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Social selling and outreach are two complementary strategies that can be used together to first develop relationships with potential prospects, then generate leads. All with one objective in mind: to boost your sales.
The biggest challenge with outreach is finding the right prospects. You know your target audience, okay, but how do you know if they really need your offer?
Sure, you can scrape 1,000 prospects on Sales Navigator and send them a blind campaign. But outreach is evolving, and this strategy is producing fewer and fewer results.
The other option is to detect signals of interest from your target audience. And LinkedIn can be a goldmine for identifying them.
Here’s how and why.
What is a Signal of Interest?
In marketing, a signal of interest is an action or behavior by a prospect that indicates they are likely to be interested in a product or service. These signals can be explicit or implicit.
- Explicit signals: actions or behaviors that directly indicate an interest in a product or service.
Example 🔍
For example, someone commenting on a cold emailing publication sends an explicit signal of interest.
- Implicit signals : actions or behaviors that indirectly indicate an interest in a product or service.
Example 🔍
For example, someone who is part of a LinkedIn group on cold emailing sends an implicit signal of interest.
Why Identify Signals of Interest?
If we pay attention to a person’s interest signals, we can show them that we’re interested in what’s important to them.
This can help us build a relationship of trust with them. But it can also help us send the right message.
By capturing the right signals of interest, we capture the right targets.
Example 🔍
Imagine you want to sell a multi-channel prospecting Saas (like LGM 😏)
In that case, it’s a safe bet that the people who commented on a cold emailing post are potentially interested in your product. These are the people you need to target.
Once you’ve identified your prospects’ interests, you’ll be much less likely to fail.
7 Hacks for Selling your Product through Social Selling & Outreach
Here are 7 powerful strategies to boost your sales by combining social selling with outreach—and the best part? You can do most of them with La Growth Machine!
Reach Out to People who Liked your Posts
If you publish regularly on LinkedIn, this hack can be a great way to capture your prospects. If someone likes your post, it’s either because they’re interested in your topic, or they’re a friend trying to support you (in which case, exclude them). Of course, the subject of your publication must be related to your product.
How to proceed 🤔
Scrap all the prospects who have reacted to one or more of your publications (using La Growth Machine, for example), and create a campaign of 2 LinkedIn private messages.
Here’s an example of a sequence that aims to share content with the prospect and gradually guide the conversation toward signing up for your tool.
Message 1 :
Hello {{firstName}}, I saw that you had reacted to my post on cold email. I also made a video about it. Are you interested?
Message 2 (if no response) :
Hello {{firstName}}, since you reacted to my last post on cold email, I thought you might be interested in an automatic cold email prospecting tool to boost your sales.
Here’s one that’ll give you X4 on your sales: {{link}}.
This method can also be used to contact people who respond to a survey, for example.
How do you Scrape Profiles that Liked your posts?
There are plenty of tools available for this, but guess what? You only need La Growth Machine—this feature is already included!
And it all happens in just a few clicks:
- Step 1 – Go to LinkedIn and get the link of the post you want to scrape (click on Copy link to post).
- Step 2 – Head over to La Growth Machine, click on the Leads tab, then select Import Leads, and finally choose Import from LinkedIn.
- Step 3 – Choose Liked a post, paste the URL from LinkedIn, and import.
- Step 4 – Create a new audience or select an existing one.
And that’s it!
You’re now ready to launch your campaign to these specific leads!
Reach Out to People who Commented on your Posts
In the same vein as the previous hack, we’re going to contact profiles who are interested in the subjects of your LinkedIn posts. But this time, we’re going to bounce off their comments. A person who comments shows greater interest than one who simply reacts.
Here, the goal is to encourage the prospect to sign up for your newsletter, but you can also prompt them to watch a video, explore some content, or even suggest a call.
Here’s what can be sent:
Message 1 :
Hello {{firstName}}, I’m bouncing off the comment you put under my post about cold email. If you’re interested in this topic, I thought you might also be interested in our article on {{articleTitle}}. I invite you to take a look.
Message 2 (if no response) :
Hello {{firstName}}, did you get a chance to look at the article I sent you?
If cold email is part of your prospecting strategy, I suggest you subscribe to our newsletter → {{link}}
We publish a new article every week. We’ve got 5 years of feedback from our users so lots of interesting tips to help you make x4 on your sales thanks to cold.
How do you Scrape Profiles that Commented on your Posts?
To export the leads that have commented on your posts, simply perform the same operation as for the export of people who have liked your post, but choose the option Commented a post instead.
Reach Out to People who Visited your Profile
If you publish regularly on your LinkedIn profile, chances are that people who see your posts are intrigued by your profile and visit it. Maybe they’d even like to ask you questions about your expertise, but don’t dare.
So get ahead of them! Scrap the visitors to your profile, sort through them to keep only the profiles that match your target audience, and send them a message.
Here’s an example:
Hi {{firstname}},
I just saw that you visited my profile. I thought you might have some questions?
We’ll be happy to talk
Have a nice day!
With this type of message, you can expect a response rate of around 50%. It’s worth it, isn’t it?
How can you Find Out who Has Consulted your LinkedIn Profile?
This feature is reserved for LinkedIn premium accounts. If you don’t have one, you won’t be able to use this strategy.
If you do have a premium account, this is where you can see who has visited your profile: https: //www.linkedin.com/analytics/profile-views/
Reach Out to People who Have Followed your Company Page
In the same spirit as the last hack, some potential clients may have started following your company page on LinkedIn. If a profile follows you, it’s likely because they’re interested in what you offer (unless they’re a competitor keeping an eye on your activity, in which case, exclude them).
This could be a great opportunity to engage with them directly and address any potential questions they might have!
Here’s how you could possibly approach them:
Hello {{firstname}},
I noticed you recently followed our LinkedIn page—thanks for your interest! Is there anything you’d like to know or discuss?
I’d be happy to help!
How do you Scrape These Leads?
You guessed it! Just follow the same procedure as before on La Growth Machine. This time, choose Followed My Company, select your company from the dropdown list, and import!
Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!
Reach Out to People who Have Published Content on your Topic
These targets may be less obvious to find, since it’s estimated that less than 1% of Linkedin users publish at least once a month. The target is therefore limited. But you can expect good return rates.
Here’s a relevant approach in this sense:
Hi {{firstname}},
I saw your post on how to boost your sales with cold email. And I found it very interesting. And I was wondering, what tool do you use for your prospecting campaigns?
This approach will show that you’re interested in your prospect, you know who he is and what interests him. Then you’re going to talk to them about a subject they’re familiar with. Chances are, he’ll be open to discussing it with you.
How do you Find these Profiles?
Simply type the keywords you’re interested in into the LinkedIn search bar and choose Posts:
You can either select posts manually, but this can take some time. Or scrape them all using a tool like Phantombuster.
Go to Phantombuster, then follow the steps indicated.
Step 1 – Connect your LinkedIn account (download the Phantombuster extension, it’ll make pasting the code much easier)
Step 2 – Enter your search url in this Phantom: LinkedIn Search Export.
Then configure the phantom to your needs and export the results.
Expert Tip 🧠
Monitoring LinkedIn keywords proves to be a long-term winning strategy because:
- You position yourself as an expert in a specific field by sharing your expertise on every post related to that topic.
- You identify leads that are already aware of the problem you solve, and therefore further down into the sales funnel.
Buska is a great tool to help you implement this strategy. You set up a list of keywords you want to track (your brand, your area of expertise, your competitors…) and it pulls up all the web mentions related to those keywords (including LinkedIn <3).
The whole social listening process runs on autopilot, so all you have to do is create dedicated outreach campaigns to reach these new hot leads.
Reach Out to People who Liked/Commented on Posts related to your Topic
In the same way, people who engage with posts related to your topic may show potential interest in the product you’re selling.
It would be a shame to miss out!
So in your LinkedIn search bar type in a keyword related to your offer, take a publication that has generated a sufficient number of reactions (>50), scrape the profiles that have reacted and commented on the post. Remember to sort the resulting list to avoid contacting off-target profiles.
Put these profiles into a campaign and start the conversation this way:
Hello {{firstname}}, I saw that you {{likened/commented}} on {{name}}’s post on cold email. Is creating outreach campaigns a topic at {{companyName}}?
I was thinking that our multi-channel prospecting tool could help you boost your sales ;) can I send you a demo of the tool?
How do you Scrape these Profiles?
As explained above, use La Growth Machine to export people who have reacted to and commented on a specific post.
Reach Out to Members of a LinkedIn Group:
There are a multitude of groups on LinkedIn dealing with a variety of subjects. People in these groups are looking for advice on a specific topic.
So take a group that deals with the subject that concerns your offer, sign up and scrape the members. As before, keep only the profiles that fit your target and contact them.
Hi {{firstname}}, I saw that you too are a member of the {{groupName}} group.
If you’re interested in cold email, here’s an article that might interest you: {{link}}
How do you Scrape Members of a LinkedIn Group?
Here too, there are several methods for extracting group members.
Since we mentionned Phantombuster, let’s stick with this tool.
Go to this phantom: LinkedIn Group Members Export, copy the link of the group you wish to extract:
And follow the steps indicated to get your list.
Reach Out to People who Have Signed Up for a Webinar
On LinkedIn, the “events” search filter can be a goldmine for companies looking to boost sales. You’ll find a wide variety of webinars organized on Linkedin. People sign up for these webinars to learn about a topic. So take a webinar that deals with your topic and approach the participants.
Here’s an example:
Hello {{firstname}}, I saw that you took part in the {{name}} webinar. What did you think of it?
I’d be interested to hear your feedback :)
How do you Scrape Webinar Participants?
Here we’ll use La Growth Machine again. But first, you’ll need to find the link to your search.
Here’s how to do it:
- Go to Networking:
- Step 1 – Go to the LinkedIn webinar whose participants you want to scrape and click on Attend (this is necessary to access the participants).
- Step 3 – On the menu, select Copy link.
- Step 4 – Next, open La Growth Machine again, go to the Leads tab, click on Import Leads, and then select Import from LinkedIn.
- Step 5 – Select Attended An Event, paste the link and click Import.
Now that you’ve got everything you need, it’s time to exploit LinkedIn’s potential to boost your sales, by combining social selling with outreach prospecting!
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