Proven Ways to Attract Clients Using LinkedIn

I see a lot of articles, blogs, videos and podcasts outlining the best ways to use LinkedIn, how to generate brand awareness using the platform, and how to become a ‘guru’, so to speak, in your particular field.

This is all great, and this content can be very useful for promoting yourself and your business on LinkedIn, but there is something that a lot of it is missing.

They don’t talk about making cold hard cash.

Why else would we be on LinkedIn? We use the platform to drive our professional and business brand forward, in order to find new clients and customers, and in turn, make more money. That’s business!

So, how do we do this without sounding sales-y?

I have recently been reading a very interesting book, recommended on a Tim Ferris Podcast, called ‘The Boron Letters’. The book contains a series of letters written by the most successful copywriter of all time, Gary C. Halbert, to his son. These letters outline every tip, trick and tactic that Halbert used to write highly effective direct mail advertisements.

Despite being written in the 80s and with direct mail in mind, every piece of information is entirely applicable to modern day advertisements, and his son (who published the book), provides a ‘modern translation’ after each letter too.

The reason I mention this book is because one of Halbert’s tactics for writing his effective letters was following a formula called AIDA. This stands for attention, interest, desire, and action. This is the process we want our reader (or connection, in this instance) to go through in order to buy from us.

Here’s how we can apply this formula to our LinkedIn marketing strategy:

Attention

This is all about grabbing the attention of your dream client in the very first place. If you’re aiming for the decision-makers, they will most likely receive connection requests and messages every day, and so you need to offer something special to be noticed. By this, I mean very basic profile features. We aren’t selling anything yet – our profile just needs to spark interest within the first 0.5 seconds of them seeing it, or they will lose interest.

Simple tactics are as follows:

• Use a professional, clear profile image of yourself
• Have a clear, concise tagline describing your title
• Make the most of your summary – craft some content (around 3 paragraphs) describing what you do, how you do it, and the benefits of your work to a potential client
• Make sure you have a couple of articles written that appear on your profile – this fills your profile up as well as demonstrating thought leadership

You only have one chance at a first impression, so make it a good one!

 

Interest

Once we have their attention, we need to catch their interest. We do this by feeding them with facts, such as statistics, numbers, or survey results. This all goes into the content you are creating and what you are posting.

Keep in mind, these aren’t facts about your services, like “Our marketing campaigns always have a 200% ROI”, as this will turn people off. These facts should be about your sector, and if you can, your specific niche within that sector.

For example, “8/10 people will click away from a website if it takes 4 or more seconds to load” is a great fact for a User Experience specialist. Another example is “78% of consumers want to see a product demonstration video from a brand before making a purchase” for a videographer.

This can come in the form of long form content (such as LinkedIn articles) or LinkedIn posts, or video.

 

Desire

We now need to tap into your dream client’s desires. It’s very important to consider that the vast majority of people don’t reveal their true desires – especially if it is money related.

I remember once, in my 2 months I spent at university, I got a job working at one of the student bars and was called to an induction group meeting. They asked us why we applied for the job, and one at a time, each of us took turns with answers such as “To give back to the university”, “To meet new people”, and “To get experience”. The supervisor leading the meeting kept saying “And?” after every answer until someone (it was me) finally sighed and said “To make money”.

Because, let’s be honest, that’s the main reason at the end of the day.

That is applicable to all business owners, employees and decision-makers on LinkedIn – they want to see benefits for themselves, and a lot of the time, in the form of cash.

We need to communicate this to them, and you can do this by writing regular articles outlining the benefits of your services or product. Again, be sure to write this in a way that isn’t blatantly selling your services. Here’s an example: “How To Double Your Profit With One Marketing Campaign” or “Get Your Dream Job With These 10 Interview Techniques”

Action

We now have their attention, their interest, and their desire. What’s next? Action!

This is the part where your potential client will actually reach into their pocket and hand over money. In order for this to happen, you need to be completely clear on what they need to do. Posting a URL to a website that is impossible to navigate will get you nowhere. Make sure that everything that comes after LinkedIn (your website, checkout page, Eventbrite – whatever your sales process) is easy to use, and most importantly, can be done quickly and easily.

If they need to email you, make sure your email is very easy to find on your profile and include it in posts and at the bottom of blogs and articles.

Lead them by the hand – you must be very specific about where you want them to go. Any confusion, and you will lose the sale.

 

I hope this overview comes in handy when putting together your LinkedIn marketing strategy! This only covers a very small portion of what you should be doing to convert people on LinkedIn, and if you want to hear more, sign up for our #DUSocial LinkedIn Masterclass coming up on 28th Feb. Led by social media experts O Communications, you will learn top industry tactics for using LinkedIn to its potential, building a brand, attracting the right clients, and most importantly, converting!

Find out more and sign up here.