When it comes to finding leads, Marc Mawhinney believes that "all coaching companies should be automating their lead generation process using LinkedIn".
Marc Mawhinney of Natural Born Coaching works with coaching companies to help them to drive business growth. Discovering the Cloud Edition of Dux-Soup, he believes that LinkedIn automation, and what can be achieved with it, has improved even more with this addition to the Dux-Soup portfolio.
Here we’ll share how coaching companies can generate leads using LinkedIn with Dux-Soup Cloud to automate the end-to-end process.
Why LinkedIn automation?
Dux-Soup Head of Marketing, Adam Osman states, “LinkedIn automation for me is using technology to automate those things that you would normally be doing manually on LinkedIn. So sending connection requests, following up those that have accepted your connection invitation with a message, for example.”
LinkedIn has several advantages over other social platforms when it comes to B2B lead generation - for further reading check out 5 reasons LinkedIn wins for cold outreach.
Whilst other marketing channels are experiencing a decline in efficiency, LinkedIn is becoming more effective. We won’t claim that LinkedIn is a panacea (i.e. you’re not going to start a campaign and magically see hundreds of leads fly in the door), but the platform involves a mindset and an approach that fits well with the rest of your marketing activity, compared to ads and other platforms that project you out into ether in the hope that something resonates.
For coaches, LinkedIn allows you to connect and engage directly with people who are more likely to become your next client.
And Dux-Soup allows you to automate your outreach; not your spam! When we think of LinkedIn automation, it’s about getting people into conversations faster, using up less of your time.
Where’s the evidence it can work for coaches?
Although we claim Dux-Soup isn't a panacea, some might argue that it is. Ashish Janiani, CEO of MotivationalDiaries.com states, “We have delivered sales training to 150+ clients and 30,000 people have gone through our coaching programs. Thanks to Dux-Soup, I ditched cold calling and closed $200,000 of new business in just 24 months. "
So the answer here is yes, LinkedIn automation can work for coaches. Let’s show you how.
Starting your LinkedIn automation journey
Because we know that it can be daunting getting started with LinkedIn automation, for coaches, we recommend starting with the basics.
This means starting with your profile. On LinkedIn, all of your automation actions are carried out through your profile. It’s what cold prospects and connections come back to. Our Head of Marketing, Adam Osman, walks us through three LinkedIn profiles at the 11-minute mark of the video, giving his professional assessment of the 6-7 key attributes of a good LinkedIn profile:
- Profile photo
- Banner image
- Headline
- CTA (call to action) button
- About section
- Social proof
- Experience
- Recommendations
Find your LinkedIn targets
LinkedIn has made available an amazing range of filters, allowing you to find a well-honed list of targets, with which you can engage in a highly relevant manner. For coaches, this is the secret to your success.
We recommend when using LinkedIn for lead generation that you invest in a LinkedIn Premium plan. If you’re running a free LinkedIn account you will be limited by the number of actions you can carry out on the platform, for example, there is a LinkedIn weekly invitation limit and LinkedIn search limits that will restrict your capability to generate leads.
We recommend Sales Navigator for their additional search filters. Here are some tips of how people are using Sales Navigator filters to enhance their searches to great effect:
- Use Persona filters
When you develop your personas, Sales Nav will automatically find you leads, matching up your personas with your saved accounts. Here we have a few persona examples:
- Personas with Boolean searches.
You can combine a Boolean search with a Persona filter to get an even more targeted result. If you’ve not heard of a Boolean search, it allows you to combine search terms such as AND, NOT and OR to get the perfect results. Check out our search and filter masterclass for more on Boolean searches.
- Additional Sales Nav filters
Depending on who you’re trying to target, there are some really excellent Sales Nav filters to narrow down your list. You can use LinkedIn Groups to target people with specific interests, target people who have changed jobs or posted recently and a whole lot more.
One other great hack is to target people who like your content on LinkedIn. These are warmer prospects that have interacted with your content and so should offer good response rates on your outreach activity.
So there are lots of ways to find, and narrow down, your LinkedIn targets. Once you have your list, it’s time to think about your outreach strategy and messaging.
Create messaging that resonates with your targets
With LinkedIn automation tools like Dux-Soup, you can create campaigns containing many different LinkedIn engagement actions, for example:
- Profile visit
- Profile follow
- Endorse skills
- Send connection invitation
- Send message to 1st degree connections
- Send InMail (depending on your quota)
Dux-Soup Head of Sales, Scott Wright has used Dux-Soup for himself, for his sales team and for his agency to generate leads.
He looks at LinkedIn automation outreach campaigns as a 4 part equation and highlights that it is a social networking platform, not a selling platform. So, first and foremost, you should engage in conversation not just overtly try to sell your product or service.
- Social Selling, Not Sales (Tone)
- Self Awareness (Profile)
- Know Your Audience (List)
- Purpose is Personal (Messaging)
- Social selling, not sales (tone)
Think of your LinkedIn interaction as similar to if you’re at a conference. You’d look at someone’s barge and ask them about themselves, and their company, not launch straight into what you sell, right?
With LinkedIn we’re creating professional connections and having business conversations so it’s important for your tone to reflect this in your tone. By taking a similar approach to that of meeting someone at a conference, keeping your tone professional and stimulating interesting conversation you’ll have a good foundation for engaging prospects in conversation.
- Self Awareness
Self awareness relates to your profile. How are you looked at by your audience? If for example, you’re a CEO of a large company who’s trying to engage with people in small businesses, how will this look to them?
Positioning yourself on a peer level with your audience will get you the best engagement. Consider how you can use different LinkedIn profiles within your business to connect with relevant audiences or decision makers, or try making your profile fit your audience better by updating your ‘about’ section to include relevant sectors that you specialize in.
- Audience
This is your list building, which we’ve already covered above.
By using fields such as people who have changed jobs in the last 90 days, you can make your early outreach messages more focused on your targets. A simple ‘congratulations on your new role’ can work really well as an example.
- Purpose is personal
Regardless of your list, the more personal you can make your engagement, the better your response rates. You could try using location filters to ask a prospect’s view on a change to the local area, or discuss business news with an industry sector for example.
Using these four factors, we can create campaigns that are engaging, thought provoking and that open up conversations.
LinkedIn campaign messaging example
Here we have a campaign example for a coach who targets CEOs and Founders of companies with a $2-$10million turnover that could do with executive coaching services to build confidence, and turn around sales teams that aren’t delivering desired ROI with their fractional services and sales accelerator programs.
Connection Message:
Hey _FN_, came across _CN_ and wanted to connect. Always admired the _IN_ space - what’s it like being a founder? I can’t imagine it being easy. Either way would love to connect.
Follow-up Message #1 (+2-4 hours from connection):
Thanks for the connection _FN_,
Curious on your thoughts on fractional executives especially around marketing and sales?
I ask because from my years of working across the board from CEO’s to CISO’s of companies like NFL, US Dept VA I’ve reaslized that many of today’s founders see most of their own revenue from their own network and so they don’t see the benefit of hiring a full team but instead are interested in something like a sales accelerator.
Follow-up Message #2 (+3 days):
What are your thoughts on the rise of fractional roles recently? Do you think they work in environments like yours?
Follow-up Message #3 (+7 days):
Again I greatly appreciate the connection and addition to your network, it truly means a lot. That said, I am always trying to make the most of my network and game to talk show on anything career or executive-wise if you are ever open in the future. Cheers
This type of messaging has worked to gain responses, allowing you to then nurture these relationships manually towards an end goal.
There are many ways you can engage with your audience, and what’s important is to use your tone of voice. For a different variation on this campaign message sequence, head to the 50-minute mark of our finding coaching leads with Dux-Soup webinar.
LinkedIn automation goals
With all activity, not just LinkedIn automation, it’s important to set goals. Here there are goals set at every action of the campaign:
Connection message = Connection acceptance
Follow-up message #1 = Response
Follow-up message #2 = Conversation
Follow-up message #3 = Call to action
Your campaign messaging should work as hard as it can to achieve these goals at every action, ultimately ending up in creating an opportunity, which could be a meeting.
Let Dux-Soup do the leg work
With your targets and messaging ready, all you need to do is enroll your profiles into your campaign and then leave Dux-Soup to carry out the actions, at the designated time delays.
With Cloud Dux, you can then switch off your computer and your automation activity will continue to run from our infrastructure, 24/7.
So there you have it, our guide to finding coaching leads on autopilot using Dux-Soup Cloud.
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