The Three Steps To Attracting Raving Fans & More Referrals From LinkedIn

“How do you generate leads for your business?”

Whenever I ask this question, I guarantee that 99% of the time networking and word of mouth / referrals will come up.

🤔 But who’s going to refer you?

🤔 Who are your raving fans that are telling everyone about you?

Many business owners see LinkedIn primarily as a platform for ATTRACTING new clients.

But if you’re looking for more referrals, it’s what you do AFTER your dream client has decided to buy from you that’s key!

Doo Method for Customer Journey Marketing

Because Customer Journey Marketing is such a BIG subject, we split into two sessions:

➊ ATTRACT

➋ RETAIN

➊ ATTRACT: was covered first in last month’s LinkedIn LoveIn where Marianne & I focused on the first 3 steps designed to help you attract your dream clients to you. These were:

➡️ Awareness: this is about your LinkedIn profile and showing up in the right place at the right time. Questions to ask yourself is do your clients hang out on LinkedIn? Are you showcasing you in your best and brightest light on your LinkedIn profile?

➡️ Consideration: the point at which your dream clients are considering you based on the content you put out there. This is about having a content strategy based on what it is you want to be famous for

➡️ Trial: this is the stage where your dream clients get to experience a little bit of you, but they’re not quite ready to sign up

If you’re looking to use LinkedIn to attract your dream clients, then check out last month’s LinkedIn LoveIn here

➋ RETAIN was covered in this month’s LinkedIn LoveIn and looked at the 3 steps AFTER your dream client has decided to work with you, namely:

➡️ Welcome: how to truly wow your customers from day one

➡️Retention: how to create raving fans

➡️ Advocacy: where your clients tell everyone else about you!

Designed to RETAIN clients, we looked at how you can apply these steps to LinkedIn to maximise your new client relationship.

Sadly, these steps are often overlooked, but are equally as important as the first three ATTRACT steps.

Many business owners focus more on client attraction than they do client retention.

Yet, it costs up to 7 times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing client, whilst loyal customers spend 67% more than new clients.

And then there’s the customer experience. This is seen as the new marketing and is certainly going to be key going into 2023.

The more we look after our clients and give them that fabulous customer experience then the less room there is for them to go to the competition. Check out how the replay of this month’s LinkedIn LoveIn below where we talk about how to apply these steps to LinkedIn.

Watch the LinkedIn LoveIn in full below.

Here’s an overview of what Marianne & I covered . . .

Step 4: Welcome

The Welcome step is all about your onboarding process with your new client. It reinforces that they’ve made the right decision by choosing to work with you.

The key things from a LinkedIn perspective are to ensure you’re . . .

✅ connected with your clients and with other key team members by sending them a friendly note that you’re going to be working with them

✅ following their company page

Connecting with your clients is important for a number of reasons including:

1. Job notifications – as well as the opportunity to congratulate them on their new job, this is all about continuing the relationship with them at their new company and finding out whose taken over at their old company
2. Who are they’re connected with? As we know recommendations and introductions from our clients are the best way to generate new opportunities – so check out who could they introduce you to?

Step 5: Retention

Retention is about delivering a fabulous customer experience, so our clients become our best fans. It’s about ways we can add value to the relationship.

From a LinkedIn perspective it’s how we engage with them on LinkedIn. Keeping top of mind, supporting them and their content on LinkedIn

Use the Bell Feature on Client profiles

✅ Top tip here is to check out your clients activity from their profile.

Have they posted anything recently?

Get behind what your clients are posting by liking and commenting on their posts.

You can use the new BELL 🔔 to get notified when your clients post so you can support their posts. For more information about the BELL icon check out my post here . . .

✅ NOT Just For Clients!

This step can also be used for employees by making them the hero on LinkedIn. Not only does it make for good content but demonstrates you’re a good company to work for. Plus, it’s really easy content that you can do on a daily basis and you know you’re being seen in the right place for the right reasons.

✅ LinkedIn Recommendations

Give and you will receive!

LinkedIn recommendations are great all round. Obviously you want recommendations from your clients but what about recommending them?

Or, your associates or suppliers or colleagues?

My top tips for requesting recommendations from clients and others is to make it easy for them to do the recommendation . . .

Make it easy for people to recommend you . . .

Have they already given you some kind of testimonial either on your website or via email or verbally even?

If they have simply take what they have given you, adapt it if required and type it into a LinkedIn recommendation request window explaining that they’ve already provided this text and would they mind adding it your LinkedIn profile.

If you don’t have any previous testimonials, then you can use a series of questions to help guide clients, associates etc in creating a recommendation. For example, what was the reason for working with you, what was the experience like working with you and what were the results etc.

Step 6: Advocacy

Advocacy is the 6th and final customer journey marketing step where your dream clients (now raving fans) tell everyone else about you, stimulating referrals and repeat business.

For example, someone I didn’t know dropped into my LinkedIn inbox recently because my name had come up in a chat they’d had about LinkedIn training – which is exactly where I want my name coming up. People in my network thinking of me whenever someone mentions LinkedIn.

What do you want your name coming up for?

The advocacy step is about being clear on what you want to be famous for and being an advocate for it by sharing what you’re doing with your clients, promoting and supporting, your clients, associates, suppliers, your community and your charities.

For me the advocacy piece is about helping your audience understand and digest content that they need to know.

For example, having the finger on the pulse of what’s happening in your industry, you can decipher what’s important for your audience to know and why do they need to know it.

This type of thought leadership content is great for people who are not natural content creators. You can take third party content and translate it for your audience so that they get a really good idea of what’s going off and why it’s important.

Referrals then come from the content you put out, from your profile and how you come across on LinkedIn. You’re creating that head turn and being seen as an expert.

Then we have Advocacy in terms of your community. Show that you’re part of a community whether that’s your local community, a charity or your industry sector. Get behind and support your community. Big them up, like you would your clients on LinkedIn.

What One Thing Will You Doo?

Customer experience and customer journey marketing is now considered to be the new marketing. We have to put our clients first.

Going forward it’s all about the customer experience and how we’re supporting and serving people because if we are serving our clients, if we’re giving them the best experience, then they will not only stay with us but they will also be raving fans, they will promote us and they will refer us.

In your business planning for next year have you considered the retention element and making the most of the clients you already have and how you can maximise the relationship that you’ve got with them by using a platform like LinkedIn?

Supporting Resources:

For a copy of Marianne’s free guide which focuses on the Welcome stage of the Customer Journey, connect with Marianne Smith FCIM on LinkedIn or email her at: mariannesmith@doomarketing.co.uk

The guide gives you 22 things you can do to WOW your client when you first start working with them

Join the LinkedIn LoveIn Group and keep up to date with the latest LinkedIn tips and tricks!

💙 If LinkedIn isn’t working hard for you or you’re not sure where to start with using LinkedIn, email judy@judithparsons.com or connect with me on LinkedIn to chat about how I can help.

Or book a virtual brew here and let’s make LinkedIn work for you . . . ⭐