Running a startup isn’t easy, and it’s not risk-free; from budget crunches to growth scaling, there are a variety of issues that need to be addressed.
Today, we will shed light on an opportunity you could exploit that is right in front of you, i.e. LinkedIn. LinkedIn can provide you and your startup with new opportunities that too at any stage (Looking for Angel Investors? Series funding? Fret not for LinkedIn is here).
In this blog, we will provide you with access to all the information that you might need to understand and choose if LinkedIn is a great fit for your business or not.
What is LinkedIn, and is it worth it?
LinkedIn is the world’s most trusted and used professional platform, with 800+ million users. The platform provides access to a variety of opportunities, from finding an internship to a job, Connecting with professionals and increasing your network, and much more.
LinkedIn gives access to individuals to share their professional journey by showcasing their achievements, education, and skills. Professionals also often display their recommendations from people with whom they have worked in the LinkedIn recommendations column.
Business uses LinkedIn for maintaining and promoting social presence, similar to the way the business operates on other social media channels. Marketing campaigns, social events, and group discussions are a few features that LinkedIn provides.
For a Start-up, LinkedIn provides a great opportunity to expand influence to raising funds it acts as a perfect fit for one to sustain and scale up in this competitive environment where liquidity crunch due to rising interest rates and Inflation is eating away people’s wealth.
So where can we use it?
3 places where you can use LinkedIn for Startup?
While deciding if you should or should not use LinkedIn as a platform in your startup, here are a few benefits that you would get from the platform:
- Recruitment
- Lead Generation
- Professionals and Interns
#1. Recruitment
LinkedIn as a platform provides companies, especially startups who are looking for top talents to assist them in their journey. LinkedIn acts as a free platform for recruiters to attract and shortlist candidates.
About 95% of recruiters use LinkedIn as a major tool for sourcing candidates.
The features that LinkedIn provides are as follows:
- Contacting eligible and desirable candidates
- A consistent source of quality candidates
- Transparent and easy hiring method.
- Recommending candidates for employment opportunities
LinkedIn also provides even more abilities with plans like Recruiter and Recruiter Lite to HR across the globe. It provides a significant edge to the users over others in the following way:
#2. Lead Generation
LinkedIn for recruiters provides an absolute way to generate leads both inbound and outbound.
Inbound leads are those where a prospective candidate approaches the company after engaging with the content posted. These candidates often come across a vacancy post and approach the recruiter or Human Resource department regarding the position.
Outbound leads, on the other hand, are those that interact with the content and show interest. These leads are generated after reaching out to the target audience in hopes of attaining a conversion.
A Startup, while recruiting, depends upon outbound leads from the recruitment campaigns that they launch to attain top talents.
#3. Professionals and Interns
LinkedIn is a diverse application where professionals gather together; however, they don't need to be industry leaders, C-suite executives, and seasoned workers.
The platform provides an opportunity to everyone, from those who are beginning their career to students looking to attain corporate exposure.
While recruiting, there might be a need to hire interns and freshers who work at a lower cost to the company than seasoned professionals. LinkedIn is the best place to find interns in every field, from data science to management. LinkedIn has it all.
How to raise Funds From LinkedIn For Your start-up Using an automation tool?
While running a start-up that to in a sunrise sector, growth is attained at a rapid pace. Hiring employees and pivoting to other opportunities is just the tip of the iceberg.
But we all know nothing is free( Or so Ted Hughes stated) for which funding is required, and LinkedIn is the correct place for your startup to get those.
Regardless of what you are looking for, want an Angel Investor, fret not to connect with High-Net worth investors on LinkedIn, Want some Venture Capitalists, apply with Venture Capital funds, and pitch them your idea.
We at Salesrobot provide you with automation techniques to automate this process and approach a massive pool of investors with hyper-personalized features. All while staying under the radar and making it look completely human.
Let's break it down:
How to approach an investor on LinkedIn?
Approaching an investor on LinkedIn is not as difficult as you think it might be. Today LinkedIn is as friendly to companies as it is to individuals. Investors on LinkedIn are getting more and more active as time passes.
Social Media, particularly LinkedIn, can be your best supporter while running a lean startup; it is quite cost-effective and provides market testing opportunities and much more.
Inbound and Outbound lead generation is also done while looking for investors for your startup. Sponsored text messaging services, collaboration with influencers, and much more could be done to secure funding.
LinkedIn’s direct messaging services (Check out this blog to understand various types of LinkedIn messages) is a powerful tool that is often used for pitching investors and attracting them for a one-to-one meeting.
Cold messaging is one such approach used to provide a quality introduction to investors. A recommendation or referral, along with it, acts as a cherry on top.
Salesrobot can assist you in approaching investors for your startup by providing you with LinkedIn automation services to make sure your brand does not become just another startup. We provide cold messaging, connection requests, and human-like services. (And no, your account will not get banned)
Developing opportunities to raise funding
LinkedIn for Startups,
After understanding how you could approach an investor. You should look at how LinkedIn provides opportunities to raise funds.
Attaining funds through traditional channels of approaching varied types of investors at different stages is always present, but LinkedIn provides new opportunities. But what are these opportunities?
- Crowdfunding - LinkedIn groups and pages often launch campaigns to assist startups by launching crowdfunding events. Crowdfunding events are launched in both online and offline formats, and the money raised is used to fund the venture.
- Merchant Cash Services - Start-ups often require urgent capital to manage cash-flow shortages and short-term expenses. Merchants often advance capital that you need. LinkedIn provides opportunities to contact merchants that are willing to connect with the business daily and extend such services.
Outreach and Marketing
Marketing and Outreach are critical parts for not only reaching out to the audience but also for understanding what your ideal audience is and does your product suit them.
To completely understand how LinkedIn encompasses it all. Keep Reading!
Who is the ideal fit for my product?
Before raising funding, there is a need to understand who is the ideal fit for your product or service. Investors today, due to the influx of the number of startups, have shown a certain hostile presence towards no-revenue startups.
Investors expect high growth and revenue in the early stages, this change in the business environment has led to many startups facing difficulty in raising funding.
But to sell, you need to understand to whom you need to sell.
That is where LinkedIn comes in; it helps in advertising your product and helping the company formulate their ICP (Ideal Customer Profile). Tools like INsight Tag and Website demographics are often used for the sole purpose.
However, LinkedIn is used to t the product in the market and understand the ICP by distributing the market on various grounds, for example,
- Age
- Gender
- Profession
- Lifestyle Stage
- Product Response
Facilities like feedback forms could also be integrated to create a feedback loop to maximize the product approach. That is, exploiting LinkedIn to its fullest potential and creating a product that customers want.
All the steps help in facilitating Customer relationship management (CRM) which has seen a constant rise in importance in the past few years.
Exploiting B2B prospects
LinkedIn is a hub for Business Owners, professionals, and C-suite executives. Brands exploit LinkedIn by promoting themselves on the platform, for which they create LinkedIn pages to share relevant content.
Business To Business deals are often kick-starters for Startups, and LinkedIn is the perfect place to be for approaching them in search of one such opportunity. LinkedIn statistics show that 4 out of 5 B2B marketers use LinkedIn.
A startup, particularly in the software department (Like ours), could find the most relevant audience.
Advertisement, Content Marketing? LinkedIn has it all.
LinkedIn provides its users to buy premium memberships and other facilities for brands looking to promote themselves. Sponsored Text messaging to promote your upcoming event is one such function.
Although LinkedIn is not the biggest social network, it provides a user base that has a similar knowledge-focused mind. On LinkedIn, if you wish to write an article or a post, share an image, and promote them all to various users, you can do it with just a few clicks, and boom-you is now one of the most talked about topics in the startup world.
Advertising on LinkedIn provides another level as up to 41% of CEOs and millionaires are present on LinkedIn, which gives access to young startups to post(about them) and reach out to these hard-to-reach individuals and firms.
LinkedIn in itself has made networking easy.
Best 5 Outreach and growth tools that you can use for Startup?
LinkedIn is the place to be if you're a marketer, salesperson, recruiter, entrepreneur, etc. And no, it's not merely a platform to connect with over 738 million other professionals who share your interests. It may also be a great tool for assisting you in achieving your professional or company objectives.
There are 100’s tools and options to choose from, but we have compiled for you 5 options that you can choose from for scaling your business through LinkedIn Automation:
#1. Salaesrobot:
Is one spot for all, from new players to those who are experienced in field sales robots provide service for all. With its attractive services like Drip messaging, Advanced charts, Safe messaging, CRM services, and much more, Salesrobot is one if not the most attractive tool to use if you’re looking for automation. It is decently priced and provides free trials and demos to all, irrespective if you want to use its services or not.
#2. Expandi:
Safe, Easy to use application that provides super-easy advanced features. Being a cloud-based platform it provides a ton of features that make automation a breeze. The Unique angle that Expandi provides is the Random Delays that the algorithm provides that mimic human behaviour and helo by-pass the LinkedIn spammy account mark. Also helps in sales and lead generation by providing dynamic personalization features in conjunction with Hyperise.
#3. Lempod:
If your goal is to drive engagement on your account, Lempod is the tool you need. It grows posts that grow naturally and boosts them to provide results in the best possible way. When you post something online, it generates likes and comments on those posts using pods that remain completely undercover. Its algorithm is also created in a fashion focused on getting under Linkedin’s radar.
#4. Saleshub.ai:
One of the main reasons Saleshub is such a successful tool for sales outreach on LinkedIn is that personalization was a key component in its design. All of your prospects may be easily reached by sending them hyper-personalized communications with photos included, thanks to the Hyperise integration.
#5. Dux-soup:
Chrome extension is super easy to use, which even new p[layers can use to automate profile visits and outreach, endorse connections, and much more. You can create campaigns within minutes, which won’t stop until a prospect responds. However, being a chrome extension, it does not work unless you’re logged in.
Can LinkedIn be useful for my StartUp?
We have summarised how LinkedIn and Startups are the right fit; however, we would also provide you with the flip side of the coin.
- Knowledge-conscious and Career focused individuals don’t have enough time to stay active on LinkedIn. As per statistics, an average user spends 6-7 mins on the platform, which is not enough from an advertisement point of view.
- Another issue is the presence of false information, which is hard to check and verify, leading to fake information spreading in the form of wrong academic qualifications, skills, work experience, and much more. Validation of LinkedIn is a hard nut to crack.
- Lately, despite its popularity, LinkedIn has been focused on a few major countries like India, the USA, Britain, etc. This leads to the platform becoming not so welcoming and useful place for the countries from where there is an absence of major participation.
Summing it up
The decision LinkedIn is for your startup is up to you; we at Salesrobot aim to provide you with all the information that you might need to make an informed decision.
However, if you do opt for LinkedIn and want some automation solutions to prevent manual labour work feel free to contact us.
We will provide reasonable discounts and a free demo ride along with access to a number of opportunities.
So, what are you waiting for?
.png){kind=small}
