Are you winning new business on LinkedIn?
The platform has evolved a lot over the last few years. If you want to win business on LinkedIn, you need to do more than sling up a weekly post about your office dog, or worse still, your boring services.
It may seem counter-productive ‘NOT’ to talk about what you offer on a B2B platform. The truth is, that LinkedIn is not a sales platform primarily. Sure, people try to use it as one, with their automated copy-and-paste DMs that often go wrong and call people either ‘Dear’ or ‘Sue’ when their name is actually Kevin. But first and foremost, LinkedIn is an awareness and education platform, that if used correctly, becomes a hugely powerful sales tool.
#1 Optimise your LinkedIn Profile
To win business on LinkedIn, first Imagine opening a new shop on the high street. Then leaving it completely empty. No window dressing, no branding, no stock and no staff.
Now imagine what would happen if you ran a whole bunch of online ads, driving people to your empty, lifeless shop. No stock, staff, no soul. What do you think the outcome’s going to be?
Now imagine your LinkedIn profile is that new shop, and your LinkedIn content strategy is to drive people there (which if it isn’t you are doing something wrong). Ask yourself the question…
“Is my shop going to convert the people that land on it? Or are they going to bounce straight off because I haven’t dressed it correctly, rendering my content useless?”
Before you do anything else on your LinkedIn account, make sure your profile is set up for success. It should represent your very own, high-converting landing page.
#2 Finding the right LinkedIn Audience.
If you want to win business on LinkedIn, first you need to identify and connect with the right people from the almost 1 billion active accounts. Yes, that’s a hell of a lot of opportunity to connect and engage.
By default, your LinkedIn feed will be based on the few people you currently have in your connections list. If like most people you have only ever used LinkedIn to find a job, however, then that is probably full of recruiters, your mates, and depending on your age… Your mum.
To ensure you’re being seen by the right people when you do eventually start creating content for LinkedIn, you must utilise the tools LinkedIn gives you. These tools will help you find the people who make up your target audience. Then shock and horror, you can connect with them. You must do this before you start posting and showing up in the feeds of completely the wrong people.
#3 Engage with your LinkedIn audience
Imagine walking into the world’s largest networking event or trade show as a complete nobody. Would you expect everyone to form an orderly line to shake your hand and listen you your elevator pitch?
Not going to happen, is it?
Now imagine that your LinkedIn feed, which you’ve carefully curated after following point 2, is that same networking event, but online. Posting a load of jargon about your services, no matter how well-written, is going to fall on deaf ears for one simple reason…
No one cares.
If you are coming at this cold having never embarked on a proper LinkedIn strategy, you have to face the reality that you are invisible. A nobody. An irrelevant spec in a feed full of established creators.
To lift yourself from this dark and lonely place, first, you need to shine a light on the value you bring. Not with your content, but in the form of thought-provoking and sometimes challenging responses to the posts from your network. Over time, a well-structured comment strategy can be every bit as powerful as content in your quest to be noticed.
Support others, and in return, you WILL BE supported.
#4 Create value-led content
To win business on LinkedIn, you must integrate a value-led content program into your strategy. Beware though, because a set of stats stolen from your competition or a celebration of a cultural holiday you know nothing about will not cut it here. To make an impact on LinkedIn, you have to connect with humans, not businesses.
First of all, grab yourself a pen and paper and write down your core message. Your elevator pitch. Your reason for being here. Write it at the top as you’ll need plenty of room underneath.
From that top-line company message, create 5 talking points that all tie back to that core message. Just like the image below.
From the 5 talking points, try to create 5 more sub-headings for each, giving you 25 post ideas that all link back to the main, over-arching problem you solve. That’s a month’s worth of content that can be used over and over again and at the core of every single piece, is the one thing people will remember you for.
The idea of this exercise is to stop you from giving away too much information in one post (a very common mistake among newbies). The goal is to give tiny nuggets each time, leaving people wanting more and acting as a continuous lead magnet for your business and its main services.
5 – Don’t be afraid of the DMs
DMs are for spammers and people who can’t be bothered to create content.
Said no successful business owner ever.
To win business on LinkedIn at scale, content alone is not enough. Whilst it can act as an essential element in the overall strategy, adding much-needed authority to you and your brand. It works best when combined with a targeted direct messaging program.
To ensure said DM strategy is not seen as spammy, and that the response rate is high enough to justify the time you or your business development teams are spending, you need to play a clever game before you send the first message.
Using LinkedIn Sales Navigator, build out a series of lists that include the people you’d ideally like to work with. This will in turn add them to your Sales Navigator home feed so that you are notified of their activity.
From this feed, you can add valuable comments to the posts of your target client, subtly putting yourself on their radar and presenting yourself as an authority in your space, or the specific topic discussed. Then, when you eventually send these people a DM, your chances of a response are significantly increased.
Cold and irrelevant all of a sudden becomes warm and memorable. All because you added value to their world.
So now you have all you need.
But if you want to know more about how to win business on LinkedIn, you can work with the Think Unconventionall team below.