If your business lies in the area of professional services, there’s no better place to make connections than on LinkedIn. Follow these four steps to search for potential new clients.
You can start by searching for people and companies on LinkedIn. You also have the option to filter your search, and how much you can filter will depend on if you have a free, or premium account.
To help you understand how to use this feature for potential client search, let’s use the example of a client I recently trained in a 1:1 session. She is responsible for stakeholder and new partner management for an industry-based authority and was interested in finding people in HR led organisations who wish to partner with their annual conference and professional development program.
1. Develop target lists for keyword search
I recommend you start by developing a target list of potential companies and role titles. In the case of my client, we began the search based on a target organisation, ANZ. We then considered the people she was interested in researching by developing a list of role titles. These included Marketing Managers, Business Development Managers and CEOs.
2. Enter keywords, company name or role title names
While the LinkedIn App user experience is improving every week, I do find the greatest functionality is experienced when accessing the LinkedIn website when logged in. The Search bar is located at the top of your LinkedIn pages. Enter your keyword in the Search bar at the top of the page.
3. View Dropdown Options & Select an Option
When you begin to type in your search word/s you’ll see a dropdown of suggestions that appears as you type. Take the time to look at LinkedIn’s suggestions in the dropdown box when searching for people and companies as it may trigger ideas for other clients and companies you can reach out to on LinkedIn.
Select an option from the dropdown of suggestions, or click the Search icon to run the search. You will note the type-ahead feature predicts related search terms as you type your keywords into the search bar. If you’ve searched for a company, the Company Page will appear in the dropdown if there is a page created. You’ll also see the following tabs at the top of the search results page:
- All
- People
- Jobs
- Content
- Companies
- Groups
- Schools
For my client’s search, the ANZ organisation appeared at the top of the list and we selected this option.
4. Select the Relevant Tabs to view search results
If you submit your search to see the full results, you will also be shown the various tab options, which you can explore further. In the case where we entered ‘marketing manager’ as the keywords in search and pressed enter, we were then presented with the tab options you can see below. The LinkedIn search filter is divided into two areas. The most frequently used search filters such as Locations, Connections, and Current companies, are located at the top of your search page.
To access advanced search filters, click All filters in the top right corner of the Search results page. This can be accessed from the All tab, People tab, or Jobs tab.
This article originally appeared on Fling Solo.
Want more LinkedIn tips? Check out this story
Trending
Weekly business news and insights, delivered to your inbox.