#61: 3-Part LinkedIn Master Class - Part 3 - Sales Funnel: How to Create an Automated Sales Funnel on LinkedIn

Learn More Earn More Business Growth Podcast

Host: Brian Webb

Episode 61: 3-Part LinkedIn Master Class - Part 3 - Sales Funnel: How to Create an Automated Sales Funnel on LinkedIn

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INTRODUCTION

Do you wish you could generate more sales from LinkedIn without actually having to prospect? Are you curious how to build an automated lead generation process on LinkedIn? Well, if so, you're in the right place today. I'm going to teach you how to make an automated funnel on LinkedIn to grow your business smarter and faster. Let's jump into it.

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TRANSCRIPT

Brian Webb:

Do you wish you could generate more sales from LinkedIn without actually having to prospect? Are you curious how to build an automated lead generation process on LinkedIn? Well, if so, you're in the right place today. I'm going to teach you how to make an automated funnel on LinkedIn to grow your business smarter and faster. Let's jump into it.

This is The Learn More, Earn More Business Growth Podcast.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Brian Webb. This podcast is designed to be your number one premier place to learn the framework, secrets and growth hacks to grow and scale your business smarter and faster. While you're working on pursuing your dreams and growing your business, I'll be here to help you make better decisions and avoid costly pitfalls and expensive mistakes along the way. So let's go ahead and jump into today's episode. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to The Learn More, Earn More Business Growth Podcast.

            If you're new here today, today is part three of a three-part LinkedIn masterclass. Episode 58, we talked about creator mode and the seven reasons that every B2B business leader should add this to your profile, and how to do it. Episode 59, we talked about part two, basically how to prospect like a pro, how to get 10 to 20 real leads or more every month from LinkedIn. Today, part three, the final part of this series anyway, is how to create an automated sales funnel on LinkedIn. And so today, we're going to talk about how to turn your LinkedIn company page into an automated sales funnel in just a handful of steps.

            Remember prospecting is an organic process, meaning you're humanly reaching out to other people, trying to connect, and form those relationships. Today is going to be more about paid traffic. So the money that you give to LinkedIn to buy traffic or to buy media to get attention to your brand and to the products and services and offers that you have. LinkedIn ads offer really, really valuable opportunities to expand your reach because that's what they want you to do. They want you to pay them using one of their specific types of ads called native lead forms.

            Again, we're always flying fast and furiously here on the podcast because you are a busy, busy person, but basically, a lead forum is when an ad pops up on LinkedIn and someone clicks on it. Instead of abandoning LinkedIn and going to your website, a form pops out with all of their information already populated from their account in the forum. All they have to do is click submit. LinkedIn likes this because they're less likely to leave the platform. You like it because it's bringing the information straight from their account, which is probably their real information, as opposed to them just giving you their juncture email address.

            But before you run any ads, the first thing you've got to do, you've got to turn on conversion tracking in the platform. And to do this, to access conversion tracking, go to LinkedIn campaign manager, open your account, view your account assets, then create new conversions for each step of your sales funnel. For example, you might want to track leads, signups, new trials, subscriptions, whatever. You can also use this to track ad clicks and phone calls, so that's step one. And if you haven't heard of these acronyms, I'm going to share them with you for the first time.

            TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU. TOFU stands for, top of funnel, MOFU, as you might guess, stands for middle of funnel, and BOFU stands for bottom of funnel. But for this next step, we're going to talk about top of the funnel. And when you think of the top, middle, or bottom of funnel, think of those as temperatures. So think of top of funnel as cold. Meaning the people who might not even know that you exist, or if they do, they have very little awareness about who you are, how valid you are. Think of MOFU or middle of funnel as people who have a little more exposure to your brand, your products, and your services. You've been nurturing them for a little while.

            And then think of the bottom of funnel as where they're most likely to convert. This is when they're hot. Hopefully, the ones that are ever going to purchase from you. And they're the ones who are familiar with you. They have been exposed to your content, and it's time to start talking about your offers. So when people are at the top of your funnel, meaning they don't hardly know who you are, focus on organic type of posts that tell people about your business and introduce prospects to your products and services. Rather than providing tons of details, create short-form content. Entertain people, educate, always educate, and always engage.

            Now, the next step that you're going to want to do when you're producing this top of funnel or TOFU content, it may reach hundreds or thousands of people if your company page has a sizeable following. But if you want your content to actually be seen, even if you're a smaller company, you're going to have to boost those top-performing posts on your LinkedIn company page. That way you can reach more of your target audience and keep adding new prospects into your funnel. So now, let's move to the MOFU, not to be confused with the MOFO. The MOFU, can't believe I said that.

            The middle of your funnel at this point, prospects have moved past the getting to know you stage. They understand what your business does. They have a general idea of how your products and service that can help them. So at this point, you want to start focusing on creating more in-depth, more detail-type content. You can detail how your products can help, demonstrate how your services have worked for other people, and share competitive research that shows your business is a top choice. Social proof, social proof, social proof. We talk about that all the time.

            Now, you can do this with regular text posts, but especially at this point, you might want to think about using images and video content, multimedia in your ongoing marketing efforts, in the middle of the funnel on LinkedIn. And by the way, if you weren't already aware, you could even upload a slide deck to LinkedIn, which will appear to the users on LinkedIn like a carousel. So if you have a slide deck prepared, for example, export that out to a PDF, upload that PDF as a document to your post, and it will look like an image carousel. So people can scroll through the various slides that you want them to see.

            Next step, we want to get to some automated retargeting with paid content. Again, we're still in the middle of the funnel. One principle I teach all the time, it takes at least 21 to 24 times for your audience to engage with your brand before they go through those three phases of the relationship, right? They've never heard of you, maybe a little bit of awareness. You build trust through enlightenment. And then finally you get to that commitment, that engagement of some kind. They came to your event, webinar. They took a sales call. They signed up to be your customer. I stumbled into another statistic recently that had nothing to do with the number of times, it was the amount of time they consumed your content.

            And the time was over five hours, meaning 21 to 24 times before they go through the process. This newer statistic that I'd bumped into suggests that they have to at least consume five hours of your content. So think about that for a second. Five hours, they see a post that's about two seconds. When you're posting videos, when you're posting documents, slide decks, PDFs, you're getting more of their attention. You might be getting more of their time. So at this point, you want to accelerate these touch points. You want to move people through this stage of the funnel more efficiently.

            Okay, I'll get back to the podcast in just a minute, but let's face it, most marketing doesn't work. Did you know that most business owners and leaders are making the same mistakes over and over again? Like so many others. You're probably tired of relying on hope, which is a failed marketing system. You know what that is, that's when you're spending valuable time and money on marketing, and then you hope it works. You've probably thrown tons of money towards marketing mistakes and failures. You wish you could get all that money back, but you can't.

            When you don't have a reliable system for generating leads and acquiring new customers, then you're doomed to exclusively rely on the loyalty of your existing customers and word of mouth. But it doesn't have to be that way. I want to give you a resource for free. You heard me right, free. I've put together the ultimate 97-point marketing audit checklist, which will allow you to assess and diagnose what is and is not working in your marketing. And it will only take you about 10 to 15 minutes. Think of it like an MRI for your marketing without the expensive medical bills to follow.

            And to get this free marketing checklist delivered right to your email inbox, just go to getmymarketingchecklist.com, provide your info and we'll get it out to you right away. And again, it's totally free. I'd actually encourage you to walk through the checklist with your team and honestly discuss and evaluate every item on the list. It will be the best 10 minutes you've invested into the growth engine of your business in a long, long time. Again, don't waste another day or another dollar on failing hope marketing strategies that do not work.

            If you want to grow and scale your business smarter and faster, and with fewer mistakes, you're in the right place. Again, totally free. Simply go to getmymarketingchecklist.com right now. Let's fix what's broken in your marketing today. This newer statistic that I bumped into suggests that they have to at least consume five hours of your content. So think about that for a second. Five hours. They see a post that's about two seconds. When you're posting videos, when you're posting documents, slide decks, PDFs, you're getting more of their attention. You might be getting more of their time.

            So at this point, you want to accelerate these touch points. You want to move people through the stage of the funnel, more efficiently. Use campaign manager to run consideration-focused campaigns. If you use retargeting audiences, you can guide prospects through a customized series of touchpoints designed to address their specific needs. Here's an example, consider publishing an organic carousel post that links to a blog post introducing people to the topic, or create a LinkedIn video ad that takes a deeper dive into the topic and re-targets people who visited the blog post.

            Publish a website traffic ad that links people to a detailed how-to guide and re-targets people who watch your LinkedIn video ad. And since this is a podcast and not a full-blown course, we can't go too deep here, but let's move to the next step, how to design bottom of funnel LinkedIn content? And remember bottom of funnel means these are people that you have been warming up, educating, entertaining, and engaging for an extended period of time. At this point, your prospects might have a strong interest in your solution, but something is preventing them from taking that final step.

            Maybe they have lingering questions. Maybe they're checking out your competition, or they might be waiting for the right offer. If you can provide the final piece of that puzzle, there's a great chance that you can secure a new customer, a new sale. So let me give you some examples for your bottom of funnel, your BOFU content. Let's talk about LinkedIn live events. This lets you connect with your prospects in real-time, and you can follow up with attendees afterward to provide additional resources for them or make them offers for that matter. And by the way, while it's called LinkedIn live, you don't necessarily have to actually be live.

            There's a tool out there called Stream Yard. You can literally produce a video, produce content and then have it post at a later time once you've polished it up. That being said, if you're going live, you need to be present in the live meaning you need to be available to chat, to get messages, to respond to people, but the video could have been pre-produced. And hopefully, prayerfully, coming soon, they're going to have audio-only events opening up to the rest of the platform. This is a platform not unlike ClubHouse, if you've heard of it, where you can go into a room, go live basically, but it will be an audio-only room.

            So you can do it from your pajamas, from your home. You heard it from me first, but a couple more examples. Gated Content, Gated Content, lets your prospects download valuable guides and reports and all kinds of things in exchange for their information, their cell phone number, and their email address. You can nurture those leads, please do, please do, via email, text message, or direct mail, and add them to your retargeting audiences. Do you sell an actual product or are you a SaaS company? How about a free trial or a demo? Get prospects in the door and onboard them into your system.

            Your final, you can automatically follow up with those leads, and encourage them to upgrade or subscribe to a paid plan. We're almost done. The last step, re-target your serious prospects automatically. I can tell you right now, if you're not running retargeting ads, you have an enormous hole in the side of your business. To lead prospects to a final stage of your sales funnel, your bottom of funnel, use lead generation and website conversion objectives for your LinkedIn retargeting campaigns. With the lead generation objective, you can encourage your prospects to fill out a native lead form to request a personal follow-up or to access your high-value lead magnet.

            And if you don't know what a lead magnet is, go to getmymarketingchecklist.com, and intentionally give your real first name, your real last name, your real cell phone number, and your best email address. One, you'll need the resource, you want that resource. And two, it will allow you to go through a journey, a sales funnel journey to see what that experience is like. But as far as your ad is concerned on LinkedIn, you want to use lead generation as the objective. You can encourage prospects to fill up that native lead form we talked about to request a personal follow-up. So bottom line, before you build a funnel, take a few minutes to optimize your LinkedIn presence for lead generation and conversions.

            Prospects might discover your business on LinkedIn in several different ways, through a search, seeing your ads, and organic content that you're sharing. When they visit your company page, however, you want them to find all of the information they need to trust your business. So have you uploaded an image and a cover image? Are you updating it regularly? Do you have CTA buttons or call to action buttons that link to your website? Are you doing a good job of showcasing your specialties? You can choose up to 20 of them by the way. And when you do this right, it actually guides the LinkedIn algorithm and increases your chance of appearing in a search.

            So that's it for today, people. Again, getmymarketingchecklist.com, go check it out. Are you subscribed to my newsletter on LinkedIn, by the way, learnmoreearnmorenewsletter.com? Go there and subscribe. We've talked about the seven reasons you need to have creator mode turned on on your profile. We've talked about how to prospect like a pro, and get leads month after month. And now, I've taught you how to make an automated sales funnel again in podcast form and short form on LinkedIn. That's it for today. Thanks for being here. I'm always grateful.

            I never lose sight of the fact that you could be spending your time anywhere else. So thank you for being here. Let's keep going and growing together. I will see you on the next episode. Thanks for joining me today, and listening to this episode of The Learn More, Earn More Business Growth Podcast. We can be found on all the major platforms like Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, and even Amazon Music. I genuinely hope you enjoyed today's episode. And if you did, I'd be honored if you'd subscribe to the show and leave us a rating in an honest review.

            I'd love to connect with you on Instagram. You can find me at, @brianwebb and the show sponsor What Box Digital can be found at, as you might guess, @whatboxdigital. You can also find me and What Box Digital on Facebook and LinkedIn with the links in the show notes. This will allow you to stay up to date and never miss out on exciting new announcements, events, special offers, and opportunities. And you'll be in the know when we drop a new episode of The Learn More, Earn More Business Growth Podcast. And if you'd like to send me a DM on Instagram to say hello, or share your thoughts on how we can make this podcast even better for you, I'd love to hear from you. Again, thanks for listening, let's go and grow together. I'll see you on the next episode.

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DESCRIPTION

The Learn More Earn More Business Growth Podcast is sponsored by Whatbox Digital, a marketing and consulting agency in the Greater Houston Metroplex. This podcast is your premier place to learn the frameworks, secrets, and growth hacks to grow and scale your business and revenue smarter and faster.