LinkedIn is one of the best online platforms for generating sales leads—B2B sales leads especially. It makes sense because LinkedIn is a social media platform for business-related purposes and it’s a very successful one. Forty-four percent of its members have an income of more than $75,000 and 50 percent of users turn to LinkedIn when making their purchasing decisions.

If you aren’t using LinkedIn to build your sales pipeline, then you are missing out on a lot of potential customers, but don’t jump in without a plan. When using LinkedIn to generate sales leads, you should do so strategically—from developing a targeted profile to building successful advertising campaigns. Follow these seven steps to make the most of your LinkedIn account and increase your sales numbers dramatically.

Perfect Your Profile

“Your LinkedIn summary (all 2,000 or fewer characters) will likely be read by more people than any other version of your bio.” – William Aruda, Forbes

Your LinkedIn profile is your first impression to most leads, so you should spend time making sure that it’s a good one.

Choose the Right Picture. Choose a professional image for your profile picture. Wear clothing that is appropriate to your job—for most that will be a suit, but if you belong to a more casual industry, be sure to wear an elevated version of your usual attire. You don’t need to go to a studio to get a picture taken, but don’t use a selfie. Instead, ask a colleague or friend to take a few pictures of you against a nice backdrop, even outside in natural light.

Customize Your Headline. Most people use the default headline of their current job title, but that’s a wasted opportunity. You should be using it to hook potential clients. How will you help potential leads? Include your title, company, and how your product helps clients. For instance, “Sales Representative at [company] helping companies increase sales by [percent] with [product name].” Stay away from jargon as much as possible. Instead, use easily understood terms that potential clients will be using in their searches.

Create a Stellar Summary. Since you’re using LinkedIn as a lead-generation tool, direct your summary to your potential clients. Tell your audience how passionate you are about setting companies up with the amazing products you sell because of the ways those products change their lives. Make your summary easy to digest by adding bulleted lists to summarize key points and including media to enhance your message like links to videos explaining your products.

Use a Custom URL. When you join LinkedIn, they assign you a generic URL, so make sure you’ve changed it to something more personal and easy to remember. Most people use their name, but if you have a common name, you may need to add another identifying detail like the company you work for or use a well-known nickname. You can change your URL up to five times in six months, so don’t worry if use job-related terms and then change jobs. As long as you haven’t used up all five edits, you can easily update your URL.

Add Current Contacts

“There is no overstating the value of happy customers who become advocates for your brand.” – Alex Rynne, LinkedIn

Yes, you already know your clients, but LinkedIn is an elaborate web of “who knows who,” so be sure to connect with all of your current and past clients once your profile is set up. Send them a nice note with your invitation, letting them know how much they mean to you. Cultivation doesn’t end with the sale or even after a client leaves. One day, they might come back to your product or transfer to a different company that can benefit from your product.

Don’t forget that many of the companies you’ve worked with (or want to work with) also have a presence on LinkedIn. Spend some time finding and following their pages to stay up-to-date on their latest news.

Add New Contacts

Everyone you talk to about business or meet during the course of the business day is a potential LinkedIn connection. – Jeff Haden, Inc.

From now on, every person you meet is a potential LinkedIn connection. If you meet someone at a party or standing in line at the store, and the conversation turns to work, consider connecting with them on LinkedIn. If they aren’t a potential client, they might know someone who is.

When sending them a connection invite, take the time to write a personal note that references your conversation and sends them something useful—like a link to a relevant article or an offer to refer them to one of your other connections. Unless your in-person conversation quickly turned to their interest in the product or service you’re selling, stay away from overly sales-like messages. Instead, connect with them with the purpose of being helpful to their job. They’ll take note and look for ways to return the favor.

Ask for and Write Recommendations

“A glowing recommendation from an existing customer provides social proof that can put new prospects’ minds at ease.” – Emma Brudner, Hubspot

Recommendations can act as powerful customer reviews for you and the products you sell, but recommendations that you write for others are an overlooked way to get your name and profile in front people who aren’t a part of your network.

Asking others to write recommendations for you is a great way to build your profile. Good reviews are a guaranteed way to improve sales records for products. In fact, having at least five reviews can increase the likelihood of purchase by 270 percent compared to having no reviews. When it comes to gaining leads on LinkedIn, both you and what you’re selling are under review, so when asking for recommendations, request that customers include a reference to the product as well.

You should also write recommendations for others. This way anyone looking at their profile (to hire them, connect with them, etc.) will see your recommendation as well as your headline and a link to your profile. If your review and headline are memorable enough, they may click through to learn more about you.

Find Leads

“80 percent of social media B2B leads come from LinkedIn.” – The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn

When looking for leads, you should use the advanced search feature. The advanced search feature allows you to filter LinkedIn members with information like their location, company, industry and how closely you are connected to them. If you upgrade to the LinkedIn Premium, you have access to additional filters like function and years of experience to target more specific leads.

After the initial search, narrow your results down to the best leads by finding 2nd-degree connections. Depending on how well you know the 1st-degree connection that links you to your lead, you can ask for an introduction. To make the introduction easier, include a draft email that your contact can use when connecting you to your lead.

For some leads, you won’t have a 1st-degree connection. You can still use LinkedIn to make the cold call warmer. Look through their profile information and find things you have in common. Did you go to the same school? Are you members of the same organization? You can, of course, immediately contact leads using the commonalities you find, but you’ll get a better reaction if you first cultivate a relationship with them. Join the same LinkedIn groups and enter into non-sales related conversations about shared hobbies or career topics. Be genuine and try to help them by referring them to others or vice versa. They’ll find ways to pay it forward to you as well.

Engage in Groups

“Offer massive value to every member. Connect anytime that they reach out to you. Try and genuinely solve their problems.” – Neil Patel, Forbes

Groups on LinkedIn are a place where like-minded individuals share information with each other—usually with articles and blog posts or by answering questions posed by other group members. Starting your own group isn’t usually the best method of gaining leads unless there is a specific topic you want to discuss, but no group in which to do so.

Starting a group is easy in theory, but it takes a lot of work. If you choose to start your own group, have a backlog of articles, blog posts and conversation topics to share on a daily basis and populate the group with several posts before you invite connections to join. Starting your own group is one of the best ways to cultivate connections on LinkedIn, but don’t go in blindly. Be prepared to spend a good amount of time managing the group.

Whether or not you create your own group, you should join any groups in which your potential clients participate. If your product or service targets marketers, join all marketing-related groups. If you want to target managers, join groups that are management-related and so on. Once a member of the group, you should share blog posts and articles that are relevant to that group. If an article about your product or service is relevant, share it, but balance it by mostly sharing and participating in non-sales posts and conversations. To make a lasting impression, share blog posts that you’ve written showcasing your knowledge on the topic at hand.

In addition to adding your blog posts and articles to relevant groups, you can also post them as status updates in LinkedIn to let your connections know what you’ve been up to as well. It may lead to fruitful conversations with leads among your own connections.

Advertise through LinkedIn

“In the history of my marketing experience at this school, I’ve never seen us convert that quickly.” – Elizabeth Hogan, Duke University, on Sponsored InMail

LinkedIn advertising is more costly than other forms of social media advertising, but for B2B companies, the access to a highly targeted professional audience is without compare. LinkedIn understands the value of marketing to their members and has invested a lot of time in developing their advertising features. They are constantly rolling out new features like carousel advertising and matched audiences which allows you to upload your internal database data to target leads better, so stay updated on what new offerings they have available.

Currently, LinkedIn has five ad types to choose from.

Sponsored Content

Sponsored content is much like ads on other social networks, where you are pushing a “status update” of a popular blog post, a video featuring your product, or a thought-provoking question to an audience beyond your immediate connections. Much like Facebook advertising, you get a headline, intro copy, and an image or carousel of images like any status update, though you should keep the copy short and to the point for an 18 percent increase in engagement.

Sponsored InMail

The most unique form of advertising available, sponsored InMail, allows you to create an email to send to your target audience via InMail. As with standard emails, you create a subject line, body copy and include a CTA button and image. Use a personal profile to send the InMail to increase open rates and keep the body copy short with a strong call to action to get the most response from viewers.

InMail is one of the most effective ways to market to your target audience because LinkedIn only sends the message to people when they are active on the network. It also limits the number of sponsored messages a user sees, so they don’t feel inundated with advertising emails. This ensures your audience is more receptive to the sponsored InMail messages they do receive.

Dynamic Ads

Dynamic ads are another high-performing LinkedIn advertising option. Dynamic ads work well when you want people to follow your page, join your group, visit your website or download your content. The system will pull in the targeted audience’s username and profile picture to create ad copy that specifically addresses them. The copy is very short and should explain how the user can benefit from clicking the CTA button.

Programmatic Display Ads

Display ads are image- or video-based ads that appear in users’ sidebar when they are using the platform on their desktop. Use eye-catching media and messaging to grab the users’ attention. To get the most out of your video-based ad, keep the video under 30 seconds, but get to the main message within the first 10 seconds.

Text Ads

Text ads on LinkedIn are much like Google AdWords, where you choose between PPC and CPI ads, set a bid for the audience you want to reach and set a budget to ensure you don’t overspend to reach that audience. You can choose our targets based on demographics like age and gender, career details like industry and position, and LinkedIn activities like to which groups they belong. Because you don’t have as much real estate as other advertising options, focus on your strongest CTAs.

LinkedIn is one of the best ways to generate new leads, especially for those in the B2B marketing industry, but it must be used strategically. Develop a presence as a thought-leader through your profile and in groups, and maintain continuous touchpoints with your contacts, whether it’s congratulating them on a promotion or referring them to another connection.

Add a few minutes to your calendar every day to check and update content on the platform. The key is to keep it slow and steady, and after a few weeks, you’ll begin seeing all of your hard work beginning pay off!

Kenneth Hitchner is a communications strategist who protects and promotes brands. He is currently the director of public relations and social media at Creative Marketing Alliance and CMA Association Management. In prior assignments, he served as the spokesman for NJ Transit, the deputy press secretary for a Governor of New Jersey and the chief content officer for a nonprofit that put downsized, college-educated professionals back into the workplace during the Great Recession of 2008.