Have you ever looked at a colleague or your competition and asked how they’ve better customer relationships and qualified referrals? The answer is simple people, LinkedIn marketing automation.
As we all know marketing is a multi-layered approach to reaching and securing new customers, and with each step of the process, there are multiple steps that we need to tick off to ensure that we get the results that we’re looking for. We’re all trying to pack in more and more each day to ensure that we’re reaching our KPIs, and any process that is going to enable us to get ahead of the competition is good right?
Because you’re reading this you’re a smart person and you know how important that LinkedIn is for searching for leads, the initial introduction, maintaining a relationship as well as placing yourself as an expert in your industry. So here are some quick takeaways that you can implement in your marketing campaigns to ensure that you are using LinkedIn automation in the most effective and non-invasive way.
Don’t Spam – It’s a real turnoff.
Yes you can implement automation as part of your CRM, tie in with social media, send drip marketing emails, check the analytics and run segmentation, however and this is a big one, you need to ensure that there is a balance between the automation and human interaction.
By now we’re quick at picking up when something is an automated message, it doesn’t make us feel valued and before you’ve even started a relationship you’re on the back foot.
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Who doesn’t like a good time hack? Automation certainly provides us with time saving tasks that don’t look impersonal such as generating sales leads, running surveys to collect data, nurturing relations and marketing via email nurturing, discovery, campaign tracking, and product promotion. You’re able to reduce the sales cycle in terms of time and reach, making the cost of customer acquisition lower and the process in general more efficient.
We’re able to bypass various stages of the sales cycle by leaving them to automation, and allowing us to step in when they’re getting closer to commiting and you’re needed to give that personal touch and start to form a solid relationship.
One area where so many people fail is follow up. It’s essential to ensure that you create not only a long lasting relationship as retention and loyalty are so important, but that the likelihood of your Net Promoter Score (NPS) is higher than the competition.
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We can all remember marketers who set themselves out from the competition by sending out timely and relevant information. Maybe it was an industry report, contact details for a potential client, an industry-related webinar, a call out for industry speakers, free conference tickets or an app to save them time and money.
The key here is that an automated system isn’t going to be able to do this. It’s not going to intrinsically know a person, their industry, their likes and dislikes. That falls down to you, and that’s where your marketing savviness comes to play. It’s all about personalisation.
You’re going to need to check in on the automation now and again to ensure that it’s working efficiently and effectively for you, and to make sure that the leads are quality. Don’t be afraid to look deep into the analytics and reporting functions and adjust the settings where necessary to make sure that the figures are going in your favour.
Are you really adding value?
Don’t just be a lemming and jump on the LinkedIn marketing bandwagon, it’s definitely not a one-size-fits-all approach. Take time to see if this really is going to add any value to you and your customers.
When you’re doing your research into automation options just be sure that it’s going to be able to do the tasks that are suitable and beneficial to your product, service or industry. Make sure that the list of contacts you choose to go through the automated process is going to be the right fit. It becomes especially important as you don’t want any of your content to be flagged as spam.
By creating these sales and marketing touches you’ll be able to bypass some of the necessary marketing steps a lot quicker, especially from the awareness to the consideration phase, and it’s going to be a lot easier for a sales rep to close the deal.
Listen and learn.
There are two ways that automation is going to play out.
One is where you scrape as much information as possible from your first-degree contacts and once done so you spam them to the point of no return, thinking that if you bombard them with an overload of information you’re going to be able to close the deal a lot quicker.
The second approach, and the one in which you should follow, is where you take time each week to draw up a list of potential prospects which have been prioritised by your LinkedIn automated system. You then take these collated contacts and create bespoke messages for each segment of that list. The following week you can target a different segment with a slightly different message which again is tailored to a particular demographic. Yes the list may be small, however, it’s going to produce much better results as not only are you building relationships but the likelihood of converting is going to be a lot higher.
It’s homework time.
When used correctly a Linkedin automation system is going to give you leverage when building connections and ultimately sales.
Now it’s your turn to start working on your email list. Create your marketing strategy through key messaging and personalisation based on different industries, and drill further for more niche demographics.
How to tread carefully between LinkedIn automation and spamming
