I’ve built a network, now what do I do with it?
This is one of the questions that we hear most often on our Facebook user group page and in discussions with customers. One of our happy Dux users has shared a blueprint for LinkedIn lead gen automation with me that in turn, I’d like to share with you.
This gives you some insight into how one company is successfully structuring their lead generation campaign using LinkedIn. Names and target markets have been anonymised as the user in question is keen to keep their competitive advantage under wraps! This is something else that we hear regularly!
Before we dive into the LinkedIn lead gen blueprint, it is worth pointing out that the process itself is still evolving as more steps are added,and tweaks made. There are plans to use more automations in the funnel/sales process wherever possible so that it can be easily scaled up.
We offer a suite of collaboration widgets. The audience that is being targeted in this case is readily identifiable via the keywords in the job title on LinkedIn and they are reasonably open to others in this community connecting with them.
So, here’s the LinkedIn lead gen blueprint as outlined to me, enjoy!
Step 1. A general LinkedIn search for the term “wonderful widgets” enables us to target a key competitor that has been around for years, and is a virtual dinosaur in the market we are disrupting. This gives us 93,000 people in my first and second level connections.
Step 2. Then I narrow by geography to get a more manageable list (specifically, under 1,000 results to work within LinkedIn limits). Pick a major city around the globe and the filter drops the number into the 800-900 range. Perfect size for a spot of automated lead generation.
Step 3. Set up Dux-Soup to auto-connect using a simple message:
“Hello FN,
I love connecting with other experts that work with wonderful widgets.I’d like to learn more about you and your work. My team and I have built a suite of brilliant toolsbased on the same technology. Let me know if you’d like to check it out.
Best regards,
Adam Osman”
Step 4.
Along with the invite to connect, we also “tag” the groupreceiving the invite with something specific like “Paris Invites June 2019” sowe can keep track of them.
Step 5.
We have a 30-40% acceptance rate on this outreach. This is pretty stellar. In fact, the true number might be higher -people I outreached to months ago still accept the invite. [Note: Dux recommendsthat you perform regular housekeeping so that you don’t have too many outstanding invites, but Wonderful Widgets seems to be bucking this trend]
Step 6.
Once they accept the invite, they are sent a template email with more information about us. I’ve tried this both using automation and also paying someone to manually do it (taking an extra step to review their profile and add a comment in the template about “I notice you focus on widget transformation which is a key issue for many of our clients too”. My plan is to move towards using an automation in this segment as our volume increases. The template invites them to click on a link and get access to our widget tools for a demo and also get access to some other resources that they might find useful.
Step 7.
If/when they click on that link, they are asked to enter their e-mail and opt-in to our email outreach. At this point, we can interact with them using our CRM campaigns which are currently driven from Infusionsoft. The campaigns are automated and take the funnel the rest of the way using the traditional content - more free resources, eventually getting them to try out our widgets which almost always leads to a conversion OR steering them towards a training option that we offer virtually on a monthly basis.
* one refinement that we are looking at is for Step 6 to use a Zapier integration to “re-tag” users in Dux-Soup when they take a defined action.
Using this LinkedIn automation for our sales funnel, we are seeing some pretty amazing results. I personally believe that automated outreach will be a determining factor in the success of many entrepreneur-led startups.
I hope that the LinkedIn blueprint outlined above gives you some ideas as to how to move from simply building an audience to engaging prospective buyer in a dialogue as part of an automated sales funnel, which aims to generate leads that convert to sales.
I’d love to hear your feedback on the funnel and if you’d like to share a successful LinkedIn sales funnel with us on a future blog, just let me know.
Thanks
Adam Osman
Head of Marketing, Dux-Soup
