Robert Brown
LinkedIn has grown exponentially, today renowned as one of the most powerful and impressive marketing tools available to B2B professionals.
But why is LinkedIn so effective?
For more information: https://useorca.com/
Our mission is to help teams do sales better by exploring ways to engage, nurture, and spark conversations with potential leads the right way. We think it's time to go beyond cold prospecting tactics like cold emails and calls.
Even though LinkedIn understands the value of their platform for social selling, there still aren’t enough tools. Official LinkedIn tools seem like they only want to help us with lead generation and after that, it’s every salesman for himself.
Fortunately, there are other LinkedIn automation tools that take care of everything from lead generation to messaging and connection requests.
It’s time to speed up the sales process, and reach more prospects without putting in additional hours.
Here are the best LinkedIn automation tools you can use for each stage in the sales process:
Best LinkedIn Automation Tool for: Lead Generation
So many leads, so little time – that seems to be the motto behind prospecting on LinkedIn.
However, if you want to reach more leads and make sure they fit all of your qualifying criteria, our recommendation is:
LeadFuze
LeadFuze has been the favorite LinkedIn automation tool of many salespeople in the last few years, and for a good reason.
It automates lead generation based on even more filters than LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
In addition to specific roles and industries, LeadFuze also filters your leads by technology they use, how much they spend on ads, whether or not they’re hiring, keywords they use, and much more.
It aggregates leads’ professional information across the web, not just on LinkedIn, and it also supplies contact information if you’re ready to start communicating with your prospects, and has integrations for most CRM software, as well as Zapier.
Best LinkedIn Automation Tool for: Prospect Outreach
If someone visits your profile, it’s very hard not to visit theirs back. There’s just something about it that brings out the good old curiosity in us.
However, it can take a lot of time to manually visit hundreds of leads’ profiles, so if you want to improve your prospect outreach, do it with:
eLink Pro
eLink Pro describes itself as the number 1 LinkedIn marketing software, and they’re not wrong.
Since eLink Pro is a browser extension, your leads will see you visiting your profile, and using this LinkedIn automation tools means you’ll be able to start reaching out to as many as 5,000 leads per week.
There’s also an option where you can cross-connect with your LinkedIn leads on Twitter, as well, so if you’re considering a multi-channel approach, you can do it with eLink Pro.
Best LinkedIn Automation Tool for: Lead Enrichment
Before you get in touch with your leads, you have to know which approach to use.
Without sales automation tools, this means you’d have to spend countless hours on researching each prospect. It’s just not cost-effective, especially since no sale is guaranteed (even though we like to be optimistic).
However, you can get more information on your leads by using the best LinkedIn lead enrichment tool:
Crystal
Crystal claims to be an app that tells you anyone’s personality, and that’s especially important in sales.
The way we sell today has changed; customers expect us to understand them as people, even if we’re in B2B. Personality matters, and yours should adapt to each prospect you approach.
With Crystal, you not only get descriptions of someone’s personality (based on data scraping of all of their social media profiles), but you also get suggestions on how to approach and convince them.
For example, Crystal says that if you want to sell something to Bill Gates, you should:
Avoid interrupting him
Skip the small talk, and speak matter-of-factly
Convince him by offering multiple options, use facts and mention best practices
We may have guessed that since he’s a public personality, but what happens with your leads who don’t get publicity other than on their social media profiles?
It’s also possible to analyze the personality of a team with Crystal, and see what their dynamic is like so you can choose the best person to get in touch with.
Best LinkedIn Tool for: LinkedIn Connection and Messages
Now that you’ve got all the info you need on your prospects, it’s time to turn them into customers.
That’s why you can use this automation tool to send connection requests and message your prospects on LinkedIn:
Orca
Orca turns LinkedIn social selling into a full-on sequence that includes both LinkedIn engagement, and email activity.
As soon as you add a lead, the activity chain will start.
Orca will view the lead’s profile, and if they view yours back, Orca will send a request to connect and a follow-up message. At the same time, Orca will send out your standard sales emails.
This is another instance of a multi-channel approach which gives you a high-quality option for communicating with your leads, and helps you build a relationship with them from the very start.
LinkedIn Automation Tools
There are a lot of LinkedIn automation tools out there, but not all of them are equally smooth and adaptable to your workflow.
When choosing the right one, pay attention to each stage in the sales process.
The right tool should do what you do every time you close: provide additional value, and make sure the deal is a win-win.
For more information: https://useorca.com/
If you’ve ever done business, you’ve probably used LinkedIn. As one of the fastest growing social networks, it reached 500 million users in 2017.
Out of that 500 million, 61 million are senior-level influencers who can improve your visibility, while 40 million are able to make the decision to buy your solution.
This unique user profile is exactly what makes LinkedIn the perfect platform for not only lead generation, but for prospect outreach, as well.
However, LinkedIn is very saturated. 94% of B2B marketers use it to reach their target audience. It takes a lot to stand out and show your prospects that you’re the ideal person to do business with, especially in an era where social selling is king.
So as a salesperson with a chronic lack of time for chasing down leads, is there anything you can do?
Yes. You can automate LinkedIn messages, and reach more prospects with less work.
LinkedIn Message Automation 101
Since the main prerequisite for messaging prospects (or anyone) on LinkedIn is being connected with them, that should be your first step.
Now, you can do it manually but with targeting and lead generation, you’ll be wasting a lot of time trying to connect with everyone.
That’s why you should use one of the available tools to automate LinkedIn messages, and make sure that your (connect) messages are well received.
Tips for Writing the Perfect LinkedIn Outreach Message:
1. Don’t sound robotic. Just because you’re using automation tools for LinkedIn outreach doesn’t mean you should make your messages sound impersonal, and come across as though they were generated by algorithms.
Don’t send the same message to everyone. Instead, pick a tool that lets you send different messages according to lead segments and personalize them.
Double down on relatability. Even though you don’t want to sell to them even before they’ve accepted your connection request, show that you’re familiar with the prospect or their industry.
Avoid generic messages. A “Hi, I’d like to connect with you on LinkedIn” message will do nothing at all, and you’re greatly reducing your chances of success.
View the lead’s profile before sending them a connection request, and wait for them to give you a view-back. Avoid the temptation to just mass-connect with everyone, and make sure the other party is at least intrigued, if not completely interested. Connecting with everyone before waiting for them to show their hand just comes off as spammy.
Optimize your profile. Make sure that your profile reflects your understanding of your industry and your product. Show the prospects who’ll view your profile later on what you’re like professionally. You can write posts on important topics, and optimize your summary to show how exactly you and your solution help prospects.
The key to social selling is communicating with your prospects. And unlike cold calling which is used to drive direct, immediate sales (although with a poor success rate), social selling drives sales by building relationships.
And the interaction that will help you build relationships with your prospects starts from the very first message. Make it count.
LinkedIn Automation Tools
We’ve already covered why social selling is important, and how to write a great LinkedIn message.
Now it’s time to find the tool that can automate messaging through LinkedIn for you. There are a lot of options out there, but what matters is that the tool improves your standard sales process, instead of changing or replacing it entirely.
Top 3 LinkedIn Messaging Tools:
1. LinkedIn Helper
LinkedIn Helper is a browser extension that automates a lot of tasks which can improve the way you sell on LinkedIn.
It lets you to send automated personalized invitations to 2nd and 3rd contacts, it has a sequential messaging system for 1st contacts (especially useful for follow-ups with leads who haven’t responded), and automatic profile visits.
LinkedIn Helper also has other features like automatically endorsing your contacts so they’ll endorse you in return, and other options that’ll increase your engagement rate and visibility.
Just like LinkedIn Helper, Dux-Soup will help you automate LinkedIn messaging with personalized connection messages, and automated messages to 1st degree connections.
You’ll also be able to filter different types of LinkedIn members such as influencers, premium members, and other groups.
Dux-Soup is a solid choice if you’re looking to try out automated prospect messaging on LinkedIn. However, if you need a more robust tool with advanced features, you may have to keep looking.
Orca will automate your LinkedIn Messages, but that’s not the full extent of its capabilities.
It works on the principle of activity chains. When you import a lead to Orca, it’ll visit the lead’s profile and send a connection request (if the lead viewed your profile in return).
You’ll be able to message leads automatically, while sending out your regular email sequence in sync with your automated LinkedIn activity.
This approach is what makes Orca a good choice for anyone who wants to make use of multi-channel communication (which works especially well in social selling), and get noticed by leads faster.
It streamlines the entire sales process, and allows you to take the conversation where it best fits your prospect. The only thing left is to close the deal.
For more information: https://useorca.com/
LinkedIn has grown exponentially, today renowned as one of the most powerful and impressive marketing tools available to B2B professionals.
With over 560 million users on the platform, approximately 40 million of which are senior business decision makers, it is easy to see why LinkedIn is becoming the social selling platform of choice for marketing, sales navigators and lead generation.
But why is LinkedIn so effective?
Well, simply put, we see social media as an extension of our own personalities. Our pages are full of our own pictures, our job history and our proudest work. They're pages built to reflect our own agendas and achievements, shared with our own friends and colleagues.
In this sense, the majority of people are more receptive to Linkedin than to their work email. Approaches are considered to be much more personable, and as millions of business executives pay great attention to their LinkedIn accounts, the social platform has become a powerful tool that is free and ready to tap in to.
LinkedIn Automation
The problem is that undetaking effective LinkedIn marketing manually can be time consuming to say the least. Finding different profiles and writing out each and every message is not simply not efficient.
This is where LinkedIn automation comes in.
By using automation tools, time from your busy work day is no longer wasted on manual marketing techniques. Instead, concise and detailed reports are compiled, helping to generate countless new leads with a minimized proportion of the leg work.
These techniques are not used to random effect.
Automation tools allow possible new connections to be filtered by job, location and other factors that you might be looking for, all in the aim of ensuring that you're getting in touch with the right people.
Linkedin users are nothing less than a target audience, and reaching the right audience is imperative.
After all, nobody wants to waste talented employees on menial tasks. The dramatic advancements of technology are benefiting almost every progressive business these days, so why not you?
Building a brand
Such methods will quickly help you to expand any LinkedIn network and ramp up your prospects. However, often packaged as an end-to-end marketing solution, LinkedIn automation doesn't stop here.
The technology is equally adept at helping to build your brand, ensuring that your connections don't forget about you. By sharing relevant information with them, these tools are able to position you as an expert within your field among hundreds and even thousands of business decision makers.
Ultimately, this will put you and your business on the required platform that you need to continue to reach new heights.
The B2B world is becoming increasingly competitive. It only takes a glance at the Linkedin profiles of successful companies to realise this, so building your brand is imperative to achieving sustainable growth.
Organisation is key
Building your network can require significant amounts of organisation, planning and preparation, and even then traditional methods can still prove to be a logistical nightmare.
Again, LinkedIn automation tools can soothe any headache on this front.
Connecting with tens of new potential clients each day, these tools are able to effectively monitor and catalog your LinkedIn marketing methods, better maintaining your business processes.
Will I get banned for using an automation tool?
Naturally, this sounds all too good to be true, and there is often skepticism surrounding the use of automation tools.
However, rest assured, automation software providers have thought this through. With proper usage in line with the given guidelines, there is no chance of becoming listed as spam, and the desired results will likely be achieved.
Why should I used LinkedIn tools?
LinkedIn's own mission statement is: “To connect the world's professionals to make them more productive and successful.”
And while the social platform itself provides the means for this, automation tools have allowed this to become an accelerated reality.
Sure, there are some negatives to it if misused, such as spamming Linkedin connections to multiple linkedIn accounts. However, the pure benefits of using such platforms alone are endless.
Not only are you able to increase your connection requests at efficient rates, but the search criteria for these can become optimised, tailored, and vastly more organised than any manual method would allow.
It is undoubted that automation tools empower sales navigators, and while countless other companies are using this to great success, there isn't much time to lose in the face of growing competition and marketing saturation.
For more information: https://useorca.com/
When it comes to social selling, the stats are clear: 75% of B2B buyers are influenced by social media, and 92% of them use it to engage with sales industry thought leaders.
No matter how busy their schedules are, buyers still find the time for LinkedIn. And if you’re in sales, you can use that to your advantage.
However, time is a precious resource. You’re probably advancing multiple prospects through various sales stages at once, so even though LinkedIn gives you the perfect opportunity to reach out, you might not have the time to do it.
That’s why LinkedIn automation is great for social selling. With a variety of tools to choose from, you can completely automate the way you contact and engage with prospects.
And once you set them up, you’re free to do what you do best: sell. Let LinkedIn tools do the rest.
Since there are tools for every stage of the (simplified) 5-step sales process, let’s take a look at the best automation tools you can use for each step.
Step 1 & 2: Lead Generation and Qualification with LinkedIn Automation
Before you can actually sell, you have to find your prospects.
LinkedIn offers a native solution for that – Sales Navigator. You can browse through lists of users in specific industry, roles, locations, and other basic factors.
Back when it was first launched, Sales Navigator was revolutionary. You could finally start using LinkedIn for social selling, and the advanced search allowed for more accurate targeting.
However, if you want to generate sales leads on LinkedIn today, you’ve got more options.
LeadFuze is a great LinkedIn lead generation tool.
While you can use Sales Navigator to generate leads, using LeadFuze will help you qualify them at the same time.
With LeadFuze, you’ll have access to more info about qualifying criteria such as:
Ad budget (Showing you the budget of your prospect)
Technology and hiring intent (Capacity)
Company news (Timing)
In addition to that, LeadFuze will also provide you with double-verified email addresses (so your emails don’t bounce) and frequently used keywords, so you can get in touch with your prospects easily, and tailor your approach to their needs.
For more info on your leads, make sure you take a look at Crystal.
Step 3: Approaching Prospects
Now that you’ve gathered enough information about your prospects and made sure they have the means to buy from you, it’s time to connect with them.
One of LinkedIn’s advantages is that connecting with prospects isn’t as abrupt as cold calls or emails are.
For example, you can view a lead’s profile and wait for them to look at yours before advancing. This is a really good move since you’ll be showing personal interest in leads, and if you’ve made sure your profile relays all the benefits of your solution (and your charming personality), they’ll be intrigued in you, too.
If they don’t give you a look-back, you can just move on to prospects who are interested instead of wasting your time.
After you’ve gotten your look-back, you can send the prospect a request to connect. It’s good to personalize the message and refer to something they’ve posted, or an area of their interest to start building a relationship right away.
Now, this can take a lot of time if you’re doing it manually. Especially if you’ve got sales email sequences, not just LinkedIn messages.
To really use LinkedIn automation for lead generation and outreach, try Orca.
Orca will automatically view your leads’ profiles, and send them requests to connect and messages once they’ve expressed interest in you. If you’ve got an email sequence, Orca will send that, too.
You can jump in when your prospects are ready.
Step 4 & 5: Demonstrate Value and Improve Customer Satisfaction
You can demonstrate the value of your solution in direct contact with your prospects, or you can demonstrate it before.
When it comes to social selling, you should double-down on value guiding the conversation. In fact, value is what should be starting it.
That’s why it’s important to emphasize your knowledge and the benefits of your solution by improving your LinkedIn profile.
You can also share content on industry-relevant news with tools like DrumUp.
It’s a neat tool that gives you all the benefits of content marketing such as customer education, establishing authority and building trust – but you don’t have to do anything yourself.
It mines the web for best content you can curate and share with your prospects. If you want to write posts, you can schedule them through DrumUp.
Demonstrating value works wonders for inbound sales, just like LinkedIn profile visits.
And since social selling is based on relationships, just because you’ve converted a prospect into a customer doesn’t mean you should stop there.
People trust people – especially when it comes to buying. So actively engage your (previous) customers, ask them for endorsements, or even make a LinkedIn group.
There’s one good rule of thumb for LinkedIn: keep the good old conversations going to start new ones.
You can automate the rest.
For more information: https://useorca.com/
LinkedIn Automation: Taking sales beyond email
Email marketing has been the king of sales enablement for years. When people talk about great customer engagement and lead generation tools, email is always brought up.
That was the case until social selling became a thing. After years of dominating the sales automation industry, email is no longer the undisputed champion. Social selling is outperforming email in many ways. This is mainly because how social networks work.
People think of their social media accounts as their public online presence. The expect strangers to see them and they’re there to connect with other people. This is particularly true on LinkedIn.
Unlike the case with emails and cold phone calls, Linkedin users are more open to connecting with other users. People who don’t want to connect with new people/businesses won’t be on LinkedIn. And that’s what makes LinkedIn automation much more powerful than traditional email outreach methods.
LinkedIn is all about building relationships and acquiring new connections. While people there are open to being approached, you need to do this the right way. With the right LinkedIn automation tool, you’ll be able to target your leads with relevant content and messages.
Asides from being good for lead nurturing, LinkedIn autionation gives your sales reps more time to engage leads conversationally.
The following are the seven main reasons why you should join the movement to take sales beyond email with LinkedIn automation and social selling.
Reason 1: It’s a Warmer Approach
Do you like getting calls and emails from total strangers trying to sell you stuff? You probably don’t. And Nobody does, including your customers. They HATE cold calling and spammy email from people they don’t know.
The reason for that is quite simple, which is the psychology behind how emails and LinkedIn invites are perceived. . While invites are considered “requests”, unsolicited emails are considered a privacy breach. That’s why an invite on LinkedIn is a better way to introduce your brand than cold emails. .
Approaching your target audience on LinkedIn is much better because they are open to connecting with strangers there. They want to make connections and connect with new people and businesses. After all, that’s what a LinkedIn account is all about.
Your customers’ LinkedIn profiles are public and you’re welcome to approach them there. They’re expecting it. A nice LinkedIn message is better than one of those creepy emails.
Reason 2: LinkedIn Notifications Get Attention
People receive tons of emails every day. Most of them are deleted without being opened. Adding to the daily email mayhem of your potential customers won’t do your business any good. They’ll probably ignore you or even hate you for it. That’s if they notice who you are in the first place!
On the other hand, LinkedIn users don’t get that many notifications and when they do, there is a chance it’s a good opportunity. They can expand their LinkedIn network with a valuable contact or even find a better job. That’s why they pay attention to these notifications.
The notification system itself is different. People get push notifications on their phones and an email notification if they’re subscribed. This increases the chance of them noticing your invitation and triggers social lookbacks, which makes your LinkedIn profile function in a way that’s similar to a landing page.
Even if someone doesn’t accept your connection request, they’ll pay enough attention to notice who you are, which is always a good thing.
Reason 3: Better Business-Customer Interactions
Whether you have a B2B or B2C business model, LinkedIn allows you to interact with your customers in more effective ways. Once you’re connected with someone, you can use LinkedIn messaging to send them follow-up messages.
In addition to sending people customized messages, you can also create content that they can interact with. Since content is -and will always be- king, email is no where close to LinkedIn when it comes to business-customer interactions.
Instead of putting a bunch of stuff in an email, send it, and hope for the best, you get a two-way communications channel with your target audience.
Reason 4: People Spend More Active Time on LinkedIn
Whenever you read any email-related stats, you find pretty impressive numbers. People appear to be spending lots of hours there, which is a good thing. Right?
WRONG!
While it’s true that people check their inboxes frequently, they spend most of their time their deleting cold, unsolicited sales emails, responding to work emails and trying to keep things organized. It’s not like they open their inbox and start reading every email. That never happens.
What will most likely happen is that your lead generation email will end up swiped away with 76% of the emails that are never opened. That’s why the time people spend there isn’t that relevant.
On a network like LinkedIn, people spend their time networking. They scroll through their news feed to find interesting posts to read and check out what everyone else is doing. There is a good chance you’ll have a meaningful interaction with them there, not when they’re trying to sort out the flooded inbox.
Reason 5: Better Customer Insights
Spending time with your target audience on a network like LinkedIn will help you know a lot about them. Unlike email, the insights go way beyond open and response rates. Being able to post different types of content there allows you to better understand your potential customers
What type of posts do they read, who do they follow, what kind of feedback do they leave on your posts is just the tip of the insights iceberg.
Using this information will allow you to improve your business. When you’re using a LinkedIn automation tool, this information can be used to make your LinkedIn marketing efforts more effective. You can also target the right audience with the right content and personalized invitations.
Reason 6: Powerful Networking Effect
On social networks in general and on LinkedIn in particular, people tend to connect with similar people. If you’re targeting people from a specific industry, each new LinkedIn connection will give you access to tens or even hundreds of similar people.
When you’re using an automation software, you can turn LinkedIn into a lead generation machine that’s working 24/7. Email doesn't work this way. You don’t access people’s contact lists when you send them an email.
This effect is hard to replicate with traditional email marketing, which makes LinkedIn automation more powerful.
Reason 7: It’s Future-Proof
Cold emails and unsolicited calls are on the way out. As email spam laws keep getting tougher and people become more resistant to cold outreach, the effectiveness of these tactics will just keep dropping.
That’s not the case in LinkedIn, and it’ll never be. As LinkedIn is about networking and making new connections, engaging with other people is an integral part of how it works. This is what LinkedIn was made for. As the world becomes more connected through social media, the way we interact also changes.
For example, discovery calls no longer have to be phone calls. We are living in the the era of instant messaging. Sales organizations need to take advantage of Linkedin by interacting with users through chat. Messaging is the new discovery call.
Sales organizations that want to future-proof their business model need to adapt their sales process to find and engage customers on and across different social channels.
Cold emailing is no longer “the” go-to tactic for lead generation. If you want to engage users in a meaningful way to grow your business, social selling in general -and LinkedIn automation in particular- is worth investing in.
For more information: https://useorca.com/
If you’re a B2B salesperson, you’ve got to be using social selling on LinkedIn to engage with your audience. How do you use LinkedIn as an alternative to cold email and other channels? Linkedin automation is the future of sales.
