If you're a business owner or marketing executive who wants insightful, jargon-free tips on making social media work for your business—FAST—you're in the right place. Jeff Molander is the authority on making social media sell. He's an international speaker, publisher, adjunct digital marketing faculty at Loyola University and an entrepreneur who co-founded the Google Affiliate Network. His book, "Off the Hook Marketing: How to Make Social Media Sell for You," is first to show how fans, readers and followers can be converted to leads, subscribers and sales. Make Social Sell is your practical resource on making social media produce leads and sales.
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Turning LinkedIn contacts or LinkedIn Group members into leads rarely happens using what I call passive engagement. It takes something more than occupying prospects' time. You've got to convince them to sign up for your webinar or download your whitepaper.
Luckily, converting LinkedIn contacts to leads is easy. Just start by solving your target market's problems in ways they find irresistible. Then plan engagement—carefully map it out to connect your target customers' questions to the answers your content marketing devices (webinars, whitepaper) deliver.
The Engagement Myth
If you’re like most B-to-B marketers, you're struggling to turn LinkedIn contacts and group members into leads. But getting it done is easier than you think. After a year of interviewing B-to-B and business to consumer businesses experiencing remarkable success using social media I found the common success principle: Ditching passive engagement—and giving contacts, friends, followers and such a reason to offer more than a “like” or merely consume content.
Many LinkedIn gurus claim awareness, reach and influence leads to conversion. They say, “regular online participation in LinkedIn Groups and with followers on other social platforms can convert them from followers into leads and on to customers.”
Yes, it can but this belief isn't much different than the “reach and frequency” promise of advertising. Namely, if we beat the drum loud enough (reach) and often enough (frequency) it will cause people to perform an action—register, attend, download. As Dr. Phil likes to say, “and how's that working for ya?” This is what I call passive engagement.
But there is a better way: Designing engagement to produce actions by solving customers' problems in places where questions often get asked—like LinkedIn Groups.
Solve Customers' Problems
You’ve probably heard that posting a certain number of times, on certain subjects, on certain days inside LinkedIn Groups where your target market congregates is the key that unlocks success with LinkedIn. Or maybe you've heard that frequent posting of blogs you've written in LinkedIn Groups will generate leads. These ideas don't work. The key to success is solving customers' problems in provocative ways.
For instance, use LinkedIn to generate questions among customers that your webinar or whitepaper gives answers to. Creatively bait customers to communicate or complain about problems (in LinkedIn Groups) that your content marketing device provides solutions for. Next, provoke actions—exploit those complaints by enticing, “ethically bribing” prospects to register for a webinar, download or perform an action that helps you qualify them as leads. It's a snap.
Scratch Customers' Itches in LinkedIn Groups
For instance, grocery store Harris-Teeter pays customers to ask its dietician health-related questions on Facebook. Why would a grocer—or you—do that? Because helping customers put out a fire or scratch a bothersome itch is powerful. It can be done on any social platform where your target audience is engaging, like LinkedIn.
Answering your customers' most commonly asked questions opens the door for discovery ... and for brands to make relevant suggestions. You can offer prospects a friendly tip or useful trick or, if appropriate, outline benefits of taking a trial, downloading a whitepaper or attending your webinar.
Always beware: leads don't “just happen” passively using LinkedIn. You need to solve problems with a plan in mind. That said, using a question-and-answer technique takes much of the work out of the process. It can even be fun. What do you think about giving this a try?
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