Tips For Using LinkedIn To Connect & Engage With Ideal Prospects

Tips For Using LinkedIn To Connect & Engage With Ideal Prospects

If your clients are other businesses you are in the business to business space, odds are very high that you should be using LinkedIn to connect and engage with potential prospects and clients. But how do you best use LinkedIn to actually do this, to connect with ideal clients and start building those relationships? Stay tuned, because I'm going to give you three tips that I think will really, really help. Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we believe marketing shouldn't be difficult. All you need is the right plan.

So we're going to talk about LinkedIn connecting and engaging today. LinkedIn is one of the top business-to-business lead generation platforms out there for most business-to-business service companies, you got to be on LinkedIn. Now, there are a few here and there where, like their target market, for whatever reason, is not active on LinkedIn, but man, those are few and far between. So I'm going to say, in most cases, you need to be on LinkedIn. It's probably the first place I would be if I was in a business-to-business offering.

So you got to be on LinkedIn. But here's the problem. LinkedIn has become, I think, really spammy where if you're on it, you see this all the time, you connect with people, people send out a connection request, you accept it, and then they immediately start sending you just unwanted messages about their company, how they can help you, and they don't even know anything about you. I mean, would you, like, go meet somebody at a networking event, introduce yourself and then start just hammering them on how you're great and how you can help them? Of course not. Nobody would want to talk to you. So why do we do this on LinkedIn? It doesn't make any sense to me. It is a very spray and pray like I'm going to just hit a ton of people and hopefully just a few people will come through the other end. I just don't think that's how most businesses want to be portrayed and what they want to be known for.

So I'm going to give you three tips to help you connect and engage with potential prospects on LinkedIn. And I'm going to warn you right now, this is not scalable. You cannot do this at scale. You have to take the time or somebody has to take the time to do the legwork and do this right. So if you're looking for something that's scalable, then this is probably not for you. But if you want to really take a honed in approach, you know, hone in on, hey, these are the 25, 50, 100 ideal clients for me and I'm going to use LinkedIn to start building a relationship with these people, then this is for you.

Personalize Your Outreach on LinkedIn

So what's the first thing? Well, first you need outreach, right? How do you outreach right? Personalize it. Don't do one of these generic canned things. Do it personalized some of the best outreach messages to connect that I have seen on LinkedIn are very personal. Look at their profile. What are they doing? Are they publishing articles? Have they been featured on podcasts? I mean, outreach in that outreach message mention that, "Hey, I saw your episode on the X, Y, Z podcast." or "I read the article you wrote. Love what you talked about here." You know, "I would love to connect with you." Just personalize it. Show that person that you took the extra time to learn a little bit more about them and what they do. I think you will get far better responses when you do that with your outreach. So that's the first thing. Personalize your outreach. 

Engage 

Second thing is, once you have connected, right? Once they've accepted that connection request and now they are in your network, well, you need to engage with those people. And I would highly recommend that you will not start just blasting messages to them. I would recommend that you start to engage with those people, how can you engage with these people that you're connected with, look at their posts, comment on their posts, like their posts, reshare their content. Guess what? When you do that, you are going to show up in their notifications. So and maybe you're going to have to test this and play with this a little bit. I'm not saying don't send messages to people. All I'm saying is your messages need to be the right types of messages. But don't you think that your message, your initial message after a connection request is accepted is going to be even just looked at in a positive light if they've seen you show up in their notifications a few times? What if you connect with somebody and then after you connect, you comment on their some of their stuff or like it? For a couple of weeks, you know, and so they've seen you in your note, their notifications for a couple of times, then you send an outreach message.

Serve and Add Value

But when you send that outreach message, OK? What do you do that goes into the third step, serve and add value? Look at how you can be of service and add value to people. First, you're going to get to know these people. You don't even know if they have a problem that you can solve at this point. So what can you do to serve and add value to them? OK? One of the great things that I see people doing now, like if you have a podcast, maybe one of the things you can do in an outreach message after you've stayed top of mind with these people by engaging with some of their content is just offer, "Hey, I think you might be a great guest on our podcast. If you're interested, let's set up 15 minutes to just connect and we can talk through what an episode might look like." Isn't that a great way to start to build a relationship with the potential prospect by serving them first? And as you get to know them, then you're going to be able to determine, "Hey, can I do some additional things to help these people or this person? Can I actually work? Would they potentially be a good client?" But look at how you can serve and add value to people first and start building that relationship. Then you can start to have those sales conversations but start to think about what's the next simple step that I can take with people, you know, too oftentimes people do this outreach cold, they connect. And then like I said there, that even if they're trying to serve people, which a lot of people aren't, they're just selling immediately. They're asking for too much. And if you ask for too much, it's too large a step. These people barely know you. They're not going to take the next step.

Conclusion

So in your outreach messages, as you're trying to connect and serve and engage with people, think about what's the next simple step? Baby steps. What's the next simple step you can ask somebody to take. If I connected with you, I commented on two, three, four, your posts over a two to four week period of time. And then I sent an outreach message to you on LinkedIn saying, "Hey, I love some of the content that you're putting out, you know, it looks like you really you're well versed in your field of X, Y, Z. I have a podcast that's focused on small business owners, and I think you might be able to add a lot of value to our audience. Would you be interested in being interviewed on our show? If so, let me know. And let's set up some just a quick 15 minute call to do a pre interview and talk through the details." Wouldn't you be much more inclined to respond to something like that, so that's just one idea, ok? But as you're thinking about your LinkedIn outreach, consider these three steps, personalize your outreach first and foremost, two, engage with people. You're never going to build a relationship if you don't engage. Reshare their content, comment on their posts, you know, like what they're doing. Those are all simple ways to engage, but it's not scalable. You have to somebody has to do the work. And then the third thing is consider being of service and adding value first and foremost. You have to get enough information before you can even think about starting to sell people. So focus on that next simple step you can ask somebody to take. And I think you're going to find your results are going to be much, much better.

So I hope you found this helpful. LinkedIn can be an absolute goldmine if it is done correctly, but I think too many people just take a spray and pray approach. I would highly recommend that you look at taking in more of a sniper based approach, create a list of those ideal clients that you want to start building a relationship with. Keep it small. Twenty five fifty, maybe a hundred. Depends on how much time you have. And you're going to focus on building a relationship and getting to know those people. For most service-based businesses, especially coaches, consultants, professional service providers.

I mean, man, if you could just bring in even a handful of new clients from activity like that, it would be life-changing for your business. So I hope you found this helpful. If you did and you'd like to get more information or if you've got another roadblock that you need clarity on, hop on over to our website, Rialto Marketing dot com, that's R-I-A-L-T-O Marketing dot com. Click on the get a free consultation button. You will get a ton of value from the call and walking away, walk away knowing where you need to focus your marketing efforts right now to get the best return. Clarity is priceless, right? When we have clarity, we know what our priorities are and our stress goes down. Be happy to help if it's of interest to you. Til next time.