Going multichannel to reach out to your prospects is a game-changer. With this tactic, you can connect with your target audience on their favourite channel which boosts your chances for more replies.
And when it comes to favourite channels, LinkedIn is the place to be for most professionals, including your prospects.
But amongst 810M+ users, how do you find your target audience? 🤯
Finding your exact target persona can be a pain. LinkedIn offers so many filters to choose from, limits to overcome, and a lack of export possibilities...
Luckily, in the past four years, we’ve tested tons of ways to find our ICP on LinkedIn. In this article, you’ll learn how to find and connect with yours, saving you hours of research!
Let's imagine you're a Web3 consultant looking for partners interested in crypto.
To access different search categories:
You’ll land on the search results page and notice these new filters aka main search categories:
If you want to narrow your search results to only people related to your keyword, choose the “People” filter.
You may end up with a huge results list, but the key is in quality, not quantity.
Let's imagine your buyer persona is located in the USA, Switzerland or Dubai and has a profile in English or French. They work in a Financial Services company for 3-5 years, in a Director seniority role.
To narrow your free search:
To find your targeted audience, you'll use “Locations”, “Profile language”, and “Industry” filters.
If you have a Sales Navigator subscription, you can access additional filters on the "Lead" dashboard, e.g. “Seniority level” and “Years in current company”.
To make your filtering process effortless, I suggest you put all your audience knowledge into practice. And if you still don’t have your target audience defined, we’ve prepared this free, step-by-step guide that will help you:
✓ define the companies you want to target (your Ideal Customer Profile)
✓ define the people you want to get in touch with (your buyer persona)
✓ segment buyer personas into tiers for best outreach results
BONUS: get access to the buyer persona template that got us 20k+ customers!
Let's imagine you're a founder who met Mary at a conference a few months ago. The only information you remember about her is her name, that she’s a founder as well, and her company is based in San Francisco.
So, how are you going to find her?
There are two case scenarios in the name search.
1. If you know the first and last name of the person you want to find:
enter their full name into the search bar.
2. If you have just a fraction of their information:
enter a combination of keywords such as “first name + job title”, “last name + company”, or any other target info.
Therefore, you can search for Mary in the "name + title + location" format.
The other way to search for people by name is:
If you’re searching from Sales Navigator, you can use “Geography”, “Job title”, and “First Name” filters as shown below.
There are many ways to extract email from LinkedIn, but how do you find someone's profile when you only know their email?
The only thing you’ll need is to have both Microsoft Outlook and LinkedIn accounts:
Forget all the manual work.
lemlist gives you an access to the AI-powered B2B database of 450 million+ contacts and find the right leads you target.
You can use the new and improved lemlist Chrome extension to gather contacts from LinkedIn.
Let's imagine you're promoting a new B2B advertising app and looking for prospects from the IT industry.
Therefore, searching for connections of someone working in IT might bring you a new list of similar members.
The simplest way to search someone’s connections is to:
From there, you can access the list of members’ connections with additional “People” filtering options.
The other way is to:
You can apply the filter “Connections of” your connection working in a software development company.
In Sales Navigator, you'll find the “Connections of” filter in the “Personal” filtering section as shown below.
Found inspirational people to follow?
-> Create a list and share it with your whole team.
Bumped into someone with impressive experience?
-> Check out their training and courses.
Discovered a cool industry expert?
-> Explore their posts to see how they work on personal branding.
Once you find targeted companies, you can easily find new prospects by looking up the employees.
Let's imagine you're a Growth Marketing Manager looking for law practice companies located in EMEA, with 1-10 employees, and 5-10M Annual Revenue.
To find targeted businesses:
By choosing “Industry”, “Locations” and “Company size” filters in your basic account, you can access more than 20k matching companies.
Your Sales Navigator account will allow you to narrow your search even further by using “Annual revenue” in the “Account” dashboard.
You can use Company search to:
-> check out what companies similar to yours are doing
-> stay in the loop with the industry happenings
-> set job posting alerts from your dream companies
Let's imagine you're a Head of Sales who’s trying to pitch a new product to retail managers.
You can use LinkedIn groups not only as an insightful hub of knowledge but also to connect with like-minded users.
If you don’t know the name of the group you want to join:
Once you join the group, you’ll have an option to search for specific content within the group. Simply navigate to the search box at the top left corner of the group.
The cool thing about joining a LinkedIn group is that you can see all the members and, maybe, potential prospects.
If you’re subscribed to Sales Navigator, you'll have the option to see the members of a certain group without joining. To do that, use the "Group membership" filter in the "Lead search dashboard.
Use Group search to:
-> ask questions to help you understand your audience's needs
-> start discussions with key people from the group
-> promote your work in an educational and inspiring way
Let's imagine you’re launching your social media management business and want to connect with other experts from the industry.
You might ask yourself "Why search for posts on LinkedIn?" Well, the answer is simple. Through posts related to your product/service, you can find new audiences and vice-versa!
Here's how to do it:
Start using the Posts filter to:
-> get inspiration for your new posts
-> see best performing content practices
-> stay up-to-date with B2B social media trends
The main advantage of the LinkedIn hashtag is increasing the visibility of its users. It makes posts accessible to everyone who searches or follows the specific hashtag.
Let's imagine you're a freelance copywriter, offering blogging services to SaaS companies.
One of the ways to look for your prospects is to search for hashtags they might use. Simply enter your hashtag, e.g. #SaaS, in the search bar to access content on the same topic.
From there, you can filter posts containing your hashtag even further with the filters mentioned in the section above.
To stay in the loop with interesting posts, you can follow all your favourite hashtags.
You can use the Hashtag Search to find:
-> companies to work with
-> tips to follow
-> people to network with
If you wanna minimize the additional tweaking of your results, try using the Boolean search.
Here are a few options to construct your search:
Pro tip -> Keep in mind this prioritization order:
1. Quotes [""]
2. Brackets [()]
3. NOT
4. AND
5. OR
If you use Sales Navigator, you can use Boolean searches in the "Company" and "Title" fields as well.
No matter who you search and how, they won’t receive a notification.
On the other hand, if you decide to click on their profile, LinkedIn will notify them saying “someone viewed your profile”.
In your profile settings, you can decide whether they can or can’t see your information.
Searching LinkedIn privately can be useful for checking out what your competitors or potential clients are doing without alerting them.
To search LinkedIn in private mode:
Keep in mind that selecting a private mode on the basic account will disable the “who viewed your profile” feature for you as well.
Only if the members set their profile sections as public, you can see them without login.
To check out your setting:
Just as limiting invitations, LinkedIn has a monthly limit for people searches. It will send you a warning when you get close to the 1000 results limit on a free account and 2500 using Sales Navigator.
To minimize the number of your searches:
Among many useful LinkedIn tools, Phanthom Buster is a go-to solution for search export.
In just a few easy steps you can scrape and export the results of a search into a spreadsheet.
Wondering how? You can check it out in this video. ⬇️
Once you have your search list, you can:
-> use it to identify your key decision-makers
-> create ICP
-> start testing out your cold outreach
Imagine sharing a screen during your LinkedIn search and all your past searches are exposed...
To avoid that, here are two ways to delete your search history:
Through the search bar:
Through privacy settings:
If you’re still debating whether you should upgrade your free search to Sales Navigator, here’s the full list of additional premium account filters.
And to show you how this process looks, Tal will tell you how to find hot leads on Sales Navigator using lemlist⬇️
Understanding how to find the info you want on LinkedIn can bring you new customers, hence new revenue. It’s important to know how to connect with the right people. Otherwise, you risk spending too much time chasing the wrong audience.
Once you find your target audience, you can prepare for your next step - reaching out to them. A good outreach will help you build relationships, generate new leads, and ultimately make more sales.
But, before sliding into their DMs, you better plan your strategy. To help you out, I've prepared a few resources and tips:
Happy searching! 🚀
G2 Rating | Price | Best for | Standout feature | Con | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
4.9 star star star star star | $30/mo $75/mo $2,999/mo | Large, distributed sales teams | AI evaluation precision, gamified KPIs | Lack of tracking system | |
4.6 star star star star star-half | Not publicly available | Sales operations and finance teams | Powerful configurability | Limited training resources and complex to navigate | |
4.4 star star star star star-half | Not publicly available | Mid-market and enterprise businesses | Comprehensive incentive management | Potentially high cost and steep learning curve | |
4.7 star star star star star-half | $15/user/mo $40/user/mo Enterprise: custom price | Complex sales structures and businesses of all sizes | Complex sales structures and businesses of all sizes | Steep learning curve | |
4.6 star star star star star-half | Not publicly available | Collaborative teams | Connected planning | Complexity and steep learning curve | |
4.6 star star star star star-half | Not publicly available | Companies with complex sales structures | Complex incentive compensation management (ICM) with high efficiency and accuracy | Complexity for smaller teams and potentially high costs | |
4.7 star star star star star-half | Not publicly available | Companies who want to automate commission calculations and payouts | Simplicity and ease of use | Lack of features like redirection | |
4.7 star star star star star-half | $30/user/mo $35/user/mo Custom: upon request | Businesses that need a comprehensive and user-friendly sales compensation management software | Ease of use and adoption | Lack of ability to configure the product based on user needs | |
4.8 star star star star star-half | Not publicly available | Companies with modern sales culture and businesses who want real-time insights | A built-in dispute management and real-time visibility | Users say it works slowly, customer support is slow | |
4.9 star star star star star | $30/user/mo $50/user/mo | Smaller sales teams | Powerful automation | Lesser user base and average user interface | |
4.7 star star star star star-half | Not publicly available | Companies with scalable needs | Automated Commission Calculations | Lack of filtering by date, no mobile app |
PRM Tool | Rating | Feature | Pro | Con | Mobile App | Integrations | Free Plan | Pricing |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
4.65 star star star star star-half | Org-wide alignment | User-friendly layout and database | Suboptimal as a personal CRM | square-check | Lack of tracking system | square-check | Team: $20/month Business: $45/month | |
4.7 star star star star star-half | Social Media Integration | Easy contact data collection | No marketing/sales features | square-check | Lack of tracking system | square-xmark 7-day trial | $12/month | |
4.75 star star star star star-half | Block Functions | High customization capability | Not a dedicated CRM | square-check | Limited | square-check | Plus: €7.50/month Business: €14/month | |
N/A | Open-source | Open-source flexibility | Requires extensive manual input | square-xmark | Limited | square-check Self-hosted | $9/month or $90/year | |
3.1 star star star | Simple iOS app | Ideal for non-tech-savvy users | iPhone only | square-check iOS only | Limited | square-xmark 1-month trial | $1.49/month or $14.99/month | |
3.6 star star star star-half | Smart Contact Management | Feature-rich and flexible | Reported bugs | square-check | Rich | square-xmark 7-day trial | Premium: $13.99/month Teams: $17.99/month | |
4.4 star star star star star-half | Customizable Interface | Customizable for teamwork | Pricey for personal use | square-check | Rich | square-xmark | Standard: $24/member Premium: $39/member | |
4.7 star star star star star-half | Integrated Calling | Integrated Calling | Too sales-oriented & pricey | square-check | Rich | square-xmark 14-day trial | Startup: $59/user/month Professional: $329/user/month | |
4.8 star star star star star | Business Card Scanning | Business Card Scanning | Mobile only | square-check | Limited | square-check | $9.99/month | |
4.45 star star star star star-half | 160+ app integrations | Comprehensive integrations | No free app version | square-check | Rich | square-xmark 14-day trial | $29.90/month or $24.90/month (billed annually) |
Capterra Rating | Free Trial | Free Plan | Starting Price (excluding the free plan) | Maximum Price (for the most expensive plan) | Best for | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
4.5 star star star star star-half | square-check 14-day | square-check | €15/month/seat billed annually | €792/month/3 seats billed annually + €45/month for each extra seat | Versatility and free plan | |
4.2 star star star star | square-check 30-day | square-xmark But it offers reduced price to authorised nonprofit organisations | €25/user/month | €500/user/month billed annually (includes Einstein AI) | Best overall operational CRM | |
4.3 star star star star star-half | square-xmark | square-check Limited to 3 users | Comprehensive incentive management | €52/user/month billed annually | Small-medium businesses and automation | |
4.5 star star star star star-half | square-check 14-day | square-xmark | €14/seat/month billed annually | €99/seat/month billed annually | Sales teams and ease of use | |
4.1 star star star star | square-xmark | square-check Limited 10 users | $9.99/user/month billed annually | $64.99/user/month billed annually | Free plan for very small teams up to 10 |
CRM goal | Increase the sales conversion rate for qualified leads from marketing automation campaigns by 10% in the next 6 months. | ||||
SMART Breakdown | 1. Specific: It targets a specific area (conversion rate) for a defined segment (qualified leads from marketing automation). | 2. Measurable: The desired increase (10%) is a clear metric, and the timeframe (6 months) allows for progress tracking. | 3. Achievable: A 10% increase is possible based on historical data and potential improvements. | 4. Relevant: Boosting sales from marketing efforts aligns with overall business objectives. | 5. Time-bound: The 6-month timeframe creates urgency and a clear target date. |
Actions | Step 1: Refine lead qualification criteria to ensure high-quality leads are nurtured through marketing automation. | Step 2: Personalize marketing automation campaigns based on lead demographics, interests, and behavior. | Step 3: Develop targeted landing pages with clear calls to action for qualified leads. | Step 4: Implement lead scoring to prioritize high-potential leads for sales follow-up. | Step 5: Track and analyze campaign performance to identify areas for optimization. |
Outcomes | Increased sales and revenue | Improved marketing automation ROI | Marketing and sales alignment | Data-driven marketing optimization |