A guide is a piece that gives you detailed information and instructions on a subject of interest to help you understand it better. Therefore, in this complete guide to LinkedIn prospecting, we will explain:

• the concept of LinkedIn prospecting in a narrow and wide sense, 
• why LinkedIn is the best place for prospecting online, 
• how to get started with it, and
• we will also dive into 4 best practices and 
• 19 best strategies for LinkedIn prospecting. 

LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional social network aimed at building relationships among businesses through their company and employees’ LinkedIn social media profiles. 

What is LinkedIn prospecting? 

LinkedIn prospecting is a process of identifying and nurturing potential customers among the platform members used by salespeople as part of their social selling activity to understand which members would benefit from their product/service the most and build professional relationships to offer it to them. 

What does LinkedIn prospecting mean? 

LinkedIn is a professional social network aimed at building B2B relationships. B2B, short for business-to-business, stands for the action of promoting and selling products or services to other businesses and organizations rather than individuals as end customers. Therefore, LinkedIn is a perfect place for business-to-business marketing and salespeople to find and nurture potential prospects. 

LinkedIn prospecting means both identifying and nurturing your potential prospects. That’s why LinkedIn developed its features in a way for you to take all steps of your prospecting process without ever leaving the platform. 

How? 

LinkedIn facilitates identifying new prospects not only because everyone is on the platform but also by giving you a detailed insight into its members’ job titles, company names, company sizes, pain points, needs, relevant content, etc., all of which you will later need to personalize your cold outreach. 

In that sense, your prospect’s profile on LinkedIn is the gold mine of relevant information. It can give you exactly the insight you need - if they are high-quality prospects indeed and should be added to your prospecting list, what their needs and pain points are, etc. This is the information you need to base your first cold outreach message and future follow-ups on. 

Cold outreach or cold prospecting on LinkedIn is a form of outbound marketing. It implies contacting prospects via LinkedIn, email or phone (known as cold emailing and cold calling) you had no prior relationship with the end goal of pitching your product or service. However, the sales pitch shouldn’t happen in that one message. What precedes the pitch is sometimes very long back-and-forth messaging to build a quality relationship and understand your potential customer’s needs better. 

Therefore, checking your prospect’s LinkedIn profile before trying to connect is one of the most crucial steps in LinkedIn prospecting that makes all others possible. We will touch upon other prospecting tips in detail later in this blog. For now, bear in mind that connecting with someone is just the beginning of the game. Your ability to understand how your prospect can benefit the most from your product or service, as well as the genuine care to help them overcome obstacles and improve their businesses plays a big role in your prospecting process. And it doesn’t happen overnight. Or over one message. 

The nurturing process can be long and exhausting but, in the majority of cases, pretty rewarding for both sides. A big part of prospect nurturing is also understanding and taking into account their buyers’ journey. Sometimes you need to give your prospects more time. Let the idea of your product or service sink in, and give it another try after a while. 

LinkedIn prospecting is not a straightforward process that goes by a formula. It depends on many factors, some of which you can influence and some of which you cannot. However, there’s a reason why LinkedIn became a place to be when it comes to social selling and online prospecting. We will explain those reasons in detail further below. 

Why LinkedIn prospecting? 

LinkedIn is a social network with 810 million users in more than 200 countries among which over 63 million decision-makers. 

What sets LinkedIn apart from other social media, such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc., is that they are either for entertainment purposes or mainly B2C-oriented if used for business, while LinkedIn members put their social networking efforts into building relationships with other businesses and organizations. 

Hence, in the history of B2B Sales and Marketing, it has never been easier to find anyone you need in one place, and on a platform that supports both your prospecting and lead generation needs. 

While prospecting and lead generation often get used interchangeably, they are two terms that don’t mean quite the same thing. 

As mentioned above, prospecting implies the process of identifying and nurturing potential customers. Lead generation refers to attracting customer interest and converting them into prospects. Therefore, a prospect stands for a qualified contact, while a lead stands for an unqualified contact. 

Both lead generation and prospecting are done by the sales and/or marketing teams, depending on the company size and organizational structure. Before the pandemic, sales and marketing people used both online and offline strategies for prospecting and lead generation. The pandemic forced them to shift to social selling only. 

Social selling is the practice of using your company’s social media to identify prospects, connect, and build trusted professional relationships with the goal of achieving your sales goals. So, ever since salespeople were forced to move to social selling only, LinkedIn quickly gained an advantage over other social media. It is not only because at the moment of the pandemic LinkedIn was the only strictly professional, B2B social network. 

It’s also because LinkedIn features were developed in a way to support all steps of social selling activities - from connecting with prospects to bonding, presenting the sales pitch, handling objections, and, hopefully, closing the deal. Also, people who are not sales reps but are using LinkedIn want to be involved in social selling activities. They want to be found by salespeople offering products and services that will make their businesses more successful. 

However, it doesn’t mean that sales reps can just approach their desired prospects, and throw the sales pitch. It’s far more complicated than that. 

Firstly, there are so many fish in the sea. Finding that ideal business and its decision-maker can sometimes be hard for the sales rep, and it could require the engagement of an entire sales team. 

Secondly, all LinkedIn members, especially decision-makers, are being bombarded with LinkedIn connection requests, regular messages, and InMails. At the end of the day, only the most skilled salespeople get noticed in their prospects’ busy inboxes. Don’t worry, there are many prospecting tips and hacks on how to stand out and speed up the connecting process. 

Later in this blog, we will cover 19 LinkedIn prospecting strategies used by some of the most successful salespeople to prospect on LinkedIn, and build relationships with the most qualified prospects for their businesses. 

How to get started with LinkedIn prospecting? 

1. Define your Ideal Customer Profile & Buyer Persona 

Simply put, sales represents the group of activities that lead to selling a product or service. Each product or service has its ideal potential customer. An ideal customer is a person who will benefit from the product or service the most on many levels, and who has also shown interest in it. The ideal potential customer who showed interest in your product or service in sales and marketing is called the qualified prospect. 

Defining the ideal attributes of your qualified prospects means focusing your marketing and sales efforts on pursuing specific leads that are more likely to convert. In B2B sales and marketing, we distinguish the Ideal Customer Profile as the perfect candidate-company, and Buyer Persona, as the perfect decision-maker(s) within that company. Once you’ve defined the attributes of each, it will be easier for you to identify them on LinkedIn, and know how to approach them better down the line of your social selling process. 

Ideal Customer Profile is a description of companies that would benefit from your product or service the most. The companies that belong to your ICP should be the ones with the 

• fastest conversion cycle
• highest customer retention
• highest LTV
• and that are willing to refer your product or service to others elsewhere. 

Buyer Persona is a description of a person who is your ideal customer with all behavioral, demographic, firmographic, and psychographic characteristics. Similar to the Ideal Customer Profile, the Buyer Persona is a perfect representation of the person 

• whose pain points your product or service solves in the quickest and most direct way
• who is a direct or indirect decision-maker
• who, in combination with the ICP, has the shortest buying cycle
• and who is a preacher for your product. 

In short, ICP represents the company profile, while the Buyer Persona focuses on the particular type of person’s profile within that company. This implies that each company that fits your ICP can have one or more than one Buyer Persona.

2. Find potential customers 

Once you’ve defined your Ideal Customer Profile and Buyer Personas within, it’s time to discover them on LinkedIn. 

LinkedIn is a gold mine for finding high-quality prospects, understanding their pain points, and keeping all communication in one place from initial contact to follow-ups. 

It is not just because everyone’s there. The concept of LinkedIn as a professional platform encourages a series of behaviors through its features that help professionals attract ideal prospects and build B2B relationships. 

For example, LinkedIn allows networking among the members attending the same LinkedIn event despite members not being connected, it awards posting relevant content by giving these members greater exposure on the platform, it gives you options to join LinkedIn groups of your interest, reach busy decision makers through paid and free LinkedIn InMails, etc. 

We will speak more thoroughly about the 19 best strategies to find qualified prospects on LinkedIn in the next section. 

3. Structure your campaign 

Making meaningful LinkedIn connections implies more than simply sending a connection request to a LinkedIn user who matches your Buyer Persona. 

It requires an elaborated outreach plan on how that professional relationship will start and be further developed so it leads to sales. 

It should contain the LinkedIn outreach strategy, how the message copy flow will go, the frequency of messages (including the follow-ups after no response), identifying your prospect’s preferred means of communication (is it a LinkedIn message, InMail, or maybe you need to switch to email or call?), and finally, how and when you’re going to serve the sales pitch. 

Additionally, you should also think about the organizational aspect of your LinkedIn outreach. It is not easy to keep track of all the LinkedIn users you’ve been talking to, where you’re at with every one of them in the process of building a relationship, where they stand in their buyer's journey, etc. 

This is when investing in a CRM comes in handy. Customer Relationship Management Software, aka CRM software, is a tool that helps companies collect, organize and manage data and streamline processes related to customers’ lifecycles. As such, it substitutes various spreadsheets and documents companies use to keep up with prospects’ or customers’ data, and it keeps all members of the sales and marketing teams on the same page. 

Skylead’s Smart Inbox is a light version of a CRM for its labeling system and the fact that it gathers all means of communication with your prospects in one place. It significantly helps you organize communication with your prospects. But, we’ll get to that later in the Automate your LinkedIn outreach section. 

4. Reach out & follow up

After you’ve done structuring your LinkedIn outreach campaign, go ahead and start connecting with your potential customers. 

Bear in mind that, in social selling, just like in face-to-face businesses, first impression matters. The biggest factors in forming a LinkedIn connection are the way set up your LinkedIn profile and approach your potential customers. 

Your LinkedIn profile is your business card. Whenever you try to make a conversation with a LinkedIn member, they will check out your profile to see who they’re talking to. The first things they see are your LinkedIn profile picture, cover photo, headline, and LinkedIn summary section. 

Furthermore, an all-star-status LinkedIn profile leads to a higher number of profile views and connections as you will show up in search results more frequently and higher up. 

After you’ve set up your profile, you can start with your LinkedIn outreach. The first piece of advice is never to leave it to chance. Every message, whether it’s a connection request, a regular message, or an InMail message, should be well-thought-out and personalized. It should reflect that you’ve done your research and know whom you’re talking to, and it should, if possible, leave room to develop your conversation further. 

A big part of your LinkedIn outreach is the follow-ups. Be prepared that not all of your potential customers will be keen to talk business with you straight out the gate. If you are targeting busy decision-makers, bear in mind also the number of connection requests and messages they must receive on a daily basis. The goal is not to give up easily but also to know when to stop. Maybe the moment is just not right. It doesn’t mean that you cannot wait for another convenient opportunity to try again. 

5. Automate your LinkedIn outreach 

If you wish to put time-consuming tasks regarding LinkedIn outreach on autopilot to make more time to find qualified prospects, come up with your outreach strategy, write compelling sales messages, or anything else prospecting-related, you should consider LinkedIn prospecting automation. 

LinkedIn automation is the use of software enabled to take over certain LinkedIn prospecting tasks that you would otherwise have to perform manually. The number and complexity of tasks that a LinkedIn automation tool can carry out vary. The best LinkedIn automation tools on the market mainly automate LinkedIn prospecting messages (connection requests, regular messages, InMail messages) and follow-ups, view and follow LinkedIn profiles, engage to a certain degree with specific content and accounts, etc. Furthermore, LinkedIn automation tools also scrape your prospects’ publicly available information and use it to personalize your outreach. 

LinkedIn automation can be cloud-based or a Chrome extension. Cloud-based automation tools are better because they are safer, and they can run while your computer is turned off. LinkedIn automation tools that are a chrome extension are more likely to get caught by LinkedIn and get your account banned. 

The first benefit of LinkedIn automation is that it saves you time because it can reach out to a higher number of prospects in less time. Consequently, it makes more time for you to focus on other aspects of LinkedIn prospecting, such as identifying qualified prospects, writing compelling sales copy, closing the deal, etc. 

Furthermore, some of the best LinkedIn automation tools on the market, such as Skylead, use smart algorithms to find the shortest possible way to your prospects. What does that mean for you? It means that one way or another, Skylead will find the way to your prospect. 

However, LinkedIn automation tools go beyond LinkedIn automation. Namely, some of them are at the same time LinkedIn automation tools AND cold email software. How do you benefit from that?  

6. Combine cold emailing with your LinkedIn outreach 

A cold email is an unsolicited email that is sent to your prospect without prior contact as part of your cold outreach strategy. It could also be defined as the written equivalent of cold calling. Cold email outreach, just like LinkedIn outreach, aims at making contact with prospects and building professional relationships for the sake of sales as an end goal. 

Ever since sales processes moved strictly and majorly online, the combination of LinkedIn outreach and cold emailing has given the best results. It is simply because, for some people, email is either still a preferred means of communication or their LinkedIn inbox is so crowded that it’s easier to stand out in their regular inbox. 

By combining LinkedIn with cold email outreach, you will for sure increase your chances of getting to your desired prospects. 

The 19 most effective LinkedIn prospecting strategies 

Strategy is a sequence of actions designed to achieve a specific goal. When we speak of LinkedIn prospecting strategy, this will majorly depend on your professional goals. However, overall, the goal of a LinkedIn prospecting strategy is usually to find as many qualified prospects as possible, reach them out and build professional relationships in the shortest amount of time, and finally convert them into buying customers. 

Here are the 19 most effective LinkedIn prospecting strategies that are likely to bring the most qualified prospects for your business independently from your industry. 

Sales Navigator as your best LinkedIn prospecting tool 

Sales Navigator is LinkedIn’s premium platform created particularly for B2B sales and marketing professionals to prospect and generate leads for their businesses. Every Sales Navigator feature is prospecting-oriented, and it aims at giving you the most relevant information and insights into your desired companies and their decision-makers. 

The first benefit of Sales Navigator is the Sales Navigator advanced filtering options. It offers 29 Lead Filters and 15 Account Filters allowing you to target highly qualified prospects en masse. Additionally, Sales Navigator suggests leads according to your sales preferences, lets you add your prospects to custom-made lists, and organize your prospecting efforts better. It has an advanced alerts system where you can set up specific activities you wish to be informed about regarding your prospects. This way, you never miss the opportunity to engage with them. The list goes on. 

Also, when you subscribe to one of 3 Sales Navigator plans, you can still enjoy all the benefits of LinkedIn Premium without additional charges.

Use the Boolean search to narrow down your prospects

LinkedIn Boolean search allows you to combine words and phrases using the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT to limit, broaden, or define your lead generation target. Both LinkedIn and Sales Navigator filters support this type of search. 

Despite it might seem a bit confusing at the beginning, the Boolean search can help you focus your prospecting efforts on ideal potential customers of a niche market that works best for your business. 

Learn how to use this technique properly in our full guide on LinkedIn Boolean search. You’ll also find Boolean string examples of how to laser-target specific prospects. 

Target LinkedIn event attendees 

Just like LinkedIn content can work well to find relevant prospects on LinkedIn, the same goes for LinkedIn events. 

If you wish to target prospects that attended a specific LinkedIn event, you need to start thinking about what kind of events your ideal audience takes part in. Meaning, instead of shooting for webinars that enhance your knowledge, start thinking about where your ideal prospects would gather. 

Not only can you find them “all in one place”, but attending an event of this kind gives you valuable insight into their problems, needs, and point of view on certain topics. 

Read our full guide on how to target LinkedIn event attendees and understand how to use them for finding qualified prospects on LinkedIn. 

Use LinkedIn groups for prospecting

Yes, we also must agree that the majority of LinkedIn groups are dead. However, their members are still there, despite being inactive, gathered around a common interest. It makes using LinkedIn groups for LinkedIn prospecting one of the common practices among sales and marketing specialists. 

However, if some of these communities are active, make sure you take some time and genuinely engage with them. Ask questions, offer advice, share your experience, and answer and comment on posts. Aside from quality prospects, you might gain valuable insights into your Buyer Persona’s problems, needs, and room for improvement. 

Also, one big advantage of LinkedIn groups is that the platform allows you to send a direct LinkedIn message to each group member without being connected to them. 

This is how you find groups of your interest. 

Option 1 - LinkedIn basic and Premium users 

#1 Run a blank search or enter a keyword in the LinkedIn search engine. Use other available filters if needed. 

#2 Choose your ideal LinkedIn group and click “Request to Join”.  

#3 Once accepted this is where you find the list of members. 

Option 2 - Sales Navigator filters: Group filter  

If you have Sales Navigator, you can go ahead and find members of different LinkedIn groups through Sales Navigator filters. Unlike other LinkedIn users, you’ll have the option to further narrow down LinkedIn group members to fit your search criteria even better by applying other filters. 

#1 Open Lead Filters

#2 Scroll down to the “Groups” filter. Put in a keyword or the exact name of the LinkedIn group. 

#3 Sales Navigator will automatically suggest other similar groups. 

Once you’ve chosen LinkedIn groups of your interest, use other Sales Navigator filters to narrow down your search results. 

Take full advantage of free & paid InMails 

LinkedIn InMail is a direct private message to or from a LinkedIn member who is not part of your network. LinkedIn members that are not part of your network can be your 2nd or 3rd-degree connections. 

Many LinkedIn members don’t use this feature because it is not very clear to them how it works. In our Complete Guide to LinkedIn InMail you can find out everything you need to know about LinkedIn InMails. 

• What are InMails and what are they used for?
• How many InMail credits does your subscription plan have?
• What is the difference between paid and free InMail?  
• How to set up your profile to receive free InMails?
• How to check your InMail credits according to your subscription plan? 

We threw in LinkedIn InMail templates for you to get inspired and understand how to write quality prospecting InMail messages. 

The People Also Viewed feature 

The LinkedIn People Also Viewed feature displays a list of LinkedIn members that the platform’s algorithm found important for your LinkedIn experience whether you are using the platform for networking, job search, or lead generation. 

The People Also Viewed feature's algorithm is based on co-occurrences found in other members' searching habits. It lies in their straightforward analysis, and it doesn't reflect or reveal your or other members' browsing history. Therefore, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you personally viewed those profiles, that they ever viewed you, or that you have any relationship with them, although you might.  

This is why, when you go to a specific prospect's LinkedIn profile and check the right rail of their profile, you will find other members with similar attributes. These members are therefore likely to match your ideal prospect traits. 

It is an easy way to get prospects without being involved in additional filtering. We've dedicated an entire guide to the People Also Viewed feature and the way you can get qualified prospects on LinkedIn through it.  

The People You May Know feature 

Unlike the People Also Viewed feature, People You May Know suggests LinkedIn members for you to connect with based on commonalities between you and the LinkedIn member in question. 

LinkedIn recommends members who may have shared connections, have similar profile information such as experiences, company, or industry, or might have attended the same school. You will see these profiles on the right rail of your LinkedIn profile or if you go to other members' profiles. 

It is an excellent way to expand your network and get in touch with members with whom you have mutual connections. Maybe some of them fall into the category of your ideal prospect, and the mutual connection can help you with the introduction. Mentioning someone you both know or getting introduced by a mutual member increases your chances of getting accepted on LinkedIn, as well as the trust necessary to keep building a professional relationship. 

Bear in mind that the better your LinkedIn profile is optimized, the more accurately will algorithms suggest members that fit your prospecting preferences. 

Check your prospects’ Contact Info 

If your prospect is not answering on LinkedIn, or you simply want to reach out via email, check their Contact Info. 

The “Contact Info” section is available only for your 1st-degree connections. LinkedIn members know that this is publicly available information, and if they share their email address, it probably means they want you to use it.

“Contact info” can contain your prospects’ business email, private email, phone number, company website, and LinkedIn profile URL. However, not all of this information has to be filled out. It is up to the LinkedIn profile owner. 

This is where you can find the “Contact info” section.

In this case, we see our lead’s business email, company website, and even phone number. 

Some LinkedIn automation tools, such as Skylead, for example, collect this information for you. 

All you need to do is move the toggle button to the right before creating your sequence. Skylead will collect all of your prospect’s publicly available data, and allow you to use it at any moment. 

Follow job changes on your feed

If your 1st-degree connection changes jobs, you will get a notification. 

It will show up in your feed as well. If your 2nd-degree connection changes jobs and the mutual connection reacts to it or posts a comment, you will see it in your LinkedIn feed also.

Why is it important for LinkedIn prospecting to get regularly updated on job changes? 

Firstly, maybe the LinkedIn member now matches your ideal prospect due to their job title change. Also, people who move to new, decision-making positions are more open to innovations and changes. It is an excellent opportunity to approach them and speak about your service and product. 

The new job position alert

Following specific companies’ job alerts is more of a long-term LinkedIn prospecting practice. Once you set the job alert for specific positions within specific companies, you will receive notifications regarding through LinkedIn and email. 

New job positions can be an indicator of a company's expansion, additional money invested into a specific department, or demand due to higher requests for the company’s product or service. In any case, it’s a positive indicator and a direct invitation for you to get in touch and offer your product or service. 

This is how you set the New Job Position alert on LinkedIn. 

#1 Write in the search bar the job position or a keyword you wish to get altered for. Then, click “Jobs”. Let’s say you are interested in the “Sales Manager” position opening. 

#2 Set up the location (mandatory) first. Then, use any other filter under the “All Filters” option that will get you as close to your ICP as possible.

#3 Here you have two options. 

You can either go ahead and turn the alert on. LinkedIn will notify you of any, in this case, Sales Manager position in the London area that matches your other filters as well. 

On the other hand, if you already have a list of companies that you would like to set alerts for, you can manually insert them here. This way, you will create job alerts for those companies only. Maybe those are your ICPs and/or you already got in touch with someone working there. 

#4 Once you’ve set everything, turn the alert on, just like above. Make an alert for each company or a single alert for multiple companies. 

This way, you will be regularly notified if specific companies open your target job openings. Or, if any company on LinkedIn announces a job opening that matches your criteria. 

Target specific job openings

This hack implies doing a job opening search, adding companies to a spreadsheet, and then finding decision-makers within and reaching out to them. It includes companies that have certain job openings at the moment of your search. In comparison to the previous hack that is more of a long-term solution (you set the alert and wait), here you will work with the search results that you get right away. 

This is how you find leads by targeting specific job openings. 

#1 Put the keyword in the LinkedIn search engine. For example, search for a “Sales Manager”. Set all filters to get as close as possible to your ICP. 

#2 Add each company (or handpick your target companies) manually into a spreadsheet. Then, find decision-makers within these companies and reach out to them.

Target your competitor’s network

If guided by the saying that in love and, well, sales, everything is fair, go ahead and target your competitor’s network. This is an easy way to get qualified leads since they obviously need and are already using a product or service like yours. It can be a pretty fruitful LinkedIn prospecting hack, if you are careful about the way you approach them and how you start the conversation. 

To put this hack into practice, you need to be connected with your competitors on LinkedIn. It can only be done for your 1st-degree connections. 

Option 1 - Go to your competitor’s LinkedIn profile and find their connection list 

#1 Go to your competitor’s profile and click on their connection list. 

#2 Once you click as above, you will be able to further filter your leads. This is when you can handpick them or copy-paste the link of your final search result to a LinkedIn automation tool, such as Skylead. 

Option 2 - Search for your competitor’s connections through LinkedIn filters 

#1 Type a keyword into the search bar or run a blank search. Click “All filters”. 

#2 Scroll down to the “Connections Of” filter. You can target one competitor or multiple competitors’ connections. Filter further your search result by using other LinkedIn filters. 

Reach out to people who endorsed your competitor or ICP

People tend to attract (and endorse) others like themselves. When it comes to lead generation, this can work to your advantage. Whether it’s your or your competitors’ Buyer Persona endorsing them for different services, pay attention to the “Skills” section of your target LinkedIn prospect. 

#1 Scroll all the way down your potential prospect’s profile. 

#2 As you may see from the picture above, there’s a total number of people who endorsed your prospect for a certain skill. LinkedIn automatically shows only those who are categorized as “highly skilled”. When you have many connections that endorse you for a particular skill, LinkedIn marks you as “highly skilled”. Click on the link marked above. 

This is how it looks. 

You can target everyone from the list or just the individuals marked as “highly skilled”. They are most likely to be from the same industry or use the services of your prospect. 

However, endorsing someone on LinkedIn doesn’t have the same weight as writing a recommendation. The LinkedIn members you find through the Recommendations section are more likely to be high-quality prospects. It takes only a few seconds to endorse someone on LinkedIn - by just clicking the button. On the other hand, writing a recommendation on LinkedIn requires putting in some time and effort and publicly standing behind your words with your entire professional career displayed. 

Target leads who wrote or received a recommendation

As mentioned above, writing a recommendation on LinkedIn requires putting in more time and effort. That’s why scrolling through your prospect’s profile and checking out LinkedIn members who wrote or received a recommendation can result in a positive outcome.

This is what the recommendation section looks like. We’ll show everything in the example of a received LinkedIn recommendation. 

LinkedIn members’ name, current title, and relationship with your prospect is displayed. This way, you can understand their business relationship right away. 

You can check out both your prospect’s recommendations and the ones your prospect wrote for other people. 

When leaving recommendations, you need to specify the type of business relationships you had with that LinkedIn member, as well as the position you held at the moment. 

The type of relationship will be displayed together with your recommendation. 

Target members who commented or reacted to your ideal prospect's LinkedIn post

When targeting LinkedIn posts for the sake of prospecting, make sure that your target posts are relevant to your business and that members engaging with them match your Buyer Persona. 

Here are several ideas on the posts you could target. 

• Posted by people from the same industry who share your point of view or ways of doing business.
• Posted by people from adjacent businesses or your client industries.
• Shared by people whose posts target your Buyer Personas or encourage your Buyer Personas to comment or post. 

There are two ways to find a LinkedIn post ideal for prospecting.  

Option 1 - Find a LinkedIn member whose posts you want to target 

#1 Scroll down through their profile and check out the “Activity” section. Click “See all activity”. 

#2 Click “Posts” to see only content posted by that LinkedIn member. 

#3 Choose a post that you want to target. If you are doing outreach manually, click here to see who reacted and commented on this particular post. 

#4 If you are using a LinkedIn automation tool, this is where you copy a link to a post. Have in mind that the majority of LinkedIn automation tools can target only members who reacted (not commented) to a certain post. 

Option 2 - Find a LinkedIn post by using LinkedIn filters 

#1 Type in a keyword in the LinkedIn search bar. LinkedIn will list all posts containing that keyword. Find the LinkedIn posts that are of your ideal prospects’ interest. 

#2 Filter your posts further if necessary. 

Collect prospects either manually or by using a LinkedIn automation tool. 

Reach out to people who reacted or commented on your post

The main advantage of using content on LinkedIn for prospecting is tailor-making your content to attract the desired, qualified prospects. It can be anything from a regular post to a LinkedIn article or a LinkedIn poll. 

You can ask a question, start a discussion, compose your post in a way to find out what your prospect or existing customers expect from a product or service, write a teaser for your next release, and then scrape them manually or by a LinkedIn automation tool. 

Check your company’s LinkedIn page followers 

Who’s better to target than people who are not using your product or service but are following your company page on LinkedIn? 

The reasons for following your company are numerous. Maybe they are in the same or adjacent industries, interested to know more, are exploring different options for their business and found you interesting, and want to stay updated in case you come out with something they need, etc. 

The only way to find out is to approach them. 

Option 1 - Check out your company page as an admin 

Step #1 You need to be your LinkedIn company page admin to see the list of your followers here. 

This is what the follower list looks like. 

Option 2 - Sales Navigator spotlights filters: Leads that follow your company page

Step #1 Go to Sales Navigator Filters. Click “Lead Filters”.

Step #2 Choose the “Spotlight” filter. Click on “Leads that follow your company on LinkedIn”. Once you select this filter, you can use other filters to narrow down your search result. 

Check out the Who’s Viewed Your Profile feature

People on LinkedIn have different reasons to view your profile. 

You appeared in their feed, their search results, came as recommended by someone, they were checking out your company’s website and saw you listed, you came out in the “People also viewed” or “People you may know” sections, you have mutual connections and many more. 

However, it all comes down to some kind of interest and link between you two. Therefore, it wouldn’t be smart to miss an opportunity like this. Check out their LinkedIn profile and see if there’s a reason for you two to connect. 

This is where you can see who viewed your profile on LinkedIn. 

Option 1 - Check your notifications

Option 2 - Check out the Analytics section

The LinkedIn Analytics section is right below the section containing your profile picture, name, headline, and other information. 

Step #1 Find the “Analytics” section. 

Step #2 Check out who viewed your profile. 

You’ll find the list of LinkedIn members who viewed your profile. Additionally, you will notice 4 filters by which you can further narrow them down for quicker and more relevant insights.

Interesting View is a category of profile views that Linkedin's algorithm assumes you'd be most interested in talking to. Aside from that, LinkedIn will categorize certain contacts according to their company, industry, occupation, etc. This categorization is unique to each profile and it can turn useful for LinkedIn prospecting. 

Activate the Bell feature 

This is a practical (and pretty wise) LinkedIn hack that not many people know. Let’s say you found your ideal prospects but are not sure how to approach them. It is a hit-or-miss opportunity or you are simply waiting for that perfect moment - whatever that might be. 

Use the “Bell” feature and you won’t miss it. Not only will you be at the right place and at the right time, but you will have an excellent way to personalize your approach. Furthermore, you’ll react in real time. As soon as the notification appears, you are ready to go. Send your lead a message and attract their attention despite their crowded inbox. 

Step #1 Go to your prospect’s LinkedIn profile. If you are not connected, click the “Follow” button first, and then turn the bell on. If they are your 1st-degree connection, just click the “Bell” button.

Step #2 You’ll get a notification each time your lead publishes something. It looks like this. 

LinkedIn prospecting: Best practices for sales prospecting 

Here are the top 4 LinkedIn prospecting best practices to take into consideration. 

1. Connect on a human level 

Good salespeople never forget that their prospects are first and foremost humans. Each step of their sales process - from prospecting to sales pitch revolves around it. That’s exactly what makes them so successful in social selling. Also, that’s something they pass on to other sales reps from their sales teams.  

Social selling is much harder than face-to-face sales. Yes, LinkedIn is a gold mine where anyone can find high-quality prospects for their business and identify their pain points with ease. But it’s still an online platform. There’s no immediacy in your dialogue. You need to follow up many times before you maybe get a response. There’s no direct energy exchange between you and your prospect. 

That’s why you need to find a way to connect with your prospects on a human level. Don’t just brag about your success and share stories that worked out for you. Show them that you genuinely care and believe that your product or service will help them become more successful. Make them open up to you. Share your business struggles or advice in case you were in a similar situation, and how you got out of it. Finally, know when to quit. People will always come back more gladly to those who respected that they needed more time to make a decision. 

2. Provide value 

Sales reps should always strive to provide value in their social selling process. The most common ways to provide value are through relevant content, and while talking to your prospects independently from their final answer to your sales pitch.  

What does that mean? 

It means that sharing knowledge that can improve other people’s businesses through your content on LinkedIn will help people see you as an industry expert. Thus, they will be more likely to come to you for your product or service than to other sales reps that would only do it for money for many reasons. One, they will know you have the knowledge. Two, they will appreciate everything you’ve done for them for free. 

On the other hand, even when connecting with prospects on LinkedIn through direct messages, you should always strive to provide value independently of their buying decision. Recommend a resource that helped you grow your business, share an ebook, or just give simple advice on something you’ve noticed they struggle about. 

3. Personalize 

Personalization should be a crucial part of your prospecting strategy. And by that, we don’t refer to just calling your prospect by name. 

All salespeople should include thorough research as part of their prospecting process. The most important source of information is your new prospect’s profile on LinkedIn. It will help you get insight into whom you’re talking to. Also, it will segment your prospects into smaller groups to optimize your prospecting efforts if necessary. 

Then, you can use a LinkedIn automation tool to put the personalization aspect, among many others, of your prospecting strategy on autopilot. In simple words, it refers to the use of variables for personalization inside LinkedIn automation tools. Howe
ver, more skilled salespeople know how to use CSV files, and really scale up their prospecting game. 

Another prospecting tip that sales teams use to increase their response rates is Image personalization. Image personalization incorporates eye-catching, often custom-made images, combined with each recipient’s publicly available data, such as name, surname, company name, etc. It helps salespeople stand out in their prospects’ inboxes. 

Some LinkedIn automation tools, such as Skylead, have Image personalization as a native feature. You can upload any image you want, include the variables, and Skylead will customize each image to the recipient. 

4. Be patient

One of the most common prospecting tips that seasoned salespeople will tell you is not to be pushy with your prospects. However, taking into account that there’s a monthly or quarterly quota, many sales reps struggle to just let go and give their prospects a breather. 

Undoubtedly, salespeople who focus on nurturing their prospects, and recognize at what stage of buyers’ journey their prospects are, hit their sales quotas more frequently. Prospects appreciate when you give them time to do their thing, and when they realize that you don’t want to sell at all costs. 

Frequently asked questions about LinkedIn prospecting

What do you mean by prospecting? 

Prospecting is the process of identifying and nurturing prospects. Qualified prospects are potential customers who would benefit from your product or service the most, and who showed interest in it. 

Is LinkedIn good for prospecting? 

Yes. LinkedIn is a gold mine for finding qualified prospects for the majority of businesses. It has over 810 million users in more than 200 countries among which over 63 million decision-makers. In the history of B2B sales and marketing, it has never been easier for salespeople to find everyone they need in one place. 

How do I reach a prospect on LinkedIn? 

LinkedIn allows you to send connection requests and paid and free InMail messages to your 2nd and 3rd-degree connections, and regular messages to your 1st-degree connections. Also, if a LinkedIn member left an email or phone in the Contact info section, you can use it as a point of contact. 

How do you use LinkedIn for sales prospecting?

Set up your LinkedIn profile to establish credibility, and give your prospects a way to know whom they’re talking to. Then, use LinkedIn or LinkedIn Sales Navigator as a LinkedIn prospecting tool to find qualified prospects. Speed up your LinkedIn prospecting and obtain better results by using a LinkedIn automation tool. 

How do I use LinkedIn for prospecting? 

First, you need to define your Ideal Customer Profile. Then, identify companies matching it. Lastly, find your Buyer Persona within those companies. Use LinkedIn and Sales Navigator search filters to find qualified prospects. In this blog, we listed 19 additional strategies to find prospects on LinkedIn. 

What are 3 prospecting techniques? 

1. Get introduced to your prospect if possible. People are more prone to do business with someone who’s not a complete stranger. 

2. Nurture your leads. Establish the relationships, and the sale will follow. 

3. Establish yourself as an industry expert by providing value through your LinkedIn content. 

Should you connect with prospects on LinkedIn? 

LinkedIn encourages meaningful professional relationships, instead of reaching out just for the sake of connecting. You should use your 2nd-degree connections to expand your network. If a 2nd-degree connection matches your ideal prospects, it’s a good idea to get introduced by a mutual connection. LinkedIn recommends using InMail messages for your 3rd-degree connections. 

How do I start prospecting? 

You must first define your Ideal Customer Profile and Buyer Persona. This way, you don’t waste your time and resources on people who are less likely to buy.

How do you get sales on LinkedIn? 

First, research your ideal prospect’s needs and pain points. Use LinkedIn and Sales Navigator search filters to find prospects. Focus on building professional relationships. The sales pitch should happen after you’ve established trust with your prospects and evaluated that they are in the right stage of their buying journey. 

What are the 5 sources used for prospecting? 

• Referrals
• Content marketing 
• LinkedIn events 
• LinkedIn cold prospecting 
• Networking 

Summary 

LinkedIn prospecting is a complex, yet rewarding process, necessary to grow your business.  

Luckily, nowadays, you don’t have to do all the steps of your LinkedIn prospecting manually. LinkedIn automation tools have evolved enough to help you put many time-consuming sales processes on autopilot. 

Test Skylead for 7 days for free. See how our LinkedIn automation tool uses smart algorithms to find the perfect path to your lead. Consequentially, it leaves you more time to focus on closing the deal instead.

To be as accurate as possible when it comes to the LinkedIn Industry List 2024, we manually checked all industries listed below as well as the number of leads and accounts for each industry on LinkedIn and Sales Navigator.

Currently, LinkedIn and Recruiter members can filter leads and accounts based on 149 industries. The LinkedIn and Recruiter industry options are more generic according to the ones reserved for Sales Navigator subscribers. 

Namely, Sales Navigator members have 413 industries at their disposal and include both generic industries as well as their sub-industries. This implies that Sales Navigator subscribers can take their LinkedIn prospecting to the next level and filter leads and accounts with more precision. 

Also, when choosing the industry for your LinkedIn profile and your company’s LinkedIn profile page, LinkedIn will let you choose among the 413 industries from the Sales Navigator list that you can find down below independently from your LinkedIn subscription. 

All of this being said, in this blog, you’ll find:

For Sales Navigator 

• The complete updated Sales Navigator industry list with the number of leads and accounts for each industry. 
• The top 20 industries with the highest number of companies according to Sales Navigator. 
• The top 10 industries with the highest number of leads according to Sales Navigator. 
• The bottom 10 industries with the lowest number of companies according to Sales Navigator. 
• The bottom 10 industries with the lowest number of leads according to Sales Navigator. 

For LinkedIn

• The complete updated Recruiter and LinkedIn industry list with the number of leads and accounts for each industry. 
• The top 10 industries with the highest number of companies according to LinkedIn.
• The top 10 industries with the highest number of leads according to LinkedIn and Recruiter.
• The bottom 10 industries with the lowest number of companies according to LinkedIn.
• The bottom 10 industries with the lowest number of leads according to LinkedIn and Recruiter. 

However, bare in mind that these numbers change on a daily bases. LinkedIn members update their industries, the platform welcomes new members and new company pages. Therefore, there will always be a fluctuation in the number of registered leads and accounts.

Furthermore, the below statistics refers only to people and company pages registered on LinkedIn. There might be businesses and industries for which it doesn't make much sense to be on the platform or online in general, despite the times that we live in. Take this into consideration if one of those businesses or industries is your target.

SALES NAVIGATOR INDUSTRY LIST 2024

Starting June 2022, Sales Navigator switched to a more detailed list of industries that now has both industries and their sub-industries for better categorization and targeting. Further, we manually checked their official industry list and updated some of the industries based on what's live on Sales Navigator at this moment. The Sales Navigator industry list counts 413 industries for leads and 413 industries for accounts.

Furthermore, when setting up your profile, LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to use the following Sales Navigator list of industries and therefore be as specific as possible when it comes to your field of business. 

Also, some of the niche industries will not show up in the drop-down menu unless you specifically type them in, both in your contact info and when using Sales Navigator filters. 

The complete Sales Navigator industry list 2024

Industry rankings [Sales Navigator]

Here are the top 20 LinkedIn industries with the highest number of companies according to the Sales Navigator classification.

Here are the top 10 LinkedIn industries with the highest number of leads according to the Sales Navigator classification.

Here are the bottom 10 LinkedIn industries with the lowest number of companies according to the Sales Navigator classification.

Here are the bottom 10 LinkedIn industries with the lowest number of leads according to the Sales Navigator classification.

LINKEDIN INDUSTRY LIST 2024 [+ RECRUITER]

The LinkedIn industry list is a bit less specific compared to the Sales Navigator one. The list of industries is generic and it counts 149 industries for leads and 149 industries for accounts. 

If you are a recruiter and using the LinkedIn recruiter plan, you should know that it has the same industry list as the below LinkedIn industry list. 

The complete LinkedIn industry list 2024

Industry rankings [LinkedIn]

Here are the top 10 LinkedIn industries with the highest number of companies according to the LinkedIn classification.

Here are the top 10 LinkedIn industries with the highest number of leads according to the LinkedIn classification.

Here are the bottom 10 LinkedIn industries with the lowest number of companies according to the LinkedIn classification.

Here are the bottom 10 LinkedIn industries with the lowest number of leads according to the LinkedIn classification.

Summary

Setting up your LinkedIn profile is the first step toward a positive and satisfying LinkedIn experience whether you are using the platform to network or for generating leads on LinkedIn. 

Moreover, for a detailed, step-by-step guide on how to optimize your LinkedIn profile and earn an all-star status, sign up for our FREE masterclass here. 

The all-star status positively affects the visibility of your profile on the platform. Your LinkedIn profile will come up more often in the search results. That way, other members will be more likely to respond to your sales messages. 

Furthermore, we released a sales book with templates and outreach tactics that our Sales Team used to level up Skylead. It contains 5 multichannel Smart Sequences with templates for each step and all the necessary steps that you should take before your outreach to maximize your results. 

Finally, sign up for our free demo and see how Skylead can take care of all time-consuming sales processes for you. Focus on generating qualified leads and on closing the deal, while our platform takes care of the rest. 

What is LinkedIn Boolean search? 

LinkedIn Boolean search (or Boolean search, in general) is a query technique that combines words and phrases with the Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT, (), “”, to limit, broaden, or better define your search. It is used to produce more accurate and relevant results, and it allows you to navigate through appropriate leads while disregarding the unrelated ones. 

LinkedIn Boolean search is logic-based, and it applies to specific LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter filters, all of which are listed below. However, it’s interesting to note that LinkedIn Basic and Premium Business filters don’t allow longer searches. If you try to apply a longer Boolean query, you will get the “No results found” message, which is not quite true. LinkedIn just wants to point out the benefits of investing in Sales Navigator designed specifically for handpicking leads thanks to its 29 Lead filters and its 15 Account filters, or in Recruiter with its 23+ filters designed for finding the finest talent for your business. 

Boolean search works only if you follow these key instructions. 

• The Boolean search operators AND, OR, and NOT must be written in uppercase. Example: content OR copywriting
• If your search term is composed of more than one word, it needs to go under quotation marks. Example: “content writer” AND copywriter
• If combining the Boolean search terms, use parenthesis to define your query. Example: (“content writer” OR copywriter) NOT “content manager”

The purpose of this blog is to cover the basics of LinkedIn Boolean search and to show you how to build Boolean search strings. 

The Boolean search terms 

Use the following 5 Boolean search operators to conduct your LinkedIn Boolean search. 

The AND operator

The AND operator tells a search engine to find all people whose LinkedIn profiles include both terms. 

For example, if you search for writer AND copywriter, LinkedIn will only bring back users whose profiles contain BOTH the term writer and the term copywriter. 

The OR operator 

The OR operator tells a search engine that you wish to find users whose LinkedIn profiles include either of the terms. Also, if there’s a LinkedIn profile containing both terms, it will appear in your results. 

For example, if you search for content OR copywriter, LinkedIn will bring back users whose profiles contain EITHER of the terms or BOTH terms. 

The NOT operator

The NOT operator tells a search engine what words to exclude from search results. Differently from other operators, it needs to stand before the term you wish to exclude. If you wish to exclude multiple terms, the NOT needs to be inserted before each term. 

For example, if you search for content NOT copywriter, LinkedIn will bring back profiles containing the word content and it will avoid all profiles that contain the word copywriter. If you wish to exclude editors as well, you should compose your query as content NOT copywriter NOT editor. 

Quotations “”

Quotations are used in LinkedIn Boolean search when your search term is composed of two or more consecutive words that need to stay in a specific order. For example, if you wish to find content editors, but avoid content writers, your query would look like this “content editor” NOT “content writer”. If you don’t put the term composed of two or more words under quotation marks, the search engine will look them up as separate terms. 

For example, content editor NOT “content writer” will bring back results that contain the word editor, the word content, and will avoid profiles with the word content writer. 

Parenthesis ()

This Boolean operator is essential for writing complex search strings that give carefully picked results. Namely, when including parenthesis in the Boolean search, the algorithm sees the string between the brackets as a query that needs to be solved separately and then in relation to other parts of the string. 

For example, the query head AND (sales OR marketing) NOT (intern OR assistant OR communications) will bring back results of all leads who are either Head of Sales or Head of Marketing or Head Of Sales & Marketing but will exclude all people from the same departments that are interns, assistant, or hold the title of the Head of Communications. 

Here’s a visual presentation of the Boolean operators for you to download.

LinkedIn filters that support Boolean search

LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter filters that support Boolean search are: 

• First Name
• Last Name
• (Job) Title
• Company 
• School

The Boolean search works with the Keywords filter and is probably the most commonly used one. However, keep in mind that this search result can be very extensive and imprecise since the search engine will list all users whose LinkedIn profiles include that particular word somewhere on their profile (in their title, headline, posts, hashtags, skills, etc). On the other hand, when you use the Boolean search in one of the specific filters listed above, LinkedIn will apply Boolean search only to those sections of your lead’s LinkedIn profile. 

The Boolean search produces the best results when combined with other filters. 

How to prepare for Boolean search on LinkedIn

Before creating a Boolean string for your LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, or Recruiter search, make sure you define your hypothetical perfect search results. 

Also, it is useful to save your Boolean search strings on a separate sheet of paper such as Google Docs or a Word document, just to keep a record of what you combined since LinkedIn filters cannot show longer queries in full. 

Here are several questions you can answer to get you as close as possible to your desired results. 

• What’s the typical job title of your Ideal lead? 
• Is there a synonym or another name for the same or similar title of your Ideal lead?
• Are there any companies you would like to specifically target? 
• Did your Ideal leads attend specific schools? 

Sometimes to get what you want, you need to eliminate what you don’t want first. 

• Are there any titles you want to exclude from your search? Typically, people exclude assistants, interns, etc. 
• Are there any companies that you would like to exclude from the search? Maybe you are already talking to these companies, they are your competitors, or you wish to blacklist their employees for any other reason. 
• Is there a particular keyword that could help you exclude a specific niche from your search? 

LinkedIn Boolean string examples 

Let’s set several Boolean string formulas that can help you understand the Boolean principle better and how to apply it to produce more relevant and precise results.

Template #1 

We will apply this formula in the Title (LinkedIn) or Job Title filter (Sales Navigator and Recruiter).  

If you have a LinkedIn Basic or Premium plan, use this Boolean string to search and exclude several job titles at the same time. 

If you have a Sales Navigator or Recruiter, you can also apply the employment period to your search. This is the main benefit of these plans, as Sales Navigator and Recruiter have an exclude option, and it’s not always necessary to exclude terms through Boolean search. 

This is how the Job title filter takes into consideration different employment periods

• CURRENT: showing profiles that have either of the above positions listed as their current employment. 
• PAST: showing profiles that have either of the above positions listed as their past employment, independently from their current position (meaning: they could be holding the same position at the moment as well, but not necessarily). 
• CURRENT OR PAST: showing profiles that have either of the above positions listed either as their current or past position. 
• PAST NOT CURRENT: showing profiles that have either of the above positions listed as past, but are not holding it as a current. 

Formula 

(Seniority OR Seniority OR Seniority) AND (Title OR Title) NOT (Seniority OR Title OR KeywordsYouWishToExclude)

Example

(Head OR Chief OR VP) AND (Sales OR Marketing) NOT (Intern OR Assistant OR Consultant OR Growth)

In this case of LinkedIn Boolean search, the search engine will bring back the users whose LinkedIn profiles include either of the following terms: 

• Head of Sales
• Chief of Sales 
• VP of Sales
• Head of Marketing 
• Chief of Marketing 
• VP of Marketing 

And it will exclude any profile containing the words - intern, assistant, consultant, or growth. 

Template #2 

Use the Boolean search to target or blacklist leads from a specific niche industry. 

Formula 

Field of work AND (keyword OR keyword OR keyword) NOT keyword 

Example

“Medical Practice” AND (sports OR nutrition OR wellness) NOT injury 

We used this Boolean string in the Keywords filter. This search should bring back LinkedIn profiles that include keywords such as medical practice and either of the terms between the parentheses (or all) mentioned somewhere on their LinkedIn profile. If a specific keyword is not your target, like injury, in this case, LinkedIn will exclude these users from the search results. 

Additionally, to get an even more specific list of leads, we applied a simple Boolean search string to the Job title.

Formula

Title OR title OR title 

Example

“Sales specialist” OR “Sales Manager” OR “Sales Representative” 

Template #3

The following formula is useful for LinkedIn users since they don’t have the Seniority filter, nor they can blacklist leads based on different criteria. These filters are available to Sales Navigator and Recruiter plans. 

Formula 

Seniority AND (title OR title) AND keyword NOT keyword 

Example 

Senior AND (“Software Engineer” OR “Software Developer”) AND Java NOT TomTom

This LinkedIn Boolean search is useful if your ideal lead’s job title can vary, but you want to include a seniority level, a specific skill (a programming language in this case), and maybe even exclude certain companies from your search. 

This LinkedIn Boolean search will bring back users that hold or used to hold either one of these titles. Also, they need to have Java programming language mentioned somewhere on their page (this is where you need to see manually if they have it as a skill or they just mentioned it in a post or similar), and if they don’t work or that didn’t work for a specific company (in this case TomTom, or they never mentioned a specific company in their LinkedIn profile).

Template #4 

Use the Boolean string to be specific about the combination of titles that you are searching for in your ideal lead. As mentioned above, this type of Boolean string has different benefits depending on whether you are using LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, or Recruiter. LinkedIn filters don’t allow you to exclude certain titles nor have multiple entries when it comes to the Title filter. On the other hand, Sales Navigator and Recruiter offer additional options for choosing to which employment period you want this search to be applied. 

Formula 

Title AND (title OR title) NOT title 

Example 

Owner AND (CEO OR “chief executive officer”) NOT Founder

For example, you’ve noticed that lots of Owners and CEOs are also Founders of their companies, but maybe these are not your target. You want to exclude companies where founders are Owners and CEOs at the same time. 

Template #5

Consider adding terms or jargon or simply keywords that are common for that particular industry in your Boolean search. 

Formula 

Seniority AND (title OR title) AND (Keyword OR keywordSynonym)

Example 

Head AND (Sales OR Marketing) AND (Saas OR “Software as a service”)

This Boolean search will bring back LinkedIn profiles whose users hold or held titles such as Head of Sales, Head of Marketing, or Head of Sales & Marketing, and worked in the SaaS industry, or simply mention Saas or Software as a service in their headlines, posts, about section, experience, etc. 

Summary 

We hope this short manual helped you gain a better understanding of the LinkedIn Boolean search and that it got you inspired to create Boolean strings of your own for LinkedIn prospecting and generating leads on LinkedIn. 

We know that it could be intimidating a bit, but if you understand its main purpose and direction, and how to use it, a Boolean search should help you navigate search engines and databases beyond LinkedIn. It’s a skill for a lifetime. 

And once you are satisfied with your search results, there are ways to speed up your sales process. Curious to know how? Test out Skylead, a LinkedIn automation tool and cold email software 7 days for free.

One of the most commonly used LinkedIn prospecting hacks for getting qualified leads is targeting people who attend specific LinkedIn events. 

Why is that? 

LinkedIn events represent an excellent way to find people from the same or similar industry in one place. Usually, professionals attend webinars and other types of online networking and learning opportunities to expand THEIR knowledge and expertise. However, when it comes to using events for LinkedIn lead generation, you need to think the other way around - what does your target audience want to hear and what kind of topic would gather them in one place? 

Furthermore, by attending a LinkedIn event with your ideal leads, you have a direct insight into their concerns, needs, and room for improvement. Use this information to reach out to the attendees, further investigate their pain points, and finally, offer your product as a solution to their problems. 

Last, but not least, targeting LinkedIn event attendees turns out to bring high acceptance and response rates, all of which directly influence your conversion. Our Sales Team reports several campaigns in which they reached out to people who were at a specific LinkedIn event with the following results: 

• January 2022 - acceptance rate 75% / response rate 41 %
• November 2021 - acceptance rate 66% / response rate 51 %
• September 2021 - acceptance rate 74% / response rate 43%

What are LinkedIn events?

LinkedIn events help organizations and individuals deepen their relationships with the target audience through virtual gatherings around a specific topic. Although LinkedIn started rolling out the events feature in late 2018, the pandemic definitely sped up the entire process of switching from live to virtual webinars, masterclasses, and gatherings of any kind. And LinkedIn turned out to be the perfect platform for it for many reasons. 

LinkedIn events are free of charge and available to all LinkedIn users. 

Benefits of using LinkedIn events for lead generation 

• Find leads from over 200 world countries in one place. 
• You can either organize the event with the intent of drawing your ideal customers or simply attend an existing event that gathers your target audience.
• LinkedIn events give you valuable insight into your target audience’s needs, room for improvement, and pain points. 
• Referring to a LinkedIn event you and your lead attended in a cold outreach message gets you a step closer to the conversion. 

How do I find a LinkedIn event?

There are two ways to find the most suitable LinkedIn event. 

• Use LinkedIn Search to find future LinkedIn events. 
• Check out past events (whether you attended them or not, all that matters is that you signed up for them). 

Find future events

#1 Run a blank search or enter your keyword(s) into the search bar. 

#2 Click the “Events” tab and check out all future LinkedIn events. 

#3 The list of events looks like this on LinkedIn. Pick the one you wish to attend. 

#4 Click the “Attend” button. 

This is the only way to see the event attendees. 

LinkedIn will give you the option of adding the event reminder to your calendar.

Down below you can find information about the event, speakers, and the organizer too, so you can check them out on LinkedIn before joining.

#5 You have two options to see the attendees. 

Click on the link below (where it says the number of attendees) or on the “Networking” section on your right. This is how you see the list of attendees and apply LinkedIn filters to narrow them down as close as possible to your Buyer Persona. 

Also, on your right, there is an option of directly messaging any event attendee or sending a Connection Request. This is your opportunity to engage, chat with your attendees and build a community around the event you joined or maybe even created yourself. 

However, the practice shows that it is better to engage after the event, as you will have more room for personalization and to be as specific as possible when it comes to making references to something that was said or asked at the event itself. 

#6 Let’s say you decided to go with the list of LinkedIn attendees and you clicked one of the two above-mentioned links. 

This is how you apply any of the LinkedIn filters to your list of leads. 

You can narrow them down by the following filters: 

• Connections (whether they are your 1st, 2nd, or 3rd-degree connection)
• Connections of (in case you have a shared connection)
• Locations
• Current Company 
• Past Company 
• School 
• Industry
• Profile Language (what language is their profile in)
• Open To (if they set their profile to be open to “Pro bono consulting and volunteering” or “Joining a non-profit board”
• Service categories 
• Keywords (any keywords that you find suitable for your search)

Find a past event 

#1 If you wish to target leads from a past LinkedIn event, click here and go to your LinkedIn feed page.

#2 Scroll down and check out your “Events” section on the left. 

#3 You’ll see the list of ALL events - future and past. 

The rest of the process is the same as above. 

How to reach out to LinkedIn event attendees? 

Reach out to LinkedIn event attendees:

• Manually 
• Using a Sales Engagement Platform such as Skylead
• 
  

Manually 

When we talk about reaching out to leads manually, we refer to either writing to them directly on LinkedIn or exporting their contact information one by one in a .CSV file. Then, you can import the file into a Sales Engagement Platform and make the entire outreach process faster and easier. 

Use a sales engagement platform

#1 If you decide to use a Sales Engagement Platform, you can also copy your final search results’ URL.

#2 Paste the link into Skylead. 

#3 Choose “Collect Contact Info” (optional). This way, Skylead will download all publicly available data such as your lead’s email, phone number, website, etc., depending on what your leads made public on their LinkedIn profiles.

Go ahead and make your Smart Sequence.

Smart Sequences are based on algorithms that track your lead’s behavior and act accordingly. This way, they assure the highest number of touchpoints with people you wish to reach out to. Smart Sequences work on an “if/else” principle, where if the condition for one path is not fulfilled, the algorithm searches for its alternative. 

Here’s an example of a simple Smart Sequence. 

If you wish to learn more about how Smart Sequences work check out our solutions page and also get inspired by some ready-to-use Smart Sequence templates. 

LinkedIn templates for approaching a LinkedIn event attendee

A LinkedIn event that you organized, attended, or are planning to join or conduct can be used in so many ways in your outreach. Either way, making a reference to it is a huge plus, and people who participated will be more prone to talk to you if you mention it. 

Here are 6 situations how to use a LinkedIn event reference in your outreach. 

Scenario #1 You attended the same event as your lead 

Template 

Hello {{firstName}},

I saw that you too attended the {{eventName}} event! 

What resonated with me the most is {{somethingThatResonated}}! 

It would be awesome to connect with you! 😀

Example

Hello Mario,

I saw that you too attended the “How To Enable Trust Building Skills In Your Sales Team” event!

What resonated with me the most is their Trust Equation and the way Darrel explained it!

It would be awesome to connect with you! 😀

Scenario #2 Ask for feedback on a certain LinkedIn event as a conversation-starter 

Template

Hello {{firstName}},

I am curious to hear what resonated with you the most from the {{eventName}} event since I saw you attended it too! 

Would love to keep in touch! 

Example 

Hello Sonya,

I am curious to hear what resonated with you the most from the “How To Enable Trust Building Skills In Your Sales Team” event since I saw you attended it too!

Would love to keep in touch!

Scenario #3 You are the event organizer and want to hear feedback from people who attended it

Connection request template 

Hey {{firstName}},

I just wanted to thank you in person for attending the {{eventName}} event! It was truly a pleasure having you there. 

Let’s stay in touch! 

Connection request example 

Hey Jenny,

I just wanted to thank you in person for attending the “How To Enable Trust Building Skills In Your Sales Team” event!

It was truly a pleasure having you there.

Let’s stay in touch!

LinkedIn message #1 

Once you get accepted on LinkedIn, use personalized Images or GIFs to improve engagement. Since we started using this feature, our response rates went up by 63%. 

This is one example to get inspired by, but the more creative you get the better. 

Scenario #4 Use a LinkedIn event that has to do with your product/service and ask for feedback on your product/service 

Connection request template 

Hey {{firstName}},

I saw that you attended {{eventName}} on LinkedIn! 

Would love to hear the most useful tips you got from it! 

Let’s connect 😀 

Connection request example 

Hey Tom,

I saw that you attended “How To Enable Trust Building Skills In Your Sales Team” on LinkedIn!

Would love to hear the most useful tips you got from it!

Let’s connect 😀

LinkedIn message #1 template 

Hey {{firstName}},

Thank you for accepting my connection request! 

I am still super-curious to hear your most valuable takeaways from the {{eventName}} event. For example, I personally found {{takeawayThatStoodOut}} surprising! 

Anyways, I {{yourOccupationExplained}}. I would love to share the solution we have and hear your feedback on it too! 

LinkedIn message #1 example 

Hey Tom,

Thank you for accepting my connection request!

I am still super-curious to hear your most valuable takeaways from the “How To Enable Trust Building Skills In Your Sales Team” event. For example, I personally found the fact that they never mentioned how this process works during the onboarding period surprising!

Anyways, I help small-to-medium-sized Sales Teams optimize their schedules. I would love to share the solution we have and hear your feedback on it too!

Scenario #5 You want to network before the LinkedIn event 

Template 

Hello {{firstName}},

I saw that you also signed up for the {{eventName}} event. 

I already attended an event {{organizer’sName}} organized on {{topic}}. {{yourFeedback}}. 

Let’s keep in touch! 

Example 

Hello Angela,

I saw that you also signed up for the “How To Enable Trust Building Skills In Your Sales Team” event.

I already attended an event Darrel organized on the time-management of medium-sized Sales Teams. He was amazing!

Let’s keep in touch!

Scenario #6 Promote your LinkedIn event by targeting people who are attending an event similar to yours 

Suggestion: Use LinkedIn InMails to reach out to your leads if you don’t have any more Connection Requests available, you wish to reach out to people who are generally getting lots of requests, or who are your 3rd-degree connections. 

Also, LinkedIn InMails work well if you need more characters for your message or your lead doesn’t accept your Connection Request in a timely manner. Aside from paid InMails included in your premium LinkedIn plan, you can also take advantage of free InMails (800 for each paid LinkedIn profile) for users who set their profiles to “open to free InMails”. 

We have 13 additional InMail examples you can check out.

LinkedIn InMail template 

Subject line: {{company}} + {{yourEventName}} = {{benefit}}

Hey {{firstName}},

I saw that you attended the {{eventName}} event. Did you find it to be useful for the {{lead’sIndustry}} industry?

Hopefully yes, because I have something even more specific for you! We are organizing {{yourEventName}}, a LinkedIn event that will give you {{uniqueSellingProposition}} specifically for your industry. We would really love to have you there! 

Would you be interested in hearing more? 

LinkedIn InMail example 

Subject Line: FlyHigh + SaaSEnMasse = 20+ additional calls in 3x less time

Hey Nicolas,

I saw that you attended the “How To Enable Trust Building Skills In Your Sales Team” event. Did you find it to be useful for the SaaS industry?

Hopefully yes, because I have something even more specific for you! We are organizing “SaaS en masse”, a LinkedIn event that will give you a step-by-step guide on 5 prospecting hacks specifically for your industry. We would really love to have you there!

Would you be interested in hearing more?

Summary

In the sea of professionals using the platform, it is getting harder and harder to find qualified leads. Sales reps are trying to get as creative as possible and to think strategically about where their target audience gathers. Reaching out to people who attended specific LinkedIn events is sure one of the best places to start. 

Have in mind that you can always target a future event, a past event, or even create one of your own that will attract your potential customers. 

And if you decide to speed up annoying sales processes, and put more focus on building meaningful relationships and closing the deal, sign up for Skylead's 7-day free trial! 

Ideal Customer Profile? Say what?

When figuring out the sales strategy, it is hard to specify who you should be targeting. If you try to pitch to somebody you think is the best, or anyone really before prior analysis, you will fail at your execution. 

Moreover, it’s like playing darts with blindfolded eyes, hoping to hit the 50 points mark. Perhaps you will hit it, but the chance is 99,9% you won’t. What’s worse, if you do not know who you are pitching to, you will waste your budget and time spent. 

Luckily, we are here to take the blindfold from your eyes and present you with the solution - Ideal Customer Profile, aka ICP. Therefore, in this article, we will show you a comprehensive guide on how to create an Ideal Customer Profile with different approaches based on whether you have an established business or just starting out.

What is an ICP?

An Ideal Customer Profile is a description of the companies that would benefit the most from your product or service. In other words, the companies that belong to your ICP should be the ones with the fastest conversion cycle, highest customer retention, highest LTV and are willing to refer your product or service to others elsewhere. Therefore, An Ideal Customer Profile is the company profile that has been or will unquestionably become a long-term customer, upsell easily and adore your product or service since it solves their problem seamlessly.

Note: Once the ICP is defined, the sales reps should get an idea how to speak and approach these companies.

ICP can be both positive and negative. In other words, you can create an ICP which describes your perfect customer match to target your ideal prospects, but also you can create a negative one - the worst kind for your business so you can run a check-up on the ones who come your way. We will focus on the positive ICP, but the same process applies if you wish to create a negative ICP.

The difference between an ideal customer profile and a buyer persona

ICP and Buyer Persona are both essential documents for salespeople, and they serve the same goals - prospecting on LinkedIn and finding the right people. In other words, these similar tools go hand in hand, and it’s easy to mix these two in the process. Firstly, to create both, let’s distinguish them clearly. 

ICP combines firmographic, demographic, and behavioral data that best describes only the company ideal for your business. This data can include info, such as: 

• Location,
• Average company size, 
• Revenue,
• Pain point, 
• Industry, etc.

On the other hand, a Buyer Persona is a document that describes people who are involved in a buying process alone. The data from your ICP might mention the decision-makers and their positions. However, Buyer Persona will go into more personal details such as job title, what social media channels they consume, or how much they make.

Basically, Buyer Persona focuses on more psychological and personal details, while Ideal Customer Profile focuses more on the company itself and the metrics.

Let’s zoom things out a bit. Ideal Customer Profile is a broader specification than Buyer Persona. One ICP can contain multiple Buyer Personas you wish to target. For example, you may be targeting the chief marketing officer as well as the CEO in the same company profile. 

Plot twist: If you zoom things out, even more, you find out that you can have multiple ICPs for your business. In this case, the industry will be the dominant specification for ICPs. If you imagine a diagram, it looks something like this:

Back to the ICP and Buyer Persona. Here is a simplified example of the main difference between ICP and Buyer Persona.

Note: If your company is new, It’s better to start off with creating an Ideal Customer Profile, and then move onto Buyer Persona.

How to create an ideal customer profile?

An Ideal Customer Profile needs to be as detailed as possible to identify all the aspects of your target companies, create a good base for your Buyer Persona, and later on for your LinkedIn lead generation activities. 

Here is how to create ICP in case you:

• Already have an Ideal Customer Profile as your customer;
• Do not have ICP as your customers or customers at all.

If you already have an ideal customer profile as your customer

1. Analyze your current customers data 

Data is precious. Analyzing it, you can figure out patterns and anomalies that your business can benefit from. In this case, the best way you can create ICP is to start with your existing customers’ data. This way, you can figure out similarities amongst your most valuable customers.

The trick here is to first pinpoint who your best customers are. You can do so by setting the following questions for yourself:

1. Firstly, what company did become your customer the fastest way possible?
2. Secondly, who are the customers that have the highest retention rate?
3. Thirdly, what customers have the highest LTV?
4. Lastly, what company did refer your product and service elsewhere? 

When you have the list of such companies it is time to move on to the next step.

2. Identify the patterns

Once you have the list of current companies that are your customers according to previous criteria, it is time to analyze them. The key here is to notice patterns and similarities between these companies.

Here is the list of patterns to keep in mind when analyzing:

• Industry - what is their business domain?
• Location - where are these companies located?
• Company headcount - how many employees work in the company?
• Revenue - how much the company makes a month (to figure out whether they have a budget for your product or service)?
• Challenges on the company level - what problem made them find a solution in your product or service? 
• Decision-maker - who is responsible for a decision to buy such a product or a service?
• Technology - what technology do they use daily? 
• Goals and objectives - what is their mission and vision?
• What is their product or service
• What is their status on the market

Note: One way you can do this step is to open Google Sheets, make a note of customers list in rows, and put said patterns in columns. Once you have them neatly written down, you can notice these patterns easier.

Depending on how detailed you wish to be while creating ICP, you may or may not use all the information listed above. 

3. Have a chat with your customer

Once you’ve established the patterns and have rough data, it is time to get personal and go deeper into the analysis. To gather more personal information, you can book online meetings and chat with your customer. Talking with your existing customers from the companies on the list will give you additional insight into otherwise unavailable information. 

Here is the list of questions you can ask your customers:

Keep in mind that not all customers have time to talk to you, or your meeting is not their priority. If you did the social selling right, you will have instant positive feedback because of your well-established relationship with them.

In other cases, you need to find an alternative motive for the customers, so they are willing to hop on this meeting. In other words, this is where discounts or gift cards come into play. You will get valuable information, and they will gain something in return. Win-Win.

4. Assemble information about your ICP

You are almost done. The last step is to assemble all this information on a single sheet of paper. As we mentioned before, it would be easier to start with ICP industry segmentation and go on from there. 

With Ideal Customer Profile defined, you can alter your sales and marketing efforts to target the right companies for your business. Furthermore, ICP is useful for SDRs as each company they come across in the future, be it outbound or inbound, can be compared to the profile on the document. In other words, depending on the comparison, an SDR can make different decisions or approach styles.

In the template below, we will show you the example. Furthermore, we will provide you with the document, which you can download or make a copy of. 

If you do not have ideal customer profile using your product or a service

The previous approach was an easier one because the data is easily accessible. However, do not despair - if you do not have ICP as your customers, or any customers whatsoever, here are the steps you need to take, which are slightly different from those above.

1. Identify your ideal customers 

One of the best ways to start creating an Ideal Customer Profile in case you don’t have any customers or the ones ideal for your business is to zero in on the certain companies you believe will most benefit from your product or service. 

You can do this by first identifying a couple of things on your end:

• Product or a service benefits
• Problems and solutions your product or service offering

Once you do that, choose a group of ideal companies to research. Follow their founders or other decision-makers and discover what they write about, are there any pain points they often talk about; visit their website, or check out their LinkedIn page. Possibilities about research are endless.
Once you’ve done your research, write down these companies. With this approach, you will help your sales and marketing team narrow down the target group and be more effective in their activities.

2. Identify the key aspects

Similarly to the previous approach, you need to add firmographic, demographic, and slightly behavioral data to the companies’ list. Here is the information you can gather about these companies and add to the list next to the companies’ name: 

• Industry 
• Location 
• Company headcount
• Revenue
• Challenges on the company level
• Decision-maker
• Technology used
• Goals and objectives
• What is their product or service
• What is their status on the market

Depending on how detailed the person wishes to be while creating ICP, they may or may not use all the information listed above. However, we do suggest making your ICP as detailed as possible since it will provide the best options for LinkedIn lead generation targeting. 

3. Finding personal information about the company

To make your Ideal Customer Profile as detailed as possible, you need to find out more personal information about the companies themselves, but one requires mingling on your end. In other words, you need to reach out to them. 

Do not underestimate the power of LinkedIn - most people will be glad to chat with you and share experiences. Furthermore, you can use this opportunity to reach out to their decision-makers and start your social selling.

To reach out to these people, you can first send a personalized invite to connect.

Example of invitation to connect that is a conversation starter:

Hey {{FirstName}},

I saw your awesome profile and noticed you work as {{Occupation}}. I would love to connect and share experiences and talk more about the hardships of the position itself.

From there, you can continue the conversation like this:

Hey {{FirstName}},

Thanks for accepting the invite. I saw that you are working at {{CurrentCompany}}. Would you mind me asking what you find the most difficult in your current job there or in general? I am doing a bit of research since I am developing a product specially designed for {{Occupation}}, and I would be glad to hear your thoughts on this.

Here are a couple of questions you can ask them:

• What is the process of decision-making in their company?
• What are the pain points in the field of your product or service?
• If they were looking for such a solution, what features would they love to see?
• What are their goals and objectives?

4. Build an ideal customer profile

The last step is to assemble the information you gathered, which we cover in the next segment. If you choose the companies that work in different industries, start with industry segmentation first, and import the rest of the data to have multiple ICPs. Otherwise, you will have only one. 

Keep in mind that depending on the effectiveness of your new ICP and the results, you can modify the said document in the future. 

Ideal customer profile template

Here is how simplified and assembled Ideal Customer Profile should look like for a fictitious company that offers a time tracking system to other companies.

Additionally, if you wish to download this template, be sure to click here and make a copy. 

How to use ICP for lead generation

After you've created an Ideal Customer Profile regardless of the scenario, it is time to put it to use. As we mentioned before, the ideal customer profile is a powerful tool to identify your ideal leads. Keep in mind that companies who do not match your ICP are still worth your while, but the retention rate will perhaps be lower or buying experience longer, so optimize and adjust your efforts accordingly.

Ideal Customer Profile is fairly easy to apply for lead generation. The idea is to search and create a company leads list to match your ICP, and then reach out to them. 

1. Similar companies search

Hacks to find leads using basic LinkedIn search

Go to your LinkedIn account and research the industry or type of companies defined in your ICP document. Once you do, use additional filters available to narrow down the search according to your ICP.

When the search is complete, go to each company profile and find your leads.

Create a CSV file with every lead’s first name, last name, profile URL, and email. Save this file for the next step.

Hacks to find leads using Sales Navigator

There are two ways you can filter your leads.

1. Find leads from the company profile

One way is to go to your Sales Navigator search, and search for the type of company you wish to find. Secondly, add additional Sales Navigator filters, and see the results. Thirdly, find your ideal company from the list, and click on the three dots button. Then, click on the “View Similar”. 

"View Similar" is a nifty Sales Navigator feature that will try to find companies most similar to the company you choose according to the industry, company size, etc. As a result, it will show you up to 50 similar companies.

You can also use your existing customer you selected as your ICP, type their name in Sales Navigator search bar, and click on “View Similar” button for that company. 

From there, click on the company you are most interested in and find your decision-maker. Once you do, go ahead and save him to the lead’s list. In addition, repeat the process for every company.

2. Find leads similar to the decision-maker working for your ICP

Another great way you can find similar leads is to use Sales Navigator to find the exact decision-maker working for your ICP. Once you do, you can click on the “View similar” button, and Sales Navigator will show you a wonderful selection of leads.

Similar to the “View Similar” feature for the companies, Sales Navigator will try to find leads similar to the lead profile you select, according to position, age, a company they work for, etc. In this case, Sales Navigator will find up to 100 similar leads.

From there, select all the leads and also save them to the list.

2. Create an outreach campaign

You can outreach the leads you found manually, but to make this process easier, you can use a sales engagement tool to do it for you. Let’s take Skylead for example. In order to create a campaign, take the CSV file from LinkedIn results or URL from Sales Navigator lead’s list, and upload or paste it into Skylead.

3. Create a Smart sequence for outreach

To clarify, the smart sequence will allow you to define the steps you need to take for your outreach towards the selected leads. Simple drag and drop of the elements, such as actions and conditions, will result in a sequence such as:

4. Enjoy the results

And you’re done. Once you’ve started your campaign, relax. Skylead will do each step from the smart sequence for you, so you can focus more on responses from the leads, social selling, and building relationships with your prospects.

In conclusion

An ideal customer profile first and foremost allows you to narrow down, analyze prospects, and optimize your approach. Furthermore, it shows precise challenges - valuable information to adjust unique selling points and offer tailor-made solutions to their problems.

To repeat, the 4 easy steps you need to take depending on whether or not you already possess an Ideal Customer Profile as your customers:

The next step is to create a Buyer Persona, so take a look at the detailed guide here.  

Wish to use Skylead to outreach to your Ideal Customer profile easier? Come, say hi via chat on our website, and test our LinkedIn Automation & Cold Email software during a 7-day Free Trial. 

Over the years, cold email marketing turned out to be the right choice to unleash the full potential of outreach as a Lead Generation strategy - apart from LinkedIn lead generation, that is. 

With its minimal cost and extensive reach, it is clear that cold emailing has probably the highest ROI compared to other marketing approaches. 

In the present day, modern email marketing drifted away from the one-size-fits-all model. It is now based on consent, segmentation, and personalization. Consequently, the response rates went up and so did its value.

However, the minimum requirement for cold email marketing is to have your leads', preferable business, emails. If you run into their private ones, it is only up to you to use them for outreach purposes. 

Here are 8 easy ways to find your leads' business emails that work. 

Ask them for it 

There are different ways of asking for your lead’s email. 

Make an online form for people who visit your website and would love to be updated on a regular basis through your newsletter. 

Or, insert a pop-up asking your visitors to subscribe to your newsletter first to access your website’s content. This one can be a bit annoying, as many people might give up unless whatever you have to offer is absolutely worthy of sharing their information. 

If you don’t have a newsletter or it is not aimed towards your leads, try giving your website visitors a free gift in the form of a pdf or audio file that will bring value to their business in exchange for their email address. 

Lastly, you can do a LinkedIn prospecting of your own and reach out to people who would be interested in subscribing to your newsletter.

Subscribe to your lead’s newsletter 

Yes, that’s correct. If your lead doesn’t want to subscribe to your newsletter, you can always do vice-versa. You will eventually get an email from them that you can use to reach out. 

Check their website 

Each brand most likely has a website. If not, there is for sure some kind of an online presence in the form of a LinkedIn, Facebook, and/or Instagram account (see below). 

When you visit your lead’s website, search the “Contact”, “About Us”, and/or “Team” pages. 

These are the places where their general email or a message form is located. It might not be the contact of the person you would like to speak to. However, by reaching out to them, explaining who you are, and asking for a specific person’s email address, you might actually get it. 

Check their social media 

As mentioned above, if not a website, there is for sure some kind of a social media presence. 

LinkedIn

Start with LinkedIn, the biggest professional network out there. If a lead has a publicly available email, it will most likely be on their LinkedIn profile. If not, try finding their company’s LinkedIn page, search for the generic email, and ask for the target lead’s direct contact. 

Anyways, there are two ways of scraping a publicly available email from LinkedIn - manually and with Skylead. 

Depending on the number of leads and your company’s outreach policy you can decide what works best for you. 

Scraping emails manually

There are three places you should look up for an email address on LinkedIn. 

1. Click on the “Contact Info” section. 

2. Check out their LinkedIn cover picture, especially if a corporate one. 

3. Read the Profile Summary. 

Sometimes users leave their business email at the end or in the middle of their LinkedIn bio section to make it seem as a call to action. Make sure you read it to the end. 

Using Skylead to scrape emails 

Collecting publicly available information of your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd-degree connections tends to be quick and effective with Skylead. 

Check out how it works. 

Turn on the “Collect Contact Info” option. 

What Skylead does is visit each of your lead’s LinkedIn profiles and collect their publicly available data. 

Once the magic has been done, use the “Export Data” on the “Campaign Tracking Page” to export emails and other information in a CSV file.

Have in mind that the “Collect Contact Info” can be just one of the steps of your automated outreach. Skylead’s Smart Sequences allow you to combine different actions based on your leads’ behavior while serving your business goals and creating a valuable database that you can export and reuse at any moment. Therefore, building a campaign with Skylead can serve multiple purposes. 

Or you can decide to make a campaign with the sole intention of collecting your leads publicly available emails and other valuable data. 

Facebook

Go to the company or individual’s page on Facebook and check out the “About section”. 

Step #1

Step #2

Instagram

There are two options for finding somebody’s email address when it comes to instagram.
The first one is only available and visible in the app.

Click on the “Contact” option. 

This action will take you to see the following information. 

The second option is available in both desktop and app versions.

Just check the “Info” section of the targeted profile. 

Try following the pattern 

There are two ways to "guess" your lead's business email. 

The first way starts with knowing the name of your lead’s company. Try composing a generic email such as info@domain.com or contact@domain.com. Reach out and ask for the direct contact of a person you would like to talk to. 

The second way is knowing the company’s business emails pattern. If one of the employee’s emails goes like john.smith@domain.com, there is a great chance that your desired lead’s email is also composed of name, dot, last name, at sign, domain. 

Then, try inserting it in your email provider and see if it will be recognized or if the picture will show up. However, have in mind that not having a picture doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not the correct one. 

Use Email Permutator 

Using an Email Permutator is one of the options.

Go to the main page and type in your lead’s name, surname, and domain.  

The Email Permutator produces all the possible email combinations based on the inserted data.

How will you know which one is the right one? Insert all of them in the recipient's field of your email and see which one will be recognized by your provider. If there is one with a profile picture, it is most likely to be the right one.

Search on Google  

There are several ways through which Google can help you find someone’s email address. 

Here are three. 

• Search “james.johnson@amazon.com” 

By using quotation marks in your query, you’re telling Google to search for results that contain that exact keyword. If your lead's business email ever showed up anywhere publicly, it will be displayed.

• Type site:amazon.com James Johnson email address in Google search

By using site: domain Google will give you results only from that domain. 

• Search [James Johnson] + email 

Google will find your lead’s email address if ever published somewhere on the web. 

Use Skylead

Use Skylead’s Email Discovery & Verification feature to find your prospects’ business emails even without being connected on LinkedIn. 

With a Smart Sequence as simple as this one, Skylead will provide you with verified business emails, implying the lowest possible bounce rates. 

After the sequence was executed, you can go ahead and export all the collected data in a CSV file. 

In case you didn't know, Skylead is an automation tool, email finder, and scraping tool, all in one platform. 

Sure, you can use it to find and verify emails and scrape publicly available data. But you can also opt for LinkedIn, Email, or combined outreach (LinkedIn + Email) that will serve your business goal best while bringing down the manual work to the minimum.

This is just one of the numerous options you have with Skylead. Check out our templates to get the idea of Smart Sequences and to get inspired for unleashing the full potential of your outreach. 

Summary

Finding somebody’s email address doesn’t necessarily have to be difficult, but it can be time consuming. 

The best approach will depend on the number of leads you want to reach and your company’s outreach policy. 

However, with nowadays software development, have in mind that automating the process of finding somebody’s business email and getting through to that person can be a quick and painless process. 

Think about it. 

Or schedule a demo call with our team member and hear out all the possibilities you can have with Skylead. 

If you’ve ever wondered if switching from LinkedIn Basic to LinkedIn Premium Account would change your filtering options, the answer is no. 

However, going for the LinkedIn Premium Account is highly recommended because of an Unlimited Profile Search and 5 InMails Credits per month. Not only. You also get to view and engage with a much greater number of profiles when having a Premium account, as you decrease the chances of getting jailed or restricted on LinkedIn. 

However, if you want an ultimate filter experience, we recommend signing up for Sales Navigator. Of course, this implies learning how to use Sales Navigator Filters for better targeting.

In this blog, we will cover all the options you have for narrowing down your search results on LinkedIn Basic and Premium Accounts. 

Let’s get started! 

Where can I see LinkedIn filters? 

Type your keywords in your LinkedIn Search Engine or just hit “Enter” while leaving the Search Engine blank. 

This action will lead you to the following choices that help you further narrow down your LinkedIn search. 

• People;
• Jobs;
• Courses;
• Posts;
• Schools;
• Event;
• Groups;
• Companies;
• Services. 

You can also click the “All Filters” option and see them in one place. 

In this blog, we will cover the three filter blocks that we recommend for better LinkedIn prospecting - “People”, “Posts”, and “Events”, and reasons why we consider them quite convenient. 

“People” filters on LinkedIn 

Connections

The “Connections” filter allows you to filter leads based on the type of your LinkedIn relationships. 

You can be somebody’s 1st, 2nd, and 3rd-degree connection.

1st-degree connections are members that you are already connected with on LinkedIn. 

2nd-degree connections are 1st-degree connections of your 1st-degree connections. They are available to be added through an Invite to Connect and are perfect for expanding your network. 

3rd-degree connections are 1st-degree connections of your 2nd-degree connections. They are also excellent for expanding your network. The only difference is that LinkedIn doesn’t recommend reaching out to them through Invite to Connect, rather getting in touch via LinkedIn InMails.

You can send paid InMails to anyone who is not your connection on LinkedIn while only those who set their profile to “Open to InMails” can be reached out via free InMail. 

You can also check out our guide on 13 LinkedIn InMail examples to improve your response rate.

Connections of

Filter your leads by choosing only those that are 1st-degree connections of your 1st-degree connections.

You can put in more than one contact. 

Locations

The “Locations” filter narrows down your leads based on the city, region, geographic area, and country. 

Current company 

Use this filter to narrow down leads based on the company they currently work at. 

Past company 

Filter your leads based on their past company. 

School 

You can filter your leads based on the school(s) they attended/are attending.

Industry

Track your leads based on the industry they listed on their profiles. 

Industries are predefined. 

Profile language

LinkedIn Profile is available in 24 different languages. 

However, this filter offers only a 5-language search. 

Open to

The “Open To” option filters your leads depending on whether they are open to “Pro Bono Consulting and Volunteering” and/or “Joining a Nonprofit Board”. 

Service categories 

Service categories are also predefined. 

You can go ahead and target your leads based on the services they offer listed on their profiles. 

Keywords

You can use the following option to search your leads via keywords. 

This filter supports the so-called “Boolean” search. That is, it gives you the option of combining keywords with modifiers such as AND, NOT, and OR to produce more relevant results. 

For ultimate targeting, consider using “Posts” and “Events” filters. 

“Posts” filters on LinkedIn 

“Posts” filters can be quite useful to gain insight into the latest industry trends and hot topics. You can also benefit from it to learn what kind of posts your ideal leads like to engage with and then use it for your outreach.

Targeting users who reacted to a certain post

There are two benefits of targeting users who reacted to a certain post. 

The first benefit is that it implies that these users are active on Linkedin and most likely interested in that particular subject or have jobs in the same or adjacent industry. 

The second benefit is that you can use their interest to ultimately personalize your outreach. Your pitch can be based on the fact that you both liked the same post and then develop your conversation from there. 

This kind of approach increases the acceptance and response rates. 

Automating post engagement campaigns 

If you want to target prospects who reacted to a certain post but would also like to save time and reach out to as many of them as possible, automating this process could be the right decision! 

Skylead offers the opportunity to automate targeting users who reacted to a certain post thanks to its “Post Engagement Campaign” options. Yes, there is a type of campaign dedicated exclusively to these types of leads! 

To use a post as a source for generating leads all you have to do is click on the 3 dots at the top right corner of said post and choose the “Copy Link to Post” option. 

Paste the generated URL to the Skylead dashboard.

From here, Skylead will take you to the Campaign Settings page. You will be able to adjust your campaign in a way that fits your business needs best.
Here is an example of a multichannel Skylead campaign.

As you may see, Skylead will not limit your Lead Generation to LinkedIn only. Thanks to its multichannel outreach and “if/then” condition, you are able to build as many possible paths to your lead.

For example, in case someone is not answering on LinkedIn, Skylead’s Email discovery & verification feature will enable a business email outreach.

The above campaign is just one of many options at your disposal thanks to Skylead’s Smart Sequences. 

Also, the dashboard allows you to create the sequence and write out message copies all in one place. 

Just by clicking on the step, you will have an option to insert your messages.

If you would like to see a step-by-step guide on how to create your first Skylead campaign and have an insight into all the steps/options, check out our blog “How to build your first campaign at Skylead”. 

Filters for posts

The following filters will allow you to narrow down countless posts on LinkedIn to the ones that are of high interest to your target audience. 

Thanks to LinkedIn’s filtering options, you will be able to find a post that your ideal prospects find relevant to their business and/or interests. 

The most important filter is the keyword. It is your best bet for finding the industry’s most relevant posts. 

Then, you can further narrow them down by using: 

Posted by

You can search posts depending on whether you posted it or someone from your network. 

Date posted 

You can search posts depending on the timeframe within which your leads posted them.

Sort by

Author industry 

Search by the author’s industry. You can add multiple industries. 

Author company 

Search by the author's current company. You can add multiple companies. 

“Events” filter on LinkedIn

Just like with “Posts” filters on LinkedIn, reaching out to prospects attending a specific LinkedIn event can be beneficial for two reasons.

The first reason is that users attending a particular event on LinkedIn are most likely highly interested in the subject and therefore make a perfect target audience. 

The second reason is that you can use the event reference to ultimately personalize your outreach and be more appealing to those to whom you reach out. 

In case you would like to target a larger number of leads, Skylead has a solution for you! 

Automate targeting leads attending a LinkedIn event

First, choose the event which leads you would like to target and click on “Attend Event”.

You will not be able to see the list of leads attending the specific LinkedIn event unless you are one of the attendees.

Once you’ve signed up, you will see the list of people who attended or were planning on attending the event. 

You can further narrow down your leads list by including other filters. 

Once you are satisfied with your search result, copy - paste the URL to Skylead’s Campaign Creator. 

Check out our step-by-step guide on how to target leads attending a specific LinkedIn event and you will see all the options and tips when it comes to automating this outreach with Skylead. 

Use this reference to highly personalize your outreach.

This filter doesn’t have options of being further narrowed down except using a specific keyword in the search engine.

Summary

Targeting is the first and most important step in your LinkedIn lead generation.

By taking the time to get to know LinkedIn or Sales Navigator filters, you will narrow down your audience to people who are most likely to be truly interested in your products and services. 

This will automatically affect your lead generation and conversion in the most positive way. 

And if you ever decide to scale your business and opt for a Sales Engagement Tool, schedule a demo call with a Skylead representative and get to know the range of options available to you!

You finally decided to go for Sales Navigator and take your LinkedIn prospecting and Generation to the next level.

By having 24 “Lead” filters at your disposal, the quality of your prospects will surely skyrocket, and so will your sales. 

Now you are like a kid in a candy shop. 

But there is that one filter that caught your eye as you realized it suits your business needs the best - targeting members of a LinkedIn group. 

Target LinkedIn group members: Where to start from

We care how you do your Lead Search. Knowing how to narrow down your audience to those who will truly be interested in doing business with you can require quite a skill. 

So, sit back and let us guide you step-by-step through the “Targeting members of a LinkedIn group” filter (better known as the “Group” filter 🤣). 

First, open your Sales Navigator and click on the “All filters” option. 

The drop-down menu with filters will appear in the following format. 

As you may see in the top-left corner, there are “Lead” and “Account” Filters.

If you want to create a Skylead outreach campaign from your search, make sure to use only “Lead” filters. 

Now, scroll down and choose “Groups”. 

How the Sales Navigator "group" search works

Click on “Find people in groups” and type in the name of the LinkedIn group which members you want your campaign to be aimed at. 

You can target a specific LinkedIn group or multiple groups.

For example, if you type in “LinkedIn Social Selling”, other groups will pop out suggesting that you can target even more of them. 

Furthermore, in the top right corner, you will immediately have an insight into how many members this LinkedIn group has. That is, how many leads your campaign will be aimed at. 

The good thing about Sales Navigator filters is that you can go ahead and further narrow down your search since most likely you don’t want to reach out to all of the members of a selected LinkedIn group. 

You can use any of the remaining 23 “Lead” filters, and include, but also exclude (something that not many people know!) certain prospect types. Not all of the filters support this option, but the majority does. 

Check this out. 

For example, we decided to go with CFO members of the targeted LinkedIn Groups but excluded those with a CEO title. 

So lit! 

And how about the Boolean search? 

Some filters allow the so-called “Boolean” search. It combines keywords with modifiers such as AND, NOT, and OR to produce more relevant results. 

What if you are not happy with the search result? 

Once you see your search result, it is up to you if you want to change it, extend it, or narrow it down even more. 

Know that at any moment you can use the available Sales Navigator filters until you create a “perfect” audience for the product or service that you are offering. 

If you would like to know more about each Sales Navigator filter individually, check out our blog on this particular topic here.

If you would like to read a detailed explanation of all filters, check out our Sales Navigator filters guide.

Use Skylead to target LinkedIn group members

Copy-paste the URL into Skylead’s Campaign Creator. In case you did not specify the “Relationship” filter (1st, 2nd, or 3rd-degree connections) beforehand, you can do it directly at the Skylead Campaign Creator page. 

Have in mind that you can use the “Group Connections” option only if you are part of the specific LinkedIn group that you are targeting. 

You don’t need to be a member to reach out to those that are. 

However, it is highly recommended just for the sake of the higher acceptance rate and eagerness to hear you out.

So, what are you waiting for?

Go target those leads, make bad-ass campaigns with Skylead and rock your LinkedIn lead generation! 😎