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3 Mistakes to Avoid When Using Email Marketing to Generate LinkedIn Leads

There are tons of awesome social media platforms actively fighting for your time and attention each day.  As an entrepreneur focused on growing a successful startup in the shortest time possible, the microwave model is very alluring. Many are seeking that single magic bullet in social platforms that will be their end-all, be-all solution for their digital marketing needs.

It is true that there’s great power and money to be made in social media marketing, but I think many entrepreneurs approach it from the wrong mindset and end up hurting their brand altogether.  But this isn’t a brand conversation. This is an email marketing conversation.

More specifically, it is a LinkedIn conversation that’s meant to help you take advantage of the huge potential this social platform holds.  If you’re not already on LinkedIn and using it to broaden your network, then you’re missing out on some very premium opportunities. And yes, I’m talking to you – entrepreneur.




LinkedIn is no longer just a watering hole for job seekers and recruiters.

It’s a thriving social network with over 500million regular users and two new users joining per second. This means people just like you and I who are focused on growing their careers and businesses. Can you not see how incredibly lucrative such a social platform would be?  Sure, you can’t go in there marketing nonsense and showing off your cat images. But honestly, I’m of the opinion that strategy won’t help you grow a quality brand anyways, regardless of platform, unless you are in the cat business.

If you are someone with a solid message, achieve clarity on your audience and feel ready to serve with excellence, LinkedIn is a diamond-mining field for your startup.

Many entrepreneurs and independent consultants have discovered this to be true, and yes they are investing in tools, software, systems, and LinkedIn funnels to help them harness the full potential of the platform. But there are those investing in all these things and still missing the mark.

Take an example of a client who recently started working with me. She sells a premium product and wants to take advantage of her vast LinkedIn connections.  Her sales and marketing team built out a funnel so they could start collecting email subscribers and eventually sell to them. The strategy was great, but the execution was very messy and in the end, the results proved that they had missed the mark.

What went wrong?

Well, after a long conversation, I asked to be taken through the entire process as though I was one of her connections so I could better understand the type of content marketing campaign they were working with.

Before we even got to the details of the written copy (my specialty), I was totally put off. Why? Because she was making the very mistakes I want to bring to your attention.

Granted, there are many other moving parts that go into the creation of a good email marketing campaign, but I know that if you’re setting up your own email marketing campaign to target connections you already have on a social platform, avoiding these three mistakes will make a huge difference in your conversion rates.

Mistake one: Lack of personalness and being too self-promotional

Constantly trying to pitch your product or service with every communication is a terrible idea.

Creating this impersonal brand image just so you can come across serious and feel like a big shot will actually hurt your conversion rates and revenue. Social media and email marketing are both about conversations and relationship building.

Here’s how to fix it:

Social media explorer, to share a nice way of ensuring that you remain relevant, add value and still do a bit of self-promotion on this article.  They recommend changing the 80/20 rule to 41%, helping people and asking nothing in return, 39% adding value by sharing helpful content, and 20% talking about ourselves.   These resonate with me a lot, and I urge you to at least test this out in your campaign and monitor the results.

Mistake Two: Lack of clarity of your buyer persona.

One of the fundamental errors any entrepreneur can make today is to build a campaign, pour in money, energy, resources, and a team to try and sell a product to everyone.

Ever had one of those conversations where someone tells you that they have a message, product, or service that can help everyone?  Yikes! Each time I hear that statement, I always sigh. While it is true that your product or service can help everyone, you really don’t want to attempt reaching everyone. Unless you have really deep pockets!

Here’s how to fix it:

What you want is to reach those people who have a problem to which you posses the solution.  Then building that relationship with them becomes worthwhile, because you know it’s just a matter of time and trust before they see why working with you is in their best interest.

How you make this happen in an effortless way is by getting to understand and know your customer as much as possible. Basically, the more you can understand your ideal customer, the easier it will be to know what to say, and how to present and sell your product or service.

Social media today defines a buyer persona as a research-based profile that depicts a target customer. Buyer personas describe who your ideal customers are, what their days are like, the challenges they face, and how they make decisions. Before you hit publish on your next outreach or broadcast, be sure to have your buyer persona in place so you can know whom you’re creating content for.




Mistake Three: No lead magnet or a poor irrelevant lead magnet.

This ties in perfectly with the first mistake. Take the example of my earlier mentioned client who was getting no traction with her premium product.

She had started broadcasting messages and emails to her LinkedIn prospects letting them know that she had this amazing product, but she never thought to first offer something of value that was helpful.  When you do value first marketing, you will always come out winning, because people love free things. And we also love and remember those people who help us solve a particular problem.

Here’s how to fix it:

Be a giver. Come from a place of abundance and generosity.  Combine free and helpful in one easy to digest content whether it’s a report, video, audio download, book, recipe, template, cheat sheet, or whatever else your creative mind can come up with, and you my friend have just strengthened the bond between you and your ideal customer.

Conclusion:

With the awareness you now have just as my client did, I believe you can already see which aspects of your content marketing campaign and LinkedIn funnel require some tweaking.

We simply tweaked a few things for her, and within a week she was already starting to record some new traction. It’s still too early to predict her monthly conversion rate, as we’re now two weeks in, but in another week or two, we expect to have enough data to start building more concrete strategies.

The same success shall hold true for you. Right where you are is the perfect time to start tweaking and measuring. Even small incremental shifts each week of 1% in your conversion rates are better than nothing, and you have to start somewhere.

Why not start by smoothing out the first contact with your potential prospect? It is, after all, like dating. If the first time you meet someone you fancy things get awkward, you spill your drink on them and then ask them to marry you – chances are, even if they did like you at first glance, they’ll probably run and never look back!

LinkedIn might be a professional social hangout joint, but the dynamics of relationship building are still the same. Take time to make a genuine connection first, offer them something relevant that is worth their time, and you will yield exceptional results.

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Janette Getui
Contributor: Janette Getui is a mompreneur transformational writer and prosperity coach. She is the co-founder of Bold Beautiful Blissful U and hosts transformational prosperity retreats and masterminds. She also runs a content creation agency that supports visionaries and thought leaders. Check out Janette's articles and follow her @janettegetui

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http://www.boldbeautifulblissfulu.com/

Contributor: Janette Getui is a mompreneur transformational writer and prosperity coach. She is the co-founder of Bold Beautiful Blissful U and hosts transformational prosperity retreats and masterminds. She also runs a content creation agency that supports visionaries and thought leaders. Check out Janette's articles and follow her @janettegetui

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