Start Generating Leads and Sales on LinkedIn Today

 Social Media Marketing for SMEs

 

Think for one minute about the niche market that you serve. Now imagine that you’re better connected in that market than just about anyone else. Now go one step further and imagine that you’re better at sparking conversations with those connections than just about anyone else. What might the impact be on your business?

The strategy I’m going to share with you here can easily add hundreds of targeted new candidate or client prospects to your network each month. It can consistently secure you sales meetings, calls, candidate enquiries or proposal requests from your ideal target market.

The reason I say this with such confidence? Because we’re putting this strategy into practice for clients around the world and see the staggering results that are being generated. There are also lead generation companies charging US $2,500+ per month to implement similar steps for corporate clients. Needless to say, that kind of spend demands consistent and tangible results to be justified. So what are the most important things they are doing?

There are just 4 steps to follow to start getting these kinds of results in your business. In essence, we’re talking about you growing your network of prospects on LinkedIn - in a way that makes you valuable and engaging rather than salesy. Then nurturing these leads so that more and more conversations are sparked. Let’s take a look at these 4 steps in turn.

Step 1 - Ensuring Your LinkedIn Headline Appeals To Your Target Prospects

Success on any social media site is a function of two key variables. Firstly, what’s the Reach of your account - how much of your target audience does your account reach? Secondly, what’s the Conversion Rate that you’re able to achieve with that audience reach? On any social site, show me a business that’s disappointed with the results they are getting from social media and I can guarantee they have a problem either with inadequate reach or with poor conversion rates (and frequently both).

LinkedIn is no different.

So our starting point is that we need our account to reach more of the right people - and one of the most effective ways for that to happen is for your ideal prospects to connect with you.

What I want to stress here is the overriding importance of your LinkedIn headline. This is the 1-2 line description you’re able to write about yourself just under your name on your LinkedIn profile. This is important for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it’s what appears alongside your name and photo in lots of places on LinkedIn. Just look at your LinkedIn homepage feed for a moment and see how many of your contacts’ headlines actually leave you knowing what that person does. I’ll bet lots of them read along the lines of: 

These are all examples of bad headlines. We want to remind people each time they see us on LinkedIn what it is that we do or who it is that we can help. Not in an overly salesy way, but in a way that’s informative or intrigues people to want to find out more. For example, my headline reads: 

I hope you can see the difference here, the key is to think about things from the point of view of your target prospects. Who do you help? What problem does your service help people to overcome? What type of people do you help secure their dream job? These are reasons people would notice you in their feed and want to connect with you.

And that’s the other reason your headline is so important - because it’s what people are presented with when being asked if they’d like to accept your connection request. Take a look at your “Received invitations” page on LinkedIn and you’ll notice the things that people see about you are:

  1. Your Photo
  2. Your Name
  3. Your Headline
  4. Who You Know in Common
  5. Whether or Not You Wrote a Bespoke Connection Request Message

They don’t see the name of your company or your job title - they only see what you put in your headline. Which is why getting that right is an essential first step in building your reach on LinkedIn.

Step 2 - Sending Bespoke Connection Requests That Are Written To Spark Conversations

This second step is key for two reasons. Firstly, LinkedIn’s own data shows that a connection request is more likely to be accepted if it’s accompanied by a bespoke note rather than just the standard LinkedIn message. But the second reason is gold-dust. Imagine if every 100 new connections prompted 10 people to have a conversation with you, enquire about your services, ask for a call, agree to meet… You can see how the simple act of growing your network would then consistently contribute to you generating new leads.

Achieving this is all about writing an initial connection request message that prompts the recipient to interact with you when they connect, ideally in a way that gets you talking about something that would then naturally lead into a conversation about what you would really like to be talking to them about. It’s important not to talk about what your company does or enquire whether they need help with XYZ. That’s too salesy and will make people clam up.

My advice is, don’t pitch what your business does or try to get a phone call scheduled or anything else overtly salesy. Instead, give people a reason it’d be valuable to connect and sow the seeds for a conversation to get started; this prompts lots of people to write back and tell you about the challenges they’ve been facing - or even to ask for a call directly. Getting this messaging right is obviously a key determinant of the number of conversations you’ll subsequently have. So experiment - and monitor the effectiveness of each of your connection messages.

Step 3 - Consistently Connect With Your Target Audience

This part is not rocket science at all. The number of conversations you’ll spark is directly related to the number of new connections you make. So it needs to become a part of your daily routine to find and connect with more of your ideal prospects on LinkedIn - or if you can’t afford the time for this, you need to outsource or delegate this task to someone to action on your behalf.

Note: if you engage us to work on your LinkedIn account, we’ll be undertaking all 4 of these steps on your behalf so time constraints will cease to be an issue. See below for further details.

Step 4 - Nurture Your Leads By Following Up With Valuable Information That Sparks a Conversation

A big mistake I see business people make on LinkedIn (and social media more generally) is to go straight in for the kill. Once your ideal prospect has connected with you (be they a potential hire, client, investor or whatever), you must resist the temptation to dive straight in and tell them about what you do in an attempt to secure a call or meeting. If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of these types of approaches, you’ll know how much of a turn-off they are.

Instead, what I recommend you focus on doing is finding ways you can make your next messages valuable to these people - ideally in a way that sparks a conversation. For example you might:

This list is by no means exhaustive, but the common thread is that you’re starting a conversation with your audience of prospects / candidates in a way that isn’t at all salesy.  You can also close each of these messages with the suggestion that if ever a call would be helpful, you’d be happy to find a time to catch up.

Why Not Let Us Get Compelling Results From LinkedIn On Your Behalf? Only £199 / $299 per month

Some of you reading this will no doubt decide to try and implement these ideas for yourself. That’s terrific, I wish you every success and I hope these steps bring you a whole new level of results from LinkedIn. I have no doubt your results will be transformed if you implement these ideas correctly and consistently.

A great many more of you will probably have had your eyes opened to the impact that this LinkedIn strategy could have in your business - but are left feeling daunted. Daunted by both the prospect of writing effective messages to engage your audience and by the challenges of consistently devoting enough hours of time to these activities each week.

If that’s how you’re feeling, why not engage the Social-Hire team to implement all 4 of these steps on your behalf? Let us be the ones to grow your network, write your copy, nurture your leads and spark those conversations being started. You just handle the resulting interest that’s generated. Simply choose your preferred option from the box below and we’ll usually have your campaign up and running within 1-2 business days. No long term commitments, cancel your monthly subscription at any time.

--> Pay with PayPal: set up your monthly subscription for just $299 per month (£199 + VAT per month for UK customers)

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Next steps: a member of the Social-Hire team will be in touch. We’ll set up your LinkedIn account and agree initial copy to be used in your campaigns to reflect the ideal audience you are targeting and your ultimate goals for this LinkedIn work. You’ll start seeing results within days. Look forward to working with you soon - oh and I forgot to mention that our services are 5-star rated on Google, please do add your own review once we've started generating similar results for you!


 Tony Restell | Founder - Social-Hire.com | @tonyrestell | Connect on LinkedIn