Understanding the relationship between LinkedIn and telco lead generation is important if you and to avoid falling down a rabbit hole!
We were amazed, recently, to discover a marketing agency using (its self-proclaimed) LinkedIn expertise as a key part of its sales pitch. That’s not to say that being able to use LinkedIn effectively isn’t a useful addition to the marketer’s list of attributes but there can be few more over-hyped and misunderstood sources of qualified leads.
To be sure, LinkedIn outreach has a role to play in B2B lead generation but it’s not a sales channel. A workflow like: connect → send personalised LI message → call to book meeting → scale should, more accurately, be called an “isn’t going to workflow”. And even when it occasionally does work, the economics often deteriorate quickly. Prospects are bombarded with identical outreach, and “personalised” messages are frequently just templated texts with the prospect’s name and company inserted. Bottom line: LinkedIn DMs don’t magically create demand or soften prospects up for the next stage in a campaign.
So, they’re experts? Hmmmm
So, when does LinkedIn actually work in the lead generation process and if someone tells you they’re a LinkedIn marketing expert, what should you be asking them? Broadly, you want several of the following statements to be true if your product or service is likely to be a good fit:
- Your target buyers are visibly active on LinkedIn and, if possible, you already have c-level access to them.
- Your market is narrow and identifiable. If you can say, “I want UK telcos with 50–200 employees whose CMO joined in the last six months,” LinkedIn likely becomes more useful.
- Your product has a meaningful business problem behind it. LI outreach works best when you’re addressing an existing pain rather than trying to generate fresh but broad product interest.
- You have credibility. A prospect who receives your message needs to be able to immediately look at the sender’s profile, posts, company and network. That’s a huge advantage.
- You can combine outreach with content. Someone might ignore your DM but see you post three times over the next month, read something valuable, notice a customer case study, and eventually respond.
There’s a point here. If someone tells you they’re a LinkedIn marketing expert, ask them how and why that’s the case. They should be able to reply with something like the above. If, on the other hand, their response is “we generated 50 leads from LinkedIn last month!”, our advice is start worrying! And another thing to ask them: how will their expertise be embedded into your sales team and processes? It’s not just what an agency can do but exactly how they do it that counts.
When to worry
Why? Because “we generated 50 leads from LinkedIn last month!” is a pointless statement without knowing how many messages were sent, how many people actually responded, how many of those were qualified, how many became opportunities, and for past campaigns, how many actually became customers? How long did respondents take to progress into the pipeline as marketing qualified leads or sales accepted leads? And would those people have entered the pipeline through another channel anyway?
The point about LI is that it can get credit for deals that were actually influenced by several channels. A prospect may discover you through Google, see your LinkedIn content, receive an email, visit your website twice, and finally respond to a LinkedIn message. Giving 100% attribution to “LinkedIn outreach” is usually misleading.
With LI, content is king
In fact, LI in B2B and telco marketing is most valuable as a source of authoritative content and strategic networking more than anything else. That does play a role in lead generation for sure, but its not the endgame itself. If you’re a telco vendor selling a high-consideration technology product, you’d much rather have a prospect think: “I’ve been seeing this person talk intelligently about the exact problem I’m dealing with” than: “This person has sent me a beautifully personalised sales pitch.”
And that’s the point, ultimately. LinkedIn has value as an outlet for established expertise which can influence (and impress) prospects, often leveraging existing senior-level contacts, not as a “general marketing channel”. In the telco domain you don’t need a marketing agency that understands only marketing. You need one that also understands telco. As a vendor, it’s best to try to try to find and work with an agency that can demonstrate that it has both.
