RESEARCH PAPER SUBMISSION

Lead Generation Using LinkedIn Marketing

Faculty Guide : Dr. Vimal Babu

Submission By:

Sneha - 41286
Siddharth Gupta - 41282
Smart Shantanu – 41285
 Lead Generation Using LinkedIn Marketing
Purpose
This paper aims to draw attention to the growing phenomenon of lead generation for business-to-
business market space by using digital-first market place (for example. LinkedIn). Lead Generation is
a key business driver and envelops all exercises ranging from identifying with the recognizable proof
and development of potential clients. Organizations utilize an assortment of offers and advertising
strategies to create leads, yet one way or the other, it is fundamental to have very much characterized
procedures set up. In respect to the B2C adaptation, B2B lead generation will in general be all the more
intensely focused on and we are trying to delve into how businesses are using and whether it has been
successful and what are some of the strategies for the same.
Design/Methodology/Approach
Structured questionnaire will be circulated among 50 key players for primary data collection and
analysis.
Findings
According to a State of B2B Marketing Report from Wpromote, 89% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn
for lead generation, and 62% say it generates them leads, over two times more than the next-highest
social channel.
Practical Implications
Lead generation is important as it ultimately fuels company’s sales pipeline, thus business. A fraction
of percentage of leads will convert into paying customers, while other fraction will not. When the former
is too small, it can be a struggle to find positive ROI with lead generation efforts. For this reason, lead
generation strategies need to balance quantity and quality.
Keywords
B2B, digital, social media, customer referrals, LinkedIn, lead generation, webinar, podcast, influencer,
campaign, template, call to action(CTA)

Introduction

For any business to flourish and sustain for longer period of time, sales is the most important key factor.
When it comes to business to business space, the company cannot just throw an arrow in dark, find
newer customers out of nowhere who have the needs that your business can fulfil and increase the sales.
However, the business these days have laid down some processes by which prospective clients are
identified and grown for the products or services of a business. This is nothing but “Lead Generation”.
Lead Generation is a key business driver and envelops all exercises ranging from identifying with the
recognizable proof and development of potential clients. Organizations utilize an assortment of offers
and advertising strategies to create leads, yet one way or the other, it is fundamental to have very much
characterized procedures set up. In respect to the B2C adaptation, B2B lead generation will in general
be all the more intensely focused on and we are trying to delve into how businesses are using and
whether it has been successful and what are some of the strategies for the same. Lead generation is
important as it ultimately fuels company’s sales pipeline, thus business. A fraction of percentage of
leads will convert into paying customers, while another fraction will not. When the former is too small,
it can be a struggle to find positive ROI with lead generation efforts. For this purpose, volume and
quality must be balanced by lead generation approaches. Lead generation usually happens with the help
of lots of primary and on field research. It might happen with referrals, telephone calls, SMS, Emails
etc. In the business to customer space, it has a lot to do with understanding the purchasing power.
However, in the business to business space, one needs to be aware of the consumption pattern, exact
need and the most important factor remains is trust. Because in this space, the customer is aware of his
needs: how much he needs, what exactly does he need and the product/service quality that he has on
his mind would be required for his business to thrive. That’s why, the lead generation process is quite
complicated in B2B segment. With the advent of the social media, the lead generation through that
channel has been a hot topic. The technological aid and available analytical tools can help us gain more
insight on what the customer actually wants. Social media has kind of aggregated all the business on
the platforms. One can reach out to the business by just swiping up the Instagram story, commenting
on a Facebook post or messaging a fellow LinkedIn connection. The latter being the most professional
social media platform, it has attracted many businesses. LinkedIn has become a hub on the digital space
to connect a business to another one. Almost every other business has registered itself on LinkedIn these
days where they look out for another business to tie-up strategically, make deals and sell the products
or services. The ever-evolving digital marketing techniques have made it simpler to track the potential
customers on the planet. The analytical tools have made it easier to track their needs and wants. The
mutual connections and reviews stand for the trust factors between the two parties. According to Forbes,
the LinkedIn drives eighty percent of Business to Business social media leads. LinkedIn lead generation
has become the prime platform to showcase what your business does by using content as the medium.
Your network on LinkedIn is all about content marketing. Although it's a great credibility booster to
publish a brilliant article on a website with 100,000 readers, it won't matter if you don't talk to the right
people.

That's where the publishing platform of LinkedIn has reached the plate. Its platform has become a prime
location for content sharing by brands. Now that anyone can publish articles on the professional
networking site, it is simpler for businesses to target brand proponents, prospective clients, and industry
influencers all in one location than ever. Therefore, it is an obligation for the marketers to know and
understand more about the Business to Business leads using LinkedIn platform.

Literature Review

Lead generation usually happens with the help of lots of primary and on field research. It might happen
with referrals, telephone calls, SMS, Emails etc. In the business to customer space, it has a lot to do
with understanding the purchasing power. However, in the business to business space, one needs to be
aware of the consumption pattern, exact need and the most important factor remains is trust. Because
in this space, the customer is aware of his needs: how much he needs, what exactly does he need and
the product/service quality that he has on his mind would be required for his business to thrive. That’s
why, the lead generation process is quite complicated in B2B segment. With the advent of the social
media, the lead generation through that channel has been a hot topic. The technological aid and available
analytical tools can help us gain more insight on what the customer actually wants. Social media has
kind of aggregated all the business on the platforms. One can reach out to the business by just swiping
up the Instagram story, commenting on a Facebook post or messaging a fellow LinkedIn connection.
The latter being the most professional social media platform, it has attracted many businesses. LinkedIn
has become a hub on the digital space to connect a business to another one. Almost every other business
has registered itself on LinkedIn these days where they look out for another business to tie-up
strategically, make deals and sell the products or services. The ever-evolving digital marketing
techniques have made it simpler to track the potential customers on the planet. The analytical tools have
made it easier to track their needs and wants. The mutual connections and reviews stand for the trust
factors between the two parties. According to Forbes, the LinkedIn drives eighty percent of Business to
Business social media leads. LinkedIn lead generation has become the prime platform to showcase what
your business does by using content as the medium. Your network on LinkedIn is all about content
marketing. Although it's a great credibility booster to publish a brilliant article on a website with
100,000 readers, it won't matter if you don't talk to the right people. That's where the publishing platform
of LinkedIn has reached the plate. Its platform has become a prime location for content sharing by
brands. Now that anyone can publish articles on the professional networking site, it is simpler for
businesses to target brand proponents, prospective clients, and industry influencers all in one location
than ever. Therefore, it is an obligation for the marketers to know and understand more about the B2B
leads using LinkedIn platform and solve for challenges that arise such as extended sales cycles,
orchestrate prospects at different stages of the buying funnel and qualifying the interest in the offerings
for sale.
We have noticed that in the preliminary stages:
Why are salespeople at companies that deal B2B still largely focusing on individual leads? 🤔 They
generate leads, find their contact information, and conduct sales outreach on a one-to-one basis, with a
“lead” being defined as a single point of contact This traditional leads-based sales model isn’t the best
strategy for B2B sales reps Focusing on one individual lead at a time isn’t the most effective or efficient
way to sell high-value solutions to enterprise customers Why?
• B2B and enterprise transactions often involve multiple decision-makers you have to convince
• Inbound leads offer no guarantee that that individual has the authority or decision-making
power to complete a sale
• When a single lead says “no,” the relationship ends
• You miss out on selling for multiple use cases within a given account
• The solution is account-based selling (ABS) using LinkedIn
A complement to ABM efforts, account-based sales enable B2B and enterprise salespeople to identify
accounts first, and decision-makers second.

Objectives
Primary Objective – To draw attention and drive focus towards new-age B2B marketing funnels
given the rapidly increasingly complexity of the nature of the buying process with multitude of
touchpoints in the consumer’s journey pre and post purchase decision by leveraging LinkedIn as an
effective tool for lead generation and reimagine the traditional ‘sales-focused’ approach to a B2B
marketing & content driven strategy that not only helps add to the pool of buyers but help in making
a fruitful, overall positive impact to the business.

1) The biggest bone of contention for most companies has been, “How to Qualify Leads” before
passing them on to the sales team where most departments are splitting hairs at what precisely
constitutes a ‘qualified’ lead per se. Marketing may have one take at it, and sales another. It’s
essential to be cognizant of both party’s point of views to come up with a unified definition.
 We have come up with a few techniques that could help companies decide WHEN a prospect becomes
a lead where they cross certain pre-defined benchmarks and thresholds in the sales funnel such as
Opting for Newsletter, downloading content, Filling an inquiry form etc. which we will be delving in
the Final Report in detail by touching upon the plan on how it is essential to segment the qualified
leads and create buckets for better utilization.

- Lead Score
- Buyer Persona Match
- User Actions

2) What strategy or framework can we adopt for Lead Gen

Following are the steps that can be undertaken for Lead Gen:
a) Have a plan in hand for Lead Qualification
b) Deploy the tactics for Lead Gen in tandem with access to quality data
c) Create and Run B2B Lead Generation Campaigns

3) What content engagement strategies are being deployed?

Firms cannot let lead-capture forms operate in silos on their website hoping to generate multiple
forms and submissions UNLESS you don’t engage your leads and give them a value-add at these
touch-points to arouse their excitement levels and compel them to be ‘hooked’ to your
platform/product/service. People won’t revisit your website if they don’t feel engaged by what
you have to offer.

A B2B buyer journey is no longer linear in an enterprising nature. It is the duty of the marketing
department to provide regular content pushes on their platform, curate material and distribute/share at
various touchpoints for high-quality lead generation. For example, if your company is into
manufacturing industrial components and one of these parts has a significant impact on environmental
sustainability, such seemingly trivial topics may seem uninteresting at first but someone from the
prospect’s organization could be looking at this criterion with great interest to comply with
environmental norms and avoid govt penalties. Hence, making content easily available and easy to
navigate, helps in all processes at all levels.
Example: Whitepapers and Podcasts are increasingly rising to prominence in the B2B space.

Research Methodology

2/3rd of B2B marketers struggle to generate high quality leads and companies that excel at lead
generation get half more sales-ready leads at lower cost.” A lead generation form forms an
integral part in any capturing strategy employed by the firm. In order to gain perspective on current
business practices in lead generation, a survey is being conducted with a sample size of 30 respondents.
The survey aims at understanding whether B2B professionals are using industry’s best practices or not.
Also with this understanding how can we leverage various LinkedIn tools to help the professionals in
better lead generation. Questionnaire includes preferred contact medium, channel for lead generation
to understand business professionals perspective in terms of technology friendliness. It also inquiries
about inclusion of features like
CTA (call-to-action), company description, social media profile integration, social proof, re-Captcha
etc. in company’s form/ad content/mail. These questions will help us in understanding whether the
business professionals are aware of these features or not and how well they are integrating these
practices in their lead generation process. Survey analysis will involve use of Quantitative methods like
benchmarking, univariate analysis, frequency distribution.

Results

To assess various current industry practices, survey was conducted through Google Forms among
industry professionals. Survey results were analysed in Excel and benchmarked against recommended
industry’s standard practices.

1.Rate the following medium of contact for prospective clients. (1 being least preferred, 5 being 5 most
preferred)
According to survey data generated, industry professionals prefer Emails as the most preferred mode
of communication for lead generation, followed by One-one interaction and via a representative. This
the due to the credibility and human touch factor associated with one-one interaction which helps in
better sales conversion as compared to various other digital medium tools available.

Preferred Contact Medium

VIA REPRESENTATIVE 11 12 7

ONE-ONE INTERACTION 18 12 0

FORMS 4 11 15

EMAIL 21 3 6

COLD CALL 6 9 15

High Me dium Low

2. Which is the most preferred social media channel for your lead generation?
For 87% of professionals, LinkedIn serves as the most preferred social media channel for lead
generation, followed by Facebook & Instagram. This is in correlation with secondary research data.

Social Media Channel for Lead

Generation

7% LinkedIn
6%
Twitter
Reddit
Facebook
87% Instagram
3. Do you make use of call-to-action feature in your forms/email/ad content?
Inclusion of Call-To-Action feature in lead generation forms/emails/ad content is practised only by
57% of industry professionals. A clear CTA feature leads the customer to desired landing page
thereby increasing conversion, which is lacking in current practises followed.

Call-To-Action Feature Inclusion

43% Yes

57% No

4. Do you include descriptions about your brand in your forms/email/ad content?

Inclusion of brand description on lead generation forms/emails/ad content is only followed by 40% of
professionals. Descriptions motivate users to connect with the brand and give them a clear
understanding of the purpose they are trying to serve. It filters out unwanted leads and thereby helps in
generating qualified leads.

Brand Description Inclusion

40%
Yes
No
60%

5. Do you allow social media profile integration in your form?

Social media profile integration helps in faster lead generation, and is followed by 73% of industry
professionals. This feature enables users to quickly navigate to the required page by just a single click.
It also allows brands to collect user’s data crucial for future product offerings.

Social Media Profile Integration

27%

Yes
No

73%
6. Do you make use of social proof in your form?
Only 40% of professionals make use of Social Proof in their lead generation form/emails/ad content.
Social proof provides credibility to customers in terms of other clients using the brand’s
services/products and encourages submissions.
Social Proof Feature

Yes , 40% No, 60%

7. Do you include reCaptcha in your form?

63% of professionals still do not make use of reCaptcha in their lead generation forms/emails/ad
content. This leads to huge number of unwanted leads generated by Bots.

reCaptcha Inclusion

37%
Yes
No
63%

8. Does your form clearly mention all the fields and requirements?
Field requirements are clearly mentioned by all the industry professionals in their lead generation
forms/emails/ad content.

Analysis

Lead generation usually happens with the help of lots of primary and on field research. It might happen
with referrals, telephone calls, SMS, Emails etc. In the business to customer space, it has a lot to do
with understanding the purchasing power. However, in the business to business space, one needs to be
aware of the consumption pattern, exact need and the most important factor remains is trust. Because
in this space, the customer is aware of his needs: how much he needs, what exactly does he need and
the product/service quality that he has on his mind would be required for his business to thrive. That’s
why, the lead generation process is quite complicated in B2B segment.
We took a survey in the industry where we floated a google form among our connections on LinkedIn
and asked them about various activities their organization does as far as the lead generation is
concerned. We asked them questions on lines of mediums through which they usually interact with their
potential customers. We also asked them about what exactly they put up in their lead generation form
that necessarily takes the potential customer to the landing page of their website. We asked them from
their perspective the ratio of lead generations to actual conversion. And we found that mostly, the best
practises of the industries aren’t being followed.
We also asked them questions about how they would fill up the form if they were to approach another
company for the products and services. We found out that, most of the times, the form that usually gets
filled up isn’t quite up to the mark. We personally visited some of our respondents’ websites and found
out that there is no clear mark of differentiation as to CTA’s are being used.
The form that they usually put were lengthy. Where the potential customers would have to undergo lots
of security questions. According to responses we got from the respondents, filling out longer forms and
waiting for the security questions to get over usually create negative impact. It would be tedious for
someone searching for the products and services till they find the right thing and then make them fill
the longer form and heavy security questions. It is very understandable that the companies would strictly
want to restrict their screening process for the only interested users. But adding up many questions on
the security and records poses a negative impact.
We also found out in 43% of the cases that there was no call to action (CTA) enabled lead generation
processes. In this VUCA world, where everything has been taken over by digital processes, it’s kind of
implied for the company persons to implement such minute details.
Visual representation of the lead generation process remains an integral part of any B2B activity. The
user landing on the web page has to get attracted by the content and overall scheme of the things.
Because according to our primary research, 77% of the respondents told that lead generation forms are
usually the precursor of service or product that are on offer.
Since we have been talking about the digital world, it is a well-known fact that due to technological
revolutions happening around, the businesses are moving towards social media to target the millennials
in B2C segments. However, we have found that all our respondents who work in a B2B space, also
have shifted themselves to the social media in order to increase the accessibility towards the potential
customer. It also serves the purpose of easier interaction with the customer or customer to be. In our
survey we found that, 87% of the respondents were using LinkedIn for the lead generation process.
LinkedIn, being “Facebook for Professionals”- as told by one of our respondents, is the most sought-
after medium for the lead generation. Since, LinkedIn is a kind of an aggregator or a marketplace for
that matter, where a company can put up product or services, and other company with the need can
purchase it. With evolution of this digital channel, there is no doubt in mind that more and more
companies are trying to make themselves available on this platform.
We also ran a few questions by them about increasing the awareness of the product/service or brand for
that matter during the lead generation process. We found that 60% of the respondents weren’t including
the descriptions about the brand in the lead generation forms, emails or an ad content. It is one thing to
increase sales, but it is another thing to make sure that it happens; with the help of appropriate content
and product/service description. It is not a good practice that only 40% of the respondents were putting
up the relevant content to show the potential buyers.
Since we discussed about the social media beforehand, however we found that 73% have made their
social media platforms visible through the lead generation process. This number will be increasing as
more company personnel have found out that the end customer would try and find out about your
services and products from social media as well. Besides, company’s social media platform serves to
create awareness among the end customer.
We also realized from our research that 63% of the respondents use “reCaptcha” in their lead generation
form. Though reCaptcha serves as a mean to get away from the bots, wherein the system differentiates
bots from human beings, this makes the entire process a tedious one and the potential customer might
stay away from his agenda.
 Recommendations

The current process of the lead generation doesn’t follow the best practices of the industry. Hence its
evident that the process should be made much simpler and easier in order to attract the potential
customers in the B2B space.
• Form length should be small, or at least arranged in such a way that it looks small
• Social media integration should be done to increase awareness about the company and the
brands, products and services on offer
• Call to Action should be made available. It takes the customer to company’s website.
• The landing page of the website should be informative. It should inform the user about service
offerings
• Alternate signing options should be made available such as sign with Google, Facebook etc.
• reCaptcha should be there in place. It allows only quality leads to submit the forms
• Landing page should be interactive and should serve a dual purpose of login as well as sign up
forms
• Form should be broken down in multiple segments if it is huge
• Form should clearly mention the fields and requirements
• The descriptions about the brand or product/services should be added

Conclusion

Lead generation is important as it ultimately fuels company’s sales pipeline, thus business. With
evolving technology, more and more firms are shifting towards the digital side of the lead generation
platforms rather than conventional methods such as cold calling etc. With the advent of the social media,
the lead generation through that channel has been a hot topic. The technological aid and available
analytical tools can help us gain more insight on what the customer actually wants. And hence it is
prevalent for us as a marketeer to understand this side of lead generation.
A B2B buyer journey is no longer linear in an enterprising nature. It is the duty of the marketing
department to provide regular content pushes on their platform, curate material and distribute/share at
various touchpoints for high-quality lead generation. With more than 87% businesses on the platform,
LinkedIn has become a hub on the digital space to connect a business to another one. Almost every
other business has registered itself on LinkedIn these days where they look out for another business to
tie-up strategically, make deals and sell the products or services.
It is also necessary to incorporate the right kind of practices in B2B lead generations. A good practice
tagged along with power that LinkedIn possess and various digital marketing tools available, can
convert the leads into the sales on a large scale.

References

• https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/the-best-b2b-marketing-strategy-for-2019/
• https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-b2b-marketers-need-rethink-traditional-lead-based-
maxim-kublitski/
• https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/blog/linkedin-b2b-marketing/2018/what-is-
lead-generation
• https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/lead-generation-forms
• https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfOTUWc577x12d2n6PKCQMnMwocoJNUsSh
0p5qkZIn524naKQ/viewform?usp=sf_link