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Why I Love LinkedIn

Introduction

I want to talk about why I love LinkedIn and the social platform, business social platform LinkedIn.

The reason being is that in today’s world we talk about audience reach and how you can best get your message from a marketing point of view or a sales point of view into the hands of your ideal target audience, which is a holy grail for everybody.

If you can get that right message to the right market through the right medium, bingo.

There’s a great saying by Dan Kennedy, something around that market, message, media.

A big advocate of that type of stuff and why I love LinkedIn.

Before I go any further on that one, I want to say that if you go over to our Growth Engine channel on YouTube, I’ve done a free video.

It’s a 15, 20-minute deep dive on how you can implement a LinkedIn lead generation strategy without spending a cent on advertising.

I know there’s a lot of people out there who are offering courses on this subject of the moment.

This is why I wanted to put it out totally free.

I’ve got no issue with the people who are doing this and they may have a different secret source that I have and that’s absolutely fine and if you want to go through their opt-in and sign up for free training and then get pitched at the end, that’s entirely up to you.

You’re more than welcome, and as I say, there are some good people out there doing some good stuff, so all credit to those.

What I’m going to do, there’s no opt-in and I’m going to share within this Growth Engine Pit Stop video what the strategy is.

I’d highly recommend then you jump over to, as I say, if you just go to YouTube and search Mike J Midgley or The Open Mike or Growth Engine, you’ll find our channel on there.

I’m going to cover this in this short overview and then jump over to that video and check that out.

In fact, what we’ll probably do, if you’re watching this on YouTube, we’ll put a link into that video for ease of finding it.

If you’re watching it on social, again, we’ll put a link into the post so you can get both videos.

You can watch this one and you can get the other one.

Here’s why I love LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

I mentioned earlier the older way of doing it, whether you’d impress advertising, email marketing, you’d have a list or you’d go to the market and you…

How many times have teleconferences make a living out of ringing up and saying, “Hey, who would be the best person to speak to about X,” whatever X is, finance, sales, marketing, selling water machines, whatever it is, doesn’t really matter.

Well, if you want to invest in Sales Navigator and I’m not an affiliate for LinkedIn.

I don’t make any money out of it outside of the money we make out of his own business and the revenue.

If you are going to invest in Sales Navigator, we’re on Sales Navigator team version because it links into our HubSpot, CRM system and it’s about 83 pounds a month, so it’s a chunk of change for sure, but the due on LinkedIn Sales Navigator, I think, is about 57 pounds a month or something like that.

Then what I’m going to say to you, and the simple truth is here, for that investment, whether it’s the just shy of 60 pounds a month or just north of 80 pounds a month, for that investment, which is roughly 700 to 1,000 pounds a year, every single one of your B2B customers are there and you can find them.

You just need the right strategy behind it.

This is what I’m going to share.

On Sales Navigator, you’ve got the ability, for example, we run an automotive campaign in our marketing agency at the moment and we targeted the head of businesses, so the head of business, the person who runs the dealership who’s in charge of the overall performance of it.

Our admin team go onto Sales Navigator and the research that we do, we look at the automotive 200, top 200 motor dealers, we go on and pull those lists off and we’ll pick one out that I think everybody will have heard of, Stratstone, which is part of the Pendragon group or JCT600 up here in the north, Perry’s on a more global basis and Evans Halshaw and Sytner Group and people like that.

You know what I’m talking about.

Those types of car dealers, great businesses, who are the top 200 dealers in the UK.

Now, the top one, Sytner Group, over 5.4 billion in revenue and that’s billion in revenue.

I’m not quite sure how many hundreds of dealers we’ve got these days, but ultimately you get that idea.

We can go to LinkedIn, we can put in, okay, give every head of business for every dealership and it’s going to give me a list, which I can save.

Then obviously I’ve got a targeted outreach strategy, so we’re going to give you a quick overview here, then I’ll go more in the deep dive later.

Gone are the days of ringing up and trying to find who’s who.

You can literally search it by company, search it by job title, search it by geographical area, you can tag them for saved search simplicity.

  • I’m not talking about spamming people here.
  • I’m not talking about connecting with people and then pitching them.

That is absolutely disgraceful and anybody who does that with me, I warn you now, you connect with me and then you pitch me straight away, I’m going to disconnect with you and I’m going to tell you why.

That ain’t very polite, let me tell you.

I hate that.

With a targeted campaign, if you’ve got value and you’re respectful of that person’s privacy, we get in a connection rate with this strategy roughly around 60 to 65% and we’re refining that all the time and that’s getting better.

For every 10 people, we actually connect with six to seven people, are actually connecting with us.

You’re getting an idea there that’s a fairly high connection rate.

Here’s the quick overview strategy, but please do jump over to the Deep Dive to watch the deeper training.

As I say, you can go and opt-in for these other people’s funnels, give your email address away, and you can probably learn more than you’re going to learn off me or the Deep Dive Training.

If that’s what you want to do, good luck.

Here are the basics of it, where you could increase your leads, you could increase more targeted engagement, you can get your reach up for your audience, and you can do all that totally free outside of what your LinkedIn Sales Navigator subscription would cost you.

Here it is. We have a 377-day strategy.

It looks something like this.

We go and pick out an audience that we know we can help.

We’ve already done that research.

I gave an example earlier about the heads of business in automotive and we create a list in Sales Navigator and we write specific copy

Automotive, Finance & Leasing Businesses

In my example, I spent over 25 years in the automotive and finance and leasing business, so I put a message out something along the lines of, hey, whatever your name is, I’ve spent over 25 years in the automotive and finance and leasing industry, look, I’m looking to connect with heads of businesses, thought leaders, add them to my professional network.

I’d be appreciative if you joined.

Something like that.

Now, I’ll cover more on the copy in the Deep Dive Training.

Automatically, the person, they know, I’m connecting with, the know, I’m one of those, I’m one of them, I’ve been in that marketplace.

If you’re currently a builder and you wanting to move into brain surgery, that’s probably not going to work.

  • Do what you’re good at.
  • Do what you know is the first big tip.

Once they then connect, that’s what we call day one.

When they connect is day one.

When we send the invitation is day zero, so day one.

Then we send them a thank you message within 24 hours saying, hey, X, we really appreciate you connecting.

Thanks ever so much.

If we could ever help in any way without obligation, please feel free to reach out to me.

In the interim, here’s a free resource that I might find you’re interested in.

We put a free resource that’s linked to a LinkedIn Pulse article, so it keeps them on the platform.

We’re not diverting them out into Facebook or blogs or YouTube.

We keep it on LinkedIn where they’re enjoying their time and we give them a free article that’s related to their business.

13 days later, apologies, we then open a HubSpot.

If you’ve got a CRM, it could be Infusionsoft, it could be Act or SAGE or whatever database you’re using these days or whatever, Pipedrive or whatever it would be.

We update that and then task it for 13 days later.

13 days later we send them another free resource, which is, hey, we recently connected with you and we hope you enjoyed that last resource.

I’ve just recently written this article and I thought you also might find this of interest.

There’s no pitch here.

We don’t sell a dime or anything.

Out of that goes on day 13.

Then at day 34, and for those who are watching this, there’s a link to Fibbonicci secrets here.

If you’re not quite sure of Fibbonicci, just search Fibbonicci, F-I-B-B-O-N-I-C-C-I on Google.

It’s a sequence of extended periods of time, so you’re not just pestering people.

You’re spreading out the time.

We use Fibbonicci secrets here as well.

Then at day 34, we actually send them another free resource, but three days later we actually schedule a call to give them a call.

That call then is something goes along the lines of, hey, X, we’ve recently connected.

I just wondered if I could get some feedback on the resources that we’ve sent you.

Did you find them interesting?

Is there anything we can help you with?

Get that out.

Ultimately what we’re actually saying is, that over a 34-day period, yes, we’ve targeted them as a potential customer.

Nothing wrong with that.

We all do that.

Let’s be clear.

We’ve put significant levels of value in over three separate pieces and then we’ve made a call.

Call Connect Strategy

Our call connect strategy, I appreciate people are busy, especially car dealerships, but we’re getting to speak to around 40% of the people, we think it’s pretty good for that, well, semi-warm, semi-cold outreach.

We’re getting about 40% call to connect and from there the meetings, the interest, the demos, the software demos that we do for dealers, we’re way above industry average, probably about 28%, 30% give or take.

We’re pretty pleased with this out-link strategy.

Now, if for any reason we don’t connect with the prospect at day 34 on message and then day 37 on the call, then that runs down to day 55, day 89, day 150, and then I think it jumps to something like about day 230 and then 280 and then day 377.

Each time we send a message with a valuable free resource that’s related to helping them do their job better, which is totally free.

That’s the summary of it, which looks something like…

Again, you see we do this life.

There you go.

Think about it.

Pick your audience.

Go and connect.

Make reference to your industry.

When they connect and accept your connection, send them a thank you for connecting, offer to help without obligation, and send them a free resource, which is usually a blog article on LinkedIn, which is a LinkedIn Pulse article.

You can then task it in your CRM and manage that through there.

Day 13, day 34 send them more resources, more resources and it’s got to be zero sales pitch, zero sales pitch.

Put your link into your calendar or ask them if you want to set up a call.

You might want to do, say, hey, I’m doing a group webinar if you want to jump on that.

Maybe you’re doing an event at a local hotel or expo, something like that.

Follow that through.

Invite them down.

Shown them up from how value, value, value and then give them a call and you’ll be surprised about how welcoming they are to speak to you.

You’ll get some good feedback on your articles.

The worst case, yeah, I found that very valuable or we’re not happy about that, that’s not relevant anymore.

It’s good marketing intel.

Then obviously see if you can push some business their way as well by making referrals.

If you know somebody who wants a BMW or a Ford or a Renault or a transit van, push them to that dealer principal.

Sure they’re going to pass it down to the sales team, but give them a referral back.

You’ll be surprised about how you’re connections grow and of course, I mentioned right out of the gate here about reach and the more people that go into your LinkedIn connections, when you’re putting your content online and you’re putting that out there, then more of that audience is going to see it.

This is probably somewhere in between a Growth Engine Pit Stop and a Deep Dive Training.

It’s probably going to run about 13 to 14 minutes this one.

Mike Midgley

Mike Midgley is the Strategy Director at 6teen30 Digital and a dynamic digital entrepreneur, nxd, strategist, public speaker and host of TheOpenMike Podcast show & Co-Host at The Inbound Podcast. Mike has achieved successful six and seven-figure exits over a 25-year career, raised in excess of £1.6m [$2.5m] in Venture Capital and highly experienced with franchising.