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This LinkedIn Strategy Has Helped Our Clients Build Successful Six-figure Businesses

LinkedIn has become one of the fastest-growing social networking sites for business-oriented users since 2018. Millions of small business owners from around the world are riding on to this new wave of network-building to leverage growth through partnerships, joint ventures, and highly targeted marketing across different industries using LinkedIn’s set of tools and features designed specifically for business.

Today, we’re going to share with you one of our best methods to grow your small business using the power of LinkedIn and Small Business Dream sales and marketing automation.

Why LinkedIn?

Facebook has a huge advantage when it comes to reach – 2.7 billion users or more than 1/3 of the world’s population while LinkedIn has less than 600 million. However, there’s more to LinkedIn than just being a social networking platform – it’s a business-oriented platform so you get quality over quantity. You’d still be able to do most things on LinkedIn but with a clear purpose in mind. You don’t go there just to make friends; you’re looking to find friends who might be clients or joint venture partners.

But you’re probably thinking, if I can do the same on Facebook, what’s the point of using LinkedIn? Here’s why we think every small business owner should have his own LinkedIn account:

1. Your LinkedIn profile will show up first on Google.

Open a new tab on your Chrome browser, and, assuming you’ve already signed up to LinkedIn, type your name or business and you’ll see right away your LinkedIn profile on the first page. Google ranks LinkedIn as an authority site, and you, as a business owner, can use this algorithm to your advantage.

However, you don’t create a LinkedIn account just for the sake of having one. Remember, you only have one chance of making a good impression about you and your business. We’ll talk later on why you need a professional-looking LinkedIn profile.

2. Your LinkedIn profile doubles as your online business card.

One advantage of LinkedIn over Facebook and Twitter is that it can turn your profile into a powerful business networking tool. Business cards are pretty much the norm. We still go home with a big stack of business cards every time we go to business networking events.

Unfortunately, a lot of us don’t have that much time and they usually end up in our circular “filing cabinet” by the end of the week (or, if you’re like us, you can have someone do it for you by using our online transcription service). With LinkedIn, you can make connections right then and there if you can find access to a microphone. If you want to know precisely how we’ve done it, we’ve written an entire blog on how to use LinkedIn at networking events to increase sales.

3. LinkedIn gets you to your next client faster than any social networking site.

Another important feature that separates LinkedIn from any other social networking sites is it gives users the ability to search people from a particular industry they want to do business with. Again, we want to be clear about why we’re making these connections. So for instance, if you’re an insurance company, you probably want to search for clients or joint venture partners in the automotive or housing industry (these properties need insurance, or required by law). Add your city or country if you’re a local business to limit your results. In most cases, you’ll end up with around 1000 to as high as 10,000 depending on your country.

But don’t get too excited and click “Connect” on every user that shows up on the search page. That won’t work. We’ll show you how we’ve managed to get a much higher acceptance rate by using a simple, yet effective LinkedIn strategy.

If you’re interested, you can download a free copy of our book, LinkedIn 5-step System: Generate 10 fresh qualified leads in 10 minutes for your small business, where we show you everything from step one to finish in much greater detail.

We use LinkedIn on a regular basis to find small business owners who lack the tools or need our business coaching. As a leading consultancy and software provider for business, we’ve already made thousands of connections and have helped hundreds of clients build successful businesses. What we’re about to show you is one of our most effective methods to rapidly grow small businesses using LinkedIn and Small Business Dream sales and marketing automation.

Get More Clients on LinkedIn Using this Hybrid Approach

Now that we’ve covered the importance of creating a LinkedIn account for your business, let’s get down to the details.

1. Create a professional-looking LinkedIn profile.

People spend thousands of dollars on professional media services just to look great and make that big first impression. How you look on LinkedIn – everything from outfit, hair style, and your background photo – speaks a lot about you and your business. It’s important to work on you LinkedIn profile FIRST before trying to reach out, since it’s the first thing they’ll notice when you’re sending invitations.

We’ve talked to a lot of small business owners and one of their problems is they don’t have the time and commitment learning photography and photo-editing skills (unless you’re already good at it). We’ve come up with a done-for-you (DFY) solution for our Small Business Dream clients where we set up everything from business coaching, LinkedIn profile, landing pages, sales funnels, and autoresponders – the whole nine yards of getting more clients for your business.

2. Connect with Clients Using Small Business Dream.

You can read hundreds of blog articles on how they used LinkedIn to leverage your business, but they don’t tell you the right way of requesting and maintaining that connection with a LinkedIn user. Hint: you don’t click “Connect” on the search page.

Here’s an interesting fact. LinkedIn users can figure out if you’ve read their profile by looking at their profile views. So instead, you go to their LinkedIn profile to tell the system that you’ve viewed them before inviting them to connect with you. It might seem like a little thing, but it has a BIG impact on how people would respond to your request.

Since you’ll be doing thousands of these, you’re going to need a contact manager to store all the names of LinkedIn users you’re trying to connect with. This is where Small Business Dream comes in. You can set up your own LinkedIn series and the system will tell you which message to send first or if you need to transfer them to another series depending on how they respond to you. It’s a semi-automated approach which is extremely powerful for starting that conversation with your prospect.

3. Keep your connections warm – always follow-up.

Follow-up is crucial to the system. Check your new connections first thing in the morning and send a follow-up message right away. The sooner, the better. If you’re using our Small Business Dream sales and marketing automation software, you can set up a new series for new LinkedIn connections.

Your follow-up message may go something like, “Craig, thanks for accepting my connection request…(state your business, what you do, and your name at the end of your message)”. Take some time to scan through your previous messages and their responses to see if your next message makes sense. Don’t spam your new LinkedIn connections. Space your next message appropriately and always ask if they’re interested before making the offer.

If you’re not sure how to properly space your messages or you need some advice on how to write your LinkedIn copy, you can reach one of our business coaches at Small Business Dream and have our team of experts set it up for you.

Where Do We Go from Here?

If you’ve read this far, then you’re pretty convinced with LinkedIn’s potential in finding more clients and joint venture partners for your small business. We’d like to spend a moment with you and help identify ways to increase your sales whether it’s through LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, email series, sales funnels, landing pages, business directories – every possible way you can think of.

Visit us at Smallbizdream.com and take a closer look at our 5-step Rapid Sales Growth Blueprint or schedule a FREE 45-minute call with one of our seasoned business coaches.

Want to stay on the move? Get our SBD Sales and Marketing Automation App for your mobile and keep tabs on your business everywhere you go.

How to Use Content Marketing and Social Media to Grow an Audience

When it comes to brand awareness, nothing beats a well-thought-out, well-executed content marketing strategy. However, you don’t have to wait for people to come to you. What you need is a system that puts you right in front of your intended audience in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible.

Content is king, no doubt. But with more than 500 million blogs and a new blog post published every 0.5 seconds, it’s almost impossible to build an audience on Google if you’re not among the few established companies and authority sites dealing on a certain topic. In fact, many businesses that rely heavily on website traffic took a beating after Google started implementing some major updates.

We’ve seen this coming a few years back, and we’ve perfected a system that helps small business owners grow their audience more rapidly without slugging it out with the ‘big guys.’ We’ve learned through experience, after working with over 700 clients, to combine different methods of customer engagement that allows them to attract the right people and keep them coming back.

Create a following on social media

Content marketers would often tell you to just create awesome content and let Google take care of the rest. However, things have changed and it’s no longer just putting out great content, but becoming pro-active in getting the right people to see your content.

1. Facebook & Twitter

No, we’re not selling to people on Facebook or Twitter. We’re here to make connections. Sure, you can buy some ads to give your post a temporary boost, but the main purpose is building that relationship and trust with people who might be a customer or a business partner.

Here’s a great thing about social media. You don’t have to be an ‘authority’ (or sound like one) to get an audience. You just have to use Facebook & Twitter the way they’re supposed to work but with a clear purpose in mind – to get more people into your business.

Show people what you do with your business, share some thoughts, some interesting articles or videos. Interact with users. Better yet, if you have your own blog or website, you can share your featured posts or repurpose old content for social media (e.g. quick tips, testimonials, etc.).

Ideally, you want to have a system already in place before going in on social media. People often make the mistake of going in and not being able to handle it right. So they end up either spending too much time doing everything by hand or sending bulk messages that are too generic to create meaningful connections.

Think of social media as your springboard. It helps you start a conversation but you’ll need to follow up on them and move to a more ‘stable’ platform like your email list as you go by.

We’ve developed our own sales and marketing automation which enables you to collect data and keep track of your conversations on social media. It’s a complete system that comes with a landing page builder, sales funnels, autoresponders and many others.

2. LinkedIn

We’ve devoted an entire blog article on this topic about how to use LinkedIn at networking events to increase sales. It’s the same idea with Facebook & Twitter, but we’re looking to find business partners, preferably those which are complementary to yours. Hence, if you’re a restaurant or catering business, you’ll probably want to partner up with event planners in your area.

We recommend having your own blog or website before looking out for potential business partners on LinkedIn. It creates a bit of impression. Like being able to write your own book, people tend to trust you more with your knowledge and experience when they see your blog or website.

Quality content still reigns supreme, but you need the right tools to get them to the right people – precisely what our system does for many small business owners like you.

3. YouTube

Videos will take center stage as technology improves and the majority of online marketers migrate to a much less competitive space. Unlike Google, YouTube is an untapped goldmine for a lot of content marketers. You don’t need a professional studio or expensive video editing software to get a thousand viewers on your channel.

Think of all the YouTube videos you’ve watched with more than ten thousand viewers and subscribers, using nothing more than an inexpensive camera, a whiteboard, or just them talking to you through their smartphones. Even if you’re a little bit “camera-shy,” you can still build a massive following using whiteboard animation software like VideoScribe and Doodly or even a slideshow made from Pixabay images with your voiceover.

Now here’s the best part. Your audience will get notified each time you have a new post by simply clicking on that bell notification icon. And, unlike a static post or webpage, your YouTube videos will continue to get more viewers, comments, and more people will subscribe to your channel long after you’ve published your videos.

Just like your Facebook and other social media platforms you’ll be able to use your YouTube content to get them to your site and keep them coming back for more.

Collect data for your sales and marketing automation

All your content marketing efforts and social media posts should all come down to this – collecting data for your sales and marketing automation. This is where most small businesses hit a dead end. They don’t know what to do with next, or they don’t have a system to capture all the data and use them to turn followers and subscribers into buying customers.

Small Business Dream offers a solution to take your fans and followers into that journey, whether it’s through sales funnels, landing pages, newsletters, drip mail, email series, and push notifications. We’ve covered every possible way to keep them interested after doing all the work of creating great content for your business.

Conclusion

Content marketing doesn’t require a lot of resources aside from your time and creativity. Like any other skill set, you’ll get better with practice and gaining more experience. However, not all business owners have the time and commitment to produce high-quality content. We offer services which includes online and offline solutions to drive your message home.

If you need help, you can reach us and take advantage of our FREE Sales and Profitability consultation where we identify key aspects in your business to rapidly boost your sales. Come visit us at www.smallbizdream.com to learn more about our 5-step system to rapidly grow your sales and profits with less stress.

How Small Businesses Can Benefit from Push Notifications

Push notifications have re-surfaced as a cost-effective way to increase and maintain customer engagement since its first launch in 2009 by Apple, and Google in 2010. Some of the reasons points to the recent explosion in the mobile markets and greater internet access. With consistent growth in mobile users, it’s only a matter of time before mobile becomes the new standard in customer acquisition and customer engagement.

Customers Have Gone Mobile

We bet, most, if not all of your customers are mobile users. Small businesses have been increasingly aware of this fact. According to Global Digital 2019 reports, 5.112 billion or two-thirds of the world’s population are mobile users. This, coupled with the rapid growth of social media makes mobile marketing not only useful, but a necessity for every small business.

Tech-savvy business owners are no stranger to email and social media marketing, yet many small businesses still haven’t seen the potential or shy away from push notifications. They work extremely well when combined with sales and marketing automation and, when it comes to real-time customer engagement, no method comes close to having a well-designed and well-executed push notification mobile marketing strategy.

How Push Notifications Work

One of the defining characteristics of push notifications is its ability to be seen through the user’s “heads up display,” which gives it a distinct advantage over email, SMS, and social media. These very short messages, typically 1 or 2 lines of text or around 80 characters, have been contextualized for the individual user. They can also be time-sensitive and thus relevant for a specific time only.

One example would be, “Hey Sarah, we have added 50 credits in your wallet for today’s year-end Sale. Shop now.”

There are several approaches to using push notifications as a mobile strategy for business in addition to email and social media marketing. Small Business Dream has created an app that is perfect for networking events. It allows you to push a button which will send the recipient a vcard with all your information while letting you collect some important data about that person. You never know where this connection will go or if this person will become a client, a partner, or a supplier.

Users on the customer’s side need to download and use the app in order to get notified via Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) or Apple Push Notification Service (APNS). They may or may not have the option to get notified upon install. Conversely, users may uninstall the app if they don’t want to be notified again. Use caution so as not to annoy your recipients and cause a lot of uninstalls.

Simple Push Notification Strategies You can Use

Before going on with the specific examples, be sure to observe the following when designing your push messages. They should be:

segmented
relevant
catchy
compelling
concise

Here’s some uses for push notifications for your small business:

1. Seasonal goods and services. Your messages can be tailored based on what’s currently in season. For instance, you can send push notification during hot summer days like, “Love the sun today? Stay cool and fresh with our stunning hats and sunglasses at 10% off.” This applies to special days as well, like Father’s day or Thanksgiving.

2. Markdowns on selected items. Your old inventory could be taking valuable space and you want to get rid of them as fast as possible to maintain your cash flow. You can get help by sending push messages to a specific category about a price drop. Your message can go something like, “Hey Mark, as a Nike fan, you can get 20% on selected items when you drop by at ABC Store today.”

3. Reminders for inactive app users. The nice thing about using a push notification service is it enables you to check on who uses your app more often and those who don’t (the app interacts with the app server and GCM or APNS with each launch). You can then use the data to send an automated push notification message such as, “Jeff, you have 50 unused credits in your wallet. And we’re adding 50 more because it’s Season End Sale. So hurry. Shop now.”

4. User feedback. Customer survey is an excellent tool for improving customer engagement, allowing you to segment your contacts further and be more relevant to your users. Know their preferences and ask about their experience using the product or service. Something like, “Hi Dennis, your experience matters to us. Tell us how you feel so we can better improve our service.” Insert a link below that says, “Take Survey Now” to take them to your survey page.

5. Geofencing. A bit more advanced, but if your app can pull this off, geofencing can work miracles for brick and mortar stores. By default, Google tracks your customer’s location, and you can use this feature to trigger a push notification message, say when a customer enters your store 5 times. Depending on which category they fall into, you can send a push message like, “Bet you’d like our men’s apparel on sale at 10% off.”

Conclusion

Push notification can work wonders for your business if handled well. Regardless of marketing technology, be it sales and marketing automation, or marketing strategies like email and social media marketing, your creativity and sensitivity to customers’ needs will set you apart from other businesses. It’s all about planning and execution. For small businesses that are struggling or want to increase their sales, download mobile apps like Small Business Dream that combines the power of sales and marketing automation and push notifications, enabling businesses to engage with customers on multiple touchpoints.

Doing It Right: Integrating Social Media with Email Marketing

When talking about online marketing, these two will always come up in people’s minds: email marketing and social media marketing. This is for good reason.

First of all, email marketing has been around for nearly three decades since it was first used in the 90s as a cost-effective, direct response method to generate massive leads. It still does today.

2002 saw the birth of social networking sites like MySpace and LinkedIn. As more and more people started using them, social media marketing came along. It was an instant success, and for a time many companies began using it to promote their brands.

But now things have changed. The online space has become extremely competitive, and we don’t see them being used by online marketers the way they used to. They knew their previous tactics won’t work anymore and so they started to rethink their strategies just to stay in business.

Why is this so?

Common Issues with Social Media Marketing

The problem with most online marketers today is they took something very powerful and useful, and turned it into a mindless lead generating tool with no creativity, and no real intention of creating meaningful connections or establishing good relationships. They took “the old-school” method of advertisement and simply moved it online.

Most of the bad rap social media marketing got into is the so-called ‘pay-to-play’ tactics used to create a superficial (or even artificial) ‘likes’ or ‘followers’ with little or no interaction whatsoever. This obviously doesn’t work with today’s savvy consumers.

Read: How All the Social Media Experts Got it Wrong

However, some social media marketers use legitimate practices to get results, but it takes a lot of time and effort (try responding to all the comments to your posts or tweets and you’ll get the idea). It also takes talent and creativity just to get people to ‘like’ or ‘follow’ your post in social media.

Another issue with social media marketing is that you’re piggybacking on somebody else’s platform. If for whatever reason the social networking site decides to take down your social media account, goes under, or loses popularity, you’ll lose all your connections and you’ll have to start over from scratch. And as they say, ‘Own the racecourse, not the racehorse’ — don’t go all out on something you have no control over.

Why People Still Do Email Marketing Today

When social media marketing took off with just a million users to 1.7 billion worldwide, some believed it’s the end of the road for email marketing. The fact is, email marketing still ranks first as the marketing tool preferred by companies to conduct their businesses online.

Research shows why this is the case.

77% of consumers are more likely to respond to promotional messages in their emails than their social media accounts
66% of consumers purchased their products because of promotional messages and follow-ups from emails
44% of users go their emails to check with a company they know as opposed to 4% in Facebook

But here’s why email marketing still ranks first:

58% of people who go online check their emails FIRST, followed by search portal (20%), Facebook (11%), news site (5%), company website (3%), and others (3%).

Email marketing is still the online marketer’s best friend when it comes to lead conversion. If you’re into social media marketing, you might consider having an email marketing strategy as well.

Using Two Different Approach

Using social media and email marketing all at once is like having two different kinds of tools. Although very different, they can work together towards the same goal. Mostly, however, people have been using them for the wrong reason.

Online marketers need to understand the difference between communicating and mass sharing. Social media has always been used for sharing good reads, an interesting find, or anything that would start a conversation. Emails are most effective when following up with your fans or followers.

Here are 5 simple tips that you can use to integrate social media into your email marketing strategy:

Create a group on social media and invite people to join in. Spend some time on your social media home page’s look and feel. Run contests, or give freebies, and discounts for active fans and followers.
Time your posts well. Make them as ‘catchy’, relevant, and timely as possible. Hint: research have shown the average life span of a Facebook post to be around 3 to 5 hours.
For Facebook users, they can use ‘call-to-action’ (CTA) buttons to lead visitors and fans to their landing page.
For Twitter users, they can use Twitter cards to display their photos, and links to their landing page, app or downloadable content.
Export your friends’ and followers’ email accounts to your mailing list for your email marketing campaigns and follow-ups.

Small Business Dream is a sales and marketing tool designed to seamlessly integrate social media and email marketing for your small business. Visit us at www.smallbizdream.com and learn more about our Small Business Profitability Blueprint