LinkedIn's fatal flaw (and the workarounds I share with my clients)
LinkedIn doesn't make life easy. In fact, this one tiny flaw can mess up your whole engagement strategy 😡
Picture this. You want to make connections with Marketing Managers in the UK working in finance companies. You go to the search bar and type in Marketing Manager, spend 20 seconds filtering by industry and geography and boom! A load of your ideal customers appear on your screen, ready for you to start engaging.
BUT, here's the thing.
This only works if your ideal customer has a traditional job title. The LinkedIn job title field is freeform, which means they can type literally anything. Head of Happiness, Tea Maker in Chief, Worn out Mum of Two Furbabies etc.
If they've been even remotely creative with their title - like 70% of LinkedIn's users have - the platform won't recognise it. Add to that the people who spend time on the platform but haven't updated their LinkedIn profile in 5 years, and you're missing out on reaching a load of potentially amazing connections.
So, if only 30% of the platform's members are searchable using their job title, what can you do if your people fall within the remaining 70%?
Here's what I tell my clients...
Who inspires your ideal client? Think about who within their industry your ideal client will be looking to for inspiration. Who's 2/5/10 years ahead of them and currently sitting where they want to be? Follow those people and check out the reactions and comments on their posts - that's where the people not as far along the journey will be, absorbing wisdom and the proof it's all possible. Start conversations with them there to get on their radar.
Up-level your search - organic search can be brilliant, but if you want super targeted search Sales Navigator is where it's at. It allows you to search by headcount and seniority (amongst a lot of other options) which avoids needing to use job titles at all. It's an investment but can you really put a price on a list of your ideal customers and the ability to connect with and DM them? (You can, it's £79.99 a month.)
Groups are a potential goldmine (on and off LinkedIn). Look beyond groups that align with what you do (great for learning, but unlikely to bring you business) and focus on groups that relate to what your ideal customer is working on. Let's say you're a leadership coach and your ideal customer is a start up leader. You'll find them not just in groups supporting start ups, but by thinking more broadly about other things they will be thinking about at this stage in their journey. Is it tax planning? Is it securing investment? Is it marketing? Those groups exist too. These are also great opportunities to offer up your services as a guest speaker to demonstrate expertise!
Capitalise on the audiences of others - similar to groups, think about other service providers who your ideal customer will be following and who are active on the platform. Pay attention to who's in their networks and leaving reactions and comments on their content - if these people are at the stage where they're looking at these people, they's most likely also looking for someone just like you.
The more you find and engage with these types of people, the quicker your feed will change and the easier it will be to keep finding and engaging. Happy hunting team 🕵️♀️