Podcast: Effective LinkedIn messages (what to say and when to say it)
When I first started trying to find new clients on LinkedIn I had no idea what I was doing.
Constantly worried about saying the wrong things or annoying people, I would often do nothing from fear of hurting the reputation of my brand.
Eventually from years of trial and error I developed a formula that would remove the worry and provide the confidence that if I followed it I would constantly fill my pipeline with new red hot B2B leads and booked calls.
In the video above I go through this formula and get into the details of how to message complete strangers on LinkedIn and convert them into high paying clients.
What to say in your LinkedIn messages
Where I see so many people go wrong with their LinkedIn messaging and lead generation is they tend to try to connect under false pretenses.
Wanting to join their network or pretend that they have looked over the persons profile and chosen them specifically.
Seriously would you believe anyone saying the same thing.
Where we’ve had a lot of success with our messaging and our clients is the way we set the tone of the conversation from the very first message.
Oftentimes we get on calls with a prospect and they say something along the lines of “honestly I usually just ignore these messages, but something about yours got my attention without being too pushy”.
Understanding your value and coming up with a strong offer is all essential groundwork that must be done with your LinkedIn profile before you even start reaching out to people if you want to have any success on the platform.
LinkedIn messaging tone
Keep it conversational and keep it short.
Don’t give too much away.
People don’t like to be sold too so don’t go sending them massive sales pitches the second they connect.
Try to get buy in to the value you provide.
For example, ask them if they have an interest in learning more about the topic your service addresses?
Ask yes/no questions that are easy for your prospects to answer and get that first bit of engagement which will snowball into a conversation and then a call.
LinkedIn message frequency
Whilst there are a lot of different opinions on this available what we have found to be effective is to focus on the quantity of touch points over time.
This gives us a better chance of being present when its the right time for the prospect to use your services.
As a rule of thumb we like to space engagment out a week at a time if we aren’t hearing back from the prospect.
Give your prospects a chance to respond.
Remember people aren’t as active on LinkedIn as they are on email.
Summary
Knowing what to say, when to say it and how frequently to say it all adds to the equation of generating quality B2B leads on LinkedIn.
Understand your value and get people to connect with you based on this, keep your messages short and conversational and space out the frequency to valuable touch points over time.
Follow these steps and I guarantee you will see an improvement in your LinkedIn lead Generation.
Video Transcript
So how do we write effective messages on LinkedIn? So the first thing we need to understand is what’s an effective template to use? Cause obviously there’s a million different ways that you can communicate with someone. And I just want to keep things really simple for you with a breakdown of what we use and find to be very effective.
So obviously what you need to do is connect with someone. And then once someone has connected, we wanna send them some messages aimed to get a conversation started. So message one. So what we use is a four drip sequence. So first of all, we wanna connect with the person. We only have 300 characters in this initial message to get a conversation started. Some people say that’s a bad thing.
I think that’s a great thing. It really forces you to be concise with your messaging. Too many people, when they get to this second message, just unload a huge amount of information on the prospects and it’s just too much. It’s too much, too early. They’re not ready for it. And they’re not interested So, breakdown of these messages is first of all, we need to connect. We send the connection messages. We need to be getting connection messages out every single day. As soon as someone connects, we wanna send a message pretty soon after. We don’t want them to connect and then just be blasted with a message straight away.
It looks very robotic and unnatural. So generally I say, give it a day to get your next message across. This next message is aimed to get the conversation started. It’s also aimed to demonstrate the value you can bring to them and get them to wanna talk to you. Some people may wanna just try and start conversation with these people, but ultimately what would need to do is reduce our input to maximize our ROI. And what that means is that we need to weed out, weed out is probably the bad word, but we need to find out the interested prospects from the entire caucus, pretty early on otherwise we’re gonna spend so much time talking to people that, you know, may wanna be our friend but it’s ultimately not going anywhere.
And it’s really important that we minimize our inputs on the platform. Now, the truth about LinkedIn is that it is a very, what’s the word? It’s a platform that, whilst there are a lot of people on it, it’s not like a phone call. It’s not like email where people are, you’re gonna get that direct feedback. People might see a message in their LinkedIn inbox. And even if it does interest them, they may… it’s not at the top of their priority list.
So there’s a good chance that even when someone receives that first message, they don’t actually take action. So what you wanna do is follow up once again not saying this is the only sequence, but one we’ve found to be quite effective, seven days. You wanna send some sort of follow-up just for reiterating basically what you said in message one which is gonna be pretty short, sweet to the point. I say maximum three to five, short sentences, short and snappy, obviously really highlighting the value you can bring. Then finally, Message three. This would be the last messages that you send as the sequence. We only send each message if they don’t reply. Once they reply, then it’s a normal human conversation.
Where having a back and forth. I might talk in another video about nurture scripts. So this is a very defined process. We’re trying to get a conversation started. Now, once someone actually starts a conversation. A conversation is a hugely complex thing. It’s why it’s been so hard for them to create AI that is trickable to the human mind of being truly human, because the human conversation is inherently complex. So you can’t really have an automated or process driven, as process driven a sequence as you do to get a conversation started cause it’s such a defined process.
Once the conversation starts, it becomes a more natural process. But what you find as you do this more and more and more is that it is fairly process driven. And even though people can say things in so many different ways, there is, it’s generally still fits into one of a few categories. And so once you start to recognize this pattern, you can start to write nurturing scripts. So what’s the advantage of writing a nurturing script? Well, the idea is that even though you might not use it word for word, it’s gonna give you a strong point of consistency and a strong template to start with. So you don’t have to rewrite the same thing out over and over or reinvent the wheel every single day.
Cause as you start to get consistent with this, you’re gonna wanna try and optimize your time on it. So once you start to see how people reply, you can start to save the best replies that you’ve come up with and store them in a way so that you can quickly use them as you need to. Anyway, I’ll focus on the nurturing scripts in another video. Today I want to focus on getting this conversation started. I know this is where a lot of people struggle and a lot of people, once they get a conversation started some people are pretty good at it already.
So they just need to know how do we start a conversation? So we wanna connect. If they haven’t replied, give it a day. And then we wanna send some sort of message, that’s aimed to get a conversation started. No character limit once they’ve connected, but some people take advantage of that and hurt themselves more than anything. They send this huge sales pitch with a million courses of action. And ultimately people take no action and put their walls up. If you don’t get a reply, seven days, send another message.
If you still don’t get a reply, one last one we do at 14 days. And it sounds like a lot of messages to send, without someone replying, but you gotta structure them in a way that’s very natural and conversational and message three can be incredibly effective whilst it’s basically saying, message them to say that you’re not gonna message them anymore. So effectively a classy goodbye. You’re saying, “You know, I’ve tried to make contact. I understand now might not be the best time. If you prefer I can follow up later, otherwise I can provide you with you know, these valuable resources.
Have a great day.” So very polite understanding of their time and you know, their value, but amazingly effective. So really it just comes down to, why do they wanna connect? You know, do they have, and then the next message is really aimed. Whoops! How embarrassing. The next message in the sequence. So connect. Let me slow it down. Take it one step at a time. First thing we wanna do is connect with these people. And we want them to connect with us based on our value. If we’re an expert at something, we wanna mention that, you know.
We are this, we specialize in this and if that’s of interest, it would be nice to connect. Or maybe I post content on this and I help people with this. If that’s in any way of interest, it would be nice to connect. So now we’re gonna start connecting with people and setting ourselves up for a conversation around the value that we can bring, which is really what we wanna direct the conversation to. Message One is basically thanking them for connecting, highlighting the value you can bring and qualifying, understanding if what you do, what you are professional at is something that they’re interested in.
We don’t wanna say, “Hey, do you want to jump straight on a call with us?” It’s more around, “Hey, do you need assistance with this area? Or is this something you’re interested in learning more about?” That way, what you do is you position yourself to actually get on a call, or position yourself to send a resource. It gives you options versus just saying, “Hey, book a call with me.” Before you even really qualify them. We’re saying, “Is this something you’d be interested in learning more about?” Yes. “Okay, great. Well, how about a quick meet and greet?” We wanna move it to a call, if they’re qualified, as fast as possible.
A very quick call, no obligation call, no sort of strategy sessions, sales call or anything like that. Purely just to meet, greet and build trust. When you talk on the phone, it’s far more easy to build trust and credibility than it is through just text alone. Now, if you don’t get a response on the first message, like I said, very short, short and snappy, three to five sentences, then what you wanna do is basically in this next message, just follow up the first message. “Hey, I know you don’t check. I know people don’t check LinkedIn all that often, just wanted to double check this.
Maybe try and drop in a little bit of credibility building.
You know, we’ve done this, so we recently we did this.” But ultimately, it’s just a very short message saying, “Hey, just want to check in again.” Without being, you know, super annoying about it. And then, like I said, message three, if you still haven’t got their attention by then, is just, “Hey, I don’t wanna keep bugging you.” A classic goodbye. Basically saying, “If you’re interested, let me know. I can send over this valuable resource. Otherwise I’m happy to follow up later. Have a great day.” Sort of thing.
If they got to this point and you can’t get them then the only other real way is to nurture them over time through things like content marketing. So posting content on LinkedIn, results that you’ve gotten with past clients and really drive that sort of FOMO effect of fear of missing out, by not working with you or just highlighting the value of working with you. It builds momentum over time. So for the immediate results we want the people who are ready to talk straight away. And over time, we’re gonna connect with people who don’t necessarily wanna talk to us straight away, but they’ll become part of our network.
They’ll see what we post on LinkedIn. Once we start to build a content marketing strategy and we’re gonna have kind of an exponential effect, as we stay consistent with this. So I hope that has been helpful. The biggest things to remember with your messaging. Short and snappy. Highlight your value. And one last thing that I didn’t mention was, one thing. We only wanna highlight one specific thing for them to do in the messaging. If we give them too many options, too many things to think about people are gonna put up their walls and they’re gonna ignore you from that point forward.
So like I said, in message one, we just wanna qualify, if that’s something that they’re interested in learning about. All they have to do is say yes or no. Not anything more than that, you’re gonna start getting people moving back, putting up walls and not communicating. So I hope that’s been helpful especially around getting your messaging right on LinkedIn. That’s what we do. That’s what we’re very good at.
So if you need any help in this area, feel free to reach out. Head to b2bleads.com. Tons of great content there. Otherwise I’m happy to have a chat with you as well and see if we can help out in any way.
My name is Ryan Caswell from B2Bleads.com. As always have a great day. Cheers.
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