Today, you will learn why IT Seniors are one of the toughest audiences to contact on LinkedIn, as well as how can you build relations with such choosy businesspeople.

Client

Our client is a team and network of tech professionals ready to implement sophisticated technology objectives, through superior software development and data science.

15 years of experience in tech outsourcing has led this company to work with more than 10 industries including Finance & Banking, Travel & Hospitality, eCommerce, etc.

Their wide range of services includes:

• Digital Business Transformation
• Software product development
• Mobile application development
• Integration services
• R&D and innovation
• UI/UX design
• Security solutions
• Technology consulting
• QA & testing
• Application support and maintenance

Challenge

Just like we have mentioned in the introduction, the main challenge was that our target audience was unapproachable (comparing to other audiences we’ve worked with).

You will find a more detailed description of whom we were targeting in the “Target audience” section.

The audience included various professionals who can be generalized as “IT Seniors” and it is important to mention that these professionals are extremely picky when it comes to networking. Usually, they accept connection requests only in few cases:

• when they are familiar with the person;
• when there are mutual connections (preferably, the credible ones);
• when potential connection benefits outweigh potential risks.

Needless to say that it is quite difficult to outreach such an “isolated” community, especially with a selling offer.

Solution

The client company provides complex technical solutions for corporate-level clients. Needless to say that such services require several negotiation levels, and the first step would be to establish communication.

During this LinkedIn Lead Generation campaign, the Client’s CEO was on a business trip in the US. So we have decided to target suitable professionals in particular states in order to schedule business meetings with the CEO.

Thus, we have set the number of scheduled meetings as our ultimate KPI.

Here is the breakdown of this LinkedIn Lead Generation campaign:

1. Profile Optimization

Before starting lead generation, we needed to make sure that the client’s LinkedIn profile is up-to-date and all-star.

The client’s CEO is a professional with almost 20 years of experience within 8 IT companies and dozens of Recommendations, so it was not a challenge for us to create a credible image for him.

You can learn how to make your LinkedIn profile all-star here.

2. Target Audience

Just like we have mentioned before, we needed to find prospects in particular narrow locations so they are able to have a business meeting with our client.

Besides that, we needed all of these prospects to be on senior positions in IT companies with a total headcount of higher than 1000 employees.

To meet these requirements, we have used:

• Location filters (the States, our client was interested in most) ;
• Industry search (Computer Software, Information Technology);
• Title search;
• Company size filters (>1000 employees);
• Keyword boolean search. (Using this filter, we were able to specify our search, excluding all the irrelevant prospects).

You can learn more about LinkedIn’s Filter mechanics here.

Here are a couple of titles we have used as keywords:

• Chief Executive Officer,
• Head of Technology,
• Outsourcing Manager,
• Chief Operating Officer,
• Managing Partner,
• Vice President,
• Chief Technology Officer.

The list is not complete but it depicts all the most common positions our prospects had.

3. Message Script Creation

Considering the fact our target audience was also segmented by industry parameters, we have prepared personalized messages for every industry.

We have used 3-level scripts that included:

• Frank and polite connection requests.
  (We have decided to emphasize the fact that our client works within the same industry as prospects do, increasing our chances to be accepted);
• Informative core message, that introduced client’s services;
• Follow-up message with a call-to-action to arrange a meeting.

4. Outreach

Because our target audience was narrow and specific, and the client’s profile had a considerable amount of connections – there was no reason for us to limit our outreach.

However, the number of connection requests was various, depending on the location we were targeting.

This chart represents how the number of requests changed month-by-month.

You may notice how the number of requests doubled during the second month of the campaign. The reason for that is that we have decided to leverage one more profile. Then we have returned to the previous outreach strategy.

Result

To provide you with the most recent results, we will add here a couple of infographics that would represent the main metrics we use to measure the efficiency of our campaigns. This is a breakdown of the last 4 months of our campaign.

The first graph represents the number of Prospects, generated by our campaign. We classify a person to be a prospect when they accept our invite and read the message.

The ratio between the number of Sent Requests and the number of Prospects is called Acceptance Rate. Comparing to other industries, this target audience has a much lower acceptance rate.

The next level is Engaged Leads. These are the people who have responded to our messages.

The ratio between Prospects and Engaged Leads is called Reply Rate.

The Interested Leads are people who showed interest in the client’s offer. We use it as our ultimate measure of success, as these were people who were interested in having a meeting with our client.

Conclusion

This Lead Generation campaign is a great example of how audience segmentation and personalized approach can generate leads even in the most hostile environment. During this campaign, we were able to:

• Grow client’s network with 1150 decision-makers in major IT companies;
• Generate almost 200 MQLs;
• Arrange 26 appointments with C-level executives in the IT and Computer Software industries.

Besides providing our client with a considerable number of arranged appointments, we were also able to leave our clients with almost 200 ongoing conversations with representatives of leading IT companies.

It is also important to mention that a single B2B sale in the IT industry returns all the marketing investments, which makes this campaign extremely successful considering its context.

Learn how to segment target audience on LinkedIn. Make sure to check our blog for more Case Studies.