Targeting your marketing with SalesNav

Your LinkedIn personal account isn’t really geared to serious marketing campaigns.

Now don’t get us wrong, personal accounts are great for driving traction and inbound lead generation but when you work in sales inbound isn’t always enough!

Every sales and marketing professional needs a way of tracking the success of their campaigns and there is no better way than having the facts and figures in front of you.

However, you won’t get such key information from your personal account.

To create effective, targeted sales campaigns on LinkedIn you need to upgrade to SalesNav.

This blog tells you how to use SalesNav effectively to build targeted lists of prospects and to transform your LinkedIn account into your very own personalised CRM!

Counting the cost….

LI likes to reel you in by offering you a free month’s trial for SalesNav.

They do, however, like to grab your credit card details first!

A little heads up for you, if you go to cancel after the first month, they will offer you the next two months at half price, so it’s a tactic worth employing even if you wish to continue using it!

They hope, of course, that you will love the features and will want to pay for it going forwards.

It works out at around £62 per month, but if you use it properly the cost will be more than offset by the leads and sales you will gain from it.

Creating targeted lists

The great thing about SalesNav is that it enables you to save people as leads, which can’t be done on the basic account.

Your saved searches can be completely focused by using the filters on the left-hand side of your SalesNav home page.

Select ‘second degree connections’ as these are the ones you are looking to convert into first degree connections.

Using the filters you can choose the type of business, geographical location, level of seniority as well as removing competitors or businesses you’d rather not work with.

The end result is a series of specifically targeted lists of prospects to focus on, for which a ‘softly softly’ approach works best.

This can create massive lists, but it’s easy to narrow them down to people who are active on the platform.

You can do this by selecting people who have posted in the last 30 days from the left-hand side of the screen.

This not only guarantees that you have content to engage with, it also ensures that you are targeting active users of LinkedIn, meaning that your connection request has a far lower chance of being ignored.

Comment on their posts before asking to connect

You will massively increase your connection success if you comment on your prospect’s posts first.

Simply click on your prospect and select a recent post that you can add value to my commenting on.

This will ensure that when you send your connection request, the prosect will be more likely to respond favourably to someone who they are already familiar with rather than a request that comes completely out of the blue.

Personalise your connection requests

You are also maximising your prospects of a connection if you add a little informal message with it.  Nothing remotely ‘salesy’, just a simple ‘Hi (first name), I’ve been checking out your content and I would like to add you to my network’ will do nicely!

If you received a connection request with a pleasant message like that attached, you’d be likely to accept it, wouldn’t you?

People like to connect with friendly, polite people, and you’re being just that by showing a personal touch.

Messaging your new connections

Once a connection request has been accepted, send your new connection a brief thank you message.  Again, nothing salesy, something along the lines of the following will do nicely:

Hi (First name)

Thanks for accepting my invitation to connect, it's appreciated.

As you can see from my profile I work in the (insert your business type) space but, don't worry I won't bore you with the details...unless you want me to!

Have a good day and I hope to bump into you on a post soon!

All the best,

Messaging people you have been connected with for a while….

It makes sense to always keep in touch with connections, if you haven’t had any contact with a potential prospect for a while it makes sense to send something along the lines of the following to them:

Hi (First name)

We've been connected for a while but haven't really spoken so I thought it was worth popping you as message saying Hi to let you know I am here if you need me.

I hope to bump into you on a post soon!

All the best,

Informal, friendly, not pushy, hopefully the way you would wish to be approached yourself!

With all messaging, a good rule of thumb is to ask yourself if you would be happy to receive the message you have just created.

If you wouldn’t be happy receiving it yourself, why would anybody else?

Types of message to send

Once you have established open communication with a prospect, make sure you keep in touch with them!

Keep them up to date with offers, industry news, any blogs you have created, poll findings, newsletters, anything that gives you a reason for keeping in touch and adds value!

Creating the funnel

SalesNav when used strategically is a complete CRM in its own right.  By creating lists of second degree connections, commenting on their posts and sending personalised connection requests you are making sure your network is constantly growing in your chosen target market.

Keeping regular contact with first degree connections through value added newsletters, industry news and offers puts you in the best possible position to do business with them when the time is right.

So is SalesNav for me?

This of course is a decision only you know the answer to, but if you take your marketing seriously, the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages.

The ability to save targeted lists saves so much time and effort compared to working purely off your basic account.

The filtering ability means you can be certain you are targeting the right people at the right level for your campaigns, giving them a far better chance of success than just relying on your personal account.

It’s the difference between just playing at marketing or treating your marketing with the respect that it deserves.

The hidden part of the iceberg

If you look upon your LI account as an iceberg, your posts and comments are the part that are visible above the waterline.

But just as with icebergs, there’s far more to LI than initially meets the eye.

A SalesNav powered LI gives your platform presence its true substance.

You’ll hopefully attract enquiries and leads off the back of your posts, but the real marketing possibilities that SalesNav provides is the hidden, but vital component to success on the platform.