LinkedIn During A Pandemic

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Since we are known for the work we do on LinkedIn, among other things, I’ve had more than a handful of people slide into my inbox over the last few weeks for an update on what we are seeing and what, if any, changes are we making in our LinkedIn efforts because of the Coronavirus and its impact on the economy and businesses. 

 And that’s exactly what this week’s #MarketingMinute post answers.

We’re several weeks into the Coronavirus/COVID-19/’Rona’ pandemic. Amongst questions about public health, business, healthcare, and the economy, we've also wanted to know - how is this affecting social media outreach and lead generation? 

We know that on the surface more people are at home and online. We also know, from last week’s #MarketingMinute post, that Facebook usage is up and ad costs are down. That’s a real opportunity for businesses. 

What about other platforms? This week we’ve dug into the research and looked into how businesses and people are behaving on LinkedIn. As a major part of the services we offer at LinkedSelling, offering both organic and paid lead generation and sales development, knowing what’s occurring on the LinkedIn platform is essential for us - and for the pipelines our clients expect us to keep full on their behalf.

I wanted to share what we found because it will interest you as well. Being informed will help you adapt your strategy (either organic, paid, or both) to be more relevant during these times, enabling you to come out of this stronger. 

So in this post, we’ll cover:

• Research we’ve found about what is happening on LinkedIn and how people and businesses are responding...
• Why we’ve changed our own organic approach (and you should too)...
• What results we’ve seen from our paid ads on LinkedIn...
• And finally, our recommendations for how you can leverage this information and adapt (or create) your own LinkedIn strategies to help you generate more leads (both during this crisis and after) and position yourself better in the marketplace.

What We’re Seeing: LinkedIn Engagement Is Up

The numbers are clear: LinkedIn has more conversations happening than ever. LinkedIn has even reintroduced unlimited group messaging back into their platform. As for the content topics, the trends have also changed, though, which means you need to adapt your strategy. 

Below are some of the major new trends we’re seeing.

First, engagement has grown. 

• 40% of LinkedIn members report reading the news more frequently.
• 30% are checking social media more often to stay up-to-date on the results of the COVID-19 outbreak.
• 43% of respondents now work remotely.
• 26% feel no impact on their productivity at all.
• 45% say this is somewhat or very likely to be a more permanent shift.

TechCrunch even reports that “Like many other websites at the moment, the career-oriented networking platform LinkedIn has seen a big boost in traffic as a result of people being asked to work from home and stay indoors overall to slow the spread of the coronavirus, with a bump of 55% more conversational activity between existing connections in recent weeks.”

(LinkedIn has since shared the same figure to their advertisers on conversational engagement)

As more people are looking for content, more businesses are providing content. LinkedIn reports seeing:

• 15% increase in engagement from SMB (small-to-medium sized businesses) over the last 3 months
• 44% of U.S. professionals report spending more time on social media because of the coronavirus
• An 8% increase in pages posting weekly 
• And a 13% increase in Thought Leadership by sharing industry news or 3rd party articles. 

LinkedIn’s data shows that across the board, their engagement and published articles have increased by a whopping 2,196%.

This shows a shift in how people work, how often they look for content, and how they use the content. But what topics exactly are they looking for? 

As expected, the hashtags #coronavirus and #covid19 dominate the trending topics for March, and businesses are connecting with their prospects with this in mind.

Omnicom’s TBWA just came out with a new study comparing the reaction of posts and engagement rates to content created since the beginning of of the COVID-19 crisis:

“Among the findings: For CEOs who have addressed the health crisis on LinkedIn, post engagement rates are up 90%.

Sixty of the [100 most socially active] CEOs tracked by the panel have communicated on LinkedIn since the beginning of the crisis; they are seeing exceptionally high engagement rates as a result. Half have seen the most reactions (“like,” “love” or “celebrate”) obtained on a LinkedIn post in 2020 from their content addressing the virus and its business impact.”

What’s important to note here is that while any news of Coronavirus is certainly taking precedence, marketing, leadership, and business topics are still being discussed. 

We can see that businesses are using the crisis to connect with their prospects and following one of the oldest marketing decrees: to meet your prospects and clients where they’re at. 

What We’re Doing: Changes In Our Organic Outbound Strategies On LinkedIn

Our outbound strategy is driven around building real relationships before jumping into any type of sales talk. As expected, a lot of the people we are talking with on behalf of our clients are unable to move forward at this time. But that doesn’t mean that conversations are lost. 

Take a look at this exchange between one of our team members and a potential prospect:

As you can see, the prospect immediately made it clear that she was unable to move forward, however, we know that won’t always be the case. Our team member was able to keep the conversation going and create opportunities for relationship building and discussion even though, like many other people right now, she’s going through a tough time.  

So while on the surface this may look like a dead-end, it most certainly is not. Through treating her like an actual human being instead of just another prospect by asking her questions, and focusing on future opportunities this client now has a great chance to build a relationship with her.

He’s laying the seeds so that when times are a little bit better, and she’s back up and running, he’ll have an immediate “in” with that account.  

Your Prospects Want To Connect Now More Than Ever 

After speaking with several of our Account Managers who conduct our outbound process on behalf of our clients, overall, it appears that people continue to be very interested in connecting - both in terms of wanting to connect with another person and in terms of growing connections and contacts on LinkedIn. 

However, it seems that their willingness to schedule an appointment to talk business varies entirely on their specific situation. As you know, each prospect and each industry is very different right now. Some industries are almost entirely halted, as far as bringing in new business, while others continue to grow. 

That being said, our experience throughout the past 2 months shows us that right now is still a great time to be building relationships with people that you want to do business with in the future, once the real and business worlds begin to normalize in the coming months.

You just need to treat your prospects like humans and be able to adapt your strategy to fit different responses/circumstances. 

For example, restaurant owners and nearly everyone in the hospitality industry have been affected, and so they obviously aren’t generating much business right now. However, in most cases, they will open back up in the near future. 

So if you were targeting restaurant owners, right now is the PERFECT time to reach out to plant the seeds and begin the relationship-building process. See if there is something you can do to help them out NOW and then talk about how you can help them even more in the future.  

Their business may be halted but they are still breathing. They still want to succeed and right now, more than ever, they are focused on their business. 

You just need to adapt your strategy to fit different responses and circumstances, and they might need to extend their sales pipeline out a bit longer to properly manage prospects that just aren’t going to buy right now.

It’s like they say, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. In other words, NOW is the time to plant the seeds and to continue to make connections and build relationships with people, so that when they are ready, you already have your foot in the door.

And if you’re thinking, “Yeah, Josh, that sounds awesome but I honestly have no idea how to do that on LinkedIn”, then I have an offer for you.

If you are interested in putting yourself in the best position to come out of the pandemic with a network of high-end prospects and a pipeline to tap into immediately, then I would like to invite you to schedule a meeting with my Director of Client Strategy to talk about how our systems would work for your business.  

What Impact Has This Had On LinkedIn Ads?? 

What about our paid ad strategy on LinkedIn? In seven words: our ad spend hasn’t changed at all.

Why? Because our results have not changed at all.

In fact, we’re betting on our LinkedIn ads because we’re still seeing results from it and we still spend more on LinkedIn ads to promote our service than we do on any other platform. 

Here’s a quick snapshot of what costs we’ve seen with our LinkedIn ads the last 3.5 months. 

As you can see the cost per lead has remained relatively consistent since the beginning of the year. There was a slight rise in lead cost in March but it’s not statistically significant enough for us to attribute that to fears as a result of the lockdowns. 

One interesting note, however, is that our top-of-funnel campaigns that use our Client Acquisition Report as the lead magnet are currently delivering leads at an all-time low. 

At the same time, our lower-funnel campaigns that lead directly to an appointment have seen a slight increase. But again, nothing significant enough for it to register as a concern. 

The best part? The leads we are getting are more motivated than ever. 

Thus far, in April, we are seeing our lowest cost per appointment numbers in 2020 with the cost dropping ~$25 per appointment from March.

A couple of notes here…

In general, our campaigns (both internally and for our clients) outperform LinkedIn’s own benchmarks for success. I bring this up to illustrate that the numbers we are seeing are a result of millions of dollars in ad spend and hours of working closely with our LinkedIn reps to get the cost down. 

This is not to say that you cannot have success on your own. But if you’d like to skip the learning curve and have my team do the heavy lifting for you just shoot me a message and we can talk about your options. 

Big picture? Our confidence in LinkedIn ads has never been higher and even though there was a small spike in costs when the lockdown began, overall, LinkedIn ad costs have stayed relatively stable. 

I’d like to point out here that while this doesn’t sound like big news, in my opinion, the fact that LinkedIn ads have stayed stable is a MASSIVE win. Our marketing team was worried that costs would skyrocket, but that hasn’t been the case at all.

Conclusion & My Recommendations

Between third party research and looking at our own numbers, both internally and those of our clients, LinkedIn is still working for lead generation, sales development, and building relationships with your prospects. Here are a few recommendations to make the most out of LinkedIn at this time:

• You will want to adapt your messaging strategy, speaking to the topics that your prospects are thinking of. The key is to remember to be human in your communications
• Many industries will want to extend their sales pipeline in order to manage expectations and put a greater emphasis on building relationships
• Focus on an integrated multi-channel, multi-touchpoint approach - while this post is about LinkedIn, the clients that we are seeing the best results for are leveraging multiple channels to schedule sales appointments and acquire new business.

When you combine LinkedIn outreach, personal email follow-up, phone outreach, and paid advertising (we suggest LinkedIn and/or Facebook) then you have a significantly better chance to reach your best prospects in their preferred channel or method. 

If you or your team are not actively building relationships with prospects on LinkedIn through strategic outbound messaging and outreach then you are missing out on a huge opportunity.

If you believe, as I do, that now is that time to build relationships and make connections, you’d like some help managing those efforts using LinkedIn, and/or you’d like to know how we help our clients, we’re here to help! 

Schedule a time to chat with my Director of Client Strategy to talk over your options. 

On this 30-45 minute call we'll discuss your business goals, your sales cycle, and then assess whether or not you are a fit for our full-service multi-channel outbound campaign services.

We have different solutions that help businesses of all sizes get more leads and sales appointments for their sales team, filling your pipeline with amazing sales opportunities. But in order to help you discover which would be the right solution for your situation, we need to talk.

If that interests you click here to get started. 

Your Turn 

Want some help? 

You’ve got options! From do-it-with-you campaigns and coaching, to complete done-for-you outbound sales development campaigns on LinkedIn to LinkedIn ad management and more, we’re here to help. 

If you’d like to learn more about how to make the most of LinkedIn at this time, click here to answer a few questions about your business and my team will direct you to the right options for you!

Want to contribute? 

Answer this focus question in the comments: How have you continued to use LinkedIn during the coronavirus crises?

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