How to Transform Business Development with Automation and LinkedIn

A modern approach to business development for industrial companies. 

For many manufacturing, engineering, and industrial businesses, business development strategies still rely heavily on familiar tactics: trade shows, cold calling, email outreach, and referrals. These tactics have been the foundation of sales pipelines for years for good reason: they offer opportunities to build relationships and gain visibility within the market.

Today, buyers behave differently. They collaborate as members of high-performing teams, self-educate themselves about important topics online, and often hold back on engaging directly with product or service vendors until they have conducted extensive research of their own. In today’s world, traditional BD methods often struggle to deliver consistent, needle-moving results. 

To meet the needs of modern buyers and create a more reliable, forecastable pipeline of sales opportunities, companies must look beyond traditional, reactive tactics and explore more proactive, scalable BD and marketing strategies. That’s where LinkedIn and automated marketing techniques come in.

Why traditional business development is no longer enough on its own. 

It’s getting harder for companies to build meaningful, fruitful long-term relationships using methods that rely on timing and chance. With strong preparation, trade shows offer a valuable boost in exposure of your company to your core target market, yet their impact often fades quickly once the event ends. Similarly, cold calls and generic emails are almost always ignored. Referrals are a more powerful BD tool, but are inherently unpredictable as a revenue growth engine. 

What is missing from each of these traditional BD methods? Consistency and value.  Potential buyers expect vendors to offer them genuine education and value before they commit to a sales conversation. They want to see a vendor’s expertise in action, not just hear about it in a pitch. Without a consistent, credible online presence that educates audiences, many businesses are missing out on sales opportunities before they even begin. 

LinkedIn and the importance of an always-on platform for relationship building. 

LinkedIn has become the single most effective digital platform for B2B lead generation and business development. If done right, It offers more than just professional networking; it offers companies a reliable platform on which they can remain visible to key decision-makers and buyers in their market, year-round. 

Unlike events and trade shows, where visibility of your company, products and services is time-limited to just a few short days, LinkedIn allows your company to continuously show up in front of a fertile, target audience through the publication of relevant, engaging, educational content. Used well, LinkedIn becomes an extension of your sales and marketing team. So, what makes the platform so effective?

• Precise targeting. Paid LinkedIn campaigns allow you to customise the decision-makers in front of whom your content appears. Filters available include job title, industry, experience level, and geography. 

• Credibility through content. Technical experts and other industry senior leaders can engage with or otherwise endorse your company
• Warm introductions over cold outreach. By consistently appearing in your audiences' LinkedIn feeds through value-led content and meaningful engagement, your company becomes familiar to your target audience. This familiarity makes direct outreach feel more relevant and welcome, increasing the likelihood of a positive response when your sales team does reach out.

The role of automation in modern business development.

Marketing automation doesn’t replace your business development efforts, it enhances them. Automation takes care of the repetitive tasks that often slow down sales teams and ensures leads are nurtured consistently, even when your team’s energy is focused elsewhere - like the trade show floor, for example. Here’s how automation supports growth:

• Lead nurturing. Automated email sequences deliver relevant content to prospects based on their interests and behaviours. This is true whether they downloaded your product guide, clicked your LinkedIn ad, or visited your website.

• Retargeting. Prospects who have engaged with your content can be retargeted with follow-up ads and messages to keep your company and brand front of mind.

• CRM integration. With the right workflows in place, leads are captured, qualified, and passed to sales at the right time. This reduces manual admin and increases conversion opportunities.

The real benefit is scale. Automation helps ensure that no prospect is missed or forgotten, and that every interested party is able to access the value they need from your company until they’re ready to talk buying. 

A new playbook for industrial business development. 

Industrial companies do not need to abandon traditional BD altogether. However, they do need to evolve it and ensure it no longer remains their only tool. The most effective modern business development strategies combine human relationships with digital tools that make the process more efficient and consistent. A modern BD strategy broadly follows this structure:

• Attract. Content and paid campaigns on LinkedIn help you stay visible and relevant to decision-makers in your industry.

• Capture. Forms, landing pages, and gated resources allow you to build a database of warm leads who have shown genuine interest in your company.

• Nurture. Email automation is essential to educate, engage, and guide leads toward a buying decision at their own pace.

• Convert. With sales involved at the right stage, prospects enter conversations informed and ready to move forward.

This approach is about building long-term relationships, not just chasing quick wins.

Bringing it all together. 

Traditional BD methods remain important - but they can no longer be the only tools in the shed. Combine them with automation and LinkedIn to drive serious value. By combining the visibility and targeting power of LinkedIn with the consistency of automation, companies can build a proactive system that enables revenue growth and new business. Built correctly, you will benefit from a system that brings in better leads, supports your sales team, and strengthens your market position over time.

Ready to modernise your approach?

At Forge, we work with industrial firms to build LinkedIn and automation strategies that support real, measurable growth. If you’re looking to modernise your business development efforts and reduce your reliance on trade shows alone, we’re here to help.