Some Painful Facts:
- COVID-19 is here, and it’s changing all our lives.
- One day, we will overcome COVID-19, and life will return to normal.
- You need to take care of your business even during this period to avoid waking up in a difficult situation the day after.
COVID-19 has stormed into our lives, shaking them up. We are required to make significant changes to our daily routines, at home, in the family, in various life circles – and of course, in business.
It’s hard to think about business when everything is changing before our eyes: children are at home, places are closing, restrictions on gatherings are in place, companies are downsizing, laying off, and sending employees to work from home if they’re lucky, or on unpaid leave if they’re not.
But we must remember that no one will take care of our business the day after COVID-19. One day the restrictions will be lifted, schools, restaurants, and businesses will reopen, and airlines will resume normal operations – but our business may lag behind if we don’t take care of it today.
Let’s Talk About Marketing and Sales During a Crisis
The COVID-19 crisis began with the cancellation of conferences, exhibitions, and international events, continued with the cancellation of flights, and now even affects our ability to get to the office and meet potential customers.
This means that in practice, our ways to generate sales opportunities, new leads, and expand our sales funnel are dramatically shrinking.
In recent weeks, I have received many inquiries from marketing VPs, sales VPs, CEOs, and others who understand that all the methods they know for generating the next sale are no longer relevant, and they are left with salespeople who have no “raw material.”
What Do You Do When All Traditional Ways to Reach New Customers Are Blocked?
If we break down the lead generation process, we’ll see it consists of several stages:
- Accurate definition of what constitutes a lead.
- Finding the lead.
- Reaching out to them, creating curiosity, and capturing their attention.
- Initiating the sales process.
Traditionally, companies conduct this process in various formats:
– Building a Database and Conducting Cold Calling: This is relatively difficult to perform in large numbers, and today it faces resistance because, honestly, who likes talking on the phone today?
– Through Conferences: This is not scalable, occasional, and cannot provide us with daily leads.
– Through Various Digital Marketing Methods:** Like cold emails, Facebook, Google, etc. – where we are either seen as spammers, competing for the limited attention of potential customers, or spending high marketing budgets without controlling the number of leads we receive.
Although I am generalizing and painting the reality in broad strokes, and indeed each of these methods can still yield results, there are more efficient and less efficient ways, more enjoyable and less enjoyable, smarter and less smart.
Our Way to Help Those Clients Is to Transfer the Lead Generation Process to the World’s Largest B2B Lead Generation Platform – LinkedIn.
LinkedIn allows advertising in three main ways: (1) Sponsored posts, (2) Ads, (3) InMail (a type of email within LinkedIn).
These three methods, in my opinion, are expensive, ineffective, fail to capture significant attention, and each suffers from different shortcomings, ultimately making them, in most cases, not cost-effective and expensive in terms of cost per lead.
The Way We Work and Recommend Working Is Entirely Different:
First, Define Who Your Lead Is.
LinkedIn allows you to filter by more than 20 different parameters. The most common ones are: (1) Role, (2) Industry, (3) Company size, (4) Geography, (5) Seniority level. It is recommended to upgrade your profile to LinkedIn’s premium profile called Sales Navigator and define your audience there.
Then, Define What You Want to Say to That Audience.
This, in my opinion, is the most crucial detail, and it will define the success or failure of your LinkedIn activity. There are a few key rules for writing a good, intriguing, and converting message: (1) It should be short! (2) It should be very clear, (3) It should be in everyday, pleasant language, not spammy, (4) It should drive a very precise action, (5) It should clarify who you are and why you are reaching out, (6) It should present a significant opportunity or a substantial reason for your outreach, (7) The other side should feel “special.”
There are additional rules, but these are the main ones. Crafting the right message is a complex and delicate task. A change of a word here or there can lead to an increase or decrease of tens of percent in the conversion rate from a connection that just received a message to one that responded. I have been researching this topic in recent years, developing practices for it across hundreds of LinkedIn activities on different profiles, and thousands of versions I have crafted and analyzed.
Finally, Ensure Your Profile Is Good.
This aspect is also composed of many parts that create a clear picture of who you are and the value you can provide. Remember that when using a LinkedIn profile to generate leads, the entire profile should be written in that context (as opposed to recruitment/job search context). This means writing the role, description, summary, and bio in the context of benefits and values the profile owner can contribute to the business context. You might be surprised, but people who respond to you will often visit your profile before responding and check who they are communicating with.
Key points to emphasize: (1) A good photo, (2) An accurate job description, (3) A short and clear summary explaining the value the company provides, (4) A description of the current role.
How Practically to Generate Leads on LinkedIn?
After defining who the lead is, what you want to say to them, and ensuring your profile looks good – go ahead and start sending connection requests to those audiences, attach a personal note, and once they approve your request – send those connections the message you defined. Do this at a high volume – dozens of messages per day, daily.
The goal of the process is to capture the other side’s attention, intrigue them, be professional, and present your value clearly, sharply, and concisely, create responses, and process the responses into leads you can work with, leading to the initiation of the sales process.
Why Do I Love LinkedIn So Much with Our Method?
And why, after 13 years of experience in marketing across various media, did we shift all our focus to LinkedIn?
Many reasons. Here are the main ones:
- Highly Active Marketing Process: It resembles sales more than traditional marketing.
- Elegant Process Perceived as Very Professional:** It allows capturing attention in a pleasant manner.
- Very Precise Targeting and Filtering Capability.
- Full Control Over the Process:** Quantities, offer, call to action, and more.
- Scalable Activity: The process is scalable.
- The Other Side Receives an Email and Sometimes a Notification: About receiving a message from us.
- Direct, Genuine, and Unmediated Communication with the Other Side.
- Ability to Reach Senior People in Specific Roles: That are difficult to reach through other means.
- The Process Is Supported by a Lot of Data About the Other Side: Allowing us to make decisions based on the information.
- Ability to Approach Through a Senior Profile: And receive corresponding attention.
Beyond that, I can attest that it actually works. Throughout our years of activity, we have conducted hundreds of LinkedIn activities and created nearly 2,000,000 communications, which have turned into tens of thousands of leads, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in sales. We work with leading companies in Israel and around the world (some well-known names: Wix, Gett, MicroStrategy, Arrow, Emet, and more).
If you need help initiating a lead generation process on LinkedIn, or strengthening your sales activity during these crazy COVID-19 days, contact us, and we will be happy to help and advise.
Daniel
Daniel@webbee.digital
053-8508803
072-2221603
The article was originally written on the company’s website: How to Increase Presence and Generate Leads During COVID-19