How to Get Clients on LinkedIn (Proven 7 Steps)

Your LinkedIn profile should be generating hundreds of qualified leads every single week. Your profile is the one thing that works for you 24 hours a day. Every post, every comment, every connection request points back to it, and most founders are wasting it. Hi, my name is Chris Donnelly, and 3 years ago I had 20,000 followers on LinkedIn. I was posting consistently, I was getting thousands of views and impressions, but I wasn't getting many leads at all. And today I have over 1.2 million followers. and my LinkedIn profile is the main driver of leads and revenue for a portfolio of businesses. In this video, I'm gonna show you 7 changes that I made to turn my profile into a lead generation machine. So when the right person finds you, they instantly know what you do, who you help, and how to work with you. So let's start with the one thing that most people skip entirely. That is knowing your ICP. Your ICP, or your ideal customer profile, is the specific person that you want to attract. And the trick here is to get really focused. You actually don't want your profile to appeal to 95% of people. You want it to be perfect for the 5% who have a specific problem that you can solve. So if you're an accountant, your ICP might be business owners who want to reduce their tax liability and pay their staff more efficiently. Or if you're a leadership coach, you're appealing to first-time managers in fast-growing companies. It all becomes incredibly clear once you understand who you're talking to, the language you should be using, and what appeals to that customer. I often think about it this way. If I'm creating content for entrepreneurs who are interested in growth and scale, then everything that I post should sit within that world. And your profile should mirror that approach. Write down who your ideal customer is and then the 10 topics that they genuinely care about. And as a founder, this should be so deeply ingrained in you, but it's best not to try and overthink this. And if you're not heavily involved in the day-to-day conversation with customers, you can ask Claude or ChatGPT. And ask what the common challenges and interests of your ICP are and have it summarize those into common themes for you. So 3 of these 10 things can often become your content pillars, but for the purposes of this video, we're going to include them in your profile. Now that you understand the fundamentals, let's build your LinkedIn profile, starting with something that most people miss: the perfect profile photo. Your profile photo does one job, and that is to make someone feel like they can trust you before they've read a single word that you have written. It's also worth noting that your profile picture is the thing that shows up every time that you comment on a post. So its potential is to reach millions of people. So it really does need to be right. So let's start with the headshot. Just try and make sure that it's taken from the shoulders up with a decent natural light and a neutral background. If you can wear fairly plain clothes to put the focus on your face, that helps. And don't over-edit it. You don't want it to look like AI. You also wanna avoid things like group photos or selfies or distracting backgrounds or home settings or anything like that. The profile picture itself is 400 by 400 pixels, so make sure that you are taking a photo with that in mind. And if you really wanna stand out like I have on my profile, make the background a color, your brand color maybe, or just one that stands out on the feed. And that is genuinely all there is to it. The other key visual is your LinkedIn banner. Most people treat this like an afterthought. There's a really big gap between what's possible and what most people are actually doing with their banners. So the worst thing that you can do is just select a photo that you like the look of, because that doesn't communicate anything about who you are, what your business offers, or how you can help solve someone's specific problems. So what does this actually look like? The technical specs of the banner are 1584 by 396 pixels. So that's the space that you have to play with. But there's actually 3 things that your banner needs to do. First, you need to set the tone. So try and use consistent colors between your company, your content, and your banner. And these brand colors begin to become recognizable between you and your content. So you have to get them right. Second, you need to have a way to communicate one clear value proposition. If we think back to the leadership coach example, it could be, I help new leaders become excellent managers using a 4-step process. So what you need to get across is who you help and what outcome you're going to deliver to that person. And that is why it's so important that we properly understand our ICP. Finally, the third thing your banner needs to include is a call to action. Specifically, if this is the only thing that they see, what do you want them to do? So don't try and hard sell here. The aim is to push them into a funnel, which I will talk about in more detail later. However, think of this as directional. Say what you do and tell them to look at that featured section. and if you don't have the skills to design a proper banner or you don't have the time at the moment, I'd suggest that you take your clear value proposition statement, so what you do for your customer, and put it across your banner on the back of your color. And if you want to learn how to do that, I'm sure you can look up how to use Canva on YouTube. So what we've just covered really is just getting you to the starting line, and the next part is the single most important part of your profile. This is your LinkedIn headline, and not many people focus on this, but the headline will follow you around LinkedIn and it will appear next to anything that you comment anything that you post, anything that you interact with. And so when you're writing it, you really need to give people an understanding of who you are and what you do. So most people just write their job title, but unless you work at a big blue chip company like Apple, Google, or Goldman Sachs, that doesn't really mean anything to anyone. So the formula that I teach, and I'd encourage you to use this, is: I am a— insert your role— that helps a specific audience your ICP we talked about earlier, achieve a desired result. So when you spell it out like that, you're leaving no doubt of exactly what you can offer and who you help. And this really gives you credibility in your audience's mind. So my headline today is co-founder of Search Bull. I help ambitious businesses drive revenue from AI search. And when I started my first company, when I was running a digital marketing agency in my 20s, and it specialized in luxury brands, my headline was Founder of digital marketing agency Verve Brands, helping luxury brands attract high net worth individuals. So you've got to remember, the purpose is to make your ideal customer immediately self-identify themselves. And the moment they read your headline, they should be thinking, you know what, that is exactly what I need. Or even, actually, this person's definitely not for me. So for you, both of those outcomes are wins. Because you don't want to be spending time trying to convince someone to buy something if they were never actually going to do it in the first place. So one more thing to note, you have 220 characters available for this, so try and keep it to 2 lines max. Most people aren't going to stop and read a long headline, so the more you try and cram into this, the fewer people are actually going to pay attention to it. Your headline sells what you do, but there's one section that sells who you are, and that is your bio. So the bio or the about section is the part of the profile that offers the most space to freely write and explain why people should follow you. Most people use this space to write out their CV or their life story, but neither of those things really work. So here's the right way to do it. By the time someone reaches your bio, they're already interested in who you are and what you have to say. Now they're looking to understand specifically, can you as a person and as a service provider specifically solve the problem that they have? So when faced with this, most people will lean heavily towards credentials. But if they're interested in reading your bio, they probably already know most of your credentials. So try and lean the other way. Showcase some of the character and what you can do for them specifically that stands you out from the crowd. So explain what transformation you can give them and what role you can play in helping them achieve their objectives. Then try and share relevant parts of your story that will help them make that decision. So for me, a lot of the work that I do is helping experienced entrepreneurs grow their businesses, often by how to reach new audiences. I've done it for 16 years across 3 or 4 different big companies. And so when it comes to my story, I list out 9 bullet points of what I was doing at each age because I want people to know the depth and the breadth of my experience. So don't overcomplicate it with small details and how you did something. You can save that for later down your funnel. Keep the sentences short with line breaks fairly often and write at a level that someone could read whilst they're on the train or the commute to work, because they may be doing exactly that when researching you. So quick thing before we continue, this channel is brand new and 82% of you who are watching aren't subscribed to the channel. I am committed to making this the most practical channel for entrepreneurs on YouTube. So if you're finding this useful, please subscribe to the channel. So this is the section that most people completely ignore. If you do this correctly, you will turn a casual visitor into an actual lead that is interested in your business. So let's start with custom buttons. When I teach people how to do this, I'm always surprised at how few people know these actually exist, but it's a really strong tool that you can use because every time you post a piece of content, this custom button will show up, creating the opportunity for someone to get in touch with you. And that is potentially thousands of times that you could push people straight into your funnel every single day. So my personal advice, is to direct this through to whatever is the most important part of your business or the best lead magnet that you have in your business. So if you have a webinar coming up, drive people to that. If you're running a sales event, push people into that side of the business. But whatever it is, make sure that you are sending them to a page that will at some point ask for their email and gives them an offer that is so good that they don't hesitate to give you their email. So whether it's a free guide on your subject matter, a Notion template, a custom GPT on your topic, videos they can access elsewhere, or a newsletter. Something that's worth trading their email for. So next up is one of my favorite parts of the profile because it's often the part that drives the warmest leads to your business. And that is your featured section. It's right in the middle of your profile. And there are a lot of people that don't know that this even exists or how to optimize it. They leave it completely empty. Or if they do know about it, they often fill it with random previous successful LinkedIn posts that they had. That have performed well, which in my opinion is honestly a huge waste of opportunity. So remember, you are designing this profile for your ICP and they don't care if one of your posts has gone viral previously or got 1,000 likes previously. They're interested in you and what you do and how you can help them. And this is the section where you can give them somewhere to go. But you should always try and have two clear offers. So first, you should always have a direct link to your actual offer. Whether it's an inquiry form or a product signup. By the time someone reaches this point on your profile, they're gonna be highly interested in what you have to offer. And so even if 10 people are in the mindset to buy at that point in time, that could be thousands of dollars of revenue coming your way without lifting a finger. Now, the second path is to capture those that are less warm and need more convincing, but still interested in what you do at this stage. So for this audience, the best thing to do is to give them, as we said before, an irresistible offer. And push them into a newsletter sequence. So the problem you may face is that some people are still guarded about giving up their personal information. So I like to focus here on creating high-value lead magnets. So lead magnets are very valuable resources that contain a condensed version of your offer or data that your ICP is deeply interested in. So what this does is create a value exchange between you and your ICP. You get their email address, and in exchange, they receive a very valuable piece of information that they can immediately put into practice. And a general rule of thumb here: if you were giving away a lead magnet and you are exchanging it for an email, I want the ICP customer to feel as if they would have happily paid for that piece of work that they've received. And that for me is a great yardstick as to whether a lead magnet is truly valuable and whether they will walk away with a positive experience from it. As a bonus tip, if you want to get really detailed and optimize every single part of the real estate on your profile. Even under your job role, you can add a media element that creates a link and you can have it direct to a lead magnet. If you look at my profile, you will see that I am the co-founder of Searchable, and underneath the description of my job, I have a media element that says a free visibility report. And if someone clicks that, they immediately go into a lead magnet and immediately trade their email for use of my product, which for me just means that every part of my profile I'm optimizing towards lead generation. Now, all of this work that we've been doing on optimizing our profile is pointless if you aren't able to develop a strong infrastructure around it. So everything we've discussed so far is about getting attention on LinkedIn, getting attention on social media. But the biggest limiting factor of LinkedIn and social media in general is that you don't control how successful you are within the algorithm. You can create the best content in the world that will appeal to the most people. However, if we are posting content that is directly pushing our offer, a case study, a testimonial, those posts are bottom of the funnel. Those posts typically don't do particularly well because they don't relate to that many people. And so as a result, LinkedIn and other social media platforms will look at that post and determine that it is not a successful post that a lot of people don't like. And so it doesn't push the post out. And so you aren't able to reach your audience with your specific sales messaging. Social media is an amazing avenue to drive attention and to get customers to know about you and to get exposure for your business, the thing you have to do is make sure that you actually own your audience. And so the audience you have on social media, you don't own, you don't control that. You can't determine how many people see your content. And so the solution is what I call deplatforming. And deplatforming, as the name suggests, is about using your LinkedIn content to pull people off LinkedIn and onto something that you actually own the distribution of. So for me, that is my newsletter, which has about 300,000 subscribers now. And every Sunday morning I send them an email and I know that there is no algorithm that sits between me sending it and them receiving it. The algorithm won't suppress its reach because that is a relationship that I own entirely. So the lead magnet strategy we discussed in step 6 is a great way to deplatform your audience. So I'd suggest that you commit some serious effort in developing a resource that people want to download. This could be a framework, it could be a resource, it could be a report. Just make it genuinely useful for your ICP. And once they download it, they subscribe to your email and therefore become a contact that you can market to in future. So look, I want to give you an example to really drive this home for you. I run a company called Searchable, and at Searchable, our lead magnet is effectively a free visibility report for your company. So you can look at how your company is performing in ChatGPT, in Gemini, in Claude, so you can see how much traffic you're generating from AI. Now, because of the way we set up our lead magnet, people sign up for the tool and immediately get an in-depth report and an agent they can use to do strategy and work out how to improve their search, all for trading their email. Now we're able to put them into our product. And the most amazing thing about a lead magnet when done right is that about 39% of people who sign up for a free account go on to then become customers of our tool. And so that is a lead magnet we spent a long time thinking about. However, the value of it means that we convert a huge proportion of our organic social media followers into potential customers. I want to take a step back now from that advanced example and tell you something that you can specifically implement today. Let's provide them with a PDF or a Notion template or a, you know, custom GPT that's set up for their business. You need to ask 3 qualifying questions. You need to know the type of business that they are, the size of business they are, so how many employees they have or what revenue they're driving, depending on how you feel your customer will respond to that question. And the last question is what budget they have to achieve this specific thing. Now, by asking those 3 specific questions, you know exactly who your customers are, you know what problems they have. And as a result, when you're marketing in future and you're sending out emails, you don't send someone the wrong offer. And I'll give you a really clear example there. Let's say that you deliver £10,000 consultancy services, but you also deliver £1,000 digital product. You don't want to send the beginner the £10,000 offer. You just wanna send the beginner the £1,000 offer. And so this is the whole point about making sure that you are sending your customers the right information. So let's bring this back to where we started. I don't want you to just think about LinkedIn as a content platform. It should be a sales funnel first, and every piece of content should help fill that funnel with hot leads. This approach has helped me generate millions of dollars for my portfolio of companies, and I want it to do the same thing for you. So if you enjoyed this video, check out my last video on how to dominate the LinkedIn algorithm.