale. These easy, pre-filled forms automatically collect leads from your message ads and sponsored content on LinkedIn. 

These forms are filled with valid LinkedIn profile information, allowing leads to send you their professional data right away. 

For example, a lead clicks on the CTA button in your LinkedIn Ad (say, a webinar signup). The LinkedIn algorithm comes into action, showing them a form already filled with data extracted from the profiles. The lead can immediately send you their information by just clicking on the form. 

You can easily download the list of your leads from Campaign Manager or start outreach campaigns right away through an integrated CRM tool. 

6. Use Sales Navigator 

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is an excellent tool for generating leads as it comes with advanced search capability, comprising more than 50 filters. 

These search attributes include job title, function, seniority level, company size, groups, years at company, experience, company type, and more. This means you can narrow down your search to minute details to build a high-quality leads list. 

Plus, there's no limit on how many searches you can perform per month.

Sales Navigator also includes additional features like lead recommendations, alerts, and InMails. You’ll get lead suggestions based on your search pattern and history, and your engagement with prospects. LinkedIn will also send you notifications when it detects changes or updates in the profiles of your saved leads. 

The InMail credits in Sales Navigator let you send messages to leads beyond your 1st-degree connections. This means you can connect and engage decision-makers and other key stakeholders even if you’re not directly connected. 

For mass prospecting, consider integrating a LinkedIn automation tool with your Sales Navigator account. 

7. Publish Posts and Articles

Publishing insightful posts and articles on LinkedIn is one of the best ways to attract high-quality leads to your profile. 

When you share helpful content, such as industry insights, trends, practical tips, and real-life experiences, it helps build your personal brand, projecting you as a thought leader or a helpful advisor instead of a sales rep.

This technique is useful only when your content is relevant to your target customers and helps solve their problems. As such, it is not a good idea to publish posts that only promote your product or solution. Instead, create posts that increase your credibility, target your audience effectively, and encourage leads to contact you.

Example of a bad LinkedIn post: 

“Our company provides digital marketing services. Contact us today for website design and SEO services! #marketing #digitalmarketing #growth”

Example of a good LinkedIn post: 

“Recently, we helped a client double their organic traffic and increase inbound leads by 40%. A quick website redesign and SEO tune-up helped achieve this outcome. 

Sometimes, small fixes make the biggest difference. Want a quick look at what’s holding your site back? Drop a comment or DM me. I’ll share a few easy wins.”

8. Send Personalized Connection Requests and Messages

Let’s say you found a person on LinkedIn that you believe can be a good lead for your company. The next step is to send them a connection request. But most people get many generic invites every day, and they ignore most of them.  

To cut through the clutter and get noticed, always personalize your connection request for each lead. Check out their profile and pick information that you can use to tailor your request. 

For example, you could reference their recent post, role, company, or mutual connection in your invitation to connect. 

Example: “Hi Sarah, I read your post about building strong sales teams and found it helpful. I’d love to connect and learn more about your approach to B2B prospecting.”

Once the person accepts your request, it’s time to follow up with messages. You must use messaging thoughtfully because pitching right away can backfire. Instead, use it as an opportunity to build trust and credibility. 

For example, in your message, thank them for connecting, reference something from their profile, or share a quick insight related to their field. 

While exchanging messages, you can gradually steer the conversation toward business. 

For instance, it is a good approach to first share a useful resource, industry insights, or success stories of your past clients. Once credibility is established, you can start mentioning your product.

Personalization is the key to all sorts of content and outreach, including connection requests and follow-up messages. But sometimes it can be challenging to create customized requests and follow-up messages, especially when you want to do it at scale. This is where a LinkedIn automation tool has got your back. 

Automation tools scan the profiles of your leads for relevant information and then use it to create and send hyper-personalized connection requests and messages. All of this happens automatically, saving you time and energy. 

9. Find Leads in LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn groups are a goldmine of leads. You can easily find hundreds of groups that could be relevant to your industry. Many of these groups were created for professionals to contribute insights, share their problems and challenges, and offer help or solutions. 

This is your opportunity to find qualified leads as the members themselves share their challenges and pain points. But make sure to choose the groups carefully and join the ones that match your industry, company, or solution. 

Only joining a group is not enough. 

You want to generate leads, and for that, you must be visible and valuable. You should participate actively in group discussions, offering help, sharing your thoughts and perspectives, and posting helpful content. 

As you build trust over time, you can start reaching out to the group members through direct messages. Also, group members themselves may reach out to you seeking solutions to their problems because they think of you as an advisor instead of a salesperson. 

10. Create a “Resource Drop” Post

This is a simple but powerful technique to attract attention, build engagement, and capture warm leads. The resource drop post method involves creating a valuable asset, such as a free guide, a checklist, or a template, and then inviting people on LinkedIn to leave a certain comment if they want the resource. 

For example, if you want to generate leads for an IT services business, you could create a free IT Health Checklist (PDF) as a resource drop post on LinkedIn.

People who comment on your post are already indicating that they’re open to knowing about your solution. You can share the free resource to these people through DMs and then use the moment as an opportunity to start a one-on-one conversation with your leads. 

11. Generate Leads from LinkedIn Event 

Did you know that you can attend, create, and even co-host small events on LinkedIn? These events are a great place to find leads for your business. 

You could create your own event, such as organizing a webinar on LinkedIn, and then collect the profiles of the attendees. Most of the people who attend your event could be qualified leads who need your product or solution. 

At the end of an event, you can save the profiles of the attendees and contact them directly through LinkedIn’s messaging feature. This way, you can exchange your thoughts and ask how you can help them further.  

12. Embed “Call to Action Links” Inside Your Featured Section

The featured section of your LinkedIn profile is the most underrated yet powerful place to generate leads. When you embed CTA links in this section, it can help turn profile visitors into leads. 

Most people use the featured section to post achievements. Unlike them, you can link it to encourage users to book your product demo, download a guide, or visit your website. 

This segment is ideally located at the top of your profile, meaning whoever views your profile will immediately see the next steps on how to engage with your business.

When a potential client visits your profile after seeing your post or comment, they shouldn’t have to search for how to contact you. A well-placed CTA link, such as “Get a Free Workflow Audit” or “Try Our Tool for Free”, will help them take action right away. 

13. Filter People Who Commented on Your Competitors’ Posts 

Your competitors’ posts are yet another great place to find warm leads. Look at the posts on the LinkedIn page of your direct competitor or the profiles of sales reps who work for that company. Check out their posts and carefully read the comments. 

People leaving comments on these posts are warm prospects as they are already engaging with the posts of your competitor. Your goal is to smartly interact with their comments and divert them to your company. 

It is a good approach to like their comments and leave thoughtful replies to create visibility and rapport. In the next step, send them personalized connection requests and start direct messaging when they accept your invitation.   

14. Use “Polls” as Intent Filters 

Many experienced B2B sales professionals use the polls feature on LinkedIn as a way to generate leads. They create polls to filter buying intent and probe the possible pain points, challenges, interests, and needs of their target buyers.

People who participate in your poll are high-quality leads because they’re giving you intent signals. You can use the results of a LinkedIn poll to filter and segment your leads and create personalized outreach messages. 

For example, you want to identify business owners who need your workflow automation solution. Now, here’s a poll you can create on LinkedIn to generate leads for your business:

Poll Caption (Post Text)

Does your team still spend several hours each week on manual, repetitive tasks? You’re not alone. Most businesses lose 10+ hours per employee on a weekly basis to manual work. 

Where does your team spend the most time on low-value tasks? Vote below and I’ll share a few ways automation can help save you hours every week.

Poll Question 

What’s the most time-consuming and repetitive task in your daily workflow?

Answer Options:

• Data entry and admin work;
• Reporting and analytics;
• Client follow-ups or reminders;
• Approvals and task tracking.

Now, you can use the poll results to segment your leads, analyze their intent, and create personalized outreach messages for each one. 

15. Leverage LinkedIn’s “Newsletter” Feature for Lead Capture 

Many sales experts even use the newsletter feature on LinkedIn to capture leads. This is an excellent technique as LinkedIn sends a notification to your subscribers every time you publish a newsletter. 

The best part is that you can link it directly to your landing pages, demos, lead magnets, or product pages. Plus, LinkedIn promotes your newsletter to people within and outside your immediate network. 

To get the most out of your newsletters, you must consistently share valuable insights and free resources relevant to your industry or niche. Doing so will help establish you as an expert in your field, attracting people who need your help. 

Over time, you’ll have a community of warm leads who’re already familiar with you and your brand. This makes it super easy to reach out to them and sell your product or service. 

16. Create Mini Case Studies as Carousel Posts

Sure, posting long-form, insightful articles can help you build authority and draw leads. But did you know that short story-style carousels that display real results create more engagement and attract more prospects because they’re less overwhelming?

Carousel posts get more visibility since they’re story-driven and visually dynamic. This is why LinkedIn profiles with 50 thousand and 55 thousand followers published 3.9 carousel posts every month on average in 2024.

If your product successfully helped resolve a pain point or challenge of a customer, consider turning it into a short success story and posting it as a carousel on LinkedIn. In doing so, use visual slides to quickly summarize the before/after results. 

For example, you could begin the carousel by stating a problem your client faced. Then, show how your solution helped the client. Finally, wind up the post with a statement about the measurable outcome achieved. 

Posting mini case studies as carousels is easy and highly engaging. It grabs the attention of leads as they scroll through their LinkedIn feeds. People who comment or react are pre-qualified leads for your business.

17. Use Boolean Search

If the basic or advanced search options on LinkedIn didn’t help you find your desired leads, consider performing a Boolean search. This technique involves combining AND, OR, and NOT parameters, besides using quotation marks to search for exact phrases and parentheses to group together different terms.

For example, if you want to find decision-makers, you might search (“head of sales” OR “sales director”) AND “B2B” AND “software”.

After getting the results, you can apply other filters like company size or lead location. This way, you can narrow down your search to only the most relevant, high-potential prospects. 

Final Thoughts

LinkedIn is undoubtedly the number one place for B2B lead generation. But leads don’t just show up on your profile or land in your inbox by themselves. To find leads on LinkedIn, you have to use a strategic approach comprising the techniques and methods explained here. 

Some of the methods require you to thoughtfully reach out to other LinkedIn members, while others involve attracting prospects using inbound strategies. It is a good idea to use a combination of inbound and outbound approaches to successfully find leads on the platform.

We recommend you start with the basic LinkedIn lead generation strategies and then progress to the advanced methods as you scale. 

LinkedIn lead generation tools make it super easy to find leads even while you sleep. Most of these platforms come with automation features that perform tasks on your behalf even if your computer is shut down. The most advanced ones let you create entire lead generation workflows and automate each step in the process.