How to Find Your Next Client on LinkedIn: A Guide for Salesforce Partners
LinkedIn was launched in 2003 to network, build careers, and share ideas. This platform is a professional social network that enables its members to connect and share content with professionals, including colleagues, potential employers, business partners, competitors, or new employees.
This social media platform exposes you to the opportunity to build relationships with individuals and other companies that could help develop your Salesforce consulting company. It’s all about career development, professional connections, industry discussions, and other business-related activities in which users are involved on this site, such as finding customers or employees alike here on LinkedIn who would assist one another or work together. This is why having your company on LinkedIn is so powerful because it’s a fantastic way for B2B marketing.
As a Salesforce Partner, you are convincing business owners, department heads, and decision-makers. Today, over 810 million members in more than 200 countries worldwide are LinkedIn members, and we have compiled a best practices guide that you need to implement as early as now to maximize this platform.
LinkedIn marketing is the process of using links and other social media sites like Facebook or Twitter by posting job offers that people can apply from their mobile device, which automatically applies through these networks. These tools will help you create connections for future leads via email and phone calls to build better relationships.
LinkedIn helps improve your brand awareness, too, because when you promote your Salesforce consulting services properly, there’ll be more traffic coming towards you!
When it comes to social media marketing, you may be tempted to put all your resources toward the big three: Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Those are great platforms for reaching your target audience but excluding LinkedIn is doing your business a huge disservice. As the world’s largest professional network, Linkedln generates 227% more effectively than Facebook and Twitter for marketing purposes, so it’s a virtual platform when thinking about social media marketing strategies.
Salesforce is the leading cloud CRM company. And since the company sells enterprises on the idea of total customer management, it has many valuable components to partners. Salesforce sales consultants and business development execs are building relationships with companies worldwide. They need help finding new clients, so they talk to their partners about how they can support them in getting more client leads. However, it’s not always clear how to go about this. Here are the steps you can take to find your next client on LinkedIn.
Step 1: Type a keyword that an ideal client might use if looking for your services in the LinkedIn search bar.
To figure out what keywords or terms you might try, put yourself in a business owner’s shoes and ask how someone looking to hire a salesforce partner would word their post on LinkedIn?
For example, if you are a Salesforce Consultant, enter “looking for salesforce partners.”
Identifying your customer’s search terms will result in landing results that have mentioned that their business is finding implementation partners for Salesforce. Be more specific about the search phrases because you might get the results that Salesforce Partners post.
Another suggestion is to make a list of key decision-makers in their industry. After that, find the specific job title and reach out to the companies one by one and ask them if they are currently running operations with a CRM or if they are using traditional processes. It can be in the form of a survey at first, and then once you get their response, you can craft a follow-up message with the shock approach. For example, if they say they are still not using a CRM, you can give examples that doing this particular task in Salesforce will only take them x amount of time vs. the time they are currently wasting.
Step 2: Find Warmer Opportunities
There is an option to sort by “sort by “in the upper right corner.” Click on that, and it should say “Sort By Latest.” Doing this will make sure that you are not seeing clients who were looking for exactly what you did in 2013 but instead those who posted their opportunity most recently, which means they may still be actively seeking a provider!
Step 3: Review Your Results and Streamline Further for Target Prospects
You have to be discerning when choosing which opportunities you should go after to make sure it will work out well for all involved- landing on a bad client can often end up being worse than not closing the sale at all because they could cause stress, headaches, and even cost you money! This is also the best time to look at your LinkedIn connections you might have in common with this person or company. That way sending personalized messages could help stand out from other Salesforce Partners!
Step 4: Reach out to good leads and make an excellent first impression.
For your hard work to pay off, there is one more thing you have to do: send a connection request. Before you do, it might be beneficial if you optimize your LinkedIn profile and ensure it’s up-to-date because the lead may contact you through LinkedIn directly after finding out about their opening. It will help them see what they are looking for when they look at your Salesforce Partner page; here are some quick tips:
Step 5: Follow up with new leads
You might be expecting a long, detailed proposal to be what wins you the job. It is often much more straightforward, though- a simple Linkedin message letting them know that these are the type of Salesforce products you are known for can make all the difference. Customize your message based on the person you are reaching out to.
It doesn’t seem like much, but it lets your lead know that your organization has taken the initiative and made contact already before even being selected as a finalist. It makes them feel special and could open up a dialogue between parties which allows the building of stronger relationships overall.
I’ve seen first-hand that this small act makes all the difference between who gets offered (or wins) such opportunities, so bake into the process! You can also provide deliverables such as case studies/white papers etc., relevant to their project.
If you’re looking for a way to land leads without giving anything away, consider focusing on the value of your product. Impart knowledge by offering Industry Trend Reports and identifying how Salesforce helped specific challenges. Using ebooks and industry trend reports, you can encourage sign-ups.
Neil Patel, Co-founder of Neil Patel Digital, might be right in saying that B2B marketing is more effective than creating text-based content for lead generation.
According to A. Lee Judge, the Co-founder and CMO at Content Monsta, the B2B marketers of 2022 will broaden the scope of media content they create. You can adopt remote production methods and produce higher-quality multimedia content without falling back to traditional building methods. More media, less in-person production!
Carla Johnson, Marketing & Innovation Strategist of RE: Think Labs, believes that the future of business as we know it relies on empathy and creativity. The heart is about understanding what matters to your buyers and acting with courage and being different from the rest of the brands to inspire people into action. Business thrives when you show up differently than other companies by using creativity and taking risks so that you can creatively address customer needs next year.
LinkedIn provides the best customer targeting options in digital marketing and advertising, being a social media site that can help you find your specific audience for whatever Salesforce product or service you are selling. For example, if you have employee scheduling to sell to small businesses in America, configure your ad. It only displays when shown to companies with less than 100 employees who work within HR positions based on data collected by US companies.
Create your own LinkedIn group to find potential prospects. To do this, start by creating and setting up a LinkedIn group of your own! Join as many groups where you think your competitors will find them. Once you have found all the people who might be applicable for what you’re looking for, invite them into the group and then tell them about your services that they should know about. If there are any competitors in these other groups who may want access to what’s going on with this new “group,” make sure they can’t get past a certain point. Stop inviting more members until things settle down within the chatroom-this will help everyone feel comfortable enough so not too many leave prematurely (you never know!). After which time, share valuable information with those interested in what success looks like from their perspective; providing insight into products/services available helps keep people engaged on social media marketing platforms like Facebook or Twitter - ensuring brand awareness through word of mouth also generates leads for small business owners
Whenever any of your connections or prospects visit your LinkedIn company page, they can see you as a well-established brand if you want them to be converted into potential leads. For that, make sure the following things are done:
1) Cover image: The cover image should be visually alluring and reflects an impression about what type of mission/vision/culture lies with the company. Make sure there is up-to-date information about recent recognition and awards mentioned in its description part
2) Contact button: Choose an appropriate contact option from the list LinkedIn provides
3) Location mention: Mention where your business location(s).
Using hashtags in your caption allows LinkedIn to organize and serve your content to people with similar search interest behavior. You increase your post discoverability by including a maximum of five top-performing hashtags.
LinkedIn Ads are a paid form of marketing on the LinkedIn social media site. They provide your Salesforce consulting company with increased online reach and recognition, as well as opening up opportunities to increase sales, hire talented people, and connect with others in your industry’s social media presence.
Sponsored posts are one way that LinkedIn allows you to use their advertising tool within the network for personal or business purposes. Besides sponsored posts, there are other options like reaching new leads through email campaigns or targeting specific demographics by adding keywords into an ad campaign.
With Linkedin Ads, you can promote your business across many platforms, including being featured on profiles so long as our review team has approved them.
Start with an awareness campaign when you want to get your Salesforce consulting company out there. These campaigns will help spread the word and make people talk about what your services are like, as well as who you are. Through these impression-based campaigns, it is also possible to gain more followers on social media sites like Twitter or Instagram, increase views of videos uploaded onto YouTube channels, along with spark greater engagement!
Opt for a consideration ad if you want to qualify leads that are already somewhat familiar with your company. These ads are optimized to help you meet the following goals: website visits, engagement (by encouraging likes and shares), as well as video views.
When you want to drive home a sale in a conversion ad, consider these three objectives: lead generation using forms pre-filled with profile data, website conversions, or inspiring more visitors to download an ebook or newsletter sign-ups; and job applicants.
There are four types of ads that you can choose from on LinkedIn.
Sponsored content ads have a native look and feel to the LinkedIn platform. These are the posts that appear to be “boosted” commands from your company’s feed. Your ad manager can create a typical center with a headline, image, and link sponsored by you. You can make carousel ads, video ads, or lead generation advertisements that follow this same format but are not explicit in their sponsorship.
CRM CONSULTING CONTENT TIP
When doing this ad, don’t just promote and list your services. Instead, focus on a business pain point that your potential customers might find relatable—present critical data on how you managed to resolve those pain points. In this way, you will be establishing credibility and social proof.
Sponsored Messaging
Essentially, Sponsored Messaging on LinkedIn allows you to reach out and contact your target audience directly. Just take note—LinkedIn has a cap in place that limits how many members will receive one of your ads per month. For instance, a person in your target audience won’t get more than two of your ads within a short timeframe with the same message content.
While 89% of consumers prefer businesses to stay in touch via messaging, only 48% of companies currently use this technique as their customer engagement strategy.
CRM CONSULTING CONTENT TIP
It’s a faster way for you to instantly connect with CEOs, VPs, and more, even without adding them. In our experience, we had at least 25% of those we sent personal messages converted into action. When messaging a person, make sure you are directing to a person who can decide on organizational change. Here’s a recommendation, do market research of the Salesforce demand on your location and identify which industries have the highest need for Salesforce implementation. From there, you will have a solid idea of which types of business you should approach first.
Text ads are an excellent way to target potential leads on LinkedIn. For example, text ads can be the perfect option if you’re looking for a specific professional demographic.
Considering 58% of marketers say that improving lead generation is one of their top digital marketing goals, text-ads are an affordable way to cast a wide net and generate strong leads on your budget.
CRM CONSULTING CONTENT TIP
This ad type is the most cost-friendly among the other types. Create a relatable caption that focuses on your customer. It could focus on your customer’s goals, internal pain points, and industry challenges. You will be given 25 characters for your headline and 75 characters for your description, making it concise.
Dynamic Ads run on LinkedIn and connect to users through personalization. This means that when a Dynamic Ad pops up in a member’s feed, their details are reflected at them- like their photo, employer’s name, and job title.
However, if members find these ads too invasive or personalized, then they can change their settings to block any information from popping up with these ads.
Sponsored Ads are one way for members to view dynamic ads and Follower Ads, which show what other people within your network have liked or commented on.
CRM CONSULTING CONTENT TIP
Dynamic ads allow you to create hyper-targeted ads that encourage viewers to follow your page, gain traffic, and earn newsletter sign-ups. The key has a clear message and call to action. Also, maximize testing your ads based on ad copy, featured central image, and image layout.
LinkedIn offers “ads for any budget.” That may be true, but from my experience, this is not the case. LinkedIn ads are a better fit for companies with larger deals sizes; they are also better for bigger budgets. I am not saying that you can’t advertise on LinkedIn if you don’t have much money; you will need to adjust your expectations about how well your campaign performs and what success looks like.
According to their site, three factors influence cost (more or less): target audience, bid amount, and ad relevance score – all these factors should be considered when selecting an appropriate price range per day/month/year.
With LinkedIn, you set the amount you will spend and bid on ads. This means that LinkedIn Ads cost different amounts from campaign to campaign. Here are the global benchmarks of LinkedIn Ad costs by the B2BHouse:
Cost-per-Click (CPC) LinkedIn Benchmark
Average cost: $5.58
CPC per Industry
Cost-per-Lead (CPL) LinkedIn Benchmark
Average Cost: $ 15 to $350
CPL per Region
Linked Lead Gen Form LinkedIn Benchmark
Average Completion Rate: 10%
Reasonable Conversion Rate: 5% to 15%
Engagement Rate LinkedIn Benchmark
Non-video Sponsored Content: 0.5%
Video Sponsored Content: 1.6%
Message Ad/ Inmail LinkedIn Benchmark
Message ad / Inmail CTR: 3.6%
Message ad / Inmail Open rates: 38%
Linkedin’s Conversation Ad CTR: 12%
Linkedin’s Conversation Ad Open Rate: 50%
LinkedIn is a powerful marketing hub for both companies and entrepreneurs. The tips we’ve given you above provide some great ideas to rev up your LinkedIn marketing efforts, but it all starts with targeting the right people. None of these tips will have as much impact if you can’t reach the right audience!
Thousands of Salesforce Consulting services seekers visit our website every month, searching for an implementation partner. Thanks to good SEO techniques, we serve them worldwide and connect them directly to their Salesforce consulting company! Membership or Advertising opportunities are available on our website so that you can maximize visibility online while acquiring more leads from potential clients nationwide. Contact us at hello@crmconsulting today if you want help with high-quality lead generation; send a message now instead of waiting any longer.
You can add up to 5 agencies to your list and contact all of them at once. This will increase your chances of finding the right provider for your needs.