How To Get Clients On LinkedIn: Step by Step Process

LinkedIn is one of the best platforms to find high paying B2B clients, but few people leverage it to its full potential.

Simply messaging people on the platform, publishing an occasional post, or sporadically commenting on others’ posts isn’t an effective strategy to get clients on LinkedIn.

So if you’ve tried any of these methods without success, this guide will help you understand how to leverage the platform more effectively so that clients come to you rather than constantly chasing new opportunities.

I have personally built a seven figure career on LinkedIn, and this is the exact process I used.

Should I Cold Pitch Clients On LinkedIn?

I’m a big fan of doing conversational cold outreach on LinkedIn and other social platforms.

The thing is, you need to do it correctly, and you likely won’t get good results if you don’t have a persuasive profile and some content published on it.

If you want to maximize the results of cold outreach and start getting inbound leads too, I recommend building a personal brand on LinkedIn (i.e., building a following on LinkedIn).

When you have a large following, potential customers will reach out to you for your services rather than you pitching new prospects. 

The downside of personal branding is that it takes a long time to build a following. Essentially, you’re building relationships at scale, and great relationships take time to build. 

Yet over a long enough time horizon, here’s the ROI of building a personal branding versus cold pitching:

In short, yes, you can cold pitch potential clients on LinkedIn. 

However, don’t rely on it as a long-term strategy, as creating content once and attracting clients organically is much more efficient. 

Therefore, I’ll outline the exact strategy I use to help my coaching clients build a personal brand and get clients on LinkedIn. 

Step 1: Define Your ICP and Offer

A common mistake many people make is offering a generic service to a generic customer.

Here are a few examples of generic services:

• Ghostwriting
• SEO
• Career coaching
• Graphic design 

Instead, niche down and become the top expert for a particular service.

Here are a few examples of more specialized services: 

• LinkedIn ghostwriting 
• Enterprise SEO
• Mobile graphic design

While niching down limits your pool of potential customers, it also establishes you as an industry expert making you a more desirable candidate for a customer looking for that service.

For example, someone looking to hire a ghostwriter to build their LinkedIn profile will likely hire a “LinkedIn ghostwriter” rather than a generic ghostwriter.

In addition to refining your service offering, it’s also important to refine your ideal customer profile (the person you’re selling your service to).  

The ideal customer profile (ICP) is the title of the person who will buy your service and additional qualifiers, such as:

• Industry (e.g., health, marketing, finance, etc.)
• Company type (e.g., ecommerce, SaaS, coaching business)
• Company size (e.g., 11-50 employees)

Here are some examples of ICPs for each of the following services:

• LinkedIn ghostwriting: Eight figure founders who have sold at least one business.
• SEO: The Director of SEO at an ecommerce company with at least 100 employees.
• Content marketing: The VP of Marketing at a SaaS company with at least 50 employees.
• Email marketing: The VP of Marketing at an ecommerce with at least 50 employees. 

Note: If you’re selling a service, the person who will actually purchase your service is usually a decision maker at the company. For example, if you’re selling a marketing service, the decision maker will likely be a VP, Director, or CMO. A decision maker would NOT be an associate or junior marketing manager. 

VPs and CMOs are excellent for companies with under 50 employees, and the Director of your service is often best for larger companies.

As you’re refining your ICP and offer, consider these three factors to maximize your income and happiness:

• Earning potential
• Interest
• Expertise

Earning Potential

Earning potential is determined by the value you deliver to the company. 

A misconception is that the value you bring to the table is tied directly to the quality of your work. 

However, value is also impacted by factors related to your ICP, such as their existing audience size, website traffic, and industry credibility. 

Therefore, you can typically charge larger, more established companies more money because they can leverage your services more effectively. 

Interest  

You’re much more likely to stick with a service you enjoy executing. Consistency is a significant factor that determines long-term success, so pick something you genuinely enjoy.

Expertise

You don’t necessarily need to be an expert, but it will help you close clients faster if you have some experience and case studies. Otherwise, you can gain experience by working for free.

Step 2: Build a Compelling Professional LinkedIn Profile

Creating a professional, branded profile immediately sets you apart from your competitors, and it only takes about an hour to execute. 

First, get a nice headshot. A professional headshot is best, but you can also dress up and ask a friend to take the picture with a phone.  

Next, select a color scheme and fonts. 

You can browse websites you like and then use a tool like WhatFont and ColorPick Eyedropper to find the exact colors/fonts they’re using. 

Then, save the exact font names and colors in a doc so you don’t lose them.

Next, use a free tool like Photoroom and you can remove the background from your headshot and replace it with your new color scheme. 

The banner image should communicate two things:

1. The value you offer.
2. A proof point to prove that you can actually deliver on your promise.

In my own banner, I communicate what I offer (a LinkedIn growth blueprint) and proof points in the form of client result screenshots.

To design your banner, you can use a free tool like Canva. 

Your LinkedIn content will attract leads, but you won’t actually close them on the LinkedIn platform. Instead, you’ll sell them through email. 

Therefore, optimize your LinkedIn profile to capture as many emails as possible by using the tagline and CTA on your profile to direct them to your free lead magnet (we’ll discuss how to create a lead magnet later).

The banner image and tagline communicates what you do, but before people buy, they’ll be more proof that you can deliver on your promise and that you’ve helped other people just like them. 

In my bio, I lay out specific results I’ve delivered for several different client personas.

Then, introduce your audience to your paid service offer for those ready to take the next step.  

Step 3: Engage With Your ICP

A key part of landing clients on LinkedIn is building real relationships with people, so create a list of people on LinkedIn who fit your ICP and consistently post on LinkedIn.  

For example, this person would be a great fit if you’re offering influencer marketing services to companies with over 500 employees:

However, check how often the person posts on LinkedIn. If they aren’t active on LinkedIn, there won’t be any content to engage with, making it difficult to build a real relationship with them.

You can see how often this person posts by scrolling down to the “activity” section in their profile:

Once you have a list of people who fit your ICP and post consistently, save their LinkedIn URLs in a Google Sheet. Then, check that sheet two or three times per week and engage with the content they post. 

The best way to provide value to someone posting content is engaging with their content, so commenting on your ICP’s post is an easy way to start building a positive relationship with them.

In addition to commenting on your ICP’s post, it’s also a good idea to engage with industry leaders and build relationships with them. These relationships can lead to speaking opportunities, content collaborations, and other opportunities that will help you establish yourself as a thought leader. 

For example, if you offer content marketing services, this person would be an ideal individual to engage with and follow:

You can also find other thought leaders by looking at the people who are commenting on their posts. 

Once you have a list of people to engage with, block off 15-20 minutes in your calendar each day to engage with them.

Step 4: Content Creation

People won’t magically find your LinkedIn profile – you have to post content to appear in your ICP’s newsfeed. 

LinkedIn content is an entire topic on its own, but the 80/20 comes down to these three factors:

• Creating content that’s relevant to your audience’s pain points
• Packaging the information in formats proven to capture attention on LinkedIn
• Maintaining a consistent publishing schedule 

To ensure you’re creating content that’s relevant to your audience’s pain points, write out the most common pain points your target audience typically experiences before reaching out to you.

For example, if you offer SEO for SaaS businesses, some of the problems your ICP (e.g., a VP of Marketing) might feel include:

• The SEO drives traffic, but not demos
• The website isn’t ranking anywhere for its main keywords
• Traffic has been steadily declining due to AI overviews

If you don’t know your ICP’s pain points, ask them. These discussions will not only make your content more effective, but they will also help you tailor your services to be more effective. 

If you don’t have any clients right now, another option is to look at your “competitors” top performing content (e.g., other people who offer the same services as you) and identify the pain points those posts address.

For example, below is a fairly popular post from an SEO consultant. You can see that the pain point he’s discussing is that “SEO takes months.”

Therefore, you could take that pain point and write your own post about how you help clients achieve certain quick wins. 

Once you have a handful of relevant pain points, the next step is to create content that addresses those pain points in a compelling format. 

This is where frameworks come in handy. 

Here are a handful of frameworks you can use to craft compelling content:

• Personal Failure Story + Lesson Learned
• Case Study
• “I Used to Think… But Now I Know…”
• Myth Busting
• Behind the Scenes (“How I Do X”)
• List of Tools/Resources to Accomplish X
• Contrarian Opinion

You can then apply the pain point to just about any of these frameworks. 

If you need help, you can ask ChatGPT to apply the pain point to that framework and generate several versions. 

If you’re auditing your content, make sure that it fulfills at least one of these two objectives:

1. Evokes an emotional response
2. Obviously and immediately useful

For example, this post evokes an emotional response:

On the other hand, this post is obviously and immediately useful:

As you’re creating content, pull from your own personal experience as much as possible because:

1. Personal experience-based content is inherently unique as nobody else has lived your experiences.
2. It highlights your experience and expertise in that subject, which makes you more trustworthy to potential clients.

Consistency is the third and final piece of a successful LinkedIn content strategy.

The more you publish, the more data you’ll get, and the better you’ll become.

Step 5: Content Distribution 

If you don’t have any followers, people probably won’t see or engage with your content when you start publishing – even if the content is high quality. 

Some of these people you engage with will likely reciprocate and start engaging with your content, but don’t expect much engagement during those first few months. 

If you want to expedite the process and get more engagement faster, you can pay for engagement from industry leaders. 

However, spend a few months honing your copywriting skills before paying for reach.

If your content isn’t great, most influencers won’t agree to engage with it. Even if an influencer does agree to engage with mediocre content, their engagement won’t help if the content doesn’t resonate with the new people seeing it for the first time.

Once you’ve built a substantial following and consistently earn a dozen comments per post, you can form an engagement pod with other people in your industry who have similar engagement rates. 

Another option to gain traction faster is publishing original data that answers a controversial question. Here’s a great example of original data that generated a lot of engagement:

Roundup lists of tools and top LinkedIn people to follow are also excellent for generating engagement.

Finally, consider posting your LinkedIn content on other social media platforms as well.

I discuss my content distribution process in more detail in the personal branding guide, but here’s an overview of how it works:

Step 6: Create a Funnel 

One of the drawbacks of social media platforms is that they control your content’s reach, so your content may not reach all of your followers. 

LinkedIn can also ban you at any moment, erasing your audience overnight.

Therefore, use LinkedIn as a platform to connect with your audience and earn their trust, but then capture their email address with a lead magnet. 

For example, my lead magnet is a free course on growing a personal brand on LinkedIn. 

Notice that I make the CTA to my free course very clear on my LinkedIn funnel. I mention it in my banner image and say in the tagline “Get my free LinkedIn course ↓ Just hit the “View my newsletter” button and subscribe.”

When people click “View my newsletter,” they’re immediately taken to my website, which is essentially a landing page. (You can easily create a free landing page like this on Kit.)

On the landing page, the main tagline should clearly define the value they’ll receive from the free course. You can also include reviews and testimonials of the free course itself to increase conversions.  

Once you have a prospect’s email address, you can nurture them and build more trust to eventually sell them into your paid service. 

If you’re not sure how to make a free course, just create a series of PDFs or videos that outlines the blueprint you implement for clients. 

Then, your service is essentially the “done for you” version of the free course. 

When people can see that you have a proven process, they often trust that you can execute and prefer to just pay you to implement it for them rather than doing the work themselves.

Notice that I also include a direct pitch for my paid services in the About section on my LinkedIn profile, as some people visiting my LinkedIn profile may have followed me for a while and are ready to buy. 

The landing page for the service doesn’t need to be fancy.

You can use Typeform, Google Forms, or a Calendly page to collect their information. Here’s what mine looks like:

On the page, I simply restate the pain point (growing a personal brand is hard) and then state that I solve it and provide proof with screenshots. 

Step 7: Stay Consistent

The final step to get clients on LinkedIn is staying consistent. 

In the beginning, it can be discouraging if you don’t have a lot of engagement, but it’s important to get the reps in and hone the craft of LinkedIn copywriting. 

To help you remain consistent, you can use a tool like Stickk and have an accountability partner hold you to your commitment. 

It’s also a good idea to block off time in your calendar once per week and create content in batches.

Getting started on LinkedIn can be challenging, but the long-term ROI is worth the effort and investment. 

Get More Help Growing On LinkedIn

These are the exact steps I teach my coaching clients to help them build their personal brands on LinkedIn. 

However, staying consistent when you’re first getting started can be hard – especially if you aren’t getting much engagement in the beginning. You also might not know how to improve your LinkedIn content. 

This is why we created Copyblogger Academy. It’s a course and community platform I run that provides the support and knowledge you need to build your brand on LinkedIn. 

There are six courses ranging from SEO and email marketing to copywriting and personal branding, and you can also ask for feedback on your work and attend accountability sessions. 

People fail on LinkedIn mainly because they simply don’t stick with it long enough. 

Copyblogger Academy provides the support and reassurance you need to persevere when it gets tough and course correct if your strategy needs an adjustment.

Sign up for Copyblogger Academy today to start building your personal brand on LinkedIn.