Five Mistakes to Avoid At All Cost if You Want to Grow your Business's Digital Footprint
Online and on LinkedIn
Here are a few issues that we regularly see that trip companies up when trying to make an impact online and on LinkedIn. If you've done any of these things, don't feel bad.
You'd be shocked just how common these slips ups are.
Lack of clarity about their target audience. They aren't clear on the types of individuals who are most likely interested in what they offer.
When using LinkedIn, Sales Navigator offers criteria that can help you isolate those looking for what you have to offer.
Keywords
Spotlights
Custome List
Past Lead and Account Activity
Geography
Relationship
Industry
School
Seniority Level
Function
Title
Company
Company Headcount
Company Type
Asking yourself or your team questions like the following will help you create messaging that speaks to your ideal prospect.
1.) What does your company do?
2.) Who buys its products or services (make sure to include all titles of decision-makers)?
3.) What are you most proud of having accomplished in your business or business experience so far?
4.) How have you saved your client's time/money or increased productivity/revenue etc.?
5.) What are the pain points you are relieving for your clients?
Lack of understanding of their customer's pain points and how they best solve them:
It's not about you. It's about how you will relieve pain for your potential client.
Ask yourself, or better, your clients, what keeps them up at night? What would make their lives easier regarding the types of service you provide or products you offer. Use this information to create your outreach material.
Unrealistic expectations of what social media is or does:
Some people still believe that you can hire an intern to kick out a few posts and generate a couple of million dollars in sales per year extra as a result.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.
Having a presence in the B2B space on social media takes planning, research, execution, testing, tweaking, and improving the process as you move forward.
When that happens, however, you can join the ranks of those organizations that have created a steady supply of inbound leads due to their efforts on social media.
Do you remember the massive kerfuffle over the Instagram influencer who couldn't sell enough tee-shirts to launch a clothing line?
As Ad Week pointed out:
"Arii Has Over 2 Million Followers. So Why Did Her Clothing Line Fail?
Social media star fell short of selling 252 items in 13 days
252 out of 2.6 million is just over .009%. If you look at that number as a conversion rate, it's low—too low for anyone who calls themselves an influencer to aspire to. It's basically less effective than a display ad, which is saying something."
Getting in front of the right people with the right message matters. A lot!
Lack of an organized follow-up process: This can be specific to a sales funnel or recruiting team response. Not having a clearly defined system for processing leads winds up with you having paid for the upfront effort and momentum only to lose it on the backend because consistent and solid follow-through has not taken place.
A stop-start mentality, or chasing shiny objects:
Some companies will try something new for 1 to 3 months, and then they are off to the next latest and greatest fad.
A better approach is to do a fair amount of due diligence upfront to know what you're getting yourself into and then make a three- to six-month commitment to that particular project.
Don't chase shiny objects.
There will always be a new feature or tool to play with, and those you have grown to rely upon may go away. Your objective is to accomplish the goals that you've set either for your business or career. Keeping that in mind will help you stay on track and focused amidst a barrage of new options and noise.
Not having clear objectives placed on the campaign:
Begin with the end in mind. We've seen many organizations and individuals get tunnel vision and commit exclusively to creating a specific type of content (videos in particular) with the hopes of generating leads or increasing network size.
But without a well-thought-out plan and the right group of people to point that message to, many have wound up spending a lot of money upfront with zero results on the backend.
When you begin with a solid objective such as "we are generating top of funnel leads which we will direct to a landing page, calendar link, or free webinar to begin generating conversations" you have a target to aim for, and the measurables become clear.
The Moving Forward Newsletter is a bi-weekly advice column by Kim Peterson Stone, the CEO of Linkability.us where we give you a peek behind the curtains into what it takes to put together campaigns that help you grow your business and career on LinkedIn and in Real Life.
If you have friends or peers that you believe would benefit from this content, please feel free to share it!