How To Get Your Dream Clients Coming To YOU On LinkedIn™
“Just how do you generate leads from LinkedIn™ . . .?”
This has to be the million dollar question every business owner who uses LinkedIn for business wants to know. Or certainly the ones I speak to!
To help answer that question, I ran a series of LinkedIn LoveIns on 'The 3 Steps To Getting Your Dream Clients Coming To You On LinkedIn.'
Each LinkedIn LoveIn covered one of the 3 key elements of an effective LinkedIn strategy:
- Profile: a hugely important first step as your profile is your shop front on LinkedIn. It's where you position your expertise and build your credibility
- Prospecting: growing your network with the people you want to meet and connecting intentionally rather than randomly
- Posting: to raise your visibility and attract self-selecting clients to you
Who are you talking to?
‘Know Your Audience’
What underpins each of these three steps is knowing and understanding who your audience is.
- Who is it you are talking to?
- What are their challenges?
- What words would they use to find solutions and how do you help?
LinkedIn is no different to any other marketing activity you undertake, you have to know who it is you are talking to so you can . . .
- Write your profile for your audience
- Find whom you want to connect with on LinkedIn to grow a strong network of the people you want to meet
- Post the right content - aka the content your audience will be interested in
Once you are clear on who your audience is, we can dig into each of the individual steps to getting your dream clients coming to you on LinkedIn.
Step 1: Your LinkedIn™ Profile
The first step is all your LinkedIn profile, as it’s the equivalent of your website, and in fact, your profile works in exactly the same way as a website does.
It helps you get found and noticed both on LinkedIn and Google and it underpins your marketing activity both on and off LinkedIn to help to drive indirect leads.
My advice is that if you do nothing else on LinkedIn, make sure you have optimised your LinkedIn profile, so it creates the right impression of you, your brand, your expertise and your credibility.
Optimise it with the right keywords, aka the words your audience will be using to find solutions to the challenges you solve, by scattering them throughout your profile but in particular the headline and job titles.
Even small changes can have a big impact on your profile!
I talk more about this here: "Update Your LinkedIn Profile & Get Found By Your Dream Clients"
OR for more tips on how to write your LinkedIn Profile and what you really need to be saying, grab a copy of my free ebook "One Hour To A LinkedIn™ Profile That Gets You Found & Noticed"
Step 2: Prospecting on LinkedIn™
Your LinkedIn profile, as important as it is, is also passive. Once done it's done. So now it’s time to get proactive by building a network of people you want to meet.
There are at least 28 million profiles on LinkedIn in the UK alone and LinkedIn is really nice as it gives us a number of ways we can find the people we want to meet – for free.
For example, you have people searches; you can find relevant groups; you can search your connections’ connections.
Essentially, LinkedIn is one big database and because of that, it’s also the closest thing to face-to-face networking you can get. So thinking of LinkedIn as a networking group is a really useful way to approach LinkedIn and spend your time on the platform.
Think of LinkedIn as a networking group . . .
If you think of LinkedIn as a networking group . . .
- Your profile represents you;
- Your connections represent the people you network with;
- What you post and whom you engage with represent the conversations you have
So who should you connect with?
If you want your dream clients coming to you there is no doubt you need to be connected BUT there is also a balance between quality and quantity.
Some people believe you should connect with anyone and everyone. Another school of thought is connecting intentionally.
Who you are connected to is one of the key signals used by the LinkedIn algorithm to determine what content you get to see in your newsfeed. So, if you’re not happy with the posts you are seeing then it’s time to look at your connections.
Likewise, it will also impact the engagement on your posts. I’ve seen people who have thousands of connections and yet they don’t get any engagement on their posts, because their audience is simply not interested in what they have to say.
Step 3: Posting on LinkedIn™
So now we have a great profile and are building a strong network. It's now time to get active by posting content to raise our visibility and attract people to us.
Posting helps you to demonstrate your expertise, build credibility, and importantly build know, like and trust. As we know 'people still buy from people.'
It also keeps you top of mind until your dream clients are ready to buy from you.
When we start building our network and developing relationships on LinkedIn, we don’t actually know if our prospect is in the market for our solution or if they are, where they are in the buying cycle. We may be lucky and our messaging hits at the right time but most likely, your potential clients are still researching their options.
Posting Tips: When it comes to posting content on LinkedIn bear in mind these tips
- Add relevant hashtags - no more than 9 and make them relevant to your audience and the topic of your post. It's not Instagram so less is definitely more!
- Vary your posts – don’t make them look all the same. Use a mix of formats including text, image, video and document posts
- Doesn't always have to be your own content. Use 3rd party content and have your finger on the pulse of what's happening in your industry
- Finally, make them easy to read and mobile friendly - it's hard to read long paragraphs of text online
If you want more of your dream clients coming to you on LinkedIn, start working on your strategy.
Are you happy with your profile?
Are you building a strong network?
Are you visible on the platform?
If not, I'm always happy to chat or look out for more #LinkedInLoveIns coming soon.
To get notified of future LinkedIn LoveIns please sign up here and get a copy of my free ebook on 1 Hour To A LinkedIn™ Profile That Gets you Found & Noticed.
