As freelancers or business owners, we all know or have used Linkedin. But have we really maximized Linkedin’s marketing potential?
Curious to answer this question, I interviewed Todd, a Pro seller and Linkedin marketing specialist known under his username toddsquad on Fiverr. By the end of this interview, you’ll understand how much of Linkedin’s marketing powers you’re overlooking and how to best use this power to your advantage.
1. Welcome Todd and thank you very much for accepting this interview. For those who don’t know you, can you give us a little background about yourself and what you offer on Fiverr?
Thanks for inviting me, it’s my pleasure. My background is in engineering and contracts management working for global corporations in chemical manufacturing and military contractors. I’ve traveled extensively throughout the US and to Taiwan, China, and Thailand. I had some incredible experiences, but the travel wore on me.
I decided it was time for a change and to pursue my own business so I ventured on my own into web design and marketing about 10 years ago. I started out helping small businesses by developing their website and managing their online marketing campaigns.
Several years ago I built a guitar and music blog and then sold it. It was a great experience, I had a chance to interview some amazing musicians and legendary guitar manufacturers. I’ve also published a guidebook and video course entitled Complete LinkedIn Ads for 2018 and Beyond – How to Setup Your Ad Campaigns for Success.
Early on it was all about Adwords and SEO. Facebook then came into the picture and then the other social platforms. Of course LinkedIn was not what it is today but it resonated with me back then because of its’ focus on B2B. So now I use it as one of the tools to help my clients build and market their brand, prospect for new business, and generate leads.
So that’s my business – B2B prospecting and lead generation to help companies fill their pipeline and drive revenue grow. I’m also partner in a startup called Grip Revenue. We’re after solving social media ROI – one of the the biggest challenges for business in the social space is understanding and measuring the ROI (return on investment) form their social media marketing efforts. We’ve have some exciting things going on and it’s something I’m passionate about.
Here on Fiverr, I provide comprehensive LinkedIn marketing services. From profile revamps and company page creation to prospecting and lead generation strategies to LinkedIn ad campaign creation and management.
2. I think many marketers are reluctant to go on LinkedIn because they might not fully understand how to utilize it and the opportunities it presents. How can business owners know whether LinkedIn is a good option or not for their businesses?
You can get a good feel for that if you can find your target audience on LinkedIn. Use the search function in Linkedin to see how large your potential audience is, then you know there is opportunity.
Also take a look at your competitors – do they have a strong brand presence? Does their company page have a lot of followers? What are they posting for content and how active are they? Is there a lot of interaction with their content?
So if your competition is not doing much then you’ve have an opportunity to be a first-mover and lead the pack. If your competition is on their game, learn what you can from them, put your plan together and start working it.
3. As within any social network I’m sure that it’s very important how your profile is build. What are your best suggestions to optimize a profile to boost connections?
LinkedIn has a powerful search function, so take advantage of it. Your profile represents you and your brand. So if it’s half-baked, what does that say about your company. You wouldn’t want your company website to have a no image, empty spaces etc, would you?
Here are my top suggestions to optimize your profile:
- Your Headline and Summary section are the most important parts of your profile. Utilize all of the space that LinkedIn allocates – 120 characters for your headline, 2000 characters for your summary.
- Make your summary client facing – talk about the business value you and your company provides first, then a bit about your company, services, features.
- If you’re in business development use a compelling call to action in your summary, what would you like people to do next – connect, call, visit website? Give them a compelling reason.
- Complete as many sections on your profile as you can – including honors, awards, publications, and skills.
- Use a high quality profile photo of yourself – head & shoulders with a smile – people are more likely to interact if you appear friendly.
Use language that resonates with target audience, whether that’s potential prospects, business partners, recruiters or hiring managers.
Completing your profile will only get your profile so far in terms of being found on LinkedIn. The second component is the number of connections. If you haven’t already, add your email contacts to LinkedIn to grow your network. If you’re not sure how, just do a search.
Next up: Define your target audience and start building connections. Take advantage of the free trial that LinkedIn offers and use Sales Navigator to build your save your search list.
Then write a brief personal message asking to connect and do it consistently. Give it a couple days then use the LinkedIn mobile app and build connections via the app as well in your spare time. Do this routinely and your boost your connection fast.
You’ll see suggested connections and just hit the connect button. In general, currently people are receptive to connecting without personal message if your profile is legit.
The goal here is to build your connection base with your target market and others as well. The more connections you have the more profile views you will get.
4. LinkedIn groups seem to be the best option for companies to market their products or services. Do you have any good tip to help entrepreneurs to effectively infiltrate a LinkedIn group?
I would not say that groups are the best option but they can be effective. One of the most important things is having a plan. Let’s say you find a group whose members make sense as prospects, what value can you offer consistently to the group?
Take a look at the discussions – can you position yourself as an authority or a trusted resource?
Start by consistently contributing to the group and when the time is right ask to take the conversation outside the group. Commit to working your plan consistently and evaluate the results after a set period of time.
Staying within LinkedIn groups, what are the basic guidelines to create a popular group?
The key to creating a popular group is to have active members around content discussion topics they are passionate about. In order to create successful group – it will take a work on your part.
Creating a successful group is not easy, so you’ll need to evaluate the potential benefit and if you can commit the time to growing it. Once you decide on the group mission, ask your connections that will be invited to the group for feedback to gauge their level of interest.
Regarding posts and articles. Do you have any good publishing tip to give our readers?
411 – 4 articles/posts that are not about your company, products, or services for every 1 soft-sell article/post or 1 hard sell post. This is the mix of content I recommend.
So think business value. Share industry article that offer insight from other sources.
In your company page feed, share company specific updates: inside the company views – how we work, behind the curtain stuff, your approach, defining meaningful work … for starters.
Test different types of posts to gauge interaction with your audience. Try a short video that offer a valuable tip or resource.
7. What is your approach in creating an ad campaign and what best practices do you suggest?
Since Microsoft bought LinkedIn last year, they really stepped up their game in terms of the ad platform. Running an ad campaign can be effective if your customer value is high as the ad costs are high compared to other platform. The trade-off for the that is audience targeting is well-defined.
They’re are a number of ad channels to consider including.
- Text ads
- Sponsored content ads
- Lead Gen ads
- InMail ads
- Video ads
- Dynamic ads
For starters, I typically suggest text ads because they are they are the lowest cost ad channel and will give a chance to evaluate interest and landing page conversion. You’ll need to make sure your ad copy is congruent with your landing page Be willing to test with different ad variants and landing pages.
If you don’t want to use a landing page but have a strong offer (download, demo, free trial) that speaks directly to your target market, then Lead Gen ads can be effective.
Lead Gen Ads do not direct users to a landing page but keep the user on LinkedIn giving them direct access to your offer in 2 clicks without manually entering their information. In exchange for accessing your offer, their contact information is pulled form their profile and sent to you in a csv file to follow up with them. If have a compelling case study or customer success case, these can be very effective. Opt for quantitative over qualitative. If you can demonstrate how you helped another client in hard numbers, that’s the way to go. If not, you’ll have to be a bit more creative to make it compelling.
The other ad channels may be fit for your business but take the time to thoroughly research and decide which make sense for your industry and audience.
As far as ad spend budget, start with the minimum daily budget and select a bid to ensure that your ads are served. After a day or two, if your campaign is getting a decent CTR (click through rate), >.35% then you can pull back bid to see if helps in lower cost while still getting clicks.
There’s a lot to consider before running LinkedIn ads. Having a well-defined target market aligned with strong offer are key elements giving your campaigns the best chance to succeed.
Conclusion
From building a comprehensive profile, creating or managing groups, posting articles or running advertising campaigns, I’m sure you all now have a better understanding of how powerful and essential Linkedin can be in boosting your online marketing strategy and activities.
Have anything to add? Tried a successful strategy you’d like to share? If so, please feel free to post your comments or insights below.
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