LinkedIn is one of the best places to find clients online, it can really be a goldmine for any company that is in the B2B business. Over the years I have had the privilege of working with many different clients and they usually have only one problem, it’s not traffic, it’s targeted traffic.
I’ve received clients who get thousands of visitors a day, but their sales are unfortunately low. What is it that causes this? Well unfortunately it’s the fact that most of their visitors aren’t buyers. They’re people who are looking to read a funny article, gain some basic information, or kill some time on their lunch break. These aren’t the kind of people that you want if you are selling your own product, and especially if you are selling to a business.
The problem is augmented when you are trying to sell to a business, this is because business owners who make the buying decisions usually aren’t sitting around browsing the internet. They aren’t reading BuzzFeed articles and if they are they aren’t thinking about the next business purchase that they are going to make. Most “traditional” digital marketing strategies don’t really work on these guys. This is why it’s so important that you understand where your market is and how to reach them.
So the first question we have to ask ourselves is, where do the B2B decision makers hang out? I’ll give you a hint, it’s in the title of my article. Business owners and decision makers spend a lot of their time at LinkedIn. In fact, some of them have complained that they waste too much of their time at LinkedIn.
I’ll give you an example, I once was doing digital marketing for a CRM website. This website sold various CRM products to a few different companies. When I first got them as a client their traffic was great, but most of their sales came from outbound calls, they weren’t really getting all that much traction from the website. I took awhile analyzing their competition and looking at what they were doing for success. After awhile I came to the conclusion that LinkedIn was really the key and answer to my questions.
So what did I do? I went to LinkedIn, set up a budget and did some advertising. Within the first day I had a conversion rate of 1 out of every 4 people who clicked on my ad were converting. That’s a pretty big deal, especially in the B2B world. I was impressed to say the least. I then spent the next few months learning how to game LinkedIn, this way I could advertise both on the site with money, and without, and today I’m going to show you how to do both.
Finding Clients On LinkedIn Through Paid Advertising
LinkedIn is incredible, it has some amazing targeting features that really lets you get down to the nitty gritty on who you are targeting and what they’re interested in. This is very similar to Facebook, but in my opinion it is a little bit more lucrative. This is because most people who are on Facebook tend to be browsing and talking to friends. People on LinkedIn instead are in a business mindset, and are usually trying to decide on what business decisions to make.
My recommendation is to take a bit to familiarize yourself with LinkedIn, buy a few ads based on clicks and then see how you do. I bet that you will be surprised at the amount of traction that you gain, the advertising at LinkedIn is definitely more expensive than in most places, but it is by far the most targeted traffic out there.
How To Get Clients On LinkedIn For Free
First off if you haven’t already read my article on how to go viral on LinkedIn I suggest that you do. It’s a great article and it will give you the basics of how LinkedIn works and the things that you should look for. That being said there are plenty of things that you can do in order to use LinkedIn.
The easiest one is to choose what business you want to work with and then try to connect with a decision maker. Most people on LinkedIn are looking to build connections, and you’d be surprised at how many of them are willing to connect right back to you. Then all you need to do is message them and create a connection. You can then build the connection and begin your sales process; if you do things correctly you should have no problem. Remember that people are on LinkedIn to do business, so don’t be afraid to talk business. Make sure you aren’t spammy at the same time and you shouldn’t run into any problems at all.
Another strategy that works rather well is to use groups to promote your product. Go to various groups in your niche and start participating, start answering questions, and writing good articles to post. Once people start responding add them as connections, use these connections to try to build up a relationship, and once again work them into your sales process. Groups are a great place where a lot of high up people tend to hang out. It also allows you to show your expertise and knowledge as you interact.
Conclusion
By following these two above strategies I have been able to bring many clients to my own clients. It’s incredible what a little bit of work and knowledge can do. While it may mean a step down for the amount of traffic for your clients, focusing on LinkedIn can be a great way to raise their revenue. Remember that in the end all that matters is that they make more money, focus on targeted traffic instead of bulk traffic and you’ll start to see amazing results quickly.
