How to Find and Message (nearly) Any Prospect on LinkedIn in Three Easy Steps

Posted by Ben Kniffen in Uncategorized

Editors Note: Recently, LinkedIn has enacted new changes for group messaging. They are now limiting the amount of messages you can send group members and can restrict profiles from this activity after surpassing that limit. As of now, they have not made the number of messages you can send public. Check back here for updates. Here is LinkedIn’s response on the issue: https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/192/kw/

What if I told you there was a simple way to find and message millions of highly-qualified prospects?

And we are talking about people you don’t know and aren’t connected to in any way.

Cold traffic.

You’d probably say, “Well, can’t I just buy an email list and blast out a few thousand emails with the same effect?”

You could….

BUT…

That will cost you.

And the reliability of those email lists are always up for debate.

I am going to walk you through how you can message almost any prospect on LinkedIn without breaking the bank, all while ensuring you will be hitting the perfect prospects with every single message.

Again, I am only going to focus on targeting people you are not connected with and with whom you have no previous relationship.

To grow your business, you need to get your name and business in front of more prospects and start warming them up to you and your product or service.  The following playbook is a solid way to get it done.

Step 1: Choose your targeted groups

Join groups that are going to be full of your prospects, not your competitors. Focus on groups that cater to the interests of your prospects.

One of the great things about LinkedIn’s database, is the specific information they require on each profile. This data is especially attractive for B2B businesses.

The job-specific data in each and every profile is unmatched on the web when it comes to targeting your best potential customers.

Let’s say, for example, that your product or service is intended for use by entrepreneurs and small business owners.

You’d be in luck!

Because there are literally thousands of groups on LinkedIn that cater to those people and these folks are active in many of the forums.

Here is a screenshot of just the first page of results when I search for entrepreneur groups:pat1

Over 3,000 results for that one search!

Whether you are targeting Salespeople, CMOs, CTOs, CIOs, CEOs or any other acronyms you can think of, you can find big results in the group search.

Before joining each group, take a brief moment to review the group stats, and make sure this group has the right people for you.

1. You can find the group statistics by clicking on the gear icon on the group’s homepage.pat 2

2. Review the “Demographics” tab and the breakdown of members by seniority, function, location, and industry to make sure the group is a viable spot to find your prospects.

3. Then click on the link titled “Group statistics”.pat 3

Once you have joined the groups that your prospects are in (Ed. Note: LinkedIn only lets you join up to 50 groups), you will be able to reach all the members you would like to message.

But how?

Step 2: How to Quickly Prospect within the Group

To search the group’s database, click on the link with the amount of members in the upper-right hand corner of the homepage. pat4

This will take you to the “Members Page” of the group, and from there you can search for members with profiles that fit the keywords you are targeting.

In our example from above, I searched for the keyword “CEO” and got 500+ results.

LinkedIn caps the results they will show you at 500, so you can get creative with some of your search terms to refine your results even more.

Here is a screenshot from our search – it looks full of fantastic prospects for this example: pat 5

You can see in the headlines of these profiles that they are all CEOs, Presidents, and Founders – the PERFECT people for me to approach with my product/service.

If you still need to investigate these people further than their headline and location information listed on the page, you are able to open up the LinkedIn profile from this page to get the full story on each prospect.

You should also notice that I am NOT CONNECTED to any of these people. Everyone in this example is a 2nd degree connection or lower.

BUT…

I can still message them without inMails, a premium account or connection requests. And here’s how…

Step 3: Message Any Qualified Prospect

You may have been able to see this in the screenshot above, but I zoomed in below to show you how you can message all these prospects. pat 6

And there you have it!

This send message button will allow you to message any 2nd-degree, 3rd-degree, 98-degrees or any other degree person on LinkedIn whom you share a group with.

(Ed. Note: There is no such thing as 98th-degree members on LinkedIn, but remember when Boy Bands were a thing?)

As a quick disclaimer, you will run across a handful of group members who have changed their setting to not allow this, but the majority of profiles will allow this type of group messaging.

This is an easy trick to pull off, but it can have HUGE results on your business!

This is a tactic we use to grow our business every single day.

Whether you are looking to drive targeted traffic to a webinar, a blog post, or just trying to set-up a getting to know you call with these prospects, it can drive serious traffic.

I could write another 15 blog posts on how to craft the perfect message to reach these people and increase your conversion rate, but I will save that for another time.

But I will leave you with a couple MAJOR POINTERS to keep in mind when writing your script:

1.) Personalize the script!

Just adding in the prospects first name can be enough. But next-level people will include a comment about the prospect’s company or city or brief personal bio that connects you to the prospect on a human level – not just sales, sales, sales!

But often the prospects name can be enough to prove that you put a bit more time and thought into this message and it wasn’t just a copy-and-paste campaign.

It sounds small, but we’ve learned from a ton of trail and error through LinkedIn, that this can make all the difference.

2.) Inject Your Personality and Lighten the Tone.

Listen: the real reason people use LinkedIn or any other social media platform is to stay connected and have some fun. They didn’t join just to be pitched to all day.

Nobody is going to want to network with someone who is all salesy from the start.

Write your message in a way that will convince people that they should want to get to know you on a personal level.

 ~

 Now I want to here from you:

What tips do you have for writing digital outreach messages to cold prospects?

Share with us in the comments below!

  • These are all fantastic tips. If there was a way to limit the traction to these and keep LinkedIn from finding out these workarounds I think everything would be great. All these methods are amazing.

  • Hi,

    I’ve been using this technique for some time very successfully but recently LinkedIn has restricted the function and I get an error message not allow me to engage with the group member. Do you have any hints/tips on how to overcome this issue.