Marketing agencies that offer lead generation services can be extremely successful, with agencies revealing compelling statistics like doubling their turnover every 2 years.
As new marketing platforms and technologies proliferate the market, agencies that are ahead of the curve and using the latest tools and techniques to the greatest advantage are seeing the greatest gains.
From TikTok to LinkedIn, SEO to Influencer marketing, there are a variety of channels for agencies to harness for their clients. Each one presents an opportunity for growth.
Become an expert in each of these channels and you’ll enjoy increased demand for your services. Growth for your clients goes hand in hand with growth for your agency. The more successfully you can execute lead generation for clients, the faster your organic growth from recommendations alone.
Plus, by adding services to your portfolio, you can grow your revenue from each client by offering them additional services. It’s a win-win.
In this guide, we focus on LinkedIn as a service. Rising in popularity due to its ability to bridge the gap between the personal approach and a volume approach, LinkedIn is gaining traction with businesses that have so far been unable to exploit its potential. Many now want to understand what LinkedIn is capable of and fully test the opportunities it can bring. But a lot of businesses simply don’t know how.
Enter the opportunity for agencies - to run a managed LinkedIn service for clients. This guide covers everything you need to offer a ‘done for you’ LinkedIn lead generation service for clients and start growing your agency revenue.
Are you ready to begin?
LinkedIn as a lead generation platform
LinkedIn is the #1 lead generation platform for B2B sales, with some businesses using it as their sole source of new business. At Dux-Soup, we’ve seen first-hand how agencies are generating over 100 appointments a month for clients, winning $200,000 of business within 2 years, generating over 7 new page followers each day, and booking over 100 sales meetings a month with cold prospects.
Its 1 billion + users, all with a vested interest in keeping their profiles up to date, results in LinkedIn offering the most accurate source of business data. And it’s freely accessible.
LinkedIn’s targeting capability and ability to engage with prospects make it the most powerful tool for B2B agencies looking to fill their pipeline with sales leads.
5 reasons LinkedIn wins for cold B2B outreach.
But how can agencies properly harness LinkedIn to deliver results for clients and what’s the best way to define a repeatable service proposition around LinkedIn?
In this guide, we walk agencies through how to set up LinkedIn lead generation services that are scalable thanks to their repeatable model. There are five chapters:
Chapter 1: How to define your service position
Chapter 2: The best tools available to deliver excellent results for clients
Chapter 3: How to get set up and onboard clients
Chapter 4: Pricing your LinkedIn lead generation services
Chapter 5: How to excel as an agency
Chapter 1: How to define your agency’s service proposition
Your lead generation service proposition can make the difference between winning and losing clients. Define a compelling and unique proposition and your win rate will increase. It’s all about differentiation.
You may choose to differentiate in your methodology, toolsets, experience, or pricing structure.
Here are some useful steps to take when first defining your LinkedIn lead generation service proposition:
- Get a good feel of your clients’ requirements
- Categorize your lead generation outcomes
- Review LinkedIn’s targeting capabilities
- Set the results in terms of quantity
- Document a well-defined, structured service proposition that can be successfully delivered and repeated for multiple clients
Most agencies will already be a dab hand at defining service propositions, so you can skip to Chapter 2 if you’re comfortable with this, otherwise, we’ve outlined our recommended steps in defining your proposition here:
Step 1: Understand your clients’ lead requirements
When engaging in a new client relationship, it is important to start by defining both your and your customer’s definition of a ‘lead’. This clarifies your understanding of your client’s needs from the outset.
For example, a ‘lead’ to one client could be a profile that meets qualifying criteria who has signed up to receive information, or someone who has consumed relevant content. To another client, it could be someone who has taken a positive call to action, for example replying to a message or requesting a demo or meeting.
As an agency, it’s your job to properly evaluate what your clients are looking to achieve from a ‘done for you’ LinkedIn lead generation service, and clearly define the objectives you are driving towards. This process also serves to protect you by ensuring it is an outcome that you feel confident to deliver.
Tip: If you’re unsure about defining what makes a lead for a client, one approach is to work through their sales process and identify different stages of the sales funnel. Your lead generation activity can focus on filling the pipeline at any one of those agreed stages.
Step 2: Categorize your lead generation outcomes
Once you’ve been through step 1 with a few prospective clients, you’ll start to see a natural categorization for lead types emerge that you can categorize to build a LinkedIn lead generation service portfolio.
Here are some examples of how you could categorize your leads:
Lead type A = Meeting booked
Lead type B = Demo Request
Lead type C = Enquiry
Lead type D = Content download
Lead type E = Prospect meets other qualifying criteria e.g. follows LinkedIn page, signs up for newsletter, registers for event.
For each client, you can select the lead type that best matches, tailor the target market (step 3) and set the number of outcomes (step 4) to define your service proposal.
Step 3: Review LinkedIn targeting capabilities
LinkedIn offers several different plans:
Regular (Free) LinkedIn
Premium
Sales Navigator
Recruiter
Your client may have already invested in a paid LinkedIn plan, bringing this option with them to the table. If they are serious enough to be looking at a ‘Done For You’ LinkedIn lead generation service then we would advise the majority to opt for a Sales Navigator plan.
This is for the following reasons:
- Because LinkedIn limits the activity it allows on a free account. It only allows a set number of search results, profile visits, and connection invitations each week, so you’ll want to make sure that your client is on the right LinkedIn plan for the activity required.
- Sales Navigator’s targeting power comes from its additional search criteria, offering additional fields to allow you to be more specific with your target audience. This opens up some neat lead generation tricks and means you can get really relevant with your messaging - improving conversion rates for clients.
- Recruiter which gives you access to the ‘Open to Work’ filter, suiting recruiters who are looking for candidates. Recruiters often still opt for a Sales Navigator plan due to the high cost of a Recruiter plan.
Below we compare the ‘lead’ search filters for a free LinkedIn account and Sales Navigator.
Regular LinkedIn lead filters:
Sales Navigator lead filters:
We mention that there are some neat lead generation tricks available with Sales Navigator. Here are some examples:
- You could build lists of people who you have interacted with in the past, and then share content or company updates with them
- You can target people who have recently changed jobs, mentioning their recent change and addressing how you can help them with it
- You can target members of groups that you are in, who will share common interests with you
There are plenty of ways in which you can use Sales Navigator filters to make your messaging relevant, boosting outcomes for clients.
Combine this with the increased activity limits of Sales Navigator and it’s our number 1 choice of LinkedIn plan for lead generation agencies.
Step 4: Set the results in quantitative terms
Once you have categorized a lead, and reviewed your targeting capabilities based on your client’s LinkedIn plan, you can move on to the final piece of the puzzle. Setting the results, and here we’re talking quantity.
During any initial discussion with a prospective new client, you should look to understand how many leads they’re looking to add to their pipeline each month from LinkedIn lead generation. There’s a simple calculator that you can use to help you with this, as shown below.
In this example, to generate $100,000 of revenue, we need to target 5,375 LinkedIn profiles to make 2,150 new connections and send follow-up messages to each of these to book the target number of demos or meetings.
You’d need to adjust the conversion rates to your client, taking into account their target audience and campaign content. Over time you can test and adjust these figures - something that will become more accurate with experience.
As you test and optimize your campaign messaging, you can work to improve conversion rates, reducing the total activity required to meet the same objectives. This is when you’ll see your profitability increase if you’re charging on a results basis.
Step 5: Define your agency proposition and market it
Now that you’ve categorized your ‘leads’, you understand LinkedIn’s targeting capabilities based on the LinkedIn plan, and set objectives in terms of results, it becomes easier to define a set catalogue of LinkedIn lead generation service propositions, using combinations of the above.
For agencies looking for scale, structuring your proposition into clearly defined options will help your internal team to market and sell it.
Add your proposition/s to your website and social channels, generate inquiries, book meetings and prepare proposals. Once you have your service proposition, it becomes a case of actively marketing it. And if your proposition is compelling enough, you’ll be winning new clients in no time.
Chapter 2: The best tools to deliver the best results
In Chapter 1 we looked at defining your agency’s ‘done for you’ LinkedIn lead generation service proposition.
In Chapter 2 we cover the tools you need to deliver your service. And when we say ‘deliver’, we’re talking about delivering excellent results that will keep clients coming back to your agency for more.
We answer the question: ‘How can you deliver a repeatable and scalable service that’s profitable for you and valuable to your clients?’
Here are the tools you’ll need:
Sales Navigator
We’ve already covered the benefits of a Sales Navigator account when running LinkedIn lead generation services for clients, so we won’t delve further into the details here. You’ll need a paid LinkedIn plan for each clients to deliver great results from the platform.
LinkedIn automation tool = Dux-Soup
LinkedIn automation tools play an essential role in being able to deliver successful and profitable LinkedIn lead generation services for customers.
Your agency offers expertise in marketing, knowledge of LinkedIn, and creative copywriting to elicit responses. It’s why clients come to you rather than hiring a junior administrator to do the job, right? Their reputation is at stake, and the growth of their business is on the line.
So why waste your skilled (and expensive) resources on manual tasks that require little thought, when you can automate this process and focus your expertise on the strategy, messaging and conversion rate optimization (CRO)?
The time and money-saving benefits of LinkedIn automation tools are huge. You simply won’t be able to compete otherwise.
So, LinkedIn automation tools are a necessity for agencies offering LinkedIn lead generation services. And this is where Dux-Soup comes in. Our Cloud Agency license was built specifically for agencies offering ‘done for you’ LinkedIn lead generation.
Dux-Soup Cloud for Agencies
Dux-Soup is the most adopted LinkedIn automation tool on the market, used by over 80,000 people across the world.
Specializing in LinkedIn as a platform, the development team at Dux-Soup keeps a close eye on LinkedIn’s algorithm changes. We release an average of 40 updates to Dux-Soup every year. These releases contain a mix of updates in response to LinkedIn’s algorithm changes, and new features in response to customer demand.
Our LinkedIn automation solution for agencies was one such response to customer demand, allowing agencies to manage multiple LinkedIn accounts from a single dashboard, and scale activity on-demand, whilst only paying for the number of licenses in use each month. It makes the management of client accounts straightforward.
Here are some facts about our Cloud Agency license:
- It is a Cloud-based LinkedIn automation tool. This means that you can manage and run automation activity for as many client accounts as you want at the same time. All automation activity is executed from our infrastructure without slowing down your computer, so you’re free to scale without limitation
- With a Cloud Agency license, your automation is ‘always on’, running 24/7 during planned activity times. You won’t have to worry about your client lead generation campaigns stopping or pausing, even when you shut down your computer
- We ensure that your clients’ LinkedIn accounts are safeguarded with our proven safety settings. LinkedIn can’t physically detect Dux-Soup, and by controlling the settings for you, we’ll give you peace of mind that your automation activity mimics human behavior, without raising any suspicions
- It’s easy to instantly add client LinkedIn accounts to your Agency Dashboard and start getting leads straight away. From your Agency Dashboard you can manage client campaigns:some text
- Create unlimited campaigns in the Agency Dash. Each campaign has up to 12 actions including Follow, Visit, InMail, Connection Invitation, Message and Endorse. Actions are set at custom time delays from the previous action, with messages and connection invitation personalization capability
- Monitor the past activity and queued activity in the activity log
- Analyze results in the Funnel Flow to see connection acceptance rates and response rates for individual campaigns
- Drill down into individual leads at any stage of the Funnel. Qualify leads in/out, continue leads in the campaign, switch campaigns and remove profiles from campaigns
- Switch between client profiles in a single pane of view
- Add and remove profiles instantly
- With metered billing, you’ll benefit from a discounted Agency rate (annual prices for a flexible monthly commitment) and only get charged for your total active licenses each month.
Our Cloud Agency license starts from 5 seats, but if you don’t have 5 clients, don’t worry. You can start by buying individual licenses for clients and when you’re ready, you can move them onto a Cloud Agency license by contacting our support team on info@dux-soup.com.
CRM System = HubSpot / Pipedrive / SharpSpring
Often a client will have a CRM system already in place, so it’s unlikely that you’ll get to choose which CRM system to work with. But with Dux-Soup, you’ll automatically benefit from access to our direct integrations with HubSpot, Pipedrive and SharpSpring if you’re running a Cloud Agency license. So if your clients have one of these then you can start to connect up their lead generation activities and earn yourself some brownie points.
When you connect Dux-Soup to your client’s CRM system with our native integrations, you can enroll profiles into LinkedIn campaigns straight from their CRM system, or send contact data from LinkedIn (choose from sending data for new connections, message responses or profiles visited) to their CRM, so you can grow their database for them as a value add.
Think of the potential. You can start to pull LinkedIn lead generation into the wide mix, automating LinkedIn outreach to qualified leads within the CRM for better results.
Optional extras
You can connect Sales Navigator and Dux-Soup to any third-party system you like with Zapier or Make.
We also have a direct integration with Woodpecker, allowing you to combine email and LinkedIn lead generation into a single platform.
You could use an AI copywriter for your LinkedIn outreach messaging.
You can combine Calendly to offer a meeting link in your LinkedIn messages.
There are endless other other tools you can use to build out your workflow process, we won’t cover all of these here but our sales team is always available for a chat so you can request a call.
Chapter 3: How to get set up and onboard clients
With the tools outlined above, there is very straightforward onboarding process with clients, which can be completed within minutes.
Sales Navigator
Your client can upgrade to Sales Navigator Core license. We recommend this when using LinkedIn automation, otherwise, the LinkedIn weekly invitation limit and other free plan limits will severely hamper your results.
Dux-Soup
A Cloud Agency license is perfect for agencies running LinkedIn automation for clients. You can purchase one at https://www.dux-soup.com/pricing/cloud-agency-plan or transfer existing Dux-Soup licenses to a Cloud Agency license by contacting the support team at info@dux-soup.com. You can then start adding your clients via the Agency Dashboard:
Step 1: Adding your client’s LinkedIn account to your Cloud Agency license
A Cloud Agency license comes with 5 client seats included. When you add additional client LinkedIn accounts, Dux-Soup will automatically start charging you for the additional licenses added, from the month you add them. It’s all taken care of automatically so you can get going with new clients immediately - there’s no pre-authorisation required.
To clarify, 1 agency seat is neede for 1 LinkedIn account. So if you work for a company that wants you to generate leads for 8 of their LinkedIn accounts, you’d need 8 seats for that client.
You can have multiple Cloud Agency Admins within your agency. Each one can access the Agency Dashboard, view and manage all of the client LinkedIn lead generation campaigns, and access the reporting dashboard.
To add a new client is simple:
Go to your Cloud Agency Dashboard and click on the ‘Add Session’ button. Your agency license key will be pre-populated so just fill in their name and click OK. You’ll get a pop-up confirming ‘new user profile created successfully’.
Now, log into your client’s LinkedIn account.
Once you’re logged in, head to the ‘Cloud Monitor’ tab and Click ‘Start Cloud Session’.
The status should change to ‘Cloud session:ready’.
Now you can create your LinkedIn campaigns in the ‘Drip campaigns’ tab of the Dashboard.
Step 2: Create your campaigns
Create unlimited campaigns for each client in the ‘Drip Campaigns’ tab of the Dash. Add up to 12 actions to each campaign, personalize messages and set custom time delays between actions.
When you’ve finished creating your campaigns it should look a bit like this:
You can dive deeper into the details of how to create LinkedIn lead generation campaigns.
Step 3: Find your prospects
From your client’s LinkedIn, Sales Nav or Recruiter account, find any list of profiles that you want to target with your campaign.
If you need some help with searching and filtering, use our LinkedIn search and filter masterclass.
Step 4: Enroll
One your list is ready, click on Dux-Soup and press ‘Enroll’ from the extension. This will enroll the entire list into your campaign of choice from the drop-down menu.
Or, choose to enroll profiles individually from the Dux-Soup Tricks widget that automatically appears next to your list of profiles.
Here the full article on how to enroll profiles into your Dux-Soup campaigns.
Dux-Soup will execute your campaign actions for you, personalizing them as it goes.
Step 5: Monitoring, analyzing, testing, reporting and improving results
The great thing about our Cloud Agency license is that you get a single dashboard where you can switch between client accounts.
For each client account, you get access to advanced campaign statistics, great for client reporting!
Then go to the Funnel Flow to analyze your campaign results and data
There’s a lot you can do in the Funnel Flow. From checking what’s in your activity queue, to drilling down into the data at each stage of the Funnel. You can see results by individual campaigns and date ranges, and search for individual leads to manage them - plus lots more.
All of your reporting is right here, so just export the data and send it to your clients when it’s reporting time..
Read more on how to manage LinkedIn campaigns with the Dux-Dash.
So there you have 5 easy steps to getting set-up, creating campaigns, and reporting results for clients with Dux-Soup.
CRM system
If your client has HubSpot, SharpSpring or Pipedrive you can connect these via your ‘CRM Connections’ tab of each client’s Dashboard. Our tutorials playlist covers how to connect these. It takes less than 5 minutes but gives your client really powerful centralized control and visibility of their leads.
If your client uses a different CRM system, you can still connect it via our webhooks and a third-party integration tool like Zapier or Make.
Now you’ve got the technology sorted (and you can see it’s pretty easy to learn), let’s look at your pricing model for LinkedIn lead generation.
Chapter 4: Pricing your services
“How should I price for my services?” It’s a common question asked by agencies.
In Chapter 1 we covered how to define your service proposition. It may be that you’ve come up with a range of packages, offering a different quantity and quality of results per package. Below we cover some ways you can price for your services along with the pros and cons of each different pricing model.
- Charging by the number of profiles enrolled into LinkedIn campaigns:
Pros: This charging model minimizes your risk. Providing you can create accurate lists of target profiles on Sales Navigator without much difficulty, and then get your campaign messaging agreed upon, you can accurately predict the time needed for your LinkedIn lead generation activity
Cons:
Whilst this charging method is low-risk to your ROI, it doesn’t offer the chance to expand your revenue further. If you’re very good at generating high quality leads then the advantages of automation tools may make a charge-by-result model more compelling for your agency.
- Charging by result:
Pros: If you’re well-versed at LinkedIn lead generation, and offer a broader scope of lead generation services for clients, you’ll have a good understanding of what a client will pay per lead. The beauty of automation tools is that you can massively scale activity and increase results without adding resource costs into the mix. Therefore the more leads you can agree to supply, the better your potential rewards.
Cons: There are potential dangers of clients not agreeing that leads supplied and charged for meet their lead criteria which can always cause a difference of opinion. This charging model is a higher-risk strategy, with careful evaluation of a client’s value proposition, and your relationship with them required. You could run the risk of delivering LinkedIn lead generation services at a loss if prospects are not converting.
- Charging by time:
It isn’t uncommon for lead generation service providers to charge based on their time, and set an expectation of results with the client.
Pros: This model alleviates the risk from your agency, with the certainty that you will make ROI from your services
Cons: You may find it harder to win clients with this pricing model, although by starting with existing clients who know and trust your services, and producing compelling results that can be used as a benchmark, this option is certainly viable.
In addition to your monthly service rate, you’ll need to factor in additional licensing costs:
- LinkedIn/Sales Navigator subscription - will you pay or the customer pay?
- Dux-Soup Cloud Agency seat cost
- Any other software costs like AI copywriting tools, Email marketing tools etc.
Most agencies work by monthly retainer with a notice period required for cancellation of services. Since the initial briefing and set-up element can add some time commitment to your agency resources, consider contracting on an initial 3 - 6 month minimum basis.
We always recommend researching the market to see what other agencies are charging for similar services to ensure that you’re not pricing yourself too low or too high.
Chapter 5: How to excel as an agency
When it comes to agency profitability, customer retention goes a long way. Here are some tips on how to excel with your LinkedIn lead generation services and retain clients for longer, growing your agency as a result.
- Demonstrate and report clear results
This is an easy but essential part of the job with Dux-Soup. Demonstrating clear results and ROI for clients is the only way to prove your value and ensure ongoing custom. With Dux-Soup, our Agency Dashboard is geared up just for this. Here’s what you can report back to your client:
- Individual campaign statistics
- Total campaign statistics
- Connection acceptance rates
- Response rates
- Lead conversion rates
- Data lists of leads generated
- Data lists of new connections
This level of transparency allows you to account for your activity and justify return on investment for clients.
- Build trackable workflows
Multi-channel reporting with tools like GA4 allows you to report on campaign results, which cover a wider set of results than just LinkedIn lead generation.
If you’re running workflows including email, LinkedIn, advertising campaigns and other channels, then tracking campaign conversions on your client’s website with a tool like GA4 will allow you to include any results achieved from your agency’s campaign activity.
- Use Black Box Thinking
Black Box Thinking is all about improving results by learning from failure. In marketing, it’s important to test ideas, challenge the norm and improve results based on evidence. With a tool like Dux-Soup, you can create different LinkedIn campaign messaging, adapt one message/action at a time, and see the impact on the conversion rate. For example, something as simple as adding a blank connection message vs adding a personalized connection message will tell you pretty quickly which strategy works best. This can then be adopted for future activity.
Use this approach with clients and they’ll love seeing the ongoing improvements in results. Remember not to be afraid of failure - not everything you try will have a positive impact, but this learning is equally important.
- Measure end-to-end ROI
Complete the end-to-end sales cycle by getting feedback from customers on their conversion rates and revenue generated. We recommend monthly or quarterly reviews where they feed back the results of your leads generated.
If you can build a strong ROI case then your client will find it hard pushed to ever let you go!
Conclusion
So now you’ve got a full strategy to selling LinkedIn lead generation services, it’s about time that you put it into action?
Start defining your proposition today and take it to market. You’ve got everything else you need right here, ready to go for when you bring on your first customer.
Good Luck from the Dux-Soup team, we hope to see you soon!
