🎣 LinkedIn lead generation with GPT-4o, Apify scraping, and automated outreach
⚡ 2,645 views · 🎣 Lead Generation & Enrichment
💡 Pro Tip — If you’re pulling LinkedIn data through HTTP requests or dealing with API restrictions, there’s a community node called ScraperNode that handles this natively. It has dedicated scrapers for profiles, companies, jobs, and people search — you just pass a URL and get structured data back.
Description
🚀 LinkedIn Lead-Gen Flywheel – Apify → GPT-4o → Google Sheets → Phantombuster
What this workflow does
- Collect audience specs – simple web-form asks for your ideal company profile.
- Generate a laser-targeted Apollo search URL with GPT-4o (no manual filtering).
- Scrape the matching leads via an Apify actor (returns clean JSON).
- Craft hyper-personalized icebreakers for each lead using GPT-4o (ultra-short, human-sounding).
- Log everything to Google Sheets – name, LinkedIn URL, company site, summary, and the icebreaker.
- (Optional) Auto-launch Phantombuster to fire off those connection requests at scale.
Why it matters
- Zero grunt work: audience research, scraping, copy-writing, and outreach all run hands-free.
- Punchy personalization: micro-icebreakers outperform canned intros, boosting accept rates.
- Scales with you: flip a switch to go from 10 to 1 000+ connections/day.
Node rundown
| Step | Node | Key Inputs | Key Outputs |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Form Trigger | Audience description | description_of_company |
| 2 | OpenAI (GPT-4o) | Audience text | SearchUrl |
| 3 | HTTP Request – Apify | SearchUrl, APIFY_TOKEN | Lead JSON |
| 4 | OpenAI (GPT-4o) | Lead JSON | Icebreaker |
| 5 | Google Sheets | Lead + Icebreaker | Row append/update |
| 6 | Aggregate | Sheet rows | Batched output |
| 7 | HTTP Request – Phantombuster | PHANTOM_KEY, AGENT_ID | Launch status |
Prerequisites
- OpenAI API key (GPT-4o access recommended)
- Apify API token with access to actor id
- Google Service Account creds shared with your target sheet
- Phantombuster API key and Agent ID for your LinkedIn connector
- Active Apollo account to open the generated search URL (only required for debugging)
Setup (5-minute sprint)
- Import the workflow into n8n.
- Add the required credentials in Credentials → OpenAI, Apify, Google Sheets, Phantombuster.
- Paste your Phantombuster Agent ID into the HTTP Request node URL.
- Publish the Form Trigger URL—this is where you (or your SDRs) describe the target audience.
- Hit Execute Workflow once to verify data flows end-to-end.
Customization tips
- Titles & keywords: tweak the prompt in the first GPT-4o node to lock in different roles or industries.
- Icebreaker style: adjust the second GPT-4o prompt to match your brand voice.
- Data columns: map extra fields from Apify into Google Sheets as needed.
- Skip outreach: disable the Phantombuster node if you only want the leads + icebreakers.
🔗 Nodes Used
Google Sheets, HTTP Request, n8n Form Trigger, OpenAI
📥 Import
Download workflow.json and import into n8n:
Workflow menu → Import from File