Don't Rush the Most Important Step for Generating New Business on LinkedIn

By far the most crucial task you will undertake when generating new business on LinkedIn is identifying the buyers who are most likely to buy your solution and how best to target them.

This process plays an important part in any robust sales and marketing strategy, but effective targeting isn’t always easy to achieve and requires research, analysis and finesse.

Get this wrong and you will be filling the top of your funnel with people who may never buy from you, wasting lots of time and resources in the process, and may alienate potential clients.

Get it right, and if you set up all the necessary strategies and marketing assets around your campaign that will resonate with them, it will make all the difference between being ignored by your target audience and being sought after and entering into warm conversations with them.

The aim of this article is to guide you through the main aspects of this process so that you too can target those most likely to buy from you and start those warm conversations.

Personas

“A fictional character created to represent a user type that might use a site, brand, or product in a similar way.” Wikipedia

Personas are the different user types who in theory are most likely to buy from you. They are a good starting point to get a feel for your overall potential audience and to understand their needs, experiences, behaviours and goals.?

You can have multiple personas because, as is in most businesses, not just one user type can buy from you. For example, I help people to generate new business on LinkedIn and primarily work with sales teams. However, I also help others who are client-facing like leaders in small to medium-sized companies.

Personas are useful to help you to understand your ideal customers, what content will attract them, and also whom to focus on. Adopting a scatter-gun approach is expensive in terms of your time and other resources, so the more niche you can get the better.

Client Data

An important aspect in identifying those you want to reach out to is to look at those who have bought from you in the past (clients and past clients) and those who are in the process of buying from you (within your pipeline). These are people and companies who have actually invested in you so are great reference points.

• What were the job titles of the champions, influencers and decision-makers?
• What company size are the accounts?
• Is there a particular geography that buys from you?
• Is there any specific grouping of sectors, or industries as LinkedIn calls them?
• Are there any other specific elements that your ideal clients have?

The more time you devote to researching and pulling together the data you have the better. You want to build up a picture of which companies and people within the companies you should target. The more detailed the better.

Targeting

Targeting involves breaking your overall target audience into segments so that you can tailor your marketing activities for them and their specific situation.

Target marketing can massively increase your likelihood of getting into warm conversations with your audience due to this relevancy.

The more relevant something is that your target audience sees or receives, the more likely it is to grab their attention and for them to respond.

Think about how you can provide that relevancy to your audience. What insights do you have about them that make it specific?

Out of all the aspects of business development on LinkedIn, this is the most crucial step to get right and will make a huge difference. Helping clients to do this on LinkedIn, is one of the main reasons why many of our clients seek our help.?

Optimising the Search

Once you have identified the different segments you want to target, and the reasons for their potential interest, you need to set up searches so that you can target your audience in a controlled, strategic and timely way. What you want to avoid at this stage is going off half-cocked and sending the wrong messages, or multiple messages to the same people.?

If you have a LinkedIn account that only has the LinkedIn.com search, you need to be highly organised when doing this step and it will take you much more time to organise than if you have a Sales Navigator account.

Setting up targeted searches is far easier, quicker and more effective in Sales Navigator than using the search on LinkedIn.com due to the better search functionality. Not only can you save multiple searches, you can also exclude people so they don’t get multiple messages, and it actually helps with your targeting too.

All in all, for those looking to run targeted campaigns on LinkedIn, Sales Navigator helps you to be much more effective, from both a time and relevancy perspective.?

Conclusion

Whom you target on LinkedIn is vital. Rush this, or don’t do this thoroughly, and all your efforts will be less effective and, in some cases, cause terminal damage.

No one likes to be sold to on LinkedIn, so spend the time to identify the right people, connect with them, develop a relationship, and interact with them in a relevant way. ?

When there is relevancy, your target audience will notice you, engage and enter into warm conversations with you. Be relevant and invest in Sales Navigator.

P.S. I'm not on commission!

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I'm Philip, thanks for reading my article. I hope you found it useful.

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