Have you got a LinkedIn marketing automation strategy to generate sales enquiries?

Have you got a Linkedin marketing automation strategy that will generate sales enquiries?  (or do you struggle to employ workers? – that’s a whole other topic. Click here).

Most people never tap into the full sales potential of LinkedIn because it is hard and time-consuming work. Writing, reading, commenting and liking posts, writing articles, sending invite requests (that often get ignored). I am sure you know what I mean and I certainly do not have time for all that.

And so your LinkedIn account is left to languish with the odd flourish of activity.

Did you know it takes on average 300 LinkedIn profile visits in order to generate a high-value sales opportunity? Go and take a look at your profile and see how many visits to your profile you have had over the last 90 days.

Here is a quick video on how to do this.

So, say you are generating 20 profile visits every 90 days, then that means it is going to take you on average 3.75 years(!) before you generate a useful sales opportunity on LinkedIn. And so it is no wonder you think “LinkedIn does not work for me”

One way that LinkedIn members often restrict their success on LinkedIn is to only connect with people they know – friends, colleagues, clients, prospects. Doing this will mean you have a very low number of 1st-degree connections and hence limited LinkedIn success.

On average 70% of LinkedIn members have less than 1000 1st Connections. Which is just not enough critical mass to make LinkedIn work for you.

But, there is an answer

LinkedIn Marketing Automation – let the automation take the strain.

Here are the top automated LinkedIn marketing strategies that I deploy when working with clients in order to build a complete LinkedIn sales strategy bespoke for the client.

1/ 1st Connection Builder Strategy

In LinkedIn, it is not just about the number of 1st Degree connections you have. What is key is the number of 2nd and 3rd connections. The more 2nd and 3rd connections that you have then the larger the searchable universe of contacts you have available for future marketing campaigns. Imagine having at your fingertips an up-to-date database of people that you can reach who are connected to businesses.

I would say you need 2500 1st connections to give you a valuable full universe of millions (unfortunately LinkedIn no longer shows us the total number of connections) of searchable 2nd and 3rd degree contacts. Plus from a profile point of view, anything less than 500+ makes your profile look weak when someone searches for you.

It took me 10 years to get my first 1000 contacts. With my ethical strategy, we can now build that number of contacts within months.

2/ LinkedIn Data Mining Strategy

Set marketing automation to data-mine your 1st, 2nd and 3rd degree connections to find prospects in your industry or target niche and then automatically follow up with direct messages. I recently had one client with over 3000 high-value 1st degree connections. But he could not access the contact details i.e. phone and email number from LinkedIn (the LinkedIn contact export tool gives very restricted data). We data-mined his 1st-degree connections and extracted the full contact details and a wealth of other data on the contacts and then he had a valuable list he could use for marketing purposes.

3/  LinkedIn Dream 100 Strategy

Use LinkedIn to identify your Dream 100 ideal potential clients. Then target them with direct messages in LinkedIn. And even bolt on an automated marketing tool, like Keap (learn more here) to follow up offline from LinkedIn with emails, texts, direct mail and phone calls.

4/ Direct Message 1st Degree Contacts Strategy

Imagine having to manually direct message one-by-one thousands of 1st connections. It’s not possible to do it yourself, let the automation take the strain. It’s like having an email list. Send an occasional Update message every 6 months with some news to remind contacts you are there and encourage them to check out your profile or website and give them some of your news.

5/ Direct Message Group members

Imagine having to manually direct message one-by-one the members of a group that you own or are a member of. It’s not possible to do it yourself, let the automation take the strain. It’s like having an email list. Send an occasional Update message every 6 months with some news to remind contacts you are there and encourage them to check out your profile or website and give them some of your news.

6/ CRM & Marketing Automation Strategy

From all your LinkedIn automated strategies we can push 1st-degree contacts into your chosen CRM / Marketing automation platform. For example – MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, Pipedrive or my preferred solution Keap (for transparency I am Keap Certified Partner). Imagine automatically connecting with a contact in LinkedIn – so they get automated LinkedIn direct messages over time. But then outside of linkedIn, you keep in touch via email, texts, phone calls, and even direct mail (we can do 100% automated direct mail with Keap).

7/ Remove old, unaccepted invites

If you are sending our invites to connect then they will not all be accepted. So after say 3 weeks, I would remove these old invites. You can do it manually, one at a time, or have the automation cancel the old invites.

If you are interested to learn more about how I assist clients with marketing automation then I would be happy to discuss this on a short Discovery call.