13 Critical Steps To Using Linkedin To Generate Leads and Accelerate Sales

by | Sep 5, 2012 | Blog

95% of the professionals on Linkedin are not realizing anywhere near it’s potential. Potential that allows you to:

  • Promote your personal brand
  • Be a Proactive Networker
  • Check References and Backgrounds
  • Look for a Job, Seek and Hire Candidates and be better prepared for interviews
  • Generate Leads and Accelerate Sales
  • Ask for Advice from your own network as well as “Crowdsource”
  • Find Experts and Partners
  • Improve your Personal Productivity with all of the different LinkedIn tools, Widgets, and Apps.
  • Research trends and industries, gather opinions by running polls as well as track company news.
  • Finally and most importantly, LinkedIn can provide you with the perfect and simple platform for a Referral System, which we all know, is critical to success in business.

You can read more here about WHY LinkedIn is the Greatest Personal Branding, Publicity and Sales Tool for B2B Markets here.

If you want to be a ‘power user’ and maximize your time investment into the most useful B2B Social Medium, then you’ll need to get the basics right:

1.     Develop a unique profile; if your profile reads like everyone else’s then it will be much harder to stand out! Be creative, controversial, funny, but most importantly be yourself. Make sure that your profile is still considered ‘professional’ by your intended target audience; prospective employers, recruiters, prospective clients. What works in the advertising industry maybe simply too much for the banking industry.

2.     Make sure you complete your profile; it’s likely to be your most public face to the world. People spend so much effort on their resume that they use intermittently yet their LinkedIn profile contains barely any information. If anything, your LinkedIn Profile should be more detailed than your resume. Today it’s absolutely fine to be an accountant by day and a fashion blogger by night. Your LinkedIn profile can easily and professionally reflect your many pursuits and passions.

3.     Optimise your profile. From the way you personalize your Public Profile and Website links to optimizing your keywords to make sure you appear in searches that matter when prospects look for professionals that have your skills.

4.     Develop a Company Profile and make sure your entire team connect to it.  Due to the simple and free nature of LinkedIn with all of its benefits we now recommend that start ups, from consultants to trade professionals, develop a great personal and company profile, especially until such time that they can afford a website that is professional. The result is a very basic but powerful online presence, while the website is being developed.

5.     Connect with clients, suppliers and prospects. Make sure you personalize the invitation and provide a reason to connect when you invite people you know or just met. Make sure you have a policy on who you connect with, your network is a reflection on you.

6.     Use the LinkedIn Productivity tools: Web Browser Toolbar, Outlook Widget, Events, Polls, etc.

7.     Ask for Recommendations, they are your testimonials and are vital in developing trust and credibility.

8.     Participate in Groups, make sure to listen first, and add value rather than sell! Social Media is about communication and education not promotion! Success comes from helping people achieve their goals.

9.     Answer questions in Answers section.

10. Build relationships, try to meet people over a coffee, pick up the phone if you are in the same geographical location.

11. Social Media is about developing unique content and then promoting it. Make sure you do both. There are multiple ways to promote your content on LinkedIn, which is why it is an amazing online PR tool!

12. Get in front of the people you need to get in front of, through correctly using the search function and then leveraging your existing relationships to make the appointment by asking for Introductions or asking the connector to forward your message to the intended recipient.

13. Test LinkedIn Mail as well as LinkedIn Advertising.

If you don’t use it, you lose it! Start with 10 minutes a day, track your progress and get LinkedIn or become Locked Out!

If you need assistance with your LinkedIn Profile, or are looking for LinkedIn Training or LinkedIn Coaching then check out http://www.influenceyournetwork.com/linkedin-training

 

 

 

The Most Asked Question in Marketing – How do I Set My Marketing Budget?

by | Sep 3, 2012 | Blog

One of the most important decisions that a small business owner will make is how much money to set aside for the marketing budget.

Successful and profitable small businesses understand that they need to allocate adequate funds for marketing their business.

Prospective customers always ask, “How much should I spend on marketing?”

The answer we give them is this:

1.     No matter how much you have it will never be enough! Having worked in large corporate environments our marketing consultants know that companies with $30m budgets these big brands always want more; more advertising dollars, more sponsorship dollars, more PR dollars, more salary dollars for the marketing department and the list goes on.

2.      Marketing Budgets will be much higher in competitive business categories and lower in general in less competitive ones.

3.     The more unique your business or product / service offering, in general, the easier it will be (and cheaper) to promote it IF you are tapping into existing demand as opposed to trying to educate the market, which will always be horrendously expensive and most small businesses just don’t have the sort of marketing budget required to do this. In these unique cases actually having new entrants / competitors may actually be a benefit as together the task of educating the market is made easier.

4.     If you are the new entrant in the market, you will have to spend more to take some share away from your competitors or create new demand in the market.

Here’s a great article discussing the different criteria for setting your marketing budget http://www.imageworksstudio.com/blog/how-set-marketing-budget-your-smb/index.html and a summary for your convenience:

1.     Counselors to America’s Small Business (SCORE) and the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) define the variable for a proper marketing budget to be between 2% and 10% of sales, noting that for B2C, retail and pharmaceuticals can exceed 20% during peak brand building years.

2.     You have to spend money to make money, yet most small businesses are completely under budgeted when it comes to their marketing. Worse still when they do spend on marketing, much of the expenditure is wasted and becomes an expense instead of an investment. 

3.     The article goes on to provide some guidelines based on revenue quoting an average of 4-6% and making the usual disclaimer that many circumstances can warrant an increase or reduction in your marketing budget as a percentage of revenue.

4.     Looking at what your competitors are spending can be useful

5.     In the end your marketing budget should be properly allocated to position your organization, trump the competition, raise awareness, generate quality conversion and of course increase revenue growth and this is the most important point and exactly how a marketing budget should be considered.

6.     On the subject of organic growth – Many small businesses start out and grow their clientele by word of mouth alone and are very successful. But they usually hit a brick wall. That’s where building a powerful brand is critical. When you rely on organic growth alone, you risk losing revenue from business you did not get because a % your target audience were never made aware of your product or service!  And you cannot underestimate the lost sales from those prospects who perceived your current brand negatively and left your website without you ever knowing about it. This is why it is so important to build the brand correctly. Why risk millions to save thousands?

Finally I’d like to use 3 examples we can all learn from:

1.     The highly successful Real Estate Agency Hocking and Stuart entered the market by investing around 20% of the Net Sales back into marketing and became one of Australia’s most successful real estate agencies.

2.     Swisse feels better by increasing its marketing budget! Millions of dollars spent sponsoring sporting events and paying high-profile celebrities to spruik its products has paid off for Swisse Vitamins, which has more than doubled its profit.  

a.     131 % rise in net profit to $8.9 million for the year ended June 2011.

b.     Swisse revenue climbed to $77.2m, up from $45m the year before.

c.      Annual marketing expenses doubled to $26m, accounting for 94% of the total cost of sales at the fast-growing company. In contrast, market leader Blackmores, which made sales of $234m last year, spent just $22m on marketing and sales activities.

So Swisse allocated approximately 34% to marketing as a % of Total Revenue whilst Blackmores allocated only about 9.5% to marketing as a % of Total Revenue.

3.     LinkedIn, the world’s biggest professional-networking website, is expected to reach around $900m in sales and marketing and sales expenditure more than doubling in the last 12 months to around $76m or 8.4% of Total Revenue in a category that sees LinkedIn play in 3 different markets with varying levels of competition:

a.     Professional Networking – subscription fee model where they have little or no competition other than that of consumer attention deficit caused by every other social medium

b.     Advertiser Media Dollars excluding Recruitment, which is an incredibly competitive category dominated by Google’s Adwords

c.      And finally competing for recruitment advertising dollars that LinkedIn is vying for by hoping to take share away from other recruitment portals.

Regardless of your industry or stage of development “You’ll Feel Better If You Budget For Adequate Marketing Investment” and invest your marketing budget wisely!

Why most recruitment consultants are damaging their personal branding and company without even knowing.

by | Aug 9, 2012 | Blog, Strategy

The objective of this post is to highlight the importance of personal branding or good old reputation improvement in layman’s terms.

I hope to show that the opportunity to build your reputation or personal brand is not only being missed by the majority of recruiters, but the way in which business is being conducted is detrimental to brand building.

Rightly or wrongly, Real Estate Agents and Lawyers are some of the least likeable white-collar professionals with a real image problem, but having picked on lawyers previously:

  1. Why do Law Firms have a serious misunderstanding of what branding is and how to do it
  2. Judging Australian law firm marketing – Guilty on all
  3. Simplicity – Your competitive advantage in raising the marketing bar of the legal profession!

and trying to alleviate marketing mistakes and problems in the small business arena on a daily basis; from manufacturers to management consultants, it’s high time we pick on someone new.

It’s not only fun, but also a great way of exercising one’s grey matter, stepping outside the daily routine and looking at a particular industry segment through the eyes of a Richard Branson or Steve Jobs. What would they do? One thing we can be certain of is that they would take away the features client have little interest in and improve on the benefits that are valued; they would turn the market on its head! Sir Branson, if you are reading this, please feel free to invite me to lunch on one of your private islands to discuss the opportunity further.

Most recruitment agencies like most professional services firms have not developed powerful brands that connect them to their prospects and customers.

Most do not have a unique offering in the marketplace that is delivered in a memorable and campaignable way both in terms of marketing communication and user experience. Other than specialising in a particular industry segment there is little else that differentiates them or provides a unique experience to their clients or candidates.

Before going further, allow me to note that this is not an attempt to provoke or put down the recruitment industry.

Firstly, when referring to the “majority” we mean transactional recruitment. These firms could learn much from Executive Search firms who are very good at targeting and engaging in a conversation with relevant prospective applicants. They are more strategic and have the vision to see that today’s candidates may be tomorrow’s clients; they see the relationship as a journey, not a short trip.

Secondly, most firms do want to treat candidates well and have good intentions. However they often fail for the following reasons:

a. Their business model is 100% client driven and hence they act only in the clients’ best interests. This means that there’s no time allowed to maintain candidate relationships.

b. They don’t realize the importance of maintaining their candidate data or doing so is difficult an unproductive. If this information was kept up to date, it would be much easier to contact candidates with the relevant roles and show that they understand the person they are calling. Lack of good candidate management software (CRM) means that companies can’t be as process driven, as they would like to be.

Thirdly, there are many talented, professional, hard-working and passionate members of the recruitment industry who are great at their jobs, but unfortunately they are not the majority. Those that do this properly really differentiate themselves in a positive way. Smaart Recruitment, The Neil Williams Company, Briggs Communications, Chikara Capital all share passion, experience, knowledge and excellent client service that makes both the applicants’ and clients’ experience truly remarkable.

Finally, recruitment agencies are probably one of the few professional services firms that have the ability to very quickly build a great services brand. Why you ask?

Recruitment, especially the search, selection and applicant communication part of the recruitment process is a “high contact sport.”

Let’s start by listing the different target audiences of a recruitment firm:

  1. Client – The one that signs the fat commission cheque.
  2. Prospective Candidates
  3. Referrers – Those who may not be interested themselves but know people who may be.

Let’s take an average job and count the number of personal and recruitment firm brand touch-points:

  • The number of applicants to have applied in response to the advertisement
  • Prospective applicants that were proactively approached by recruitment consultant to see whether they would be interested
  • Shortlisted applicants that would have been communicated with multiple times.

Our research shows that on average each recruitment consultant may communicate with anywhere between 40 and 300 different people for any one position.

So all these contacts made by recruiters in what I have called a ‘high contact sport’ is a great opportunity to generate positive brand perceptions for:

  • The recruitment consultant personally
  • The recruitment firm
  • And in many cases for the company brand of the client

So what’s the problem and hence the opportunity?

The prospecting effort by most recruiters or headhunters ends up being perceived as similar to that of a pushy second-hand car salesman.

A recent Seek survey showed that 40% of applicants were disappointed by the lack of feedback* however if you speak to most people looking for work you will find that the percentage is actually much higher.

Over the last 24 months I have spoken to dozens of jobseekers in the I.T., Marketing and Administration industries who in the majority have had a negative experience with the recruitment consultant who contacted them.

The negative brand perceptions quickly add up as a result of:

  • The number of prospective applicants who were contacted to see whether they would be interested in a certain position or to see whether they would refer to someone who may be interested
  • The number of applicants who have been rejected with a standard and delayed ‘templated’ e-mail response or worse received no response at all
  • The number of cold calls and emails being made to prospective clients by recruitment business development people.

In all these cases the way in which the recruiter communicates with these audiences, via phone, email and LinkedIn has been detrimental to their brand instead of contributing to brand building.

Pressure from management, lack of planning and doing it the way it always has been done, are all contributing factors.

As pressure to win retained jobs increases, recruiters are feeling the strain. A few years ago it was acceptable to place a candidate over a few months, now results are being demanded in two weeks. Often these timeframes are promised to ensure retained work, but it then becomes almost impossible to adhere to them and build a good candidate list without something being compromised. Often the first area to suffer is ‘candidate management’, followed by poorer quality candidates being sourced.

Young or inexperienced recruiters with high or almost impossible KPIs are under pressure from day one and the turnover in some of the larger transactional firms is very high. Under this sort of pressure and lack of maturity or understanding of business etiquette, recruitment consultants send off mass and untargeted emails to candidates, call inappropriate people and fail to screen and qualify candidates in a uniform and process driven manner.

Here are just 4 examples to illustrate my point:

Case 1:

We recently advertised for a senior role in our consultancy on LinkedIn. The role was a business opportunity to build your own business under our banner and was not in any way a typical job, the opportunity description was very specific, e.g.: it had no salary, no set hours of work.

We received 2 calls from recruitment consultants who cleverly managed to conceal their identity until they spoke to me. When told that we were not interested in their services and that I was very happy using LinkedIn, there was no polite offer of sending me some information that would convince me to change my mind, such as ‘Pitfalls of DIY Recruitment’, or any other attempt to show their expertise through thought leadership and experience, there was no attempt to highlight the benefits of using their recruitment services. There was however ‘begging’ to keep in touch with me to see whether our needs would change. When contacted in approximately 6 weeks, one of the consultants couldn’t even remember why they were calling me and their CRM system was under the impression we were looking for an employee!

Case 2:

This is an email I received from a senior recruiter wanting to connect with me on LinkedIn and ask for a referral:

“We currently have a role for a <Job Title> Expert with a leading <industry> brand. Looking for someone with at least two years <area of expertise> experience. If you know of anybody please send me your number for a chat.

Thank you,

<Name>

Case 3:

<Recruitment Consultant’s Name> has indicated you are a person they’ve done business with at <Recruitment Firm Name>·

Hi <Name of Prospective Candidate / Referrer>, I came across your profile and wanted to drop a quick line to see if you are exploring other job opportunities. I have a <Name of Position> opportunity – 12 months fixed term contract in <Name of Geographical Region>. If interested please call me on <Phone Number> to discuss further.

Case 4:

<Name> has indicated you are a person they’ve done business with at <Recruitment Firm Name>

Hi <Name of Prospective Candidate / Referrer>, I’m recruiting a role which I think may be if interest to you – are you open to career opportunities at present? If so please contact me on <Phone Number> for a confidential chat, thanks, <Name of Recruitment Consultant>.

My reply to Case 2 went something like this:

Hi <Name>, thank you for the invitation to connect.

It took me a while to respond due to the fact that I didn’t know who you were and you didn’t provide a reason for wanting to connect. You indicated that we have worked together at <Name of Recruitment Firm> which is not true, and indicates to me that you can not be bothered finding my email address or paying for an InMail or learning the many other ways of connecting on LinkedIn.

In saying this, I’m always happy to assist fellow professionals if they just ask – nicely! And this raises the question of networking NOT just social media utilization.

You probably wouldn’t call me or meet me at a networking function, and ask for what you are asking below. LinkedIn is NOT Twitter, it is a much more personal medium. Most people, myself included hate receiving “broadcasts”.

I realize how busy and stressful business is today, especially in recruitment and especially at your level of top management, but your below request for a favor is missing 2 critical elements for getting the favor:

  1. We have never met and do not have a relationship you can ‘leverage’
  2. You have not illustrated at all, how I will benefit by helping you! Why should I call you?

If you do this 20 times a day and even if a fraction of the people think like me, you are not creating the optimal perceptions about you or the company you work for. This is something a lot of recruiters don’t think about, but those that do can really stand out from the crowd.

Although I later found that the LinkedIn message was written by a junior with access to the senior’s LinkedIn profile, and the person has since been dismissed, the above highlights the problem which is happening on a mass scale and the crime is being perpetuated by the very people who should most be aware of social media etiquette in general and LinkedIn specifically as they spend so much time in this environment.

What will the future bring? Will it see talent agencies arise to represent the interests of the employee rather than those of the employer? It already happens in Professional Sports, Modeling and Acting. Can this happen in I.T., Marketing, Engineering, etc.?

Will your typical recruitment agency survive or will it morph into a new animal? Will the agency model be increasingly catering to executive search and selection and any thing below executive level be done by employers dealing directly with the talent pool through even more advanced online technologies? Only time will tell, but one thing is certain, the industry deserves a shake up Mr. Branson!

* Your Career, Marketing Magazine June 2012

 

Your network is your biggest asset and LinkedIn is the way to demonstrate your personal branding

Your network is your biggest asset and LinkedIn is the way to demonstrate your personal branding

by | Feb 20, 2012 | Blog, LinkedIn, LinkedIn Training, Promotion, Strategy

Your-network-is-your-biggest-asset

There are not many certainties in the world today, but here are 3 we can examine and show you how LinkedIn can assist you in benefitting from each:

1. The world has changed and the change of pace will keep accelerating.

Whether there will be another financial crisis or not and how big it will be is not something any of us can predict or control, but jobs will keep being lost; outsourcing, offshoring, resources will keep flowing to where the return on investment is the greatest. Whether it is job vacancies or business opportunities you will have to work harder and smarter to stand out and differentiate yourself from a greater number of competitors all trying to get a smaller share of the pie.

So, who can you rely on when times get tough?
You! And the equity in you; your personal brand. LinkedIn is the perfect personal branding and publicity tool.

LinkedIn, is a way that you can communicate to the world

  1. What you know, your experience and expertise, knowledge and the benefits you can deliver to your clients and manage and leverage
  2. Who you know, your trusted network, the people that think you are good
    There’s no point debating which of the two is more important, you need a good dose of both for success.

2. Online Marketing in general and Social Media Marketing specifically, together with the irreversible swing towards inbound marketing means that if your online marketing assets are not optimised and helping you and your business ‘get found’ then you will rapidly be left behind.

When it comes to B2B and professional services, LinkedIn provides the ultimate platform to combine all of your marketing assets, once they have been optimised – no point driving visitors to a leaky boat:

  • Your LinkedIn Profile itself is a great way to be found by prospects and stay top of mind in front of your customers
  • Your Website
  • Your Blog
  • Your YouTube Channel
  • Your Slideshare

3. Everybody in business relies on it, everybody wants it, everybody knows it is the most effective way of attracting customers, yet when it comes to the holy grail of generating referrals very few businesses / salespeople have a have a plan and a process to turn their connections into contracts!

LinkedIn is the perfect Sales Tool for B2B and professional services marketers that allows you to leverage your networks. LinkedIn provides the perfect and simple platform for every step of a typical Referral Process:

  1. Identifying Referrers / Influencers in your Network
  2. Providing customers with a WOW experience (LinkedIn won’t help you there – you need to be great at what you do or deliver exceptional value through your products and services!)
  3. Stay Top of Mind through regular communication that adds value to your customers and prospects
  4. Educate your network how to refer to you
  5. Ask for targeted Referrals and Introductions, rather than ‘asking for referrals blindly’
  6. Recognise and Reward those that refer to you!

Don’t get left out, get LinkedIn.

To learn about our LinkedIn courses check this out.

For a Free and No Obligation Discussion about your specific needs contact us today.