If you are looking for assistance with your LinkedIn marketing and are considering the Cleverly LinkedIn Lead Generation Agency, then this post is for you.
Before investing your hard-earned marketing dollars into any service, it is essential to read real reviews and testimonials about that service.
In this case, LinkedIn lead generation and automation is a hot market right now.
This post will review the widely advertised Cleverly LinkedIn Lead Generation Agency.
What Is LinkedIn Lead Generation?
LinkedIn is the #1 social platform for businesses.
Did you know that 4 out of 5 new B2B leads come from LinkedIn?
With over 600 million users on the LinkedIn platform, it is the best place for business networking.
LinkedIn's core features, like direct messages and targeted search, make the process of sales at scale seem overwhelming.
In the last few years, a new industry of "LinkedIn lead generation" tools have cropped up to capitalize on the opportunity on LinkedIn.
Who Should Use LinkedIn For Lead Generation?
It would be safe to say that if your business sells to other companies (B2B), you need to be doing prospecting and lead generation on LinkedIn.
While other platforms like Facebook and Instagram make more sense for Direct To Consumer (or B2C) brands and products, the #1 platform for businesses that sell to other companies is LinkedIn.
LinkedIn makes it easy to narrow down your search to find your ideal buyer, usually a decision-maker in the company at the VP or C-level.
Because LinkedIn has almost become a necessity for business professionals, LinkedIn search makes it easy to target these people using search filters like company size, location, and in some cases, business tools.
Connection Requests
The first step in finding your next customer on LinkedIn is sending them a connection request.
A Connection Request on LinkedIn is akin to asking that person to be your friend on Facebook or following them on Twitter or Instagram.
A successful connection request adds that person to your LinkedIn network and gives you access to more details like their email once added to your network as a 1st level connection.
LinkedIn Message Follow-up
Once your connection request is approved, you must then craft a message sequence in LinkedIn direct messages to convince the new connection to take the next step in your funnel, usually scheduling a sales presentation or product demonstration call.
The most critical part of using LinkedIn messages for lead generation is coming up with a compelling message that talks about your prospect's benefits.
Most marketers using LinkedIn get this wrong and end up boasting about THEIR OWN success, features, and products or services.
When doing sales prospecting, especially on LinkedIn, the golden rule is that the person doesn't care about you, they only care about what you can do for THEM.
LinkedIn Lead Generation Automation
The process of manually searching and reaching out to your prospects is time-consuming.
This process is termed "social selling" and includes a mix of content creation, liking, sharing, commenting on comments, and sending connection requests.
As we mentioned, there are many tools like Chrome Extensions, scraping platforms, and complete SaaS solutions that automate many of the manual processes of LinkedIn lead generation.
This review will look at a SaaS-based platform that is one of the most advertised "lead generation" platforms for LinkedIn called Cleverly.co.
Cleverly.co Review
Cleverly.co has billed itself as "The #1 LinkedIn Lead Generation Agency" on its website.
The first step in using Cleverly is going through an onboarding form.
Then you will need to schedule a call with an Onboarding rep to begin using the software.
Once you get access to the platform, you will need to perform a search for prospects and launch an automated connection request campaign.
Cleverly Core Functions
Cleverly gives you the ability to search LinkedIn for potential prospects by industry, company size, and job titles.
These are the same functions that can be used in free or paid LinkedIn accounts.
What Cleverly does is pull in these basic functions into a single dashboard and provides automation for the connection request and follow-up messages.
There is no intuitive automation other than if a prospect replies to your message, then the follow-up sequence stops, and you receive an email.
Other LinkedIn platforms like Clickedin.io use complex artificial intelligence to respond to replies and business intelligence to find your ideal prospects.
Cleverly Pricing
The core lead generation services provided by Cleverly break down like this:
Silver ($297 per month)
200-300 prospects per month
Gold ($397 per month)
500-600 prospects per month
Platinum ($497 per month)
800-900 prospects per month
Cleverly also offers secondary services like:
Profile Optimization ($499 one-time)
Done-for-you LinkedIn Candidate Recruiting ($297 per month)
LinkedIn Job Seeking ($297 per month)
Cleverly's platform can also be "white-labeled" and sold as your own service by adding your logo and branding by paying an extra monthly fee.
White-label God ($397 per month)
White-label Platinum ($497 per month)
Cleverly Online Reviews
Online reviews are a hotly-contested subject.
Online review sites are filled with suspect reviews from Fiverr freelancers from other countries who have never used said service.
With this in mind, Cleverly's reviews should be taken with a grain of salt at best.
A Trustpilot reviewer had this to say regarding Cleverly reviews:
manual | cleverly.co reviewer
Beware of "fake" Cleverly Reviews
I am a real user working at "A Real Company" who paid for 4 months of Cleverlys LinkedIn lead generation service. What you read now is not a Fake Review.
In four months of paying $297 per month, we got *ZERO* (0) Leads. Again...ZERO...NOT ONE LEAD.
I would highly suggest that anyone reading reviews of "Cleverly's" incredible successful customer campaign results do a little research and digging into **the company leaving the review**. Are they a (One Man Show) or a legit business with at least 15-50 employees. Can you find that company on a google search, and can you call them and someone picks up the phone?
Pay Very Close Attention to the Tone of A Review, and it's claims. Track the person leaving a review on google. Call that company. Find them on LinkedIn. Find That Reviewer on LinkedIn..send them a message. Let's get Real about reviews and see the proof yourself.
Another Cleverly user on Trustpilot had this to say:
cunmaui808 | Cleverly.co reddit reviewer
Cleverly.co Approval Rate Review
The CR acceptance & dialogue-conversion rate in my Cleverly campaign was zero-ish, which was about 20% lower than what I had been doing on my own.
They launched a campaign without getting my approval on critical details. To their credit, they did extend my trial period for doing so.
Too many CR's were being sent to people who were definitely NOT my target Decision Makers. I was wkg with Cleverly's cxo, but apparently, there is no way to easily "scrub" the contact list they create prior to the campaign's launch in an efficient manner....meaning, they suggest you plow through profile after profile....2000 or so of them. I'm used to rapidly scrubbing 2000 lines on spreadsheet-style system in about 30 mins before I launch a campaign, so not being able to clean up the contact list was major deal-breaker for me.
When searching for positive reviews about Cleverly, you might come across this one from Reddit:
frankm095 | cleverly.co "reviewer" on reddit
Seemingly Positive Review of Cleverly.co
Hey guys, I mean to be honest me and my co-founder have been with Cleverly for about 5 months now and closed est. 30k worth of revenue off about 1.5k invested so far.
Been working amazing for me, but I guess it only works if you have a good product or service.
You can check out their client reviews on Trustpilot.com
Hope this helped if anything.
While this review sounds promising, an astute commenter replies about this "positive" review:
speakers7 | Writer
Calling out fake reviews about Cleverly.co
"This guy joined 6 days ago, 2 posts, and their only posts about Cleverly..."
Cleverly Pros and Cons
The good and bad with Cleverly.co
Pros
Cons
Cleverly.co Verdict
Cleverly provides a very basic LinkedIn messaging platform for a high price.
Several commenters have mentioned that their search function pulled prospects that were not in their target market, so it does not include any advanced business intelligence logic in its search algorithm.
For their most expensive lead generation package, "Platinum," at $497 per month, you can only run one active campaign at a time.
This limits your LinkedIn lead generation even further.
Cleverly has a good proposition to put your LinkedIn lead generation on autopilot with a "done-for-you" service, but fails to deliver on the features you'd expect at such a high monthly cost.