LinkedIn outreach is the process of connecting and building relationships with other professionals on LinkedIn to achieve business goals. It typically involves identifying and contacting target prospects through LinkedIn messaging and emails. The main objectives are to generate leads, build brand awareness, and establish connections with potential customers, partners or employees.
Why Do Outreach on LinkedIn?
There are several key reasons companies and professionals do outreach on LinkedIn:
- Lead generation – One of the top goals of LinkedIn outreach is to generate new leads and sales opportunities. With over 722 million members, LinkedIn provides access to a massive audience of professionals.
- Recruitment – LinkedIn outreach enables sourcing and contacting qualified candidates for job openings. It’s an important recruitment channel for most companies.
- Brand awareness – Outreach helps increase brand visibility and establish thought leadership in your industry. Useful for content promotion.
- Partnerships – Identifying and connecting with potential partners, affiliates, or joint venture opportunities.
- Market research – LinkedIn is a valuable source of market insights. Outreach helps connect with prospects to research pain points and gather feedback.
- Staying top of mind – Regular outreach keeps you connected and top of mind with your network and clients. Helpful for maintaining relationships.
The wide reach and professional nature of LinkedIn make it well-suited for B2B outreach across multiple objectives.
How to Do Effective Outreach on LinkedIn
Here are some best practices for doing outreach successfully on LinkedIn:
1. Identify Your Goals
Be clear about what you want to achieve from your outreach. Is it lead generation, recruitment, market research or something else? Defining goals will shape your outreach strategy and messaging.
2. Research Your Target Prospects
Take time to research and identify your best-fit prospects on LinkedIn. Analyze their profiles, groups and activity. Look for commonalities that indicate shared interests and pain points.
3. Personalize Your Outreach
Personalized messages have much higher response rates. Mention their role, company, interests or connections you share to make it more relevant.
4. Craft an Engaging Message
Avoid generic outreach templates. Create messages that grab attention and make it easy for prospects to reply. Ask smart questions and focus on their needs.
5. Keep It Short
Long messages are ignored. Get to the point quickly. Cover just enough to pique interest and get a response.
6. Use LinkedIn Features
Make use of LinkedIn features in your outreach. Send InMail messages to those you’re not connected with. Use @mentions when messaging connections. Check for recent activity.
7. Add Value
Look for ways to add value, not just pitch your offering. Share an interesting article, compliment their work or offer helpful advice.
8. Follow Up
Response rates are rarely 100%. Politely follow up if you don’t get a response within a week. Try changing your approach in the follow-up.
9. Connect First
If possible, connect with your prospect first before sending an outreach message. Being connected increases open and response rates.
10. Be Patient and Persistent
Outreach requires patience and persistence. It may take multiple touchpoints before you get a positive response. Don’t get discouraged easily.
LinkedIn Outreach Message Templates
Here are some effective LinkedIn outreach message templates you can model for different scenarios:
Introductory Outreach
Hi [Name],
My name is [Your Name] and I’m with [Company]. I noticed you work in [Industry] and have experience with [Area of Expertise].
At [Company], we provide [Value Proposition]. I’d love to connect and see if there are any ways we can collaborate to [Goal].
Let me know if you would be open to a quick [Meeting/Call] to discuss further.
Thanks,
[Your Name]
Article Share
Hi [Name],
I recently came across this article [on Topic] that I thought you would find interesting: [Link to Article]
With your experience in [Industry/Topic], I would love to get your perspective on it sometime. Let me know if you would be open to connecting.
Hope you have a great rest of your week!
[Your Name]
Complement
Hi [Name],
I wanted to compliment you on [achievement or work]. The [results/impact] you’ve driven for [company/clients] is really impressive.
We actually just launched a new [product/service] focused on helping companies [achieve same results]. I’d love to get your insights on it sometime.
Let me know if you would be open to a quick call to discuss further.
Keep up the great work!
[Your Name]
Follow Up
Hi [Name],
I wanted to follow up on my earlier message about [topic]. I really think there could be some great synergies between [your company] and [my company].
I’d love to learn more about your current [goals/challenges] and see if there’s a good way for us to work together.
Are you available for a quick call sometime in the next week? Even 20-30 minutes could be quite valuable.
Looking forward to connecting.
[Your Name]
Best Practices for LinkedIn Outreach
Here are some additional best practices to improve your LinkedIn outreach strategy:
- Include a strong call-to-action in your messages to drive a response.
- Leverage LinkedIn ads to expand your reach beyond connections.
- Test different outreach approaches and tweak based on results.
- Use CRM to track outreach prospects and automate nurturing.
- Join relevant LinkedIn Groups to connect with your audience.
- Publish your own high-value content to attract prospects.
- Thank those who respond and offer to connect or set up a meeting.
- Follow up but avoid becoming a pest with too much outreach.
- Monitor your sender reputation and keep LinkedIn messages high-quality.
Mistakes to Avoid with LinkedIn Outreach
Here are some common mistakes to avoid with your LinkedIn outreach efforts:
- Using a spammy approach to just blast connections
- Sending generic outreach messages with no personalization
- Contacting prospects who are not a good fit for your offering
- Sending overly promotional pitches instead of value-focused messages
- Outreaching without a clear goal in mind for each prospect
- Not customizing follow-up messages based on previous conversations
- Focusing too much on company offerings rather than prospect needs
- Sending messages that are too long and hard to scan quickly
- Not taking the time to build a relationship before pitching
- Giving up too quickly if prospects don’t respond right away
LinkedIn Outreach Tools
There are also tools available that can help streamline and automate parts of the LinkedIn outreach process:
- Sales Navigator – LinkedIn’s premium sales tool for searching profiles, managing leads and monitoring prospect activity.
- Dux-Soup – Headless browser for automating LinkedIn messaging and other actions.
- Buzzstream – All-in-one tool for LinkedIn outreach including finding prospects, sending messages at scale and tracking responses.
- Nimble – CRM that integrates with LinkedIn for tracking contacts and communication.
- Mailshake – Email outreach platform with LinkedIn integration.
- MeetAlfred – Virtual assistant for booking meetings on LinkedIn and other platforms.
- Ryze – AI tool for optimizing LinkedIn profile to improve visibility.
The right tools can save time on repetitive tasks, surface better prospects and provide helpful analytics on your outreach efforts.
LinkedIn Outreach Metrics
Tracking key metrics is vital for measuring the results of your LinkedIn outreach and identifying areas for improvement. Here are some important outreach metrics to monitor:
Metric | Definition |
---|---|
Contact Rate | Percentage of prospects contacted through LinkedIn outreach |
Response Rate | Percentage of prospects who respond to outreach messages |
Conversion Rate | Percentage who become marketing qualified leads from your outreach |
Connect Rate | Percentage who accept your connection requests |
Quality of Leads | Relevance, job role and budget of leads generated |
Click-Through Rate | Percentage who click links in your outreach messages |
Unsubscribe Rate | Percentage who opt-out or report your messages as spam |
Benchmark your metrics over time and optimize areas like subject lines, messaging and targeting to boost performance.
Tips for Measuring LinkedIn Outreach
Here are some tips for measuring the impact of your LinkedIn outreach efforts:
- Use LinkedIn analytics to track reach, clicks and reactions to your posts.
- Leverage sales reporting tools to analyze deal sources and pipeline influenced by outreach.
- Track open and click-through rates for customized outreach emails.
- Integrate LinkedIn messaging with your CRM to monitor prospect engagement.
- Add UTM parameters to links in messages to track prospect traffic and conversions.
- Survey prospects on what messages or approaches resonate during outreach.
- Document test cases and measure impact of changes to outreach campaigns.
- Review inbox response metrics in tools like Sales Navigator.
- Analyze the quality and quantity of new leads compared to effort spent outreaching.
- Compare results of automated vs. manual personalized prospecting.
Conclusion
LinkedIn outreach provides a powerful channel for connecting with prospects at scale. But outreach needs to be high value, personalized and focused on helping prospects. With the right goals, preparation, tools and metrics, you can generate more leads, recruits and partnerships from LinkedIn outreach. Maintain a long-term approach, continuously test and refine your process. Outreach is about developing relationships first and business second.