B2b Lead Generation Strategies [Statistical Study]

Last year, we used ProspectIn to find out the best optimization techniques to improve your b2b lead generation strategies on LinkedIn. And we weren’t disappointed with the results! 🧐

This year, we recreated the campaigns in order to see if it was any different using our new prospecting tool : Waalaxy. 🌌

Did you know LinkedIn generates 80% of B2B leads? This is why we did this study. 👍 Find out more in our full prospecting guide!

Which job titles have the best acceptance rates? Is it better to use a long connection note or to keep it short? Or do you even need to send a note? Should you do a followup message? 🤷

Find out all the answers here. 👇

Why optimize my LinkedIn B2B lead generation?

When you’re prospecting in general, you’re going to be handling a lot of data about potential customers, about follow-up messages, etc. which can be a little overwhelming!

By using an automation software, you will be able to perform your lead generation campaigns on hundreds or even thousands of prospects at the same time. 💪

You can use techniques, like the one we’re using here, which is A/B testing to see which message or approach works best on your target audience. 🎯

You can analyze results easily in the Dashboard, and you can compare your performance metric, weekly or monthly to see your improvement and make the necessary adjustments.

Furthermore, you can use a qualified database of prospects, that you can even share with the Sales Team you’re working with to avoid any duplicates. And you can see the actions’ history, in order to avoid contacting your prospects several times over the same things.

That sounds awesome right? 🤩

Find out more 🔥

How to do b2b lead generation on LinkedIn?

I would say the first thing to do is optimize your LinkedIn profile, as explained in this wonderful article! ⚡️

There are several ways to optimize your prospecting on LinkedIn. Keep in mind, that your profile is the first thing that any prospect sees about you. You have to think of it as the equivalent of your landing page, so try to catch your prospect’s attention!  👀

Here’s a quick view of an optimized LinkedIn profile :

• It has an updated banner,
• A professional profile picture,
• And a catchy job title.

Once this is done, we can get down to business. 🤓

When we talk about optimization, there are elements that we can statistically measure, but there are also non-measurable elements.

For example, we cannot evaluate if the content of a connection request is successful or not. However, we can measure things like, size of the message, the person’s influence, etc. by checking the acceptance rate of your connection request on LinkedIn. 💯

It is impossible to quantitatively measure the quality of your copywriting because each outreach message is different. We can at best study patterns, like followup messages, that work best. 👌

Results of the study: Connection Message on LinkedIn

This study was conducted to show you how a LinkedIn lead generation strategy works, using automation with the Waalaxy app. 👽

Actually, it was very easy! 🙌

First, we exported 300 prospects on 6 different accounts, so a total of 1800 profiles were exported from different LinkedIn searches, and into their CRM. From there, we were able to tag them, in order to split them into 3 different groups :

• 100 were tagged as send request with a “long note” (300 characters) + a “thank you” message afterwards,
• 100 were tagged as send request with a “short note” (less than 150 characters),
• 100 were simply tagged as send request without a note.

This step was important to make the messages as personalized as possible. 💌

1. Which job titles transform more on LinkedIn?

Hypothesis

To generate leads on LinkedIn, one of the first elements that people see after your first and last name is your “title”, i.e. your job position. 🧐

Therefore, it seems accurate to believe that job titles can have an influence in the prospecting performance of an individual. Whether it is the acceptance rate of connection notes or the response rate to follow-up messages.

These are the titles that we analyzed:

• “Director”,
• “Founder”,
• “SEO copywriter”,
• “Business Developer”,
• “Sales”,
• “CEO”.

Thus, we analyzed 6 job titles that very popular on LinkedIn, in order to find out which profiles performed better. 💪

These are the average acceptance rates for connection requests:

• “Director” 30.33%,
• “Founder” 30%,
• “SEO copywriter” 40.33%,
• “Business Developer” 44.33%,
• “Sales” 52%,
• “CEO” 32%.

In this case, it seems that the Sales profile has more acceptance than the Director, Founder or CEO profiles. 👀

Profiles’ comparison

In fact, the general acceptance rate of connection requests is 38%, but some profiles are above average and some are below. 😬

The “CEO”, “Founder” and “Director” profiles are therefore below average, while the “Sales”, “Business Developer” and “SEO copywriter” profiles are above.

B2B lead generation on LinkedIn : The conclusion

More specifically, we used the scenario “Neptune” (ex “Breaking Bad”): to see the message response rate on a prospecting scenario with a “connection request” + “message”:

This represents to the number of responses you can expect in a prospecting scenario with new leads, when you are not connected on LinkedIn. 🤝

Furthermore, we have 2 performance indicators “acceptance rate” and “response rate”, to measure a different performance. It will be necessary to look at these different indicators depending on the use case.

For example, if your goal is to grow your social network and have a big amount of connections on LinkedIn, without focusing on lead gen specifically, then the indicator that will interest us is the acceptance rate of connection requests.

In this case, the “Sales” profile will be the best performing profile. 😄

If you want to run a LinkedIn campaign for lead acquisition, on people you’re probably already connected with, and want to increase your response rate, then you’ll have to look at this indicator.

In this case, a neutral profile like the “SEO copywriter” profile will be the most efficient. 😎

Finally, if you want to run a marketing campaign with a scenario such as “Neptune” in Waalaxy, and you want to maximize your conversion rate, then the “Business Developer” profile will be the most suitable.

Limitations on LinkedIn

You might be thinking: “Great, now I just have to change my job title to improve my prospecting performance. If I want to maximize my acceptance rate I will use the Sales title, and when I want to convert my prospects via message I will change my profile to Business Developer!” 🤔

But be cautious, it’s true that having a “CEO” profile in one’s network can seem to be very attractive, but it’s possible that the “Sales” profile gets more responses simply because the quality of their messages convert more.

Changing the LinkedIn job title will not be enough to have good conversion rates, you also have to send quality messages and value content to your leads. Unfortunately, that is something that is hard to quantify, so it depends on how you use your “powers” haha! 😇

2. What size of connection message gets the best response rate on LinkedIn?

Hypothesis

You might be asking yourself whether you should send a long or a short message to connect? Well, we have found the answer for you. 👌

The human brain is capable of determing if a message is going to be boring or not, within seconds of looking at it. Equally, your prospects don’t have time to read extended messages. As soon as they see a long message, it puts them off immediately. 😴

That’s why we assume that a short message will improve your acceptance rate compared to a longer one. 💥

When it comes to selling or convincing, a short, impactful message with a clear call to action is most effective than a block of 1000 illegible words.

But now we have the numbers to prove it. The results are irrevocable. 😮

Results

We analyzed the average acceptance rates for the two connection messages:

• Notes under 150 characters: 38.66%,
• Notes with 300 characters: 31.66%.

Average acceptance rate with a note for each profile, from lowest to highest: 📈

• “Founder” 25%,

• “Director” 26%,

• “CEO” 31%,

• “SEO copywriter” 37.5%,

• “Business Developer” 41.5%,

• “Sales” 50%.

Conclusion

Connection messages under 150 characters have a response rate +7% higher than messages with 300 characters, that’s just HUGE! 🤯

The conclusion is irrevocable. If you want to maximize the acceptance rate of your messages, keep it short. Take your prospecting message, then cut it in half. 👏

300 characters are not much, believe me. You have to get to the point. Hook. Value proposition. Call to action. 🔥

3. Should you send a LinkedIn invitation request with or without a note?

Hypothesis

A little less than a year ago, we explained to you in this study that it was better to send your invitation request without a note if you wanted to maximize the acceptance rate of your connection requests on LinkedIn.

The results of this study seemed counterintuitive. Surely, sending a personalized note should optimize the acceptance rate. 🤨

This study was based in 1 800 connections requests.

Results

The results obtained go in the same direction of our study from a year ago: if the objective is to maximize the acceptance rate of your connection requests, it is better to send a connection request without a note. 😅

• The average acceptance rate for connection requests without a note: 44%,
• The average acceptance rate for connection requests with a note: 35%.

Acceptance rates without a note for each profile, from lowest to highest: 📈

• “CEO” 34%,

• “Director” 39%,

• “Founder” 40%,

• “SEO copywriter” 46%,

• “Business Developer” 50%,

• “Sales” 56%.

Conclusion and limitations

If you only want to maximize the acceptance rate of your connection requests, it seems best to send a connection request without a note, the results show +9% more acceptance rate. 👍

But when it comes to prospecting, it might be worth reading the results differently. This is because when you choose to present your offer or service from your connection note, your acceptance rate will certainly be reduced, but the people who accept your invitation may be more inclined to be interested in your offer when they receive your prospecting message. ✍️

In addition, the lower acceptance rate of the connection request with a note compared to the connection request without a note can be explained by the fact that the people who receive a connection request attached with a prospecting message prefer not to accept the request, for fear of being prospected later. 🤐

It is possible that a connection request with a note that is not intended to promote a product or service, but which is formulated in such a way as to optimize the acceptance rate, might lead to a higher acceptance rate than the one without a note.

To sum up

In this article, we saw why it is important to optimize your prospecting on LinkedIn. We saw that different statistics regarding LinkedIn messages and invitation requests allowed us to draw conclusions about maximizing prospecting results. ⚡️

• We have seen that some profiles transform better than others, but that they are different profiles depending on the use case.
• Short messages under 150 characters perform SIGNIFICANTLY better than longer messages.
• It is preferable to limit yourself to a single follow-up message to keep a healthy balance between a desirable response rate and reasonable prospecting practices.
• It is best to send an invitation request without a note to maximize your chances of being accepted.

I hope you’ve found this article helpful. 🤗 Remember that these are statistical data and your individual case may be different!

Discover Waalaxy 🪐

Please feel free to reach-out to me on LinkedIn to discuss more about b2b lead generation strategies, I would love to hear yours! 😉

FAQ B2b Lead Generation strategies

How to automate b2b lead generation?

The best way to do it is by using Waalaxy, our multichannel tool, of course ! 💫

No, but really, part of ProspectIn’s and now Waalaxy’s success, is that we’ve used our own tools to automate prospecting on LinkedIn and other channels like emails. 🔥

It allows you to automate B2b sales strategies in very easy steps, like creating sequences on LinkedIn and adding emails to support your marketing strategy. Waalaxy CRM is completely safe, if you respect our daily quotas and don’t use other automation tools at the same time. 😋

Waalaxy, therefore, makes it possible to automate prospecting on LinkedIn in a simple way, especially thanks to the campaign feature. This key Waalaxy feature is used to send sequences of actions such as profile visit, profile follow, connection request or message.

Therefore, you can combine LinkedIn scenarios with a drip email campaign in order to share different content with your prospects. Keep LinkedIn interactions shorter, and mostly to have a direct discussion with your potential clients. 🤓

On the other hand, using emails can complement the marketing funnel by sending them more complex information, like newsletters or your detailed PDF catalogue, proposal etc.

The idea is to cover as many channels as possible to convert more! 💯

5 best b2b lead generation strategies

Before finishing and as a reminder, there is a difference between lead and prospect.

Here are 5 strategies that are proven to work for us :

• Use your website or blog as a lead magnet.
• Apply outbound marketing to drive traffic.
• Use social media platforms that your target uses.
• Work on content marketing & email marketing.
• Make use of paid ads on Google and LinkedIn ads.

Plus 5 extra tips :

• Reuse the strategies that worked in the previous year.
• Always use personalization in your communications.
• Use an SEO strategy to optimize your conversion rates.
• Always automate what takes too much time.
• Use UX optimization to boost your website.

These are just a few of the lead generation techniques we use at Waapi. So, we thought we’d share the knowledge with you! 💙

Now you know more about b2b lead generation strategies, and how to improve your reach on LinkedIn by using simple optimizations to your process.  👌