When it comes to making money online, it’s not really about getting thousands of leads, but more about getting the right ones.

However, the question is, how do you find those ideal leads?

There are lots of articles on our blog about how to determine who your ideal customers are, where to find them, and what they are likely to buy.

Once you’re clear on that information, this article will help you make the most of your marketing efforts to your prospects on LinkedIn.

When it comes to marketing on any social media platform, most marketers focus a lot of their energy on trying to be everything to everyone, everywhere. They have a sort of ‘spray and pray’ attitude that something’s gotta work sooner or later.

But this is such a waste of time and energy.

If you focus only on doing the right things at the right time and directing those efforts toward the right people, then you will get much better results for a lot less work.

Effective LinkedIn Marketing

If you’ve been following our blog, then you already know about the importance of having a well-planned strategy and a clearly defined action plan if you want to achieve success in any area of Internet marketing.

But, you may be surprised to know that it’s not necessary to be on all the social networks, consistently pumping content out and placing ads on all media outlets.

This is especially true if you’re selling high-ticket offers.

An approach that is simpler and straightforward would yield you better results in this case.

Build strategic business relationships and you will be able to trump any huge ad spends or complex funnels. A great place to do this is LinkedIn.

True, LinkedIn has lots of businesses that you’d have to compete against, but there you will also find tons of big-name prospects.

More than you’ll ever need, and they will be at your fingertips. All you need is some way of standing out so that you can rise above all that noise.

And the BEST way to do that is by building relationships with your ideal prospects.

This system works for virtually every industry just as long as you’ve got a specific prospect and a high-ticket offering. But first, let’s look at something that DOESN’T work on LinkedIn, and that is…

The Hard-and-Fast Sell

There are countless marketers on LinkedIn and if you want to stand out then you’re going to need a message that doesn’t contain generic ad copy.

The ironic thing is that as commonplace as that type of copy is, it doesn’t really work.

Sure, you could get a couple of people to bite, but then even a blind squirrel is going to find a nut now and then, right?

But, can you really afford to burn through all those prospects when you’re targeting leads that are MOST valuable to you? Of course not!

The biggest reason why this type of method doesn’t work is that only a small percentage of your target market (under 3%) are ready to buy from you at any given time.

This means that when you send messages on LinkedIn trying to encourage people to buy from you, there’s a 97% chance they’re going to shut you down immediately – and those definitely aren’t the sort of results that we’re after!

So, a complete switch in your selling strategy is required.

Instead of immediately going for the hard sell, focus on building relationships with your prospects. This way, you will not only earn their trust but you will also be able to position yourself as an expert in your industry.

This is the quickest and most effective way of standing out from the sea of other marketers who are fighting for that same prospect’s attention.

When you do it this way, your prospects will know exactly who to go to when they are ready to buy.

Follow the lead of successful marketers

As with most other things in internet marketing, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel here. The main issue is figuring out how you can build trust and nurture sincere relationships with your prospects.

To help you answer that question for yourself, take a look at what successful marketers already know:

• A hard sell isn’t going to work
• It takes between 7 and 13 touches before the majority of prospects will consider buying from you
• Decision-makers and buyers respond to a valuable relationship and a positive experience, particularly if they are part of those who aren’t ready to buy from you yet.

This last one is the reason why this strategy works so well on LinkedIn. On that platform, you can easily message any of your prospects in an inbox that is far less packed than email.

So now you know that buyers respond mostly to those vendors that they trust and have relationships with, it’s time to take a deeper look at how you can actually use this process to build relationships with your best prospects.

The First Thing You Must Do is to Niche Down

Get clear on who exactly you want to target. This is the most important part and the key to the entire system. There are plenty of articles on our blog that will show you how to create the perfect customer avatar.

This step is vital and should not be skipped under any circumstances because if you’re targeting the wrong people, then your sales will be harder to achieve.

Also, those clients will likely be a lot more difficult to work with, and they won’t help you move your business forward. So, you need to target only those people who have the potential of becoming excellent clients.

You want those people that you are sure you’ll get results for, and those that will pay for the outcome that they desire.

Don’t Be Everything to Everybody

You must realize that you simply can’t be everything to everybody.

This seems a little counter-intuitive, I know. Most marketers think that by marketing only to a small, select group of people, they are missing out on a lot of business but, in fact, the opposite is true.

By focusing only on those specific people, you will have specific shared interests and experiences with them.

In your communications, you’ll be able to speak to those interests and needs directly, thereby positioning yourself as the authority or the ‘go-to’ guy for whoever needs help in that situation.

You can tailor your LinkedIn campaign based on various niches such as geography, title, industry, age, gender, and many others. The best thing about this is that you can expand outside of your chosen niche as you grow (but that’s a topic for another article).

So start with a niche that is well-defined and then follow the rest of the steps outlined below to boost your LinkedIn marketing strategy and increase your revenue.

The Next Step is to Start Building and Nurturing Relationships

Once you know exactly who your best prospects are, start messaging them in a strategic way that is designed to nurture the relationship and build trust.

To do this you can use a multi-touch messaging strategy that is as follows:

• First Message: Thanks for Connecting
• Second Message: Link to quality resources
• Third Message: Link to high-level group discussion
• Fourth Message: Request for call
• Fifth Message: Message 4 Follow-up

This is a simple 5-Message Sequence that you can follow for your LinkedIn marketing strategy.

Now, let’s explore each of the messages further:

Message #1: Thanks for connecting

This is the first message in the sequence and it will set the tone for the entire relationship so instead of behaving like most other sales reps with commission breath on their tongues, simply thank the prospect for the connection and look to build on that connection on LinkedIn.

Message #2: Link to quality resources

The aim of the second message is value and positioning.

You want to provide your prospect with a valuable resource that they will find useful (with no immediate benefits to your bottom line).

This positions you very differently in your prospect’s mind because you led with value that was not tied to a sales funnel directly.

To them, you are now a resource.

Message #3: Link to high-level group discussion

If you have a LinkedIn group, then this is where you can promote the group through the perspective of it being yet another valuable resource that your prospect can make use of.

If you don’t already have one, it could be a great idea to create a group for your prospects specifically.

It can be about the things that they care about (not only about your solution), and this will help to cement you in the minds of your prospects as an industry resource. Don’t be just another vendor.

Be different. Become a trusted adviser.

Message #4: Request for Call

The most important thing concerning the fourth message is to provide a quasi-specific time frame regarding this conversation.

More prospects will follow through on your call to action if you can make it really easy for them.

This method helps to further build relationships with your prospects.

General time frames tend to work best with prospects.

For instance, use the day of the week and either morning or afternoon (Tuesday afternoon or Thursday morning, etc). When you manage to get them into an appointment or conversation, you’ve effectively taken the relationship to the next level.

Message #5: Message 4 Follow-up

Time to follow up on your previous message. This is something that you must always, always, always do! Never leave your call to action on its own, add a follow-up.

You might try different angles with this.

For instance, you could try some of the more direct approaches that are effective as follow-ups such as adding to your message a bit more information about your particular business and the types of people that you help.

How to Get Appointments with High-Value Prospects

This LinkedIn messaging strategy has helped countless online entrepreneurs in various industries to achieve success and take their businesses of varying sizes to the next level.

Whether your business is big or small, you will find immense benefits in using this particular strategy.

This is also a great method for getting your foot in the door of some of those huge companies that are almost impossible to reach.

The most amazing part of all this is, it doesn’t take that much time to target your ideal prospects and send out multi-touch messaging campaigns such as this one.

This is especially true once you’ve broken the whole thing down into a simple and manageable system.

After you’ve developed the relationships with your prospects, the next step is the sales conversion which happens much easier because when the clients eventually move into the 3% who are ready to purchase your product, they will already have a great relationship with you and you’ll already have proven your value.

Use This Messaging Sequence as Part of A Larger Strategy

But remember, this LinkedIn messaging campaign needs to be part of a larger strategy. You will not find success on this platform just by logging in and blasting messages out to everyone.

The messages that we discussed are the main factor in a successful campaign on LinkedIn and they work best when used with certain other components of your strategic plan.

This means that if you want your messaging campaign to have the maximum effect, then you’ll have to keep in mind the following things:

• Make sure your profile is properly optimized to attract only your best prospects
• Create an efficient system for bringing in new prospects to your network continually
• The language you use in your specific messages should compel prospects to take action
• Find an effective way of converting prospects from appointments to paying clients

In Conclusion

Using a marketing method such as this multi-touch messaging campaign where you create and nurture strategic relationships with your ideal prospects allows you to stop the all too common (but ineffective) ‘spray and pray’ approach on LinkedIn and start booking those high-ticket sales appointments.

It will help to open the doors to real, sincere business conversations so get started now and use this LinkedIn 5-message sequence to generate more sales for your business.

Feel free to post your comment below. An email address is required but it will not be shared with anyone, put on any list, or used for any kind of marketing, just to alert you if there are any replies. Thanks and happy hunting!

PlanetBizOp.com

->Steven

Updated: Originally published July 21st 2018