9 Social Selling Tactics that drive pipeline for your SaaS

Alexander Estner

Oct 06, 2024

Hey - it’s Alex.

Today we cover:

1️⃣ 3 ways to get attention on LinkedIn

2️⃣ 9 actionable social selling tactics that work in 2024 (and 2025)

3️⃣ Ready to use LinkedIn post templates

Bonus:

List of my vetted Go-to software tools for early-stage SaaS startups

LinkedIn Social Selling Tactics

9 out of 10 founders I talk to say they want to leverage LinkedIn to sell their product.

Getting attention on LinkedIn

On a high level, there are 3 ways you can use LinkedIn to grow your SaaS.

1️⃣ Organic Reach

2️⃣ Paid Reach

3️⃣ Outbound

Organic Reach

You get organic reach if you’re active on LinkedIn. Being active can be done in 2 ways:

1️⃣ Posting Content

2️⃣ Engaging with other people’s content

LinkedIn works best with personal profiles, so don’t focus on your company’s profile (only). If you want to have organic reach, build personal brands.

This means that at least one person of your company (ideally the founder), the more the better, is active on LinkedIn.

That’s the easiest way to get organic reach.

Below you see the stats of my LinkedIn profile.

Treat your LinkedIn content and profile views similar to your website.

You can track/optimize:

✅ Impressions (of your posts)

✅ Profile views

A profile view = similar to website traffic (if you optimize your profile).

Paid Reach

LinkedIn offers 10 different types of ads on its platform.

We wrote a full LinkedIn Ads guides for early stage SaaS companies.

LinkedIn Ads Guide

To know if paid ads are a good fit for you 👇

10-points LinkedIn Ads checklist for SaaS startups

Outbound

The third option is Outbound. This means you actively reach out to your ICP via LinkedIn.

There are multiple ways to identify relevant people to reach out. Here are a few:

Building lists (via LinkedIn sales navigator) —> great guide.
Profile views
New company followers
Followers of your competitors —> see how to steal competitors follower
Website followers —> tools to identify them
Scraping & trigger tools

Check out the TPPSSB framework for LinkedIn outbound sequencing.

9 LinkedIn selling tactics that work in 2024

These tactics are focused on driving pipeline. It’s about getting the attention of relevant leads.

These tactics are NOT for people who want to purely grow their followers.

The goal of these tactics is to help you grow your SaaS (aka. revenue)

#1 Value-commenting (on ICP relevant creators)

You need to follow 3 steps for this tactic:

1️⃣ Know your ICP

2️⃣ Build a list of creators (5-20) your ICP is following

3️⃣ Add valuable comments on their post (fast)

You don’t need a specific tool to do that. But with a tool like taplio it’s get 10x faster. It allows you to have a shortlist of people and in one feed you see the relevant posts and can directly comment without leaving the tool.

But the most important part is step 3️⃣. Please don’t make any AI-comments.

Take the time to add value and show your expertise.

My recommendation: Add value in the comment and then link out to a relevant additional resource (ideally yours).

#2 Run auto-connect campaigns

LinkedIn allows you to send around 100 invites per week.

If you do this every week, you can quickly expand your network (of your ICP).

Sending blank invites (without a message) has on average a 35% acceptance rate.

This rate varies depending on the strength of your profile + your audience.

But let’s quickly do the math:

100 x 35% = 35 new ICPs every week.

If you run this for 1 year you will end up with 1820 new ICP people in your network.

Time Invest: maximum a few hours.

Because you can run these campaigns on autopilot.

Tools like Lemlist or Expandi are great for that.

All you need to do is adding/importing a list of relevant contacts and setting up an invite-only campaign on these tools.

P.S. You can combine this tactic tactic 5!

I’ve tried this myself for a few weeks. Here are the results 👇

#3 Own LinkedIn posts (focused on generating pipeline)

Most founders I work with struggle with creating content.

They don’t know what to write about. And also not How to write good posts.

That’s why I have 3 things for you:

1️⃣ 12 Ready-to use LinkedIn posts templates + 25+ revenue focused content types

2️⃣ A simple framework to turn 1 content idea into 250+ LinkedIn posts

3️⃣ Founder-Led LinkedIn Content Delivery Service (Done for you)

If you want to outsource your LinkedIn content, I’m launching a new service 🎉

I call it: Founder-Led LinkedIn Content Delivery Service

If you want to learn more about it, book your free intro call. I will only start with a few seats in the beginning.

Book your free intro call

#4 Engange with ICP likers & commenters

Lots of founders start to post but then forget to also monitor their posts.

So here is what you should do:

✅ Respond to all comments

✅ Scan people who liked your post

—> if there are people who belong to your ICP and are not part of your network, send them a connection request.

—> if there are people who belong to your ICP and are already part of your network, send them a DM and start a conversation (related to the post, no pitch)

✅ Scan people who comment on your post

Do the same for the people who liked your post.

#5 Run value-first LinkedIn DM campaigns

You’re sending DM sequences to ICP people on LinkedIn.

But instead of pitching your product, you add value first.

So all you do is 2 things:

1️⃣ Share a valuable asset in your DM

—> this can be done either in the LinkedIn connect text or once the accept your invite in your DM1.

Important: Don’t pitch. Just share value. Don’t ask for anything in exchange.

2️⃣ Wait 😀

If the content is relevant for them, they will start to engage with you. This can be either:

✅ they respond to your message

—> if that happens, you can start to slowly nurture and qualify them. Don’t pitch. Instead start a conversation with them

✅ they follow you and start reading your posts

—> once they are ready, they will reach out to you, or read your lead magnet, or visit your website.

✅ they convert from your lead magnet to your next CTA

—> they read your content. They start trusting you.

If you have a CTA in your content that you share, they will find a way to move down the funnel (aka. start a free trial, schedule a demo…)

Here’s a DM I’ve started to test a few weeks ago 👇

#6 Comment Below Lead Magnets

Some people hate it. But it works 😀

You share highly relevant content on LinkedIn.

And ask people to comment in order to get the asset.

And you will send a DM to everyone who commented.

Here is how to do it step-by-step:

1️⃣ Post something relevant

2️⃣ Add a clear comment below CTA

3️⃣ Respond to every commenter

—> Responding will boost your reach further.

4️⃣ Extract commenters

This one is optional. If only a few people comment you can do the work manual.

If it’s getting 100+ I would recommend tools like Phantombuster or taplio to export the ones who commented and add them to a specific ‘asset delivery’ sequence with tools like Lemlist or Expandi (see tactic 5).

5️⃣ Delivery the asset via DM

Here is the exact DM I’ve used for my last ‘comment below’ lead magnet post. 👇

Check out a few other successful ‘comment below’ lead magnet for inspiration:

Examples of Lead Magnets Posts:

#7 Turn your profile into your ‘homepage’

In the early stage, if you take LinkedIn seriously, you will most probably get way more impressions on your profile than on your SaaS homepage.

👉 LinkedIn profile optimization checklist

That’s why optimizing your profile is key

#8 Add your main CTAs in your ‘featured section’

For you, this means one or more of the following:

✅ Link to your Lead magnet (e.g. Guide)

✅ Book a demo

✅ Start free trial

For me it looks like this 👇

#9 Have a small group of early supporter

This one is key if you just start posting your content.

Find a small group of people who want to support you. Ideally they belong to your ICP audience.

Why?

Because LinkedIn analyzes your post engagement.

They analyze how your post is performing. If in the first 30 minutes after you post you barely get any engagement, then the chance that your post will get organic reach is very low.

So what can you do?

Find a few people who engage fast every time you post.

Tell them:

Please like & comment every time I post
They should add a relevant comment. Not just ‘Nice’.
Don’t share the link directly with them, they should find the post on their own (heard that LinkedIn tracks this to stop pods).
They should belong to your ICP, otherwise, LinkedIn will push the content to irrelevant people.

So you can turn it around. If in the first 30 minutes, people from your ICP engage with your post, LinkedIn marks this post as relevant and pushes it to other people with similar characteristics. This way your post can get a lot of organic reach.

Happy growth 🚀

Alex

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