Why LinkedIn automation?
LinkedIn and other social platforms have become more relevant as the preferred channels for young professionals to connect and network, whilst traditional sales prospecting channels like outbound emails and calls become less effective.
For example, with cold email cadences, you’ll send out 1000 emails to incur a 15% open rate with a 2% reply rate, of which more than half are ‘unsubscribes’. Cold emailing might have been effective in the past, but that’s definitely not the case today. Cold email is outdated, and you should look beyond spammy, cold sales tactics.
As cold outreach becomes less effective, many sales teams are turning their attention to social selling on LinkedIn and other social platforms as a warmer approach that offers more flexibility and functionality like visiting profiles and sending messages and invites to connect. Plus, you get to engage prospects where their attention is, which opens more sales opportunities.
A rule of thumb is to automate repetitive, mundane tasks that distract you from focusing on what’s important like having real conversations with prospects. Don’t automate conversations between you and the prospect. At the core, sales is about relationship building through meaningful interactions. Relationships are not something you can or should ever automate.
That said, here are four reasons why LinkedIn automation is worth considering:
- As part of the sales process, LinkedIn automation frees up your time to focus on initiating conversations and relationship-building interactions.
- Manually visiting profiles, sending connect requests, and following up with messages are easy tasks when you have 2–3 leads. But when you get to 10+ leads, it starts getting more difficult to manage and stay organized. You need a well-structured approach to sell, and LinkedIn automation makes the process seamlessly organized.
- Automation builds your network while content builds brand awareness and loyalty. So with the right automation tool, you can build relationships and expand your network in the right way — through content. On LinkedIn, that may come in many different forms such as posts, comments, direct messages, your profile page, headlines, profile summaries, etc.
- LinkedIn is networking in the digital age; it’s where business professionals hang out. Stay ahead of the times by engaging your market where they prefer to network.
Many people believe LinkedIn automation is spammy and ineffective. The key to using LinkedIn automation is to be genuine and honest, and not engaging in activities that you wouldn’t want to be done unto you.
Build your network of leads, followers, and brand ambassadors
Profile visits, sending invites and follow-up messages and other related activities have taken social engagement to a whole new level. Since LinkedIn automation tools offer personalization and allow you to sequence and automate repetitive engagements, you’ll have more time to do the things that matter most in sales: relationship building. In other words, more time creating meaningful content that not only builds your brand presence but also stay relevant with your network. This will help generate leads to grow your business.
Give value to your network at scale
Automation reduces the time you spend doing mundane social activities that sales bots can and should handle. This creates enough time to deliver more relevant content to your network and provide cohesive experiences.
Network effects are one of the four defensibilities that create the most value for business owners and sales managers in the digital world. Google, Facebook, and Apple are some of the large companies that use this defense mechanism to ensure their products/services keep selling once the usage has reached a certain level.
Now, the question is, how do network effects work on LinkedIn? It’s simple: When your network engages with your content, their LinkedIn networks will also see that they’ve engaged with that content. This serves as social proof and makes your offering more valuable for others.
LinkedIn automation, the right way
There is a right way of automating LinkedIn and social selling. Applying spammy email tactics to the social selling channels is the worst way to engage potential customers and incredibly damaging not only to your reputation but to the brand as well.
Social selling is about connecting and building relationships with other LinkedIn users through content. LinkedIn automation should only be used to help you connect with those leads, not to spam them with automated follow-up messages in the form of a sales pitch. Social selling and LinkedIn automation are not about pitching, but about relationship building.
Why Linkedin specifically?
LinkedIn is a thriving social network filled with regular users — over 500 million of them, to be exact. And it’s home to more than 9 million business profiles from over 200 countries.
LinkedIn is also the best social network platform to help sales teams connect with prospects, other professionals, and businesses to expand your professional social network and help you engage directly with potential customers.
But numbers are just that: numbers.
It’s the quality of LinkedIn users that is truly impressive. You might also be surprised by how well users engage with the platform itself.
75 percent of all registered LinkedIn users have incomes over $50,000, and 44 percent have incomes over $75,000.
Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are on LinkedIn, and a recent survey of business executives found that 76 percent of them check their LinkedIn accounts on a daily basis.
(Source: Neilpatel.com)
When you market on LinkedIn, you’re not just hitting a generalized demographic of individuals in certain geographic locations with certain professed interests like everywhere else.
On LinkedIn, you’re able to target your audience on a much deeper level — including geographic location, current company, past company, industry, profile language, non-profit interests, and school.
This is why LinkedIn is the perfect option for highly targeted communication efforts to a very specific “micro” demographic with better opportunities for high conversion rates.
What’s the key to getting set up?
Before you invest any time and energy into this strategy please read this: across all of our clients we’ve found the key to success with this strategy is that you must have a well-defined niche and positioning.
A niche is a specific market you serve. A well-defined niche would be “Heads of Marketing Operations at post series A startups” or “CEOs of digital marketing agencies with 5 – 50 employees”. A more poorly defined niche would be “IT departments” or “banks”.
Positioning refers to the place your company and product have in the mind of your niche. The core element of positioning is what result you drive for the customer. The more specific you can be around the results the better.
For example, “we help real estate brokers save $2,000 per agent a year” is strong positioning while, “we help real estate brokers save money” is weaker, and “we help real estate brokers ensure quality service and customer satisfaction” is even weaker.
The clearer your niche and your positioning the greater your results will be when you use this strategy.
A well-niched company with crisp positioning = great results A somewhat niche company with a few specialties or use cases served but has not fully committed = good results
A generalist company that does not have a niche or has vague positioning = poor to no results This has proven to be true time and time again and is a good general lesson on how to market your business.
What you get for a monthly fee
- You get your first and second messages written for you.
- You get up to 1200 invitations per month (This will save you $4-5k per month you’d spend on an SDR).
- You get second messages sent to your new connections within 20 minutes – this will yield you approximately 10-20 leads per month.
- Once a lead comes in, you will be notified via LinkedIn.
- You will get more demos booked.
- You get a monthly strategy call ($500 value).
- You get access to premium support – we hold your hand every step of the way as you are getting set up.
- If you have a well-defined niche and positioning and you use this strategy properly, you cannot fail.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many clients a month will I get?
Out of approximately 1200 invitations per month, you should be able to generate anywhere from 1-4 qualified leads per month if you follow up properly.
Out of these leads, you should be able to bring in at least 1 new client a month from this initiative. We’ve had clients bring on 3-5 clients a month using this strategically so you can do that if you take this really seriously.
Can I link this to my CRM system?
Yes, we can connect this strategy to your existing Customer Relationship Manager system.
This means that whether you’re using Hubspot, Pipedrive, or any other leading CRM tool, we’ll set up the campaign in such a way that all leads are funneled directly into your CRM system after being qualified by certain criteria, which you’ll help us define.
Can I send my leads links to white papers or other assets in the second message?
Yes, absolutely. We work with you to craft your second message. We highly recommend that you send along with a whitepaper or other assets that build credibility.
This will significantly increase your conversion rate.
So you guys send the first invitation and follow up messages, but I still have to do the qualification?
Yes, we do generate leads for you, however, you will still have to do some follow up with them and you have to qualify them. But remember, this can be even easier if you work with us to set up Drift or Intercom chatbots to automate the qualification process, and if we connect this system to your existing CRM.
What happens if you message current clients?
If we message current clients don’t worry, it’s not a big deal. Simply send your client a message that looks something like this:
“Hey {name} I apologize for this message, obviously we know each other, I’m running a few cold marketing initiatives and we’re still working out the kinks, I hope you are well.”
Should I wait to get my LinkedIn profile sorted before I start?
No, no need to wait.
Chances are your current LinkedIn profile will get you decent results as it stands. As you’re doing more and more prospecting, you can update your LinkedIn profile using the template we gave you and watch for an increase in conversion rates. However, you don’t need your LinkedIn profile to be perfect to get results.
Can I send them to a webinar with a follow-up message?
Yes, absolutely!
Instead of a call, you can send them to a webinar. Your prospects will appreciate it.
Do you have disclosures? Are you guys going to hack my LinkedIn account?
Yes, we include disclosure and no, we are not going to hack your LinkedIn account. One hack can seriously damage our reputation so we take data breaches extremely seriously. Trust us, there is no funny business going on.
Is this spam?
No this is not spam. Think of LinkedIn prospecting just like any other traffic source. As long as you have a well-defined niche and crisp positioning and you target the right audience your network will appreciate your personal outreach.
We’re the experts at this. We know how to leverage this channel without spamming your market.
Will this work if I’m in a small niche?
Yes, this will work extremely well since the chance of your competitor using this strategy are very slim. You might experience lower volume because there are fewer people, but the quality will be higher.
We look forward to working alongside you.