How to Use LinkedIn Groups to Build Brand and Generate Leads

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Unleashing LinkedIn:
How to Use Groups to Build Your Brand
and Generate Sales Leads

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As a B2B Professional,
All I Want Is an Unfair Advantage.

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As a B2B Marketer,
I want to build my Company’s Brand and
generate as many qualified Leads for my
sales team as possible.

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As a B2B Sales Professional,
I want to build my Personal Brand and
generate as many Meetings as possible
with qualified prospects.

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Let’s discuss one way
to achieve both of these objectives.

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LinkedIn
LinkedIn seems to offer the “perfect storm” environment, for
B2B brand building and lead generation:
 Thousands of relevant + transparent prospects
 Frequent member login activity
 Low cost of entry and participation
 Highly scalable platform
All of the above can be captured within LinkedIn Groups.

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What Is a LinkedIn Group?
• Groups are Interest
Forums on LinkedIn
• As of 18 Nov 2012,
there are over 1.4
million groups on
LinkedIn
• Groups allow
members to post
articles and
conversation starters,
and reply to existing
articles and
discussion threads

LinkedIn for Lead Generation8
Competitive Advantages of
LinkedIn Groups

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LinkedIn Groups
Resemble Real Life
• LinkedIn Groups are equivalent to a real-life group that’s
made up of hundreds of your prospects
• Groups offer long-term digital connections between
yourself and your prospects – allowing for virtual
discussions every day
• These digital connections are gateways to real life
meetings – like the one we’re having right now 

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Self-Reporting
LinkedIn encourages self-
reporting: the sharing of one’s
details within their personal profile.
Self-reporting creates
unprecedented transparency of
your target audiences.
This means Unprecedented
targeting.
LinkedIn Groups Can Capture Your
Prospects in One Place

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If you’re targeting CFOs,
LinkedIn offers you
direct access to 1,500+
Senior Finance Decision
Makers in Australia, in
companies > 200 staff

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If you’re targeting CIOs,
LinkedIn offers you
direct access to 1,000+
Senior IT Decision
Makers in Australia, in
companies > 200 staff

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If you’re targeting HR Heads,
LinkedIn offers you direct
access to 800+ Senior HR
Decision Makers in Australia,
in companies > 200 staff

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You Can Deliver
Industry Information, Insights, and
Thought Leadership to Your Members
LinkedIn Groups
Build Prospect Value

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You can post
industry
content for
the benefit of
your group
members.
This content
encourages
discussion,
which yields
market
insights for
your sales
team.

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You Can Engage in
Industry Conversations and Display
Your Expertise to Your Members
LinkedIn Groups
Promote Thought Leadership

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You can have a
professional
discussion with
your group
members –
building
personal brand
while
developing
relationships
with them.
How would this
benefit your
sales team?

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Groups Give Rise to the Personal Brand
• Personal Brand has
always been important in
B2B
• How important are the
personal brands of your
key people to winning
business for your firm?
• LinkedIn groups are 100%
person-to-person based –
ensuring the development
of personal brands

A LinkedIn Group Case Study

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Case Study:
B2B Social Media Lead Generation

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• Launched in October 2010
• Currently has 3,000 members, from Australia, Singapore,
Hong Kong, and New Zealand – our key markets
• The group’s audience is primarily composed of B2B
Marketing Directors, Social Media Managers, and Sales
Professionals
• The group is an ongoing source of agency B2B leads
Case Study:

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Our key uses of the LinkedIn group include:
 Demand Generation – We are building the category of
B2B Social Media Lead Generation by posting articles
that prove the concept and its worldwide / local adoption
 Market Research – We are constantly learning new
things about our target audience via the insights they
provide during discussions
Case Study:

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 Market Expansion Feasibility – We test the potential of
any industry or region I want to expand into, by inviting
prospects from those industries or regions, and observing
their participation
 Relationship Building – by interacting with our
members, we are building thousands of relationships as
we establish our positioning and expertise in our field
Case Study:

LinkedIn Groups:
The Strategy for Brand Building
and Lead Generation

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LinkedIn Groups: The Strategy
1. Product
2. Prospects
3. Content
4. Social Sellers
5. Management & Policies

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Strategy: Product
• Which is our most strategic product or service? Which
do we want to sell more of?
• If you have dozens of products, bundle them into product
families, then build groups around the families
• Always start with the product, never the social
network. In the end, it’s always about the leads and the
revenue.

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Strategy: Prospects
Which prospects are most likely to buy our product or
service?
• Which are the companies we want to land as clients?
• What are the job titles within those companies, that
we should be talking to?
• Invite them to the group, using LinkedIn Ads or Inmail
• Exclude competitors and all other non-relevant
professionals

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Strategy: Content
What is the content our prospects need to solve their
problems and do their job better?
 Do you produce our own industry-leading content? If
not, can you commission some material?
 Can you come up with Conversation Starters or
Polls?
 Beware of the Ribena effect – too much of your own
syrup makes the rest of us choke
 3rd Party content is a very reliable way to build true
industry credibility

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Strategy: Social Sellers
• A Social Seller is a man or
woman who represents their
company in social networks
• Social Sellers focus on
building their personal brand,
sharing category content,
and generating leads
• The most impactful Social
Sellers are people in
Business Development and
Sales – the only ones who
close deals.

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The Social Seller Concept
• Social Sellers own their LinkedIn profiles, legally
• But – Marketing co-owns the marketing and
content dimension of LinkedIn profiles
• All group content that is distributed via Social
Sellers, should now be approved, or influenced, by
Marketing
• Social Sellers = Distribution Channels for
Marketing
• This approach reduces social media risk while
maximising brand alignment and compliance

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Strategy: Social Sellers
• Which of your group managers will be appointed Social
Sellers; i.e. who will seek out meetings with your group’s
members?
• Will they come from your Sales or Pre-Sales
department?
• Marketing and C-Suite do not close deals, so their role
within the group is secondary to those who close deals

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Strategy: Management & Policies
• Who will be the Group Owner (1), who will be the Group
Managers (up to 10), and who will be Group Mods (up to
50)?
• What is expected of the Group’s Management? Do their
KPIs need to be adjusted?
• Who decides on which Content gets posted, and which
group applicants get accepted?
• Who makes the decision on the group’s Social Sellers?

The Science of Brand Building via
LinkedIn Groups

Content Distribution +
Conversation
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Personal Brand Building
Group
Participation

Content
Distribution +
Conversation
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Group
Participation
Mere Exposure Effect
Positioning Effect
Brand
Building
Personal Brand Building

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Building Brand Awareness + Familiarity

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Positioning Effect
Associating your
personal brand with
the content of your
posts and discussions,
makes you stand out
and become
synonymous with that
content.
This gives you greater
credibility and trust
with your group
members.

The Science of Lead Generation
via LinkedIn Groups

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Lead Generation – Outbound
In most B2B
groups, 90% of your
leads will come
from Outbound
efforts!

What Numbers to Expect from
LinkedIn Groups

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Member Engagement
• Most groups must accept the 3% Rule; i.e. no more than
3% of your members will become regulars (>1 post per
month)
• So if you have 100 members, then probably 3 of them will
be regulars
Of the other 97%:
 50% are “beneficial lurkers” who consume information
 50% have forgotten they are in your group!
• Remember that just over 50% of your members are
“participants” in your group

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Costs: What to Expect
LinkedIn Ads
o Avg. $2 - $4 Cost per Click;
o 0.025% - 0.05% CTR (=1 click per 2000 – 4000
impressions)
• Inmails
o $10 per Inmail;
o 10% - 20% CTR
Join Rate:
• 5% - 25% of every invitee will join, depending on the
relevance of your invitation script and group name
• As a rule of thumb, you will need to send a minimum of 500
Inmails to achieve 100 members (with 3 active members)

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What Results Can You Expect?
Assuming your Social Sellers:
• Post at least 2 – 3 pieces of relevant content every week
• Engage with your members at least 1x – 2x per week for at
least 2 – 3 months, and
• Engage in best-practice Inbound + Outbound Lead Generation,
then you may expect:
 Approx. 15 – 25 leads for every 100 members in your
group
 This percentage will grow as the brand awareness and
positioning of your Social Sellers grows within the group

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How Do We Measure ROI?
• Each Social Seller is given their own list of named prospects
with the group (in line with their sales territory)
• As each Social Seller meets his prospects, this meeting is
recorded in the CRM using source = “LinkedIn Group”
• Once a sales proposal is submitted, the Social Seller (or
Marketing) records the $ value of the proposal against the
company CRM account
• The organisation can now determine $ pipeline value vs. the
investment in the group (i.e. salaries + agency costs)

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Thank You!
Connect:
LinkedIn: Tom Skotidas
Twitter: @tomskotidas
Google+: Tom Skotidas

How to Use LinkedIn Groups to Build Brand and Generate Leads

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