You’re posting on LinkedIn, growing your network and showing up, but the leads aren’t coming. Maybe you get a few likes from the wrong people, or nothing at all.
LinkedIn is undoubtedly a more complicated platform than it was a few years ago. There are more people on it, more people scrolling and a lot more noise. And you’re in the middle of all of it.
This article walks you through exactly what I do on LinkedIn to get leads, why I do it and how you can adapt it to your own business.
We’ll go throughโฆ
- Why you need to start with the end in mind
- Why your profile comes first
- The three things I do: content, a newsletter and events
- How to follow up without pitching
- What results to expect in the first 90 to 180 days
- How to keep your emotions out of it
- What to do if you’re a salesperson
You can eat the meat and leave the bones. Take what works for you and adapt the rest.
So, let’s get into it.
Step 1: Start with the end in mind to get leads on LinkedIn
Before you touch your profile or write a post, answer these questions as specifically as you can:
1. What am I selling at the end of this journey?
2. Who is going to pay for it?
3. Why will they pay for it?
4. How much will they pay?
The closer you get to an answer, the easier everything else becomes. Your content strategy, your profile and your connection strategy all come out of it. Who am I connecting with? What should they see on my profile? What should I post about?
If you skip this step, things don’t link up. You put out posts and get random engagement, or none, you grow your network, but nobody sees the relevance of buying from you. You try to reach more people and still get no results.
Even the big influencers on LinkedIn, the ones with followings far bigger than mine, know exactly what they’re trying to sell.
The three big reasons people don’t get leads on LinkedIn: they’re unfocused on what they’re selling, and unfocused on who would buy it and why.
It’s rarely the algorithm, and it’s rarely a lack of understanding of the platform. It’s doing the wrong things without the right focus.
Long-form and episodic content convert at a higher rate because they build real trust. Recent B2B content marketing research confirms that buyers require multiple meaningful touchpoints before considering a purchase decision.
If you’d like help getting this clear, it’s exactly what we work through first on the Social Selling Accelerator.
Step 2: Fix your profile to get leads on LinkedIn
Everything on LinkedIn revolves around your profile. It’s how people check you out and how they figure out what you do.
Think about the journey from “I don’t know you” to “I’m ready to buy from you”. A big chunk of that journey happens on your profile, when people look at it, click around and read. Skip that part, and you make the whole thing harder.
If you’re focused on lead generation and you haven’t fixed your profile, you’re toast.
My team at Maverrik is around 30 people, and I can sell to corporates. But on LinkedIn, my objective is to sell to small business owners who are trying to make LinkedIn work. So my profile carries all the supporting information for that audience, and my posts speak to the same people.
Tips for your profile
1. Pick one primary audience: You might serve several, but your profile needs to speak clearly to one.
2. Match your profile to your offer: Everything on it should support what you sell and why people buy it.
3. Align your posts with your profile: Your content should speak to the same people your profile does.
4. Borrow from people doing it well: One of my one-to-one clients followed my examples and produced a profile that looks better than mine. I’m updating mine again because of it.
Step 3: Three daily habits to get leads on LinkedIn
I do three main things on LinkedIn:
1. Content: posting consistently
2. A newsletter: long-form content
3. LinkedIn events: regular live sessions
This is aimed at experts: consultants, cybersecurity advisors, executive coaches and anyone who uses their knowledge and wisdom to help someone else. If that’s you, these three things will give you more opportunity than you need, as long as they’re aligned with your proposition and you let them compound.
A useful way to think about it: LinkedIn is just a room full of people, like a big networking event. There are lots of ways to work that room. You can chat by the drinks, wander the crowd, get a slot on stage or put up a stand. What matters is your intent. If you wander in to see what you can sell to whoever, good luck. If you ask who you really want to talk to and whether this is the right event, you’re on the right track.
Part 1: Content that helps you get leads on LinkedIn
I’ve posted daily on LinkedIn for years. In years gone by, posts would simply go nuts. That isn’t true any more. Some still do well, and I’ve had posts reach 22 million people, but I don’t bank on them. Posts are my long-term win.
What I do is talk about the topics that link to the reasons people buy. Here’s how I think about it. If I’m a coach who helps lawyers become confident in the courtroom, my profile clearly shows my success at that. I connect with lawyers who are likely to be in court, and I post about being confident and successful in the courtroom. Then I shouldn’t be surprised when I get inbound leads from lawyers who want to be more confident in the courtroom.
That’s how the content machine works. You attract people interested in what you talk about.
7 tips for content that gets you leads
1. Know why your ideal client buys: To get people to enquire, make them curious about something they really want to achieve, either a problem they want to leave behind or a goal they want to reach. The sweet spot uses both.
2. Know what they’ll pay for: There’s a difference between what you want to sell and what they’ll pay for. If there’s a gap, you’re flogging a dead horse, because convincing people to buy something they aren’t already motivated to buy is very hard.
3. Write episodic content: I’m a huge Star Trek fan, and the classic episodes are re-watchable because each one stands alone. You don’t need the backstory to enjoy it. Your posts should work the same way. Assume every reader is seeing you for the first time. If they need existing knowledge to understand your post, you’ve lost most of your audience.
4. Don’t write for yourself: I am not my customer. If you only talk about your topic, you’ll attract competitors and people who have already solved the problem. You might get great engagement, but from people who will never buy.
5. Use your face: I mostly use images, and plenty of personal and phone pictures. I’ve found branded graphics don’t work as well, and I want people to recognise me and build trust.
6. Be consistent, not perfect: I post five times a week, but you don’t need to. I don’t agonise over whether a post is good or bad. The compounding effect is what counts. I get inbound leads every day, and it’s never because of one post.
7. Start with ideas: If you don’t know where to begin, work from the reasons your audience buys. I’ve got 30 post ideas I’m happy to share, so get in touch or take a look at our free resources.
Part 2: A LinkedIn newsletter
I publish two newsletters every week: Win on LinkedIn, and Build Beyond Referrals, which is aimed at clients who rely heavily on referrals. Each edition is essentially a bigger post about something my audience really wants.
Long-form content converts at a higher rate than short-form content. In many ways, short-form posts are the top of the funnel, and long-form is the middle and bottom.
Why a LinkedIn newsletter instead of your website?
Getting people from social media to your website is hard, because the platforms want you to pay for ads to do it. Inside LinkedIn, a newsletter is more valuable to you for four reasons:
1. Subscribers come to you: LinkedIn automatically invites your connections to subscribe. I have over 30,000 subscribers. Not all of them are active, but it’s still a great audience.
2. LinkedIn notifies them: Every time you publish, subscribers get a notification.
3. It lands in their inbox: People with email notifications switched on (about 40 per cent of users, by my understanding) get an email teaser of your newsletter. LinkedIn is emailing your content for you.
4. You can see every subscriber: That means you can start conversations with new subscribers and engagers every time you publish.
I also run adapted versions on my website, but the main home for my newsletters is LinkedIn.
You don’t need a huge network to get started. Even with 1,000 connections, I’d expect at least 300 to 400 subscribers within 30 days of launching, and enough to start conversations every day.
Look at how I structure my editions and you’ll see a clear route to getting calls booked: real value, then next steps, then a clear way to get engaged. Some editions are heavier on value, and others are heavier on how I can help.
For me, the newsletter has brought in more inbound leads and revenue than anything else I do on LinkedIn, and I was early to it.
Part 3: LinkedIn events
Every week, I run a free LinkedIn event to help people with what they’re struggling with, which is getting clients from LinkedIn. I’ve done it for six years.
I could run a slick webinar with a countdown clock, where I spend half an hour twisting the knife and telling a sob story, I don’t have time for those games. I show up every week and deliver value. Most people don’t watch live. They watch the replay. Then I follow everyone up and invite them to a conversation.
Every event, some people ask for the resources and some ask for a call. The messages say things like “I’d love two or three clients a month from LinkedIn, how would I do that?” or “I’ve tried everything and it isn’t working.”
Across six years, I’ve had around 125,000 sign-ups. When we looked at the people who became inbound leads and paying clients, we found that the majority had signed up to at least two events.
It’s not about one event. It’s about rhythm.
One of my clients in AI cloud services ran two events. The first brought a small number of leads. After the second, he followed up and booked a meeting with someone who had attended both, and it turned into a โฌ250,000 opportunity.
Want to see what this looks like in practice? Take a look at our upcoming events.
How often should you run events?
I run one every week because I have a big team to look after and need a volume of clients you probably don’t. I wouldn’t tell you to do that, because you’d burn out. One a month is totally doable.
Follow up with the people who signed up, the people who interacted and the people who messaged you asking for the resources. And don’t expect inbound from day one. I didn’t get people saying “Dean, tell me how you can help me” to begin with. I had to work at it until it came.
How to follow up and get leads on LinkedIn without pitching
When I say “outbound”, people picture pitching, degrading themselves or looking desperate. That’s not what this is.
In the first 90 days, you’re reactively following up on interest. Talk to your new newsletter subscribers, the people who engage with your content and the people who register for or ask about your events. You don’t need to pitch.
Think of the best kind of selling as booking a session with a good coach. A good coach doesn’t tell you what to do or lead you somewhere. They draw out what you want and what matters to you. If there’s alignment, they offer to help and ask if you’re open to it. Sales is helping people uncover their need and seeing if there’s a fit. It starts with them, not us.
Tips for following up
1. Start with a simple message: When you get two new subscribers, message them. You can use a template, but adapt it. It’s easier to adapt something than to start from a blank page.
2. Make it a conversation: Ask questions and listen. One of my clients says he gets more from following up interactions than from posting content.
3. Have more conversations than you need at first: You might be a bit clumsy at handling them early on. More conversations help you learn what works faster.
4. Follow up consistently: Treat every newsletter edition and event as a chance to start new conversations.
What to expect: the first 90 to 180 days
Here’s the truth. When you start content, a newsletter and events together, the return on paper in the first six months will look questionable.
There are outliers who make $100,000 quickly, but most people won’t. Inbound doesn’t arrive because someone saw something once. It arrives because they keep seeing a consistent message, and then decide the time is right.
The long-term return is huge. But the first 90 to 180 days are about repetition and following up the interest you create.
Is it boring? Yes. But it’s easy. Imagine having to bank on a single post each day to get a lead, or sending a pile of sales pitches just to fill your pipeline. Rinse and repeat is a far better deal.
Why I’m so big on consistency
I learned this the hard way. I started my first business at 18 and relied almost entirely on referrals. When that work went out to tender, I had no way of generating new leads. I panicked and chased shiny objects, looking for a hack or a trick.
What turned things around was doing a few simple things every single day, over and over, while being clear about what I was selling and why people needed it. That’s the same principle I follow on LinkedIn today.
Keep your emotions out of it
LinkedIn spends a huge amount of money keeping you on the platform. When you log in, it’s designed to protect its business model. If LinkedIn knows you want leads and clients, your feed will fill with tactics, tricks and tips, because that keeps you searching, consuming and scrolling.
It can also mess with your head. If you get too emotionally attached to an outcome, LinkedIn becomes a roller coaster. Every good post is a high, and every bad one has you on the verge of giving up.
I’ve had events that went brilliantly and events that were a car crash. I once lost 21 subscribers in a day from around 31,000 and spent a while wondering what was wrong with me. Then I reminded myself that LinkedIn wants us to keep looking for answers and trying shiny new things.
LinkedIn is a tool and a channel to get revenue. You’ll build brilliant relationships and friendships there, and you’ll build your brand. But use it with self-discipline and don’t get emotionally attached to it.
If you’re a salesperson
If you sell for a company, you’re under pressure to fill a pipeline, and your employer probably wants you doing outreach rather than content, newsletters and events. You have a pipeline, a quota, a manager and a target, so you’ll need a different approach. You’ll likely need a lot more meetings than a solo consultant who needs three to five new clients a year.
But the trust piece still matters. People are more likely to respond to your outreach if they recognise your name. I call the framework for building that recognition and visibility the seven steps, and it’s designed to improve your response rates when you reach out.
If you’re in sales, take a look at our LinkedIn Training and Social Selling with Sales Navigator programmes.
Checklist to get leads on LinkedIn
1. Define the end point: What are you selling, who pays for it and why?
2. Fix your profile: Make it speak to one clear audience.
3. Post consistently: Write episodic content that links to why your ideal client buys.
4. Start a newsletter: Publish regularly and keep it inside LinkedIn.
5. Run events: Start with one a month and follow up every attendee and sign-up.
6. Follow up reactively: Have conversations with subscribers, engagers and registrants, without pitching.
7. Give it 90 to 180 days: Let it compound and keep your emotions out of it.
LinkedIn isn’t short of tactics. What gets results is knowing what you sell, who it’s for and why they’ll pay, then doing a few things consistently.
Good luck, and I want you to be successful.
Next, read: How to Build a Profitable Personal Brand in 30 Days
If you want help getting more leads, conversations and clients from LinkedIn, book a call to learn how we can help.