Using LinkedIn for free to get Sales

There are many people selling LinkedIn secrets out there, and I know information and education generally earns people a living, knowledge is power they say. But as an entrepreneur who has always used blind faith and given away everything so my readers know as much as me, I believe this is my karma, and will in the long run help me achieve my goals after I have helped enough others achieve theirs.

In the last three months I have been consulting with a company as a Marketing consultant. My main objective was to get appointments with buyers so they can sell their products.

During my 3 months with this company I have helped them gain direct access to over 250 buyers around the world and have arranged appointments that is potentially worth millions of dollars for them for a one digit percentage of what’s it’s cost them so far for my services.

Biz-find success

To say they are happy is an understatement, especially when you take into consideration that they had almost but closed down the company a few months ago and now have taken 5 new people on.

My process is a content marketing and social media marketing strategy with their website at the heart of it all. LinkedIn is a massive part of this activity; since I started we have had genuine sales enquiries which have advanced to phone calls and appointments and samples which are a direct consequence of the marketing.

When I started I was given a very old, and I mean 12 year old database of contacts and their companies, trade shows etc. Now your average person may assume that it was not worth going at, but for me it was gold dust. I emailed everyone just to see who bounced and who didn’t, one way or the other I got a result.

I was able with Social media to see where people had moved to and whether they were still in the industry, my thinking was people move companies all the time, but rarely change careers, quite often they had formed their own businesses and became more valuable than they were before.

Part of my activity was to start a well thought out LinkedIn Profile, with my heading using the best keywords for what they do, and I approached it not as a CV, but more as a mixed pitch, saying what I do at the company and why they are worth working for.

If I was an employer and saw one of my right hand men on LinkedIn with a glowing CV I would wonder why they want to leave so much.

Biz-find LinkedIn marketing

So here are my free tips for LinkedIn:

Adding a friendly business suit image is vitally important, showing head and shoulders, I am not keen on really serious looking people on LinkedIn whom I am very unlikely to approve, nor will I add girls who look like they are on a dating site. Actually I admire people using LinkedIn for dating as at least it shows acumen for target marketing.

Adding a Slide share power point presentation to your profile and or a YouTube Video is really powerful to keep people on your profile and to highlight your benefits and U.S.P.’s.

LinkedIn as from summer 2015 added a cover photo option for users which is a really great way to let people know what you do, and here I cannot stress enough how pictures are more powerful than words, if you have any really clear image of the benefits of what your company offers, then add it.

Think Surfboards; does anyone who sells surfboards merely show an image of the board? Or do they show the freedom of a surfer on the ocean!

Biz-find marketing tips

Finding contacts:

Next step; I use their contacts services to start off getting people to add me as a contact, the; ‘Add by individual email’ service is particularly useful as you can add a long list of your emails in comma deliminated form from say; your database, and LinkedIn sends them an invite via their server.

Then I join groups by searching all the keywords and then looking which groups have a decent number of members then join, you can join about 50 groups, use peripheral market keywords as well. If you have no contacts the admins of groups get a warning to beware of people with no contacts.

To begin with; write some great useful content and add it to your site /blog and share it to LinkedIn and all the groups you are in.

There is a plug in with Word Press I have been using for many years, which allows me to share my blog to over 100 million people on all the top social media sites and drive targeted traffic to my sites called; Add this.

Once you have a few contacts you can start to add a few people each day through the groups, you don’t need their email once you are in a group, but remember LinkedIn has a limit on your contacting, and you may get time banned if you go too quickly, adding around ten a day works for me.

One trick I have found useful is; If you can’t invite the contact because you are time banned or they are not in your groups; Google them in a new tab and you may see their name on LinkedIn in the search results, then you can often invite them to be your contact that way.

Make sure you add your company page, your product presentation page, write blogs on LinkedIn’s posts page, and start your own group; I did not say all this activity would take a week now did I?

It’s quite exciting when you start to get targeted people approving you and this means you have a direct line to them. This is where you can either turn them off or on, with the next step which is where most fail:

The first contact:

The majority of people will write their intro email to thank their new connection for adding them, and then tell their potential client what they do with their scripted emails they just copied and pasted. Smart marketers know this old method is doomed, I call it back foot selling, so we use a completely different tact.

First off; make sure to endorse your new contact for their skills. You want their contact right? So you must admire what they do! If you have worked with them before; offer a recommendation (testimonial) as LinkedIn calls it.

Think about a way to help them with a connection or two to someone whom you think could benefit from their services. Offer a link to their website from yours or about a great trade show where you found business, just as a random act of kindness.

Biz-find tips and advice

We call it reciprocal marketing, give and people will give back, you get trust first and then people are more likely to work with you later.

How about a recommendation to a group where you have found success and that maybe they could find a client or two there also, or how about telling them about a client you have just sold to who could use their products to compliment yours.

If you can’t rattle you grey matter around enough to help someone in the first instance, then your first intro email must be purely a thank you and nothing more, make a note to get back in touch with them through the LinkedIn free C.R.M. system at a later date when you can think of a way to endear yourself to them.

So within three months I have found over 250 targeted people who are worth millions of USD with this method, compare that with the old fashioned way of paying thousands of dollars for trade shows, company cars and reps and the traditional ways people like me had to start in the 80’s and 90’s by banging on doors and cold calling

We are Netmedia UK Government registered start up mentors and Fellows of the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management (ISMM) who have been creating websites and training companies to engage in an effective content management strategy and using digital marketing to win over new clients and increase sales since 2009.

Contact Netmedia to see how we can help your business find new clients.

Add me on LinkedIn 8000 contacts can’t all be mad!

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