By: Jeff Molander
Earning leads with LinkedIn Groups is easier than you might think. The trick is provoking your
target market into contacting you for more details by teasing them with content that they cannot resist interacting with. This gets customers to click to your Profile and onward to your blog--where they can more clearly understand the thought you just provoked.
"Experts” say being engaging in LinkedIn Groups is the key to generating leads with LinkedIn. Finding crafty ways to mention your blogs, webinars or new product releases within LinkedIn Groups, they claim, will create more appointments, leads and sales. "Engaging" is like magic. But you know it's not true. Here's what works.
The System Revealed
I’m creating leads and sales using blogging, podcasts and LinkedIn Groups with this simple system. I...
1) Create valuable content (answers to burning questions)
2) Monitor for people demonstrating need for it (in LinkedIn Groups)
3) Reveal answers in ways that create cravings for more of what I have to share
The last step is where I provoke reaction--beyond sharing. This part is key. I make sure to not “tell a story” or “provide valuable content” or educate my target market. We hear a LOT about these as successful tactics but it's mostly social media guru blather. You've got to get people to do MORE than share the content.
Finally, once I get the lead secured, I give my prospect FULL satisfaction--useful, actionable answers to burning questions and insights they had not heard before. One example of this is my free sales training videos.
Step 1: Content that Provokes
I recently decided to go after a niche market: Small to mid-sized home improvement businesses who need help using LinkedIn for sales. My goal was to create sales leads for my book and training products—relationships I could nurture into sales. My strategy was to get people already engaged in discussions relevant to the pain I can cure to actually leave LinkedIn and visit my site.
First, I created content that I knew would scratch the itch of my target market. I baited my hook. I interviewed a kitchen cabinet industry expert who had something truly different to say about how successful kitchen cabinet dealers are using social media and using LinkedIn for sales prospecting.
What my expert had to say was contrarian, valuable, provocative and actionable. This part was key. This was the barb in the hook.
Step 2: Locate Relevant Discussions
Next, I published a handful of stories and audio interviews on my site featuring my guest discussing how successful dealers are using social media to create leads and sales... and gave them a chance to learn how to do the same.
I then carefully joined related LinkedIn groups, taking care to make sure I was clear about my intent to join. I had something honestly valuable to share—actionable insights on a topic that is of current interest to group members.
Within a few days I spotted a discussion on a Kitchen Cabinet industry group where I could answer a question in a way that “brought to life” the specific valuable answers my guest expert was offering… but not in the usual way.
Step 3: Tease Prospects Into Action
The biggest mistake most of us are making when promoting content within a LinkedIn Group is sharing a link back to what we’ve published on our blogs. The minute I stopped sharing links and started saying less the more action I got—the more people did what I wanted them to do (visit my site and become a lead).
Lately, the more I’m baiting people… teasing them… the more I’m getting emailed directly through LinkedIn from hungry customers who want to connect, become a lead or buy a product on-the-spot.
Yes, I have a Website that is quite good at selling products and capturing leads so that part doesn’t go away. What’s key here is how I am teasing my target audience into taking action on something I know they already want to act on.
To do this I took 2 of my best quotes from the hour long interview and chummed the water with them in the LinkedIn Group. If you want to catch fish you’ve got to attract the jumbos. You've got to trot out your very best material and it's got to be good--new information, new insights. This is what provokes action. This is the best content for blogs.
How many of you are doing the same? Surely there are more success stories out there. Let’s hear some!
Photo Credit: DerekGavey
