Introduction
This article was written in partnership with deux.io, a prospecting and growth hacking agency.
If you want to reach large accounts with high revenue potential, be aware that the competition is fierce. Large companies naturally attract the attention of many players on the market! So how can you hope to stand out?
In this article, we share all our solutions to prospect key accounts on LinkedIn and actually reach them.
Segmenting by industry
Choose one industry, not 15
Ok, you’ve defined your ICP, but don’t get lost! Be strategic. Aim for a single industry. Why?
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Sector expertise: By focusing on a single industry, you can develop real expertise in that field. This means you’ll have a better understanding of the needs, challenges and opportunities specific to that industry. You can therefore design a more effective data collection strategy and obtain better-quality data.
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Market targeting: If you intend to use the collected data for commercial purposes, targeting a single industry lets you target your market more precisely. You can tailor your products or services to the specific needs of that industry, which can increase your chances of success.
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Profitability: Data collection can be costly in terms of resources, time and money. By limiting your scope to a single industry, you can maximize the efficiency of your data collection strategy and optimize your return on investment.
Define a weak signal
Showing that you know your target’s industry is good. Showing that you understand they need you is better.
Let’s imagine that, thanks to your ICP and the industry you’ve defined, you decide to target Total’s regional HR directors.
How do you know they need your services?
For example, you go and look on Indeed for:
- Total job offers
- in a given region (e.g. Nouvelle-Aquitaine)
- where applications are still open even though the offer has been up for more than 30 days
Conclusion: Total’s HR director for the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region seems to be struggling to find the right candidates.
You have the signal that this company and this person need you!
Collecting data on your target
Collecting via LinkedIn
LinkedIn is THE professional platform par excellence. Users share information about their skills, experience and network. It’s therefore a goldmine for building your lists. But be careful, you’ll need a LinkedIn Sales Navigator account.
Here are a few tips for collecting data on LinkedIn efficiently and responsibly:
- Use a recognized tool
LinkedIn strictly regulates the automated extraction of its members’ data. It’s therefore important to go through a recognized tool and to keep your volumes reasonable. Here are 3 tools you can use:
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Phantombuster: PhantomBuster is an automation tool for extracting data from LinkedIn. It offers a variety of features, including exporting search results, users, profile data, connections, messages and company information. PhantomBuster can also be used on other websites.
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Waalaxy: Waalaxy is a prospecting solution that offers a scraping tool for LinkedIn. This tool lets you collect data on dozens of potential customers in a few clicks. All you have to do is create a list of people on LinkedIn, select the number of people to export and the list where the data should go. The data is then exported to the selected list in CSV format.
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Evaboot: Evaboot is a LinkedIn scraping tool that comes as a Chrome extension. It’s easy to use and lets you obtain a wide range of information from a LinkedIn profile, including emails, contact details, skills, experience and more. Pricing is affordable.
There are also smaller tools that are just as effective, such as Derrick App.
- Collect small amounts of data at a time
Avoid collecting large amounts of data in one go. LinkedIn limits each account, and an account that moves too fast doesn’t stay healthy for long.
- Take regular breaks
When collecting data, it’s important to take regular breaks. This avoids overloading LinkedIn and keeps your account healthy.
For the prospecting that follows, if your own account can’t absorb the pace, there’s a very practical solution: MirrorProfiles. It lets you rent dedicated LinkedIn accounts, warmed up over 4 months. The goal? Multiply your prospecting volume! You run several accounts and several campaigns in parallel, each account staying within its own limits 😉
Collecting via websites
Depending on what you’re looking for, scraping a website is a very interesting idea. It lets you:
- collect the contact details of potential prospects
- collect product prices
- collect information about a company
To do this, you can use tools such as:
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Scraper: Scraper is a Chrome extension that lets you extract data from similar websites. It’s designed for users who want to collect data from a large number of websites. Scraper works by analyzing the links between websites. It then uses this analysis to identify similar websites. Once the similar websites have been identified, Scraper can be used to extract data from them.
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Web Scraper: Web Scraper is frequently used for tasks such as collecting data for research, monitoring online prices, creating product databases, extracting data from social networks, collecting contact lists, and much more. To get started with Web Scraper, users need to install the extension from the Chrome Web Store or the Microsoft Edge Add-ons Store, depending on their browser. Once the extension is installed, they can create custom collection scenarios using the tool’s graphical interface.
Preparing your outbound campaign for key accounts
Creating a multi-channel sequence
A multi-channel sequence is a communication strategy that uses several channels (emails, messages, LinkedIn, SMS, etc.) to reach your target in a smarter way. This type of strategy has several advantages:
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Reach a wider audience through various communication channels.
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Increase the chances of conversion by reaching prospects where they are active.
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Let prospects choose their preferred way of responding, which improves engagement.
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Gather precise data on the performance of each channel to adjust the strategy.
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Strengthen brand presence by maintaining consistency and visibility across several channels, which can reinforce prospects’ credibility and trust.
As you’ll have understood, you need to choose which channels to be on, and in which order!
Here’s an example:
Here, the chosen channels are:
- LinkedIn and email
The strategy starts with a connection request on LinkedIn:
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If accepted on LinkedIn within 7 days, a message is sent
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If not accepted on LinkedIn within 7 days, an email is sent
So you need to think about how you want to proceed, and over what period of time!
The next question is: how do I address my target?
Copywriting
Keep in mind that you’re not the only person contacting your prospect. You need to write strategically to stand out.
First, ask yourself the right questions:
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what is the objective: a product demo, a meeting?
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what level of language should you use: everyday, formal, casual?
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what professional jargon should you use: insert keywords and expressions commonly used in your target’s world. This will support your expertise.
Then write your sequence, without forgetting to include personalization elements based on the weak signals, the ICP, the industry and the persona! Here are some copywriting examples specific to LinkedIn. Be careful, these are only examples: copywriting is unique and tailored to your ICP, so don’t try to copy and paste. They can simply give you ideas.
Once your messages are ready, you can launch your sequence. But we have one last trick up our sleeve.
Preparing the intervention of a second team member
To give your strategy even more impact, here’s our advice: bring in another person from your team.
Let me explain.
In your first message, you are the only contact. In a follow-up message, you bring in a colleague:
“I’m following up and looping in Louis, our {{industry}} manager, who will give you more information. He already works with {{competitor 1}}.”
This shows that you’re an organized team, with different profiles that match your target.
Preparing retargeting by importing the accounts into LinkedIn Ads
Thanks to the data collected earlier, we can now run retargeting. This is a campaign that uses advertising to reach people who already know our company in one way or another.
With LinkedIn Ads, you can choose which companies or people your campaign reaches. Our goal here is to make sure our target sees us.
So here we’ll run 2 campaigns:
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A campaign targeting THE persona (50% of the budget): the aim is to make sure our main persona sees our ad
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A campaign targeting the whole company minus the persona (50% of the budget): here, we make sure that all the important people can see the ads and talk about them to our personas.
In short, we’re everywhere!
Preparing a dedicated landing page per company
To score even more points and be sure to get noticed, we create a landing page for each account.
If we’re targeting Total, our landing page will:
- use the company’s colors
- highlight why we can help them
- explain how
- include a dedicated video with a Total x {{my company}} thumbnail
- have a CTA to a contact form or Calendly
Conclusion
In the end, prospecting key accounts on LinkedIn is child’s play if you follow a clear and thorough method. Prospecting on LinkedIn at a larger scale becomes simpler with MirrorProfiles! Don’t hesitate to surround yourself with professionals if you don’t master all the required skills, and to invest in effective tools! Learning how to generate leads on LinkedIn is not out of reach 🙂
