We’ve spoken many times about the value of omni-channel marketing. As a refresher, it’s the strategy of using electronic, print and other mediums to deliver your messaging through in order to drive a conversation with decision makers.
There’s one platform out there that many speakers are underutilizing, ignoring entirely or worse – misusing – in order to reach decision makers. It happens to be the largest professional social media platform:
LinkedIn.
How are the best using LinkedIn as part of a systemized strategy to connect with decision makers that won’t respond to emails, letters, cards, or a rock through their window?
(Full disclosure: We haven’t tried that last tactic. But we’ve been tempted.)
(Want to know how to leverage LinkedIn to increase your speaking sales? Then you’re going to want to sign up for our next FREE Masterclass. Register HERE)
First, Why LinkedIn?
It’s true that many folks aren’t active on LinkedIn and prefer another social media platform. We’re found, however, that most of the folks we deal with across more than a thousand qualified organizations do have a LinkedIn profile.
While we don’t rely completely on LinkedIn, we do use it as another method of outreach to both drive conversations and create them and fuel referrals. Let’s get into all of those.
Creating Conversations
LinkedIn has a wonderful little feature that allows for reverse-stalking. You have the ability to see who’s viewed your profile. We make it a habit to check all those names once a month and it their job title indicates they’re a potential decision maker, we scrub their organization and prep it for our cold outreach campaign.
As part of an omni-channel outreach strategy, we enjoy LinkedIn because it’s not a place people are used to getting an enormous amount of sales pitches (at least not yet). Therefore, when they see they have a message waiting for them, they open it! Our messages to decision makers are both mentioning the specific event we’re inquiring about AND an offer to open our network to them in case they’d like to meet anyone. That has a 99% acceptance rate.
Keep in mind: Even if the first time we’ve seen a decision maker is through LinkedIn, we still enter them into our omni-channel outreach campaign. Remember – you’re a speaker, they want to hear you on the phone!
First Impressions Matter
The value of LinkedIn as a stand-alone marketing platform can’t be ignored. When decision makers enter our world through our letters, cards, emails, phone calls and LinkedIn messages, they’ll often cruise over to our LinkedIn profile and check us out there before going to our websites. That means our LinkedIn profiles have to be something we’re proud to show to someone who might pay thousands of dollars for our talks.
Ensure your banner image is a picture of you speaking on a large a stage as possible. Avoid the generic images. Your headshot should be a professional speaking headshot, not one with a family member cropped out of it.
Your title – the first text someone sees under your profile – should speak to the results you achieve for clients, not your job title. Use your value proposition to speak clearly about the expertise you have in a few words. Your introduction – the first block of text viewers see – should lead with your contact information. You do want visitors to reach out and have a conversation with you, right?
Finally, each keynote you’ve ever done can be listed as a separate job experience. You can list yourself as being employed for a month and search for the company or association you spoke for so their logo appears. If you have video testimonials, footage, or pictures from the talk, you can load them as media within the job experience listing as well.
Do This Now:
-Ensure your outbound marketing includes a LinkedIn invite and use messaging on that platform to break up how you reach out to your prospects
-Use the ‘see who’s viewed your profile’ function on a regular basis to see who’s checking you out – so you can check out their next event as a place you could speak.
-Get your profile at least as sexy as your website. Anyone who swings by your profile should know exactly what results you provide to organizations and see plenty of examples of how you do that through articles, videos and recommendations.
Love this content? You’ll never believe what we’re giving away in our free masterclasses each month! REGISTER HERE.