Skip to content

How Avidly Norway generated 40 organic leads via LinkedIn in one day

2 mins read

While social sharing on Facebook and Twitter have declined in recent years, comments, likes and shares on LinkedIn have increased by 60 per cent annually over the course of the last three years. LinkedIn also works well as a lead generation channel – something Avidly Norway has proven. Here's how we got 40 organic leads from LinkedIn in just one day.

At Avidly Norway, like so many other companies, we tested both sponsored premium content and events on LinkedIn, but it is especially fun when we manage to get free organic leads. 

Espen Hellman, a specialist in sales development at Arctic Sales Development, says that most of his customers struggle to understand how to use LinkedIn strategically to bring in new customers and generate leads:

"Many people use LinkedIn, but often they do not know what specific steps they need to take to get from where they are now to creating business opportunities on the platform. It's a unique platform - you use LinkedIn in a completely different way than Facebook, Instagram and other forms of social media. You build the strategy and achieve your goals in a completely different way."

In just one day, Avidly Norway generated 40 new contacts from LinkedIn, and over the course of the next days, the smooth flow of leads continued. So how did we do this?


Engage your network in content production

What is the best way to create content that people actually want to read? The answer is simple: Ask the audience to help make the content. Instead of producing a downloadable content we hoped would create engagement and generate leads, we went out on LinkedIn and asked our network about the following (translation below):

linkedin

“A dictionary for digital marketing?

I'm working on a digital marketing glossary - a resource that will help marketers, sellers, managers, and others who will navigate in this jungle of foreign words and an ever-expanding new vocabulary.

Which words do you think should be included? Do you have examples of words that can be difficult to explain or that you frequently get asked about? Or do you have a word that you have always wondered about?

I would love your input for this dictionary, to ensure that it truly covers what most people are curious about in digital marketing.

Please add your ideas and contributions to the comment field, and I will send you the dictionary when it is ready. If you have a word and a definition /explanation, I will cite you in the glossary as well.”


Do marketers find the definitions they need and Norwegian translations of English expressions? Does everyone know what the typical abbreviations we hear about in marketing today really mean?

To find out if there was an interest in a dictionary aimed at digital marketers, we published a post on one of our employee's, Elise Karlsen Bye's LinkedIn profile, where we asked her network if they wanted such a dictionary.

In the post, we also asked for suggestions for words that should be included and encouraged definitions of these words or phrases as well. The response was incredible - we got close to 90 comments - both from people who only wanted the dictionary sent to them when it was ready and from people who contributed with words and definitions.

The suggestions came from people both within and outside Elise’s network. The post spread across LinkedIn, and people became very invested. When the dictionary was completed and designed, it was sent as PDF to everyone who contributed to making it.

IMG_0313-1-1-1 (1) (1)-compressed


Espen Hellman believes it is often more valuable to publish content on private profiles rather than the company's profile:

QUOTE

"It's one's personal profile that's really worth something. It takes a lot to trust a company, but it is pretty easy to trust someone when if you've had faith in him or her over a span of time. "
- Espen Hellman, ASD

The fact that we sent the dictionary to contributors meant that we did not get any direct leads from that group. What gave us leads, however, was this:

We shared the dictionary on LinkedIn, this time as gated content. We also mentioned and thanked everyone who helped make it.

Many of these people liked the post, and some commented. Additionally, there were some who also shared it on their private LinkedIn profiles.

In total, this resulted in 40 new contacts on this day alone - and a steady stream of new contacts for the next few days.


Want to know more about the kind of results your business can achieve with inbound marketing and sales? Contact us for a free and non-binding consultation, where we go deeper into what ROI you can expect if you implement the inbound methodology to your business.