AJ Wilcox is a LinkedIn advertising expert. He began advertising on LinkedIn in 2011 and quickly discovered its powerful potential for business-to-business advertisers. AJ was so passionate about the results he was seeing, that he left his job to start B2Linked in 2014.
On this episode of The Salesman Podcast AJ shares how we can use paid advertising to create a bubble around our target accounts of useful content and build relevancy at scale.
Featured on this episode:
Resources:
- AJ on Linkedin
- wilcoxaj
- B2lLnked.com
- How to Wow: Proven Strategies for Selling Your [Brilliant] Self in Any Situation by Frances Cole Jones
- StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Gallup
Transcript
Will Barron:
Do you want to know how you can use LinkedIn advertising to get in front of anyone? Any crazy hard to reach decision maker, a C-suite in a huge company, a C-suite in Microsoft, Oracle, whoever it is then this episode is for you. Hello sales nation, welcome to today’s episode of The Salesman Podcast. On today’s show, we have AJ Wilcox, he is a LinkedIn marketing expert, I’m just a marketing expert in general. You can find out more about him on B2Linked.com. On today’s show we’re dive into LinkedIn marketing. How we can use it to send specific emails for specific people through Sales Navigator, how we can send LinkedIn emails to mass amounts of potential decision makers through sponsored emails and a whole lot more, and so while that said, let’s jump right in. AJ, welcome to The Salesman Podcast.
AJ Wilcox:
Thanks so much. Will, appreciate you having me on here.
Will Barron:
I’m glad to have you on Mate. Just before we click record, we were nerding out on cars, and so for anyone in the audience, I’m sure you’ll get some emails follow up from this of what you drive, what you want to get into because I know there’s a load of car note in sales nation. So with that said, we’re going to talk about LinkedIn specific, LinkedIn advertising. The goal of the episode is to find out whether this is a tool that salespeople can use or whether it’s what our enemies in marketing need to be focusing on.
What is a LinkedIn Ad? · [01:39]
Will Barron:
I guess if that is the case, we can look at how they can support us through LinkedIn ads as well. But for someone who isn’t and I’ll give you context, I’m deep into the Facebook marketing, Facebook ad tool. I’ve never used LinkedIn. So I’m in on this with the audience, I’ll be asking questions that will probably seem a little bit silly, but they’ll want to know as well. So for anyone who hasn’t done any online advertising whatsoever, what is a LinkedIn ad? What can we put in it? Then later on, we’ll dive into how narrow down we can do the targeting.
AJ Wilcox:
You bet. So there are three different types of ad units that you can get access to on LinkedIn. The first is called sponsored content, and it’s going to appear right inside of your news feed. So if you log on to the app or if you go to your homepage of LinkedIn, if you look at the second item in that list, it should say promoted and you’ll know that’s an ad. The second kind is oftentimes looked over, but it’ll appear in the right rail of a lot of your pages, and there’ll be three little text links with little 50 by 50 pixel images, and those are called text ads. Then the third that we just recently got access to at the beginning of this year is called Sponsored InMail, and those appear right inside of your LinkedIn InMail box, and they’ll say “sponsored” as well.
“LinkedIn ads are expensive. But what you get for that is by far the best B2B targeting in the world. You can target people by their job title, by their level of seniority in the organisation, what department they sit in, the name of their company, company size, company industry, education, etc.” AJ Wilcox · [02:37]
AJ Wilcox:
The absolute beautiful part, the reason why you should care about LinkedIn ads is the targeting. So I’ll get this out of the way. First of all, LinkedIn ads are expensive. Here in the US we usually pay somewhere between about $6 and $9 per click whereas as you know, from your experience on Facebook, even for B2B clicks, you’re probably paying between $1 and $2. So they are expensive but what you get for that is by far the best B2B targeting in the world. You can target people by their job title, by their level of seniority in the organisation, what department they sit in, the name of their company even, company size, company industry, education. It just goes on and on and on. It’s very, very rare when someone comes to me and lays out who their ideal customer is, and I go, “Oh, sorry, I don’t know how to reach them on LinkedIn.” It’s all there.
Will Barron:
Because that’s contextual as well, that pricing, there’s potentially cheaper may be, or may not be alternatives on Facebook, but if you didn’t have that alternative, the price is the price, right? So we don’t need to worry too much about that for the second. But if I came to you and we work with Salesforce, they sponsor the show, we’ve done different other behind the scenes content deals with them as well. If I came to you and wanted to get in front of the Salesforce, consider this mega company. If I wanted to get into one vertical within Salesforce and perhaps some decision makers there, can we get narrowed down enough for something like that?
AJ Wilcox:
Oh, hands down. Yes. So on LinkedIn, it’s a little bit larger of an audience size than Facebook requires. You have to have at least 300 people in your audience. But assuming that at a massive company like Salesforce, if you’re saying, “We want to show to anyone VP and above or anyone director and above,” as long as that audience is larger than 300 people, you can show ads.
Will Barron:
Got it. Got it. Okay, cool. There’s multiple angles to grow up here. There’s direct lead generation and I want to cover each one of these, direct lead generation, and then also something that I do all the time on Facebook with this audience and they may or may not realise this and hopefully opening Pandora’s box here will give them some insights to what’s going on with the podcast and how I keep it top of mind with them. But there’s also top of mind advertising. So I do ads on Facebook to the people who like our page and then people who like other pages like Grant Cardone’s Facebook page, like Garven Truck’s, Facebook page. I’m trying to stay top of mind with them and entice them into potentially looking at the show to liking our page, to opting in, and there’s a funnel here of, I give them loads and loads of value, loads of awesome content and then after I funnelled it down on Facebook, they’ve seen so many videos, they’ve clicked so many things they’ve done so many other things. This custom audience then gives them a link to subscribe or something like that.
How to Use LinkedIn Ads to Stay Top of Mind · [05:41]
Will Barron:
So I’m not saying that salespeople should be particularly doing this because it’s a lot of work and my whole business is built on the back of growing the audience this way. So that might be useful to the audience to know and understand of what I’m doing to grow the show, but perhaps not as applicable when you only need to be in front of 150 people every day to smash your target. But is there any way to do similar top of mind marketing on LinkedIn and I’m assuming this would be down to the sponsored content in the newsfeed. Can we push out content and get it to specific people, whether they click on it or not to stay top of mind with them or even just get some awareness with them?
AJ Wilcox:
You most certainly can. So here’s the deal. What you’re doing, the strategy you’re using on Facebook is absolutely brilliant and it works 100% of the time from my experience. It absolutely works. Facebook’s ad platform is so sophisticated in the way that they handle retargeting, that you can spend money to send someone to content and then retarget them, nurture them all the way down the funnel until they’re ready to do business with you, and you can do it economically. LinkedIn on the other hand, because that initial click is going to be $6 to $9. I have not found an instance yet where I can show ROI by sending someone to an undated piece of content, a piece of content that I know I’m probably not going to get a lead out of.
AJ Wilcox:
So what I recommend to people is it’s not the smartest marketing, but because of LinkedIn’s cost, this is just how you have to do it. Skip the first part of your funnel and go immediately to, I’m going to provide you something of value in exchange for your email address. Most of the time, the most successful pieces I’ve seen have been things like join a free webinar. Here’s an ebook, a free white paper, a cheat sheet, a guide, a checklist, something along those lines.
What is Retargeting and How Does it Work? · [07:21]
Will Barron:
So just so we don’t lose anyone here and this may be way too basic for the audience. I’m not sure. Maybe I need to pull them on the marketing abilities as sales professionals, but a few things to run through what is retargeting?
AJ Wilcox:
Oh yes. Yes. So sorry. I’m glossed over that small little thing. Retargeting is the technology that if you’re out looking for something on a website, let’s say you searched for blue shoes. One day you clicked on a website, decided not to buy, two or three days later you might be surfing around the web and see Amazon ads or ads from another retailer showing you those blue shoes, reminding you that’s in your shopping cart. So this is sometimes viewed as a creepy technology, but I assure you, it’s not personally identifying, it’s saying, “We noticed you were on the website. We’re going to create a rule that says anyone who fit this criteria. They’ve been to our website this many times, they’ve been to this page, whatever we’re going to show you another ad.”
AJ Wilcox:
So you can pay for that initial click from Facebook’s targeting, from LinkedIn’s targeting and get someone to your website, and then you use retargeting, by the way Facebook has great retargeting built in, so does Google AdWords, LinkedIn’s is okay. You can use that retargeting to say, “Okay, we’ve gotten them once, now let’s remind them who we are or follow up and do another one of those jabs or maybe that right hook.”
Definition of Gated Content · [08:25]
Will Barron:
What is a opt in or gated content or there’s probably a million other terms to define this? We all know this and we’ve all probably put our email address in and we’ve all experienced it but just from, a definition standpoint, what is gated content?
“Gated content is any content that you’re going to get after you fill out the form. So you get something in exchange for giving us your lead information, say your email address.” – Aj Wilcox · [08:42]
AJ Wilcox:
Yes. So gated content is any content that you’re going to get after you fill out the form. So anything can be gated. A gate could just be the login to the back end of your website. But yeah, when I say gated content, I just mean you’re going to get something in exchange for giving us your lead information.
Will Barron:
Cool. There’s plenty of platforms, I’ll probably link to some of them in the assurance of this episode where you don’t need to code, you don’t need to do anything. A salesperson as bright as we all are, we can suss out a website where there’s some opt in a form, and then when that gets submitted, the user, the prospect gets the content and you get their email address. So what I’m interested in now is for a marketer, they would then go into MailChimp, whatever it is, we use MailChimp to send a series of automated emails, to push them down a funnel, to sell them a product, or get some other call to action in towards the end of this funnel. What I’m interested in for sales people is, because I don’t know if this is being done.
How to Contact Social Media Leads Via Email · [09:45]
Will Barron:
So you can tell me if anyone any of your clients do anything similar, but for salesperson to have an opt in piece of content and then contact these people directly to make the most of this six to date $10 investment on the front end, is this something that you’ve seen be done or is it always down the funnel?
AJ Wilcox:
Yes, I’ve definitely seen it done many different ways. Most of the sales teams that I’ve worked with in the past have started from search activities. So this is things like Google AdWords, Bing ads, and SEO. When someone is converting through one of those channels, it was because they were actively searching for a solution. So you send them to a landing page that says, “We’ve got this solution talk to our sales rep,” and so they’re going to be ready to talk to someone. With social media on the other hand, you’re showing ads to people because of who they are, their professional criteria, their psychographic type of profile, but not because they’re actively looking for something.
AJ Wilcox:
So be aware that you probably don’t want to contact one of your leads using the same rules that you do with search. With search we say, what’s the inside sales report? Say call them within two minutes, otherwise your efficacy drops down. You don’t want to call someone within two minutes of downloading your piece of content, because they haven’t had a chance to read it yet.
Will Barron:
So we can treat it perhaps like we’re meeting someone at some industry event. They’re at the event, they’ve put their hand up in that they are perhaps not looking for a specific solution, but they’re there to hear about solutions maybe. So our opt in content has to reflect that. So if we’re selling to a CMO in a specific industry, we can put together a checklist, a piece of content that is common problems for them. Money aside for a second, because I’m assuming the audience’s companies will be paying for this as opposed to them paying it out of their own pocket. So we are getting a foot in the door with these individuals to build a relationship as opposed to we are getting a hot sales lead straight through the door. Is that a better way of looking at it?
AJ Wilcox:
Absolutely.
Relationship Building and LinkedIn Cold Outreach · [11:45]
Will Barron:
Cool. Okay. So we’ve got the email and we’ve skipped 15 steps here I know. If we had more time, we dissect them all individually. But we’ve got the email what is the next step from a relationship building perspective, considering that we’re on the LinkedIn platform? Should we now just dump LinkedIn? Should we add them as a contact on LinkedIn, reverse engineering their email address, so that they can see our face. They can see our profile, they know what we’re about. Should we go straight for the phone call? You may or may not have done all this. So I appreciate some of it will be a thinking exercise as I go along with this as well, and the audience will experiment with it and feedback to us I’m sure. LinkedIn’s done with at this point, they’ve done the job lead generation or can we reuse the LinkedIn platform to stay top of mind with them to get more content in front of them to build that no, like and trust?
AJ Wilcox:
Yes. So let’s talk about what happens when you reach out to someone cold on LinkedIn. Let’s say you have Sales Navigator and you’re sending them an InMail or you don’t have Sales Navigator and you’re just sending them a connection request saying, “Hey, I like this about your profile, I’d love to chat.” When you do that, the conversation usually starts out with, “So who are you guys? I’ve never heard of you.” But if you’re advertising to someone, usually they are going to see the ads several times before they decide to click, and so it changes the conversation innately. Now your conversations start with, “Oh, you guys are legit, I’ve heard of you before.”
AJ Wilcox:
So what I absolutely love doing is not saying yes, advertising is the only way, you don’t have to do anything else on the platform, versus no don’t pay for clicks at all just go out and start relationships. I think a combination really, really works well. There are, like I said, all kinds of different styles, my sales style, and I’m not really a sales guy, so I have a lot to learn from you. But my sales style is very non aggressive, very much like soft touch, soft touch. I want to be a value to you. I want to be a resource. Whereas we’ve worked with lots of companies whose sales team would say, “Oh yeah, we’re going to dial every single content download lead that we have and ask him if there’s anything we can do.” So I think it just depends on your style as a salesperson and the company’s marketing style.
Will Barron:
So you just said, you’re not a sales guy, but you just outlined what salespeople need to do, and it’s clearly that you are a salesperson, because the success that you’re having that you were telling me before we click record, just to stroke your ego there for a second, but you are just doing it over a different platform. I don’t think you should not consider yourself a salesperson or think you’ve got anything to learn. Maybe you’ve got things to learn from the experts have on the show, not particularly me perspective in that perspective. Well, it’s interesting that you touch points with this, because I think if the audience is selling, so my background is medical device sales.
Will Barron:
If I was selling medical devices to a surgeon and I rung them immediately after they opt into a piece of content, one, they’re not going to answer because they don’t know the number. They don’t care enough to answer at that moment. They are in a role where they’ve probably got an assistant in gatekeeper form before you get their phone number anyway, even if they’ve submitted it. But I feel like, and I think you believe this as well as I’m saying, I can see your face. There’s no like, and trust before you make an ask, this giving value up front, I feel like the whole of the sales industry will end up by this, inside sales is going to change.
The Future of Cold Outreach is Leading with Content · [15:18]
Will Barron:
The used car type salesperson will disappear over time as well. So I just wanted to double down on that comment flippantly as you made it because I think it’s important for the audience to hear that. I think this is all the next step of it. So if we paint out a funnel here that isn’t automated, that we’re going to manage ourselves, we could, we want to get an into Microsoft for example. So we could target, because there’s multiple CMOs within that company, we could target them. We could even then target the people layered down from them because there’s more of them.
Will Barron:
So that fills up that 300 minimum requirements and any good piece of content that they uncover, we could even perhaps set it up that they send it to their CMO. Would that be a potential strategy of here’s an awesome piece of content. This is going to help your CMO and then in the follow up email that comes when you get their email addresses, “Hey, no pressure. I’m not going to call on you, forward this onto your CMO and see if they want to engage.” That could potentially be a way to get a foot in the door as well I feel.
AJ Wilcox:
Yeah, I think so. The softer, the touch, the more likely it is that you’re going to get someone to respond. There are some hacks. So for instance, if you know you’re showing ads only to Microsoft and you know these are only senior marketers at Microsoft, you can use the word Microsoft in the ad and maybe even the ad could say, send this to, and you use the person’s name, the CMO over there that you want it to be sent to. Of course that CMO might not see it. They might not see their name being used, but definitely one of their subordinates is going to see it and say, “Hey, just so you know, someone’s using an ad that has your name.” It’s a little bit of a hack.
AJ Wilcox:
What’s so nice about this is I told you that there’s this initial click cost of somewhere between $6 and $9 to get someone to click well, if you use the person’s name or the company name or someone that they know in the ad, you’re going to have so many people clicking, this gets a little bit more on the technical side of advertising. But if you bid by the impression and not by the click, you can get your click costs down into like the $1 to $2 range simply because yeah, of course, everyone who sees that is going to click on it and wonder who are these guys who are using our CMOs name?
Will Barron:
Interesting. So if we stick to a round number of $5 not going into the auction system that’s behind most of these sites and the way that ads are placed and the spend behind them. I would pay $50 for 10 clicks. An organisation that would be selling to Microsoft might pay $100 for a hundred people underneath this individual to click. Because if you put it in a different context, how much would you pay for a meeting with a CMO at Microsoft, probably 1,000, couple of thousand. If you were paying for outsource lead generation. There’s companies that will just cold call people and I don’t know what they charge, but for appointment setting and things like that might be a reasonable cost. So this is also sales nation can jot down and calculate and then pass onto either their marketing team or their sales management.
How to Create a Linked Ad From Scratch and Target the Right People · [18:16]
Will Barron:
Well, if you had interest in, so the cogs a ticket here now, AJ of let’s create an ad. Let’s create a piece of opt in content and let’s create a little bit of a funnel for the audience to sell a marketing SaaS product to a CMO within Microsoft, Oracle, whoever the huge organisation is. So the advert itself working from the very top, we want to name the CMO. We want to bait them into clicking on it and that’ll take them to a website. What does that advert? What does copy look like for you?
AJ Wilcox:
If you want to get straight up creepy, you can use the CMOs name and have their picture in the ad. Be creative here, there isn’t a standard, because this is what I would consider a growth hack at this point. But yeah, be creative. Get them to a website to just get their attention and then have your Facebook retargeting set up to say any traffic that comes from here, we’re going to show them the next thing in the sequence, have AdWords retargeting do the same thing. You can have LinkedIn do it as well, but it’s really up to you. What do you do? What funnel do you want to put them in? What message do you want to convey? Realising that you’re probably going to get three or four seconds from the person when they come to your website the first time, the next time they come back, what do you want to convey? And walk them through that journey?
Online Touch Points and How to Use Them For Conversions · [19:44]
Will Barron:
Well, let’s create the website as well, as it will just be one page. There’ll be an opening form at the bottom. So we’ve got the face on the ad. We’ve got the name, they’ve clicked through. They know that we’re up to something at this point. They know that something’s being hacked, there’s a process in place here clearly. They know that not manipulated, but they’re being influenced down a pathway, so that in the back of our minds, and this is like all the marketing team at Microsoft who are getting hit with this message over and over and over on LinkedIn.
Will Barron:
So the webpage, what should the goal be here? Should we go directly to the product at this point? As in 10 ways our product is going to help your CMO send this to him or her and you’re going to look like a star, or should we stick perhaps to industry specific of here’s 10 things you can tell your CMO on behalf of us that are going to make you look great in front of them.
AJ Wilcox:
I would go as personalised as possible. So if you use something like builtwith.com, run Microsoft through it, you can see, oh, they use Eloqua and they use Adobe Analytics and walk down their stack so you understand. Once you understand what they’re working with, you could very much personalise it and I would own up to it. I’d be a little bit cheeky and a little bit clever and say, “Look, we got you here because we targeted you. We obviously used your CMO’s name, but we’re being serious here. We’ve got something that’s going to be of a lot of value. Here’s what you’re using. Here’s how we can augment that.”
AJ Wilcox:
Of course, in a little bit higher of a touch, you could do if you wanted, you could say, “Here’s a piece of content that we feel like would be really helpful to you,” and then maybe a subsequent touch after another jab, maybe your right hook could be, “Let’s talk, we have something that’s really going to help you out.” You’ve got their attention by that point, they’re thinking, okay, these guys are clever.
Why You Need to Make Your Ads as Intriguing as Possible · [21:29]
Will Barron:
Got it. Because that’s part of the problem or part of the hustle as well. It’s differentiation, right? Because you can spend a million dollars a year on LinkedIn ads, but if they’re all boring, if there’s nothing to them, if there’s no human connection between you and the advert itself, then I’m going to click on them and then click off straight away. So it’s not even a hack at this point, we’re building a relationship with them and we’re building intrigue. Aren’t we? How important is the intrigue to all of this?
AJ Wilcox:
I think it’s really important because if you’re just going by normal metrics, you know that 10% of your leads are going to turn into a sales qualified lead, and then half of those are going to close. So if you’re just going by that’s the results you can expect. But if you’re going to be what we call spear fishing, going after just the big fish and you’re going to take, I don’t know, maybe it’s going to take three or four hours to design this special experience just for Microsoft knowing that, that might not turn into anything, but maybe you’re going to do the same thing for Salesforce and the same thing for Oracle. You go about doing that and you’re going to build a lot of intrigue very quickly and I think your prospects with them go up. I think your return on effort will be massive.
What To Do Once You Have a Prospect’s Email · [22:43]
Will Barron:
For sure. So they have opted into whatever content we put together. We’ve now got the email address, or I guess there’s another step here. Should we ask for the name, the mobile number or work number, the email address, what office they’re in, or is the one or two pieces of content that have a higher priority for us and giving them a lower barrier to entry of actually clicking submit on that form?
“Generally, the more things you ask for, the lower your conversion rate. So if you want to just start a conversation with someone, you probably want to do that by just asking for name and email. Phone number feels very aggressive to me.” AJ Wilcox · [23:21]
AJ Wilcox:
So name and email address are my non-negotiable. I need those things, but then depending on how aggressive you are, you can ask for anything else. You look at adobe.com for their white papers and that they’re asking you for 13 different fields and you’re going, how in the world. But generally the more things that you ask for the lower your conversion rate goes down. So if you want to just start a conversation with someone at Microsoft, dip your toe in the water, just start the conversation, you probably want to do that by just asking for name and email. Phone number feels very aggressive to me. I know if someone asks for a phone number, I’m probably going to get dialled a whole bunch of times and I’m going to try to avoid that.
Will Barron:
I’ve never put my phone number in any online form ever. So in the UK it starts with 07 and it’s 11 digits long and I just spam the heck out of it.
AJ Wilcox:
I think that’s probably what most people do too. So if you can, if you can get away with not needing the phone number yet, maybe you use another data provider who will say, “Hey, this person’s email address matches to this type of phone number or an organisation dialling tree,” something like that, and you can augment it that’s much better.
Is Getting a Prospect’s Email Enough to Offset the Financial Costs of Running LinkedIn Ads? · [24:15]
Will Barron:
So you’ve covered exactly what I wanted to get into there of there’s so many companies that will give you business addresses, numbers, whatever it is, emails even from someone’s name and the organisation that they’re in. So what I feel like we need from the get an email is just an opt in to communicate, right? I think that’s worth whatever financial cost is going to come into this. That someone raising their hand and saying, “Hey, I was interested in intrigued enough to say yes to a conversation.” Am I being too fluffy with this or is that worth, obviously it depends on the deal size, but if we’re dealing with these big organisations, is that worth the investment in time and paper click alone, just to get that opt in for a conversation back and forth.
“If your company’s going to make $15,000 or more from a deal, whether it’s the lifetime value or just that initial deal size, LinkedIn ads are a no-brainer. They work almost every time. But if it’s going to be less than that, if you have smaller deal sizes, that high click cost is probably not going to be worth it.” – AJ Wilcox · [25:18]
AJ Wilcox:
If closing Microsoft means this is going to be a multiple million dollar deal for your company, absolutely. If this is going to close software that the licence is $200 a month and the normal client lasts about a year, it probably won’t be worth it. So you’re going to have to gauge by the value. But what I tell people is if your company’s going to make $15,000 or more from a deal, whether it’s the lifetime value or just that initial deal size, LinkedIn ads is a no brainer, it works almost every time. But if you’re going to be less than that, if you have smaller deal sizes, that high click cost, unless you’re doing a lot of the hacks that we’re talking about to get really low cost per click, probably not going to be worth it.
How to Use Your Prospect’s Email Address to Find Their LinkedIn Profile · [25:53]
Will Barron:
Okay, cool. I love this. So you are building loads of context here for the audience. Well, the audience context is if you intrigued with this, get in contact with AJ after the fact, and he’ll do all this for you or some of it for you from an organisational standpoint. So with that said, in that plug in there, once we’ve got the email address, I’m assuming then we can search LinkedIn via that email address to find the actual person thinking that perhaps if it’s john@microsoft.com it might be difficult to narrow down who is actually opted into this content.
AJ Wilcox:
Yeah. My favourite plugin for Chrome is called Rapportive, like rapport and then tive. If you get this, it’s a plugin into your Gmail and any email address that you click on or hover over, it will automatically bring up a link to their personal profile. So you can immediately reach out to them with a connection request, and I think that’s really powerful. Rapportive is actually owned by LinkedIn and they just emailed this morning saying that they’re going to be upgrading it, and they’re actually going to call it Sales Navigator Lite. But yeah, there are probably a lot of other ways to translate an email address to someone’s LinkedIn profile, but the way that LinkedIn gives us is probably the easiest that I know of.
Will Barron:
Well, yeah. Anything else I guess is a hack using, because I think LinkedIn, you may know more about this. We don’t need to go into it, but I think LinkedIn had a problem with their API. There was some open back door. The email address was actually hidden on the website, because I know people have added me on LinkedIn and then I’ve been spammed the heck out of them via my email, months and months afterwards and I can’t unsubscribe from them. I think there’s other things going on here, but perfect, if that’s their software, their tool clearly, that’s what they want us to be using moving forward. So we’ve put a lot of ground here if we put this to place.
The Appropriate Number of Touch Points Before Going in For a Phone Call · [27:24]
Will Barron:
So we’ve got the attention of either the decision maker or people below, above the decision maker. We have given hopefully a couple of these people, the opportunity to send something to the decision maker on our behalf, because we could even say, “Hey, I’ve got this book that I want to put into the hands of this decision maker.” I’ve got it signed from the author, which is a pretty easy hack if you want to buy a load of books from someone. If you want to get in front of CMOs, go to someone who’s written a bestselling marketing book and buy 100 copies and they’ll probably sign it and ship them to you.
Will Barron:
So you say, “I’ve got this book. I want you to hand it to them on my behalf, give me your email address, and I will send you the book and then you can hand it to them,” and you’ll look like a superstar giving them this book and thinking about them and in the front of the book, it has your signature or whatever. So we do that. We’ve got opt in from them. We’ve got the LinkedIn profile. Other than then more organic content marketing on LinkedIn. Should we be sending them if they’re perhaps not opening normal LinkedIn messages? So we’d be sending them sponsored email messages and then I want to fade the conversation over to if we can’t get in touch of anyone, how do we use a sponsored LinkedIn message as an ad tool versus Sales Navigators, LinkedIn messages as well.
Will Barron:
So we’ll come to that in a second, but how can we once we’ve got the opt in, we’ve sent them this awesome book, which is an awesome hack I’ve just come off the top of my head and I’m really proud of that one, I’ll be using it myself, and we’ve got that top of mind. Is there any other way we can advertise to them that we can use organic content to them just to stay top of mind before we engage and we’ve added enough value to go for a phone call.
AJ Wilcox:
Yeah. So there is a sales evangelist named Gabe Viemezar that I’m friends with and I follow his content pretty closely. He shared with me an event he spoke at, it’s the 23 touch points that he requires all of his sales people to go through to start social selling. I’m sure I can get you a link for that presentation or that checklist, but it essentially has things like reach out to connect with them on LinkedIn, send them a LinkedIn message, like one of their tweets, like one of their shares on LinkedIn, retweet something. It’s just all of these little innocuous things that, 23 may sound like a lot of things. You might feel a lot like a stalker at this point, but to someone else after 23 things and I know it because it’s been used on me. It will get my attention, but it doesn’t feel creepy, because a lot of times I might not get a notification when one of my tweets is liked, but I do get one when it’s retweeted.
“The more touch points you have in your sales process, the better.” AJ Wilcox · [30:02]
AJ Wilcox:
So just to add to what you’re saying, I think the more touch points you have the better. For what actually goes into it, the book thing is brilliant. I think I’m going to probably use that as well, but yeah, the more touch points you can get the better.
Sending Sponsored InMail and Do You Really Need Sales Navigator? · [30:15]
Will Barron:
Good. So let’s move on to InMail messages, Sponsored InMail messages versus what you can do in Sales Navigator. So I think you can send so many through Sales Navigator. Is there a difference between them? Is there a difference where one should be used one shouldn’t be used, and then I guess underlying questions to all this, should we all be using Sales Navigator as well? Should we all be paying for it?
“I like to be really judicious about sending Sponsored InMail because of the pricing. If you’re doing sponsored content or text ads, you’re only going to pay when someone clicks or you can choose to pay when the ad is viewed at a low rate. So that basically means if you’re going to launch something that absolutely sucks, there’s no risk to you. LinkedIn’s just going to shut it off and you never get charged. But if you send out Sponsored InMail, you’re going to pay somewhere between 65 and 85 cents to land in someone’s InMail box, no guarantee whether or not they’re going to see it, let alone open it, let alone click through and take action.” AJ Wilcox · [30:42]
AJ Wilcox:
Yeah. So big deals that you brought up here, first of all, with Sponsored InMail, I like to be really judicious about when I send Sponsored InMail because just the way that LinkedIn has priced it. So if you’re doing sponsored content or text ads, you’re only going to pay when someone clicks or you can choose to pay when the ad is viewed at a low rate. So that basically means if you’re going to launch something that absolutely sucks, that falls flat. There’s no risk to you. LinkedIn’s just going to shut it off and you never got charged.
AJ Wilcox:
But if you send out Sponsored InMail, you know you’re going to pay somewhere between about we’ll call it 65 and 85 cents US, to land in someone’s InMail box, no guarantee whether or not they’re going to see it, let alone open it, let alone click through and take action. So if your offer is not really, really compelling, I would say Sponsored InMail is going to probably be pretty expensive. So I like to test my offers first using sponsored content and text ads, and then when I have something that I know gets a super high conversion rate, super high engagement rate, then I would test that out on Sponsored InMail.
AJ Wilcox:
Now the difference between sending out a Sponsored InMail and an InMail from your Sales Navigator account, Sponsored InMail, you have to send this out to a list of at least 300 people or at least have that many people in your targeting criteria. So what that means is your message can’t be super personalised. You can have a field to fill in their first name, their last name, but that’s pretty much all you get for personalization. So I feel like it’s going to come across as more of a mass mail and you’ve got to be aware of that.
AJ Wilcox:
Whereas if you log into your Sales Navigator account, you can select a person. You can say, “Hey, by the way, loved you on X podcast,” mention something from their profile. You can make it intensely personal and that’s going to get read. So I think there is a difference there and it might be worth employing both.
Average Open Rates For Sponsored Inmails · [32:37]
Will Barron:
What is the open rates for a Sponsored InMail? Because as you’re saying this, if the open rates are reasonably high, this is something I could do to people in the sales industry, in a B2B space. So just send an email of, “Hey, here’s a podcast, a shit tonne of free content, subscribe here.” But I’m intrigued to the open rates versus the costs at this point.
“The average click-through rate in Sponsored InMail is about 12%. But if you’re getting less than a 50% open rate, it’s probably telling you your subject line is really bad.” AJ Wilcox · [32:57]
AJ Wilcox:
So the average open rate of Sponsored InMail, if you’re getting less than a 50% open rate, it’s probably telling you your subject line is really bad, but then there’s an average 12% click through rate. So, understanding that you get a little bit more of someone’s attention, you get more real estate. If you do the math, your cost per click is probably going to be higher than something like sponsored content, but you had more of a chance to get them to know like, and trust you by this point, and so conversion rates should be higher. So I have quite a few clients who use these very successfully and then I have others that we’ve tested and they’ve been absolute failures. So be aware of or be judgmental about the types of ads you’re using.
Will Barron:
Interesting, because if it was a couple of dollars per click, and people would click. If you could convince them in the copy to, and being totally selfish. I’m going to derail the conversation here for a second, just to leverage your knowledge on this. But if I could get a new audience to understand what the podcast is, that it’s right for them through, the targeting and click to iTunes and subscribe, maybe I’d pay $2, $5 for each new subscription, because it’d be an interesting hack for me to then whenever I want to jump up through the iTunes charts, just over the course of a weekend, go from where we are typically in the top 50 to 100 into the top 50 by spending a grand or so on ads, maybe it’s conversation for another time. Interesting.
Is Using LinkedIn Inmail to Get Someone’s Attention Really Sustainable · [34:38]
Will Barron:
As we talk about though, it’s probably less applicable for the audience, sales nation. We should probably be focusing on the InMail specific. Which is better from a lead generation, from a conversation standpoint. Is it always more effective to send a InMail and be guaranteed someone’s attention or is there an argument here to go the free route, which will be less effective of adding someone as a contact with essentially the LinkedIn message on that as you add them as you add them as a contact? There’s a box to how we met or whatever the box says. There’s a box in there. Is it as effective to copy and paste the InMail in there or should we be a hundred percent paying for InMails?
AJ Wilcox:
So going back to the previous one, I just came up with a hack that I think might be really fun for you. We know that if you wanted to show your podcast in sponsored content, you’d probably pay between six and nine bucks a click. But as for hacks, since we’re talking about them imagine if you bring someone from Microsoft on as a podcast guest, and then afterwards you send out a LinkedIn ad targeting just their employees or just their company using their name saying, “Hey, we had your CMO on the podcast,” again, you’re going to get really high click through rates. If you’re paying by impression, you’re going to get really, really low costs, and then you might be able to milk a lot of new subscribers out of that at a much cheaper rate. So I think that would be best through sponsored content, I probably still wouldn’t use Sponsored InMail for that one.
How to Organically Stand Out on LinkedIn · [36:17]
Will Barron:
Nice. I’m jotting this down as we go, because we have people from Oracle, we have people from Salesforce on regularly. So that might be the follow up marketing that we need to implement from that, so I will for sure throw that in. AJ, before we wrap up here, mate, is there any other hacks, is there anything else organically seems you spend so much time with LinkedIn that sales people should be doing on the platform other than the obvious stuff of having a great profile and all that kind of thing.
AJ Wilcox:
Well, I definitely think that it’s all about soft touches. I’m of the millennial generation, I’m the tail end there, but I see the shift that is happening in sales where, baby boomers, they were okay with being hard sold. They knew that if they went to a car dealership someone was going to beat them up for six hours while they sat down and tried to take it. But millennials, we like to go in and be educated and know what we’re doing and we like to make our decision without pressure. So I think we’re going to see more of this happening and how that translates to LinkedIn for me, if you reach out to me with an InMail that says, “I want to do business with you,” and it has any hint, any sniff of there’s going to be pressure behind this, I’m just going to ignore it entirely.
AJ Wilcox:
But if you reach out to me with a connection request that says, “Hey, AJ, loved hearing you on this podcast, really respect what you’re doing in this field,” and it feels personal, I’m going to connect to you. Then once we’re connected, you can take the time to shoot me articles, shoot me comments about something else you saw me do that you liked, and we start a relationship and at some point I’m going to say, “Hey, this is interesting. I want to reciprocate, what do you do? What can I learn and help you with?” As soon as that reciprocation happens, you have a relationship, you’re not hitting on someone anymore, and to me, that’s going to get me to respond versus the, I’m going to shoot out InMails repeatedly in hopes that 10% of those people are going to respond and I’m going to get a lead. If you nurture them a little bit more, I think you’ll do better with the millennials.
Will Cold Outreach Ever Go Away, Just Because it Doesn’t Work? · [38:32]
Will Barron:
Across the whole market considering that no one knows in the sales industry, one person who’s come on the show knows my mobile number, no one that I do business with, even the people we’ve done six figure deals with multiple huge companies this year, none of them know my mobile number. It’s not in my email signature. I use Skype to do all these international conversations, all these calls on the business and my lead gen and my sales side of things. Do you feel like with social media being just the biz that it is, and clearly it’s going to get more and more ingrained into everything we do. There’ll be a Facebook TV. The LinkedIn app will be baked into every BMW because it’s the most common car for sales reps to be driving round in.
Will Barron:
Do you feel like this cold call, this cold emailing, all this spamming that inside sales are doing at the moment, that a lot of salespeople are still doing because their sales manager used to do it 10 years ago and it used to work. Do you feel like, oh this is going to go away not because it’s the right thing to do, not even because you get better business results, I don’t think soft is the right word. I want frame it as that being strategic about the touch points and building a relationship first, do you feel like all the hard selling, the spam is going to go away just because it doesn’t work to make it as simple as that.
AJ Wilcox:
I think we’re going to have two heads, both of these coming to a single head, we’re definitely going to see that sales style go away. On one side, you’re going to have the smart organisations who are measuring everything and they’re saying, “Hey, we used to send out 10,000 spam messages and we’d get three leads out of it and this quarter we only got two, the next quarter we’re only going to get one. This doesn’t work anymore. We’re going to be smart and we’re going to shut this down and shape up.”
AJ Wilcox:
But then you also have these really lean strategic organisations who will go out and usually they’re run by younger people, and the first thing they’re going to say is, “Yeah, we don’t want to be perceived that way. We’re going to go out and start with a softer touch,” more of the jab, jab, jab, right hook philosophy, rather than go in for the kill, and I think they’re both going to find that it’s a lot more effective that way and they’re going to change, but I don’t think there’s going to be one cause for it all and it’s going to happen gradually.
Will Barron:
I think the perceived element of this is really important. I’m glad you said that, I’ve now banged about on the show multiple times, we’ll wrap up with this. I think that LinkedIn is a great example of this, if you on your personal LinkedIn profile are adding hundreds of people a week and you’re just spamming them and spamming them and spamming them. What’s going to happen in 46 or 48 months from here? Your personal brand is going to get hit. Your are going to be seen in your industry from all these decision makers that you’ve spammed over the years that it’s coming from you, that you are a poor salesperson, that you are not someone they want to do business with long term, because you have been spamming from your LinkedIn profile.
Will Barron:
I don’t think this has ever been the case before, I think you could hide behind your company. You could make a tonne of cold calls and your first line is, “Hey, it’s John from X, Y, Z company,” and they’re remembering the company, they’re not remembering John. But when it’s your face on there, when they can look over your history and see you worked at these places, I think it’s tying all into this mental image of what’s happening I think of the internet in general, where you seen less people using pseudonyms, people are using their actual names as their usernames, people are using the actual pictures of themselves on all these profiles, which wasn’t the case for anything other than Facebook. When that first popped on the scene, you’re going to see everything getting more legitimised, and it’s going to be more and more difficult to do all the spamming without your personal brand being hit without your personal brand being hit.
Will Barron:
So I just wanted to interject that into the end of the conversation here, AJ, because I don’t want the audience to make mistakes now, which kick him in the ass in five years time, when someone comes to sell you, your business is now doing 200 million a year, you’ve just conglomerated it and took free over ad agencies. You’re doing incredible things and they spent you a spam email now, because it’ll be like this interesting, I’ve never even thought about this. This is amazing. So they send you a spam email now, five years time, they send you another email when they’ve learned the lesson and in your inbox, you’re going to see the spammy email. This person’s changed companies four or five times now, but they’re going to see the spam email from four companies ago and then the new email from that. There’s going to be a chain of conversation there unless they close their LinkedIn profile and start over again.
AJ’s Advice to His Younger Self on How to Become Better at Selling · [42:39]
Will Barron:
I’ve never even thought about it like that, but that’s going to be the case for a lot of people, I’m sure. So with that, AJ, to wrap up, mate, I’ve got one final question that I ask everyone that comes on the show and that is, if you could go back in time and speak to your younger self, what would be the one piece of advice you’d give him to help him become better at selling?
AJ Wilcox:
Well, the biggest achievement I made in selling was early on when I very first started my company. I was operating out of a place of fear, I needed to provide for my family. I had three kids with one on the way and I was really scared. So the first meeting I went in where they said, “Okay, give us your pitch.” I was like, “Okay, well, I don’t really know that I have a pitch, but here it goes.” That was like the worst sales conversation I’ve ever had. Versus when I finally got to a position where I knew that my family was taken care of, the business was making enough money to cover things. All of a sudden I could start having really legitimate conversations with people and saying, “You know what? Actually, LinkedIn is probably not the best way for you to do your marketing right now, wait until X. Wait until you have better content. Wait until you have more budget, and I can start having these conversations that are generating trust.”
“Always operate out of confidence even if there is fear and because that’s the way that you’re going to get the sale. Develop a sales style that’s all about what is best for the customer, and once you figure that out, you can have a real genuine conversation.” AJ Wilcox · [43:40]
AJ Wilcox:
So if I could give myself advice, it would be always operate out of confidence even if there is fear and because that’s the way that you’re going to get the sale. Because I told you, I don’t consider myself a sales guy. I was just forced into this because I was a really good tactician, really good at doing LinkedIn ads, and then I had to go out and start a company around it. But now my sales style, I’ve settled into it and it really is all about what is best for the customer, and once you figure that out, you can have a real genuine conversation.
The Benefits of Building Trust and Operating in The Client’s Best Interest · [44:10]
Will Barron:
Love it. I love it. Just another layer on this and to use your example there, you email or you LinkedIn message someone saying, “You’re not a great fit for this right now.” They change round three or four companies and then reach out to you on the next occasion, they’ve seen that trust, build an email when they send you the next LinkedIn message and it’s a feed of trust there and how describe it, it is just a documentation of every time you send this email, every time you say to someone, “You’re not quite right.” Every time you don’t try and manipulate them or influence them, it’s almost money in the bank for the future. Is that a reasonable way to look at it?
AJ Wilcox:
Yes. This happens all the time to me, someone that I turn down now that I could feasibly talk into doing it, that I might earn $2,000 or $3,000 before they decided it’s not working and quit, that same person would come back and say, “Hey, I’m now at a company with a bigger budget or better content,” and then they become clients that are spending hundreds of thousands on LinkedIn ads, and it’s much better for me. So yeah, operate out of a place of confidence not from fear and your future’s going to look bright even though you’re probably going to lose a few grand right now.
Parting Thoughts · [45:18]
Will Barron:
Perfect. Well with that, AJ, I believe you’ve got an opt in for us here, which you can share us the link with and then share us a link so we can find out more about you and everything that you’re up to as well.
AJ Wilcox:
Sounds great. Well yeah, this is for anyone who wants to know how B2Linked starts doing LinkedIn advertising. So if you’re saying, “Yeah, we don’t really want to hire an agency to do this. We want to give it a stab ourselves, go to B2Linked, that’s the letter B the number two, then the word linked.com/checklist. Then that’s going to be, this is the same process that me and my team use for every new account we bring on and you can make sure that you’re started right. Then by the way, if you go to the website and fill out the contact form, or if you download the checklist, you don’t have to be worried about a sales guy jumping in and trying to force something down your throat, you know from this what my sales style is, it’s very light. I want to be of service to you. So, fill out the form, get the content and don’t worry about ever being followed up with if you opt out.
Will Barron:
Perfect. Well with that, AJ, I want to thank you for your time. I thank you for sharing some hacks and expertise and giving me some personal self-ish advice on this, of how to grow the audience, I appreciate that mate, and I want to thank you for joining us on The Salesman Podcast.
AJ Wilcox:
Well, thank you so much. Will Barron, ladies and gentlemen. Woo.
