How can you successfully accelerate business growth using LinkedIn and generate up to 1000 new prospects per month? Here we show you how to generate more leads on LinkedIn by using LinkedIn automation - the answer to scaling results, without scaling effort.
In this blog we share our hottest LinkedIn lead generation tips by exploring:
- The benefits of organic versus paid growth
- How to leverage existing connections to generate new leads
- The importance of objective setting for your campaigns
- How to use automated actions and sequences to achieve your campaign objectives
This blog is also covered in a Dux-Soup webinar, presented by Giles Garnett, our Head of Professional Services and available on our YouTube Channel.
New to Dux-Soup? Our website has lots of helpful guides offering tips, tricks and insights to accelerate your lead generation. How to get started with Dux-Soup explains what Dux-Soup can do, and how you get it up and running - from first-time installation, through to defining a campaign, getting prospects into the campaign and connecting to a CRM system.
If you haven’t tried it before, why not take advantage of a 2-week free trial of the Turbo edition and see how it can boost your LinkedIn growth? No credit card needed, just click on the link to get started right away!
How to generate more leads on LinkedIn
When it comes to LinkedIn, there are two different mechanisms for growth depending on your circumstances:
Organic growth
This is ideal for businesses without a marketing budget who want to nurture their connections. The messaging and engagement is personalized through the use of ‘likes’, ‘endorsements’ and ‘comments’, all aimed at building lasting relationships. It requires time and investment, and a strategy in order to be effective.
Paid growth
Perfect for companies with a marketing budget, or a wish to drive focus toward a specific marketing campaign, offer, or event that demands quick results. No engagement is needed, this approach doesn’t build relationships, it’s all about advertising.
Why Automate?
Does the word automation make you cringe ever so slightly?
If you’ve ever had an impersonal, blatantly automated message land in your inbox then automation probably does send a small shiver down your spine. You know the messages we mean, they’re riddled with grammar and spelling mistakes, with no thought to the relevancy of the content. They can leave you feeling far from special.
And yet, when automation is done well it can address needs, offer solutions, and be a potent mechanism for building relationships. When effort goes into the targeting and messaging it doesn’t have to make you cringe. Automation is an investment in your business with significant benefits.
When you’re ready to scale up, automation enables you to do it consistently, and accurately. Our three Dux-Soup plans offer established processes to meet the needs of your lead generation and your budget. The Dux-Soup automation tool’s robot mimics human behavior and carries out repetitive actions saving you time.
Using Connections
An important resource that many people don't make the most of is their existing network. If you’ve put work into creating an excellent network of first-degree connections - use them! There are many ways to leverage this network to increase your visibility and grow your business:
1. Use Dux-Soup to message your network directly and update them with your news. When you auto-visit your network, Dux-Soup will automatically visit every LinkedIn profile, and notify your connection of your visit. This can encourage them to view your profile in return or they may get in touch. At the very least, it’s a means of warming up your connections before you send a direct message.
2. Find key connections - this could be competitors or former colleagues - and have a look at their network. While some people like to hide their connections, those that don’t can offer a rich source of data for your industry and network. Watch how to run automation tricks against the connections of your connection at 11.24mins of the webinar.
Whatever approach you take, remember that every person you connect with will increase the size of your 2nd and 3rd-degree network.
Objective Setting
When you carry out any actions on LinkedIn using either Dux-Soup Pro, Turbo or Cloud editions, create a clear set of objectives to focus your efforts. And then measure against these objectives.
Pro
- Clearly define your target audience and align them with your outreach action(s)
- Manually track your success by monitoring how many actions are being performed per day, the size of your network and the new connection responses in LinkedIn and also your mailbox
Turbo & Cloud
- Each campaign should align with the target audience
- Turbo and Cloud activity can be monitored through the Dux-Dash. In the Funnel Flow you can track the statistics for each campaign this includes invitations sent, accepted connections, follow-ups sent, prospects who have responded to you and qualified leads. These statistics enable you to measure the progress of your objectives, for example: 150 invites sent per week, with a 20% acceptance rate.
- Regularly review your campaigns for changes and adaptations. Use A/B testing to see which approach works and compare your messaging, audience, time of communication or conversion action for a more rigorous approach to finding the right combination. The blog How to A/B test with Dux-Soup contains all the steps to help you get started.
How to automate your LinkedIn lead generation actions
Pro
For Dux-Soup Pro users it’s important to be organised with your actions.
LinkedIn is a pot of pure gold for generating new leads and profile lists, and being clear about what actions you are running against which ‘list’ is essential. The blog Using LinkedIn lists with Dux-Soup to boost your lead generation focuses on some of the more useful lists LinkedIn is able to generate for the Dux-Soup robot to automate.
Track and trace your messages using the Dux-Soup ‘Tag profiles’ option, this will help prevent you from double-messaging people too.
Always be aware of LinkedIn search limits and LinkedIn weekly invitation limits. The number of connection requests that you send and the length of the outreach messages can all be tracked by LinkedIn.
Dux-Soup has implemented safety mechanisms in both the browser-based and Cloud-based tools, which in combination with the Dux-Soup LinkedIn automation safety guidelines means you can automate LinkedIn without fear of your actions causing suspicion.
If you can get people to visit you, connect with you and then get into a conversation with you, your network is sure to grow.
You can do all of this with Dux-Soup Pro by performing the following actions:
- Sending connection request to 2nd and 3rd degree connections
- Direct messaging 1st degree connections
- Sending InMails to 2nd and 3rd degree connections
- Visit only - ANY PROFILE (check your visibility settings in LinkedIn are set so people can see that you’ve visited them).
Go to 21.17mins of the webinar for a demonstration of these actions.
Turbo and Cloud
With Dux-Soup Turbo and Cloud you can build as many campaigns as you like for your different audiences. Each campaign can have up to 12 actions and they’re all defined in the Drip Campaigns option of the Dux Dash.
Enroll your prospects into the campaign(s) and monitor their progress using the Funnel Flow to see how many people have been invited/messaged, to check the acceptance rates per campaign, and to review all the responses and decide the next action(s).
Watch the tutorial Creating Drip Campaigns to see the set up.
Either bulk enroll all the prospects (the time-saving option), or use the Dux-Soup widget to cherry pick the profiles. This blog shows you the options Enrolling prospects into campaigns.
The drip campaign feature allows you to define the campaign actions, the timing, and the content. You can control which prospects are engaged in which campaign. You can follow our LinkedIn automation playbook to help you get started with Dux-Soup Turbo and Cloud.
LinkedIn campaign strategies
Let’s take a look at a selection of campaigns, each with a different purpose, audience and set of actions. They include 2nd and 3rd-degree connections, direct messages to 1st-degree connections, InMails, and Auto-visits.
Depending on whether you have a standard or LinkedIn Premium Plan, you may be limited by how many connection requests you can send. This won’t stop you from still being able to visit hundreds of profiles a day.
1. Auto-visit campaign
There’s always value in an auto-visit only campaign, it gets people's attention, reminds them that you want to be seen, and as the Dux-Soup robot can work anytime of the day, it means you can go to sleep while it continues working on your behalf!
Here’s an example of an auto-visit campaign. The profiles are visited 3 times over 3 months, and each time they will be notified of the visit.
2. Network growth campaign
This next campaign is outreach for new connections starting with a visit and then 5 days later a connection request. Turbo and Cloud will monitor for the acceptance, and once they’ve accepted, Follow-Up message #1 is queued up. When that’s gone, the next action is queued up. The moment somebody responds the campaign stops and you decide what happens next.
3. Network nurture campaign
This last campaign is aimed at 1st degree connections and so it doesn’t contain a connection request. It starts with an auto-visit, 10 days later Follow-Up message #1 is sent, with more to follow.
Conclusion
There's no denying, LinkedIn is a treasure chest of potential new leads. Whether you’re new to LinkedIn or an active participant with lots of connections, this checklist poses a few questions and thoughts that will help you grow your business and be more efficient with your time and costs.
1. Do you want to automate?
LinkedIn is the go-to place for Lead generation. It’s a phenomenal resource that gives you access to industry influencers and decision makers. Dux-Soup helps thousands of professionals every day, to generate vast numbers of new leads and multiply their LinkedIn lead generation conversion rates. Here are some reviews:
Q: What do you like best about Dux-Soup? A: The ease of importing lists, especially combined with Sales Nav, for a steady growth of connections.
Q: What do you like best about Dux-Soup? A: This helps automate your networking efforts and creates targeted sequences that can help small business owners so much. This is super effective and easy to automate. I use it to automate reach out to many different target groups with customized sequences. Affordable and useful Turbo version.
Q: What do you like best about Dux-Soup? A: I like how easy it is to set up campaigns. I love how much control the tool gives you to automate campaigns. The customer support is really fast and helpful.
Q: What do you like best about Dux-Soup? A: I like the way that Dux-soup enables me to message a lot of LinkedIn connections without spending loads of time on it
2. Which version of Dux-Soup is appropriate?
There’s something for every budget and all your LinkedIn outreach requirements. Your strategy, actions and need for scalability will determine which one is right for your business.
Pro semi-automates LinkedIn functions for you, running on a real time browser.
Turbo allows you to fully automate your lead generation. It contains all the Pro features, plus campaign management and API access, opening up countless integration possibilities.
Cloud offers an easy-to-deploy solution where safety settings, automations speeds and computing resources are all dealt with, leaving you to create and manage the campaigns, utilize the integrations and leave Dux-Soup to carry out the tasks while you switch off your computer and do something else with your time.
If you’re still unsure, have a read of the blog Dux-Soup LinkedIn automation: What’s the right plan for you? to help you decide which one best suits your requirements.
And don’t forget, if you’re not already a Dux user you can try Dux-Soup Turbo for free for 2 weeks. This gives you the chance to access the automated drip campaigns and see how they might work for you.
3. Leverage your network
Building a strong, engaged and professional network of 1st-degree connections is key to success. If you’ve made extensive connections and then left them dormant, seize the opportunity and create a 1st-degree direct message drip campaign. The bigger your network, the more useful it becomes.
4. Objective setting
The more effort you put in upfront, the better the rewards at the end. It pays to work in an ordered way following clear objectives. Regardless of whether you choose Pro, Turbo or Cloud, match your audience with your action, and use that one list against one action or campaign. The beauty of Dux-Soup is that it allows for different flavours of campaigns and those different approaches can all run simultaneously.
Questions
At the end of the webinar there were plenty of questions from the live audience. If you’d like to hear them in full go to 37:49min of the recording.
Here’s a taste of some of the questions that came up:
- Why doesn’t LinkedIn see connection requests and messages as spam?
- How can I ensure my outreach does not include my current clients?
- Can I still work on my browser while Dux-Soup is running in a separate window?
- Can I send members of my LinkedIn Groups connection requests?
- Is it possible to carry out manual Dux-Soup actions while my campaigns are running?
- Can Dux-Soup gather email addresses from LinkedIn and can I then export them to my CRM?
- Am I able to operate Dux-Soup on a Company LinkedIn page?
- Is Dux-Soup best for generating leads from your existing network or for cold messaging?
- Can I change my messaging mid-way through a campaign?
- What’s the difference between InMail and Direct messaging?
If you have any thoughts or questions get in touch! You can contact the support team via the live chat, visit our Help Center or send us an email: info@dux-soup.com.
