Ten Tips to Generate Leads on LinkedIn

When it comes to selling insurance, it’s important to meet current and prospective clients where they are—on social media. Specifically, LinkedIn.

So, what is LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network on the internet. You can use LinkedIn to organize events, join groups, write articles, post photos and videos and more.

Are you on LinkedIn? Despite the success brokers have using the platform, only 46% use it.

Why use it?

Simply put, you should use LinkedIn because that’s where your B2B and private clients are—and your competition. It’s a place where you can establish your professional identity and a brand that’s all your own. It’s also the place to establish yourself as an authority figure in the insurance industry, while radiating empathy and taking a proactive approach to helping customers.

Now that you have a good sense of why LinkedIn is a great place to build your business, let’s talk about the top ten tips for building a successful profile.

1. Optimize your profile. Use LinkedIn’s wizard to set it up. Provide case studies where you’ve gone above and beyond for your clients under each position you’ve held. List your education and any relevant trainings you’ve completed.
2. Produce articles that position you as an insurance thought leader.
3. Build relationships, not just connections, with clients, prospective clients and other leaders in the insurance industry. Send personal messages that aren’t salesy.
4. Choose a profile picture and background image that look professional.
5. Use a clear headline, which appears below your name and photo.
6. Fill out the “About” section of your profile so it clearly states the results you get for your clients.
7. Be active by sharing existing content and producing original content.
8. Add awards and other “social proof” to your profile. Give and ask for recommendations to highlight your skills and expertise.
9. Incorporate keywords throughout your profile (more on this below).
10. Run paid ads when applicable (more on this below).

Now, let’s talk about keywords and paid ads.

How to optimize your LinkedIn profile for keywords

What is a keyword?

A keyword is a word or phrase that describes the content on your page or post best. When people search your keywords in a search engine like Google, your website or post should appear. The higher your website or post ranks in the search results, the more success authority over those keywords you’ll have. Keywords can contain multiple words.

How do I optimize my profile for keywords?

LinkedIn functions as a search engine to help users find and connect with professionals whose services they require. The people looking for your profile will search for terms that should connect them with you, such as, “renter’s insurance,” “insurance for churches,” or “hospice insurance.” It’s important that the terms you’d like to be connected to are in your profile’s headline, your job title, your professional summary and your skills and endorsements area.

Instead of saying “insurance agent” as your job title, you could say “EMS insurance agent” or “all professional lines insurance agent.” Finding their terms in your profile makes the audience feel you’re a good fit.

Some tips on using keywords:

1. Use them in moderation. “Keyword stuffing” isn’t rewarded by Google. Instead…
2. Use them naturally. The should be part of logical, coherent sentences that tell audiences about the topic.
3. Monitor and adjust. It’s important to switch your keywords as needed; when you feel like they’re not working or if there’s been a notable change in the market.

How to create a LinkedIn ad

LinkedIn users see up to two times higher conversion rates when they implement paid ads. With LinkedIn paid ads, you can be specific and ultra-target your audience. You can even upload a list of current customers, called a “lookalike list,” and LinkedIn will find similar contacts to market the ads to. For more on lookalike audiences, visit LinkedIn.

For a comprehensive guide on creating LinkedIn ads, visit this Hootsuite article.

The first thing to do when creating ads is to decide which kind of ad(s) you want to utilize. There are four types of ads:

• Sponsored Content—ads with original content you create
• Sponsored Messaging—sponsored in-app messaging to audience profiles
• Lead Gen Forms—forms that users fill out to generate leads
• Text and Dynamic Ads—ads that run on the right rail of the LinkedIn interface

Sponsored Content

There are six types of sponsored content:

• Single image ads
• Video ads
• Carousel ads
• Event ads
• Document ads
• Thought leader ads

Each ad type has a different look and feel. For more detailed information about each ad type, visit LinkedIn.

Sponsored Messaging

Sponsored Messaging is when your ad is sent as a private message to a user. They can be Conversation Ads, which is a choose-your-own path ad, or Message Ad, which sends direct messages to your prospects to spark conversation.

Lead Gen Forms

You can collect leads on LinkedIn with Lead Gen Forms.

Text and Dynamic Ads

Options for this category include Text Ads, to drive new customers to your business on a set budget, Spotlight Ads, to showcase a product, service or event and Follower Ads, to gain followers.

Next, you’ll need to decide your LinkedIn ad objectives. These include:

• Awareness, which maximizes your brand’s share-of-voice through impressions, could include Single Image Ads, Carousel Ads, Follower Ads, Event Ads and Spotlight Ads.
• Consideration, which encourages clients to act and find out more about your business, could include website visits, engagement and video views.
• Conversation, which focuses on lead generation and tracking actions on your website, can include conversion ads, lead gen forms, carousel ads, job ads and text ads.

As you can likely deduce, each of these objectives, starting with awareness at the bottom, takes the audience through a marketing “funnel,” in which they gradually get closer to buying (converting).

Your audiences’ awareness levels with your company and brand will determine which of these objectives you choose.

After choosing your ad type and objective, you’ll need to choose your target audience. As mentioned above, you can upload a lookalike audience list, and/or you can manually choose demographics for your audience, including age, location, gender, job title and industry.

The last major step in the process is creating your budget and schedule. LinkedIn recommends at least a daily budget of $100 or a monthly budget of $5,000. For new advertisers, LinkedIn recommends spending at least $25 and letting an ad run for at least two to four weeks to learn what works and what doesn’t work from the experience.

Next, you’ll actually build the ad in LinkedIn, uploading your visual and written content.

Finally, you’ll measure performance, tracking it daily and observing trends. This means noting which time of day, week and month you get the most impressions/conversions/clicks from your target audience. LinkedIn shows you a breakdown by profession of the audiences who saw your ad(s). Once you notice these time patterns, you can focus ad spend on those times so you really target the right audience. It’s recommended that you run multiple ads to compare which works best for your business.

LinkedIn is a great platform for you to advertise, network and assert your authority with audiences. You can generate solid leads, meet potential clients and share/re-share content that matches your brand and business model.

How have you used LinkedIn to help grow your business? Let us know in the comments below!