Creating Messaging That Works With LinkedIn Workflows
Your messaging is critical.
This is especially true if you work with LinkedIn workflows.
The way you leverage your tone, delivery, and consistency can make all the difference to the success or failure of your outreach, but sadly a lot of people still pay more attention to their automation instead of the message itself.
In this guide, we take a step back and look at how you can properly craft messaging that you can use to convert with your LinkedIn workflows.
Ready?
Let’s jump right in.
Why Should You Trust Me?
My name is Houston Golden, I’m the founder and CEO of BAMF Media, a consultancy agency that has been helping everyone from Fortune 500 companies to new startups elevate their growth through growth strategy, LinkedIn optimization, and digital marketing.
To put it in simple terms: I’m a growth hacker.
The examples you see here today I’ve used on my clients and even my own agency.
A Few Simple Rules
Personalization
One question that you ought to re-examine before automating your messaging or crafting anything is your ideal customer profile.
Who are you trying to reach?
Now, I’m not going to dive into the creation of idea customer profiles, but I want to state the obvious. You need to personalize the messages that you send out. And, this starts with understanding who your customer is.
Different industries, geographies, habits, and even median income or subtle differences in job positions are going to affect the audience that you are reaching out to.
People like things that are tailored to their desires, and they appreciate content that resonates with who they are.
You want to create messages that jive well with the personality of the person that you are taking to, and that all starts with research.
Optimize Your Profile
At BAMF Media, we believe that your LinkedIn profile is a landing page.
Here’s why.
The moment that you message someone, get them interested in a post, or connect with them - provided that they’re somewhat interested - they immediately check out who you are.
This means you have to optimize your LinkedIn profile’s elements to turn it into a landing page. I devoted a third of the LinkedIn Bible to concentrate on profile optimization because there’s a lot of stuff that you can do to turn it into a funnel, especially if you run a B2B outfit.
Stop Selling on Your First Pitch
I absolutely hate it when people try to sell me something on the first message.
And, chances are, your prospects hate it, too.
Instead of trying to aggressively sell on the first pitch, aim to get to know a person.
Think about it, there are times where we even refuse to purchase products from people that we know.
No one really buys from someone who casually drops a link to a product on the first message.
Stop wasting your time and your automations.
Your aim is to establish rapport and get to know a person, and believe it or not, you can automate this entire process. You can start with a hyper-targeted question, invite them to a group, etc.
Reengage Outside Messaging
LinkedIn messaging isn’t the only tool at your disposal.
In fact, if it was, you’re in for a world of trouble.
You need to utilize multiple dimensions of comms to get your message and story across to your prospects. Engaging in a multidimensional marketing strategy using different platforms and variations of your messaging is the only way to achieve proper brand recall.
Here’s an example.
There are times that we’ll run retargeting ads before we even message a prospect. It makes a lot more sense to establish brand recognition before a “feeler” message because people usually respond better to things that they’re already familiar with.
Using Facebook in conjunction with LinkedIn is another good example of how you can keep personal conversations on Facebook and move the serious stuff over to LinkedIn.
At my marketing agency, I emphasize the need to create lead magnets within posts so that initial engagement is already established and a pseudo-relationship is already formed before we even get the team to say “hi” to our prospects.
This list can go on and on, but what’s critical for people to remember is that we need to use the options that we have because it helps with familiarity.
Keep It Simple
My last rule is to keep it as simple as possible.
LinkedIn messaging is still a messaging platform, you don’t expect an entire email to come through via the application.
You want it to be both streamlined and relational.
The Slower Surefire Advanced Approach
Here’s the framework that we use on a daily basis in all of our initial messaging.
It’s called ABC. Not your usual “Always Be Closing” strategy, but rather “Always Be Cool.” Don’t be too aggressive with your pitches and aim to build a connection, the sale will eventually arrive.
It utilizes all the techniques that we’ve mentioned, but we don’t try to pitch or communicate with a prospect, until they have really felt our presence.
This could be an increasing number of engagements or subtly remarking to them without even approaching them in the beginning. The key is to show prospects that you’re non-aggressive, but still actively put your brand in front of them.
The Initial Message/Connection Message
The first message you send out to your prospects is the most critical message because it is the first time you directly approach them.
There are different ways to structure this message, but it is all dependent on where you are drawing your leads from.
If you’re getting them from someone who’s engaged with your posts or Linked company page before, you could invite the prospect to join one of your groups before you send them a follow up message saying “hi”.
If it’s from a hyper-targeted message, you could try asking them a question first about their business or offering them a free audit.
As you can see, there are variations dependent on the source of your leads.
· Keep your message short and fun.
· Sometimes a simple “hi” followed by their first name and a question about them works wonders.
· If you don’t want to ask them a question about their business send them an invite to your Facebook group or LinkedIn company page, this way you have more “surface area” to target them with. Remember you’re building your initial connection.
· Aim to be relational. You can only do this if you personalize the message that you’re sending out to them, make sure that the questions you ask or the statements that you make are relevant to the industry or circumstance that they are in.
· Make sure you introduce yourself.
And, again, we can say this enough, don’t try to close on your first message.
LinkedIn works using proper lead nurturing. You need to gently guide the prospect through your pipeline and this is especially true for B2B operators.
Here are a couple of templates taken from the BAMF LinkedIn Outreach Bible that I want to share with you.
The Follow Up
There are plenty of opportunities to follow up with your prospect, especially if you’re running multiple campaigns or hitting them with various lead nurturing efforts.
Follow-ups are easier to do than initial messaging because automating value-driven giveaways or messages that “touch base” can be done in bulk for multiple campaigns.
However, you still need to include multiple points of personalization
Now here’s one of my peeves when it comes to automation, don’t constantly use fields such as their first names if you have to automate. Your client will know you’re using software instead of trying to hit them personally.
Here are a couple of things that you can do to help with your follow-up messaging:
· Send your follow up message at least 7 days after you send them a connection request. This allows them to see content that you have been publishing throughout the entire week further reiterating the value of the brand that you have.
· Send them a lead magnet via a link, this way you’re adding value to the conversation.
· If it’s a follow-up to a pitch, make sure that you give them multiple dates to reschedule.
· Simply, continue the conversation that you’re having with them. This makes it more organic
Here are more examples from my eBook on how you can craft follow-up messages.
The Pitch
Here are our surefire ways to enhance the pitching process that you have.
· Don’t pitch ask them if they have time to chat. You want to get them in front of a closer as soon as possible.
· Don’t sell them anything yet, but instead offer to have a quick meeting with them. This will help you create a sales discovery process and it sounds less intimidating.
· If you do have to pitch, give them something for free, e.g. a quick trial period to access your solutions, a marketing audit, etc.you need to make the process as easy as possible.
· Alternatively, you can move the conversation from LinkedIn to email and then pitch them from there.
The Negative Close
Nobody is immune to rejection.
There will be times where a prospect won’t want what you’re offering, and it could be for a number of reasons. Some of which beyond the control of the prospect themselves.
But this doesn’t mean that a lead is gone forever.
A lot of people forget that regardless if a prospect rejects your proposal, you still need to be able to perform a “close.”
Remember, that a connection can still be leveraged for the growth of the company.
Prospects that don’t want to buy now can always be remarked to in the future, if you find that you can’t solve their problems you can always keep them in a separate list to sell to if you can solve their issues later on, and if all else fails, you can always ask them for a referral depending on how you ended your relationship with them.
Here are our tips:
· Keep it cordial and don’t market to them in the last message. You don’t want to make it all about trying to make a sale because you might end up wrecking your chances of working with them in the future.
· Ask them what went wrong and if they’re willing to stay in your list - if you maintain a newsletter or a mailing list.
· Don’t close the doors to working with them in the future
· Don’t remove them from your list! The trick is to move them to a separate list depending on their reason for not subscribing to your solutions.
Tracking
If you’re using a LinkedIn tool to help you with your messaging we highly advise that you track what you’re doing.
Don’t just rely on the first campaign that you have in mind.
When we work with our high-profile clients, everything is tracked and all messages are A/B tested because we understand that sometimes things don’t work.
You need to be able to create campaigns that are hyper-flexible, this way you can change things on the fly and stop wasting valuable time and resources.
The simplest way to constantly be testing is to always create two versions of your message and send it a sample of the people you are targeting.
Takeaways
Crafting messaging for your LinkedIn workflows doesn’t necessarily have to be difficult, as long you take stock of what you have to avoid to make sure you’re not just running “any other” campaign out there.
If we could offer all our readers, clients and even colleagues one simple rule, it would be, “be relational.”
Your workflows, no matter how automated or advanced won’t work if the person on the other end of the screen doesn’t feel like they can relate to you.
Now, that’s what matters the most.
If you ask me, keep your messaging simple, find ways to relate to them, and make sure you follow up.
That’s the quickest recipe to crafting LinkedIn messaging that resonates well with your prospects.
