Lead generation on Linkedin and LinkedIn marketing has been covered quite extensively in numerous articles. Why?
Simply because LinkedIn provides a great platform by which to target professionals who work in the B2B space.
However for all the advice that is available people still struggle with lead generation on LinkedIn. In an interview with social connection and lead generation expert Marko Pavicic, explains why businesses still struggle to get the most out of LinkedIn.
He also shares how he uses a scientific process that integrates neuroscience and LinkedIn to help video agencies scale and become seven-figure businesses. A process as he puts it – that can build a predictable yet consistent flow of leads and clients with $0 in ad spend.
- Why use LinkedIn for B2B lead generation?
- Why most businesses struggle with lead generation on LinkedIn?
- What is a superpower?
- How do you find your superpower?
- What do people get wrong when doing lead generation on LinkedIn?
- Lead Generation on LinkedIn: Profile changes based on your superpower
- Why you should look to collaborate
- How to do outreach for lead generation on LinkedIn?
- How to reach out to people that have different superpowers
- How to scale your outreach
- How to build out a referral engine that supports lead generation on LinkedIn
- How to scale your visibility on LinkedIn and outside the platform
- How to build consistency with your LinkedIn efforts
- What to do if you don’t get any replies or you don’t get any engagement from your content or your messages
- Listen to the episode with Marko Pavicic
- Watch the episode with Marko
- Some topics we discussed include:
- Related links and resources
- Connect with Marko
Why use LinkedIn for B2B lead generation?
Take a look at the statistics below:
- For 94% of B2B marketers, LinkedIn is the first channel they use when they want to distribute content to various social media sites.
- 91% of marketers use LinkedIn as the number-one platform when they want to access professionally relevant content.
- B2B blogs and websites get 90% of their social traffic from Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and LinkedIn drives half of this traffic.
- LinkedIn offers quality leads as 4 out of 5 members on the platform are in charge of making business decisions. Compared to the average web audience, LinkedIn users have two times the buying power.
These statistics represent just a fraction of the potential that LinkedIn offers as a rich opportunity for lead generation. However, many businesses either don’t know how to leverage the platform, or they get one or more aspects of their strategy wrong and end up wasting money.
Why most businesses struggle with lead generation on LinkedIn?
On LinkedIn, you aren’t just targeting people in specific geographic areas and around certain professed interests. Instead, you can target people on a much more granular level, including companies they work for or have worked for, languages they speak, the schools they attended, and so forth.
For highly targeted marketing and communication, LinkedIn is a great go-to platform. It allows for better conversion rates in the B2B space.
That said, most people struggle with lead generation on LinkedIn because they lack the ability to network effectively.
Marko says that to network effectively on any platform or even through in-person meetings, you need to understand one thing about yourself – your superpower.
He says most people haven’t identified their superpower because, as they go through life, through school, someone always tries to suppress this concept of understanding your character, your natural abilities, what you are good at, and what you are not good at.
What you need to do, instead, is define that one area that you are good at, and then build your business or your job around it.
If people did so, they would find it far easier to connect with other people and build relationships to create this inner satisfaction, and so, more profitability in business.
What is a superpower?
A superpower is that one specific thing which you enjoy doing and which helps you enter into the flow zone.
If I were to take myself as an example, it would mean that I enjoy writing content. Looking at this from a science perspective, it means that I enjoy creating ideas and putting them into words to show them to somebody.
Designers, on the other hand, might enjoy drawing or using photoshop.
Connectors like Marko enjoy using a piece of paper to list names with whom he can connect today to make life easier for those people.
Closers will ask themselves – what specific things can I complete today so I can move to the next thing?
How do you find your superpower?
An easy way to do this is to think of your favorite movies because we quite easily relate to our favorite movie characters.
Ask yourself –
- What are my favorite movies?
- Who are the characters in those movies?
- Why do I appreciate or admire them?
Then:
- Define your favorite movie character.
- Ask yourself why you admire him or her.
- Look for similar patterns in life (meaning what you enjoy doing).
In Marko’s case, his favorite movies are Gladiator
and Brave Heart.
The characters he relates to are those who unite people to fight for the freedom of Scotland in the 12th century or gladiators in ancient Rome.
What do they have in common?
A quest to unify people and connect them to fight for freedom.
After making 10,000 social connections, Marko has developed the 3C framework to help us identify our superpower.
It consists of creators, connectors, and closers.
As we go through life, we go through all of these stages of developing our superpower. But there is one area that comes more naturally to us. Let’s explore these areas in some detail so you can identify yours.
Creators
In business terms, creators are likely to be designers, architects, marketers, copywriters.
Their superpowers are:
- Compassion
- Empathy
- Openness
- Honesty
- Integrity
- Passion
- Obsession
- Trust
- Ability
This means that such people, like yourself, will always approach things from the emotional side, by generating ideas with their imagination and expressing themselves by doing a specific thing or project in their personal or business life.
Creators might put so much emphasis on the emotion behind the project which they are producing that they will have a blind spot. This occurs when they don’t get good feedback or if they get feedback that is not given in a constructive way. As a result, they feel hurt, and they take the feedback personally because they invested so much emotion into the project.
Every superhero also has Kryptonite, the downside of their superpower. When you understand both the superhero side and this Kryptonite side, you get the whole picture. Then it’s easier to find your balance between the two sides.
Connectors
Connectors really value social bonds.
They really value reaching out to people, building relationships. They like creating more value in personal and business life by making life easier for other people through simple social connections.
Their superpowers include:
- Unity
- Collaboration
- Integration
- Method
- Structure
- Organization
- Gratitude
- Resilience.
Their Kryptonite is that they might become so invested in connecting with people that they’ll put others’ needs before their own. This means that many times they feel drained and tired.
Closers
Closers, in simple terms, are salespeople. These are usually people like CEOs, managers, leadership experts, perhaps a parent/s if you have a family.
This means that, when you need to accomplish something, closers are the ones who finish the task.
Their superpowers are:
- Empowerment
- Loyalty
- Simplicity
- Calm
- Clarity
- Fearlessness
- Greatness
- Persistence
To get something done, like closing a business deal or supporting someone in need, might require a lot of loyalty or patience. This often means that you really must be calm and work to understand the needs of other person or persons and put them above yours in that equation.
What this means is that, instead of attacking somebody, they just ask why. Good salespeople always dig deep to find the root of the problem rather than just pitching a solution.
Their Kryptonite is that they might focus so much on numbers, tests, and logic that it’s really difficult for them to express emotions. Forging forward, closing deals, or completing projects comes naturally to them. But when they need to slow down and say, “Thank you,” or “I am grateful for the sale,” or “You did a great job,” they find it very hard. Being vulnerable is really difficult for them.
How does knowing your superpower category help with finding clients?
When you understand the category in which you operate most of the time, it will become really easy for you to understand other people.
Ask yourself, “How can I use my superpower to make life easier for the people that I interact with?”
Let’s take Marko as an example. As a person who really appreciates relationships, the way he could help is by generating leads.
When Marko meets people like me, he already knows that I am a creator. If he connects with future clients, he knows that many of them are likely to be closers, and he can speak with them in a relevant manner.
Tip – Keep your Kryptonite in mind to find the right balance in life.
- Use this guide to help you figure out your superpower. Ask yourself, “At this point in life what is the one thing that I most enjoy doing in my business?
- When you understand this, it forms the foundation because it gives meaning to your life.
What do people get wrong when doing lead generation on LinkedIn?
- What LinkedIn actually does is to give you the ability to connect with other people. Your LinkedIn profile is how you present yourself to them.
LinkedIn leverages one of our basic needs as humans, which is to be social. We cannot live in isolation. The biggest punishment for somebody is living in isolation.
The platform leverages a specific part of the brain, called the social brain, which influences our innate ability to connect with people.
So, for example, if I write this post and don’t share it with anyone then it is only a piece of content. It doesn’t have value (given my superpower of being a creator) until I share it and get a reaction or feedback from my audience.
What people often get wrong on LinkedIn is that they are not aware of their superpower or how best to connect with people. This leads to several results:
- They do not approach anybody because you feel that your work is not worthy. They lack self-confidence, self-worth, and this goes on and on: They do not approach anybody…
- If they do connect, their approach is too much like making a sales pitch (75% of people on LinkedIn do this). The script goes something like this: “Hi, this is my service, would you like to help me? Can I help you?”
- If they connect with people and their messaging is delivered better, the issue is often that they are not consistent in connecting with people, approaching them, providing value. Without this, they will not have business success. If they want to have a predictable number of clients, they need to understand the number of people they must connect with on a daily basis. They need to know the amount of value they need to provide future clients. Only then will they generate a certain number of meetings, which leads to clients and ultimately revenue.
Lead Generation on LinkedIn: Profile changes based on your superpower
Focus on the Headline and the About page. These are the most important things in your profile to have right. Because if you don’t get people’s attention on these, they will move on.
The Headline
In the headline, you need to share a specific practical thing. Use a formula like, “Connecting A + B to help C”
In Marko’s case, this works out to be –
“Connecting neuroscience and LinkedIn to help video production companies.”
People are intrigued when two seemingly unrelated or uncommon things are connected – like LinkedIn and Neuroscience. Why?
Because one part of that sentence triggers the emotional part of the brain and one part triggers the logical part. Neuroscience is emotional while LinkedIn is a social platform that lends to the logical part of the brain.
When you understand this, it makes it easier to identify whom you can help.
When people from production companies land on Marko’s profile, they see that he uses neuroscience and LinkedIn to help people like them, so they identify with what he does.
For one of Marko’s clients, the LinkedIn headline was changed to “Connecting consciousness with video to create engaging content.”
Why link consciousness and video?
Because he was in a space providing video services to guys like Jason Silva, Ryan Bilay, Tom Bilyeu – all big motivational speakers.
The Cover Photo and Profile Photo
Marko recommends taking great care with your profile photo. Make sure it’s something professional and clean – not you in a swimsuit or anything like that.
In the cover photo, you could feature your business logo or, if you have been featured in a big publication, show that off. In other words, use the cover photo as an important source of credibility.
The “About” Section
When people ask for a referral, they do it by asking their close circle of friends for it.
When you ask for a referral the question that most people have in their minds is, “Can you tell me something about this guy that will lend utility and credibility to my situation?”
The first sentence in the About section, therefore, is really important.
Here is how you can write out the section:
Step 1: Put the first sentence in the form of a question about a specific problem that you resolved for your clients.
In Marko’s case, this is something like, “Do you struggle when it comes to having consistency with generating leads and meetings?”
Step 2: Once you define the challenge your future clients face in the form of a question, answer it with a simple sentence.
So, in Marko’s case, it’s something like, “I help video production agencies who were stuck using traditional marketing or referral sources. I helped them create a sales system to consistently generate leads and clients.”
The best way to think about answering the question is by identifying what a person gets from working with you.
In Marko’s case it goes like the following five bullet points:
- Define your superpower within 10 minutes.
- Develop a profile of your dream client within seven minutes.
- Get a specific framework for consistently connecting with your dream clients.
- Then get a proven method for converting conversations into leads and meetings.
- And then, finally, get a proven method for using your existing contacts to build a referral engine and stay top of mind.
Bear in mind that your clients are likely to have a multitude of problems and challenges, and you might want to address a lot of them at once. But when people have many choices, or when your profile lists many problems that you have solved, they will be stuck. (This is due to a psychological issue known as the paradox of choice.) So, instead of clicking the “Send Message” button, they will feel unsure about what to do and move on.
Tips –
- Include specific measurable things in your solution
- Consider adding some referrals. Or if you have some good client stories, write two or three sentences how you helped them or what they say about you.
Why you should look to collaborate
Collaboration is a way to build confidence and credibility with the person or persons you wish to work with. Psychologically it is easier for a person to say yes to an offer to collaborate than to a sales pitch. Mind you, this is a long-term strategy, which will work only if you value relationships more than a sale.
Using words like “collaborate,” “integrate,” and “connect” puts a person into a more receptive position, rather than saying, “Let’s connect and work together.”
Marko approaches collaboration by offering a few options to the challenge a person is facing. He also combines his approach with relevant content.
He does this intentionally to support his superpower, which always comes down to connecting or collaborating or integrating people.
How to do outreach for lead generation on LinkedIn?
Many times in sales, you get a message like, “I noticed your post….. Do you have 15 minutes for a short chat?”
The thing is, we live in an age where there is so much information that people get stuck, paralyzed. This means that, to scale your business, you need to position yourself by recognizing that your future client has challenges.
Marko, for example, is in this marketing agency video production space, and he already knows what the structure of 5-, 6-, and 7-figure businesses looks like in terms of lead generation and client acquisition and the challenges they face. In light of that, Marko has a list of resources he can share with his future clients.
These can be LinkedIn posts, PDFs, short videos, and so on.
For example, if a future client has a 6-figure business, he knows all of the main challenges they have in generating leads with predictability. He knows that they need to have a specific system, either through LinkedIn or some other channels to connect with people daily and to generate meetings. These, in turn, bring in revenue with predictability.
What he will do is this:
- Look through his library and send the person an informational piece, like a short video on how can that person can use LinkedIn to generate leads efficiently.
- He sends it over with a link, without a call to action and without a request for a 15-minute call.
Why?
Because he has found that after years of testing that you can build your online authority through the principle of reciprocity that people have in their mind. It means, “If I give you something for free, I don’t ask anything in return. But you will feel slightly obliged to give me something in return.” This means that I’m just using this principle ethically because if a person from day one sees, “Okay this guy is delivering value, he’s just here to help me. What does it cost me to ask him? How can I help him or her?”
How to reach out to people that have different superpowers
One, it all boils down to asking yourself a question: What specific type of relationship do I want to have with this person? Then, based on that, how am I going to reach out?
Marko says:
When I reach out to people, I ask myself, Is this person
- a client?
- a strategic partner?
- a potential referral?
Maybe this is an elimination, which means, “At this point, I don’t see any way that we can build a relationship.”
Let’s say my superpower is creating great content, empathy, storytelling. If I read somebody’s LinkedIn profile and see their website and posts, I can get a good idea of what works and what does not work.
So now I can apply my superpower to their Kryptonite.
My superpower is creating great stories and customer journeys through research and interviews. Let’s say for example that a future customer I find on LinkedIn has no content on their profile or on their website. Perhaps they have content, but the wording isn’t good, there is no engagement and consistency.
So, I could reach out and say, “Hey, I noticed on your profile that your posts are not having a lot of engagement. Here is a three-step process for how you can increase your engagement with seven minutes of activity each day.”
It all boils down to your superpower.
What challenges does your future customer have? Use your intuition to provide the best possible resource to build value for that person.
How to scale your outreach
After several years of being in business, chances are that you start to notice strengths and patterns. Let’s say you run a team of sales reps. You notice that when it comes to creating content, the biggest challenge your sales reps have is consistency. So now you can identify a solution to the problem and provide practical steps to solve it.
Identify five to seven common challenges or patterns in the target audience. Then ask yourself, “How can I resolve this?”
Then, over a weekend or one week, create maybe seven to 10 resources that are going to help them resolve the issue of consistency with creating content. This can be a short video, which you can record through Zoom or through your webcam. Maybe it is a three-page PDF or a LinkedIn post.
So basically, when you have identified your challenges for a target audience, go to what I call the “value library.” When you have connected with other people, just send them some resources one at a time.
With regard to connection requests, it comes down to scale. Marko advises against using third party software for lead generation on LinkedIn because they will ban you.
Instead, use the LinkedIn search bar to prepare your lead list. For example, if your target audience is “lawyers in Australia” or “lawyers. Australia.” Say this is a search alert. You can do this on the free version or the paid version. Once you define your lead list, you can export it to an app called Skrapp.io.
Then prepare a couple of scripts that you can use to connect with people. Use the framework of creators, connectors, and closers.
Don’t use messages like: “Hey, I noticed that you are in video production, let’s connect.”
Use something better, like: “Hey since you are in video production, here’s a post which shows you how you can get a client with one message.” And then link to the post.
The point is this: we try to position ourselves from day one to give value to other people.
When you have identified your lead list and your templates for sending a connection request, then hire a Virtual Assistant (VA). In the Philippines or Pakistan, you can hire a VA for 3 or 4 dollars an hour. This means that, for 4 dollars an hour, you can send 60 to 70 connection requests per day.
How to build out a referral engine that supports lead generation on LinkedIn
Let’s say that you want to do marketing for lawyers in Brisbane within a radius of 200 kilometers. What you can do is ask, “Okay whom do I know from Brisbane who might have access to lawyers?”
The first thing you do is this: write down from memory the names of people who might be able to connect you. Then go into your LinkedIn account and filter the connections from Brisbane inside your network. This can be easily done in the search bar; you just choose a location.
Then you might also go into Facebook and do the same. From this process, you might get the names of 15 to 20 people whom you feel might be able to help make connections.
When you have identified those people, enter their names into an Excel spreadsheet and then ask yourself, “Okay, what is the desired outcome from this relationship?”
For one person, it might be, “Okay maybe this person can connect me with lawyers in Brisbane, but if this person has a business in Sydney, maybe she can connect me with some lawyers from Sydney, too. Write this down.
The next step is messaging. Reach out to the people on the list, either through Facebook or LinkedIn and say something like, “Hey, I thought of you and wanted to hear your friendly feedback on an idea I had. Can I call you tomorrow or when you have some free time?”
Why do this?
Because it is a way to respect other people’s personal space. Marko says from experience that most people would be open to the idea and make time for you. On the other hand, asking for connections in the initial request, especially with creators or connectors, won’t be met with a favorable attitude.
We need to remember that on social networks everybody knows somebody. This means that you might not get the connections you are looking for in the first few requests, but if you send 20 to 30 messages you will see that a lot of doors will start to open up.
So, lead with value and provide value consistently before you ever ask for referrals or for business from a partner or a client.
It all boils down to two parts.
- The type of relationship you share with a person.
- How you make your request.
How to scale your visibility on LinkedIn and outside the platform
If you post a lot of content, in the long run, the LinkedIn algorithm will give you more space, more visibility, more engagement.
In terms of scaling relationships in traditional ways such as face to face meetings, the biggest obstacle is that there is a limit to how far these relationships can be scaled. Yes, you can create a lot of connections. But face to face meetings are not scalable simply because there is only so much of you to go around. To increase relationships in that way you would need to increase your salesforce.
Another way to look at scaling would be to identify a high-level connection that you can make who has an audience that is much larger than yours.
So, say you interviewed five CEOs of big companies who have 40K plus followers on social media and who have a big email list. That could mean that when they share your interview with their list, in one move you might get 1000 new podcast downloads.
How to build consistency with your LinkedIn efforts
Do two things.
- Define your superpower within 10 minutes
- Ask yourself, “Whom do I want to connect with?”
What to do if you don’t get any replies or you don’t get any engagement from your content or your messages
People often become paralyzed when they don’t get a response in five to seven days; they start thinking that they failed. We are living in an age where there is so much information and we are accustomed to getting rewards immediately. In business, this is not the case.
It could take a couple of days – or even weeks or months – to see results.
How do you keep forging ahead when you don’t see any fruit from your efforts?
- Go back to your superpower.
- Go back to recalling your favorite movie characters, and ask yourself, “What would he/she do in this situation?”
The answer is always … keep trying and moving forward.
Listen to the episode with Marko Pavicic
Watch the episode with Marko
Some topics we discussed include:
- What is a superpower and how to discover yours
- How to use neuroscience to boost your lead generation on LinkedIn
- How to best change your LinkedIn profile once you know your superpower
- How to position yourself on LinkedIn to encourage collaboration opportunities
- How to reach out to people with superpowers that are different from yours
- How to save time by automating the process of outreach
- How to build out your referral engine
- How to leverage content to scale your visibility on LinkedIn and outside of it
- What to do if you are not getting much engagement with your content
- and much much more
Related links and resources
- Check out Marko’s site
- Discover your superpower with this template. Watch this video first where Marko walks you through using the template.
- Respona’s email finder and email verifier
- Skrapp.io
Connect with Marko
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