LinkedIn Strategies for Generating New Leads
Mandy McEwen, CEO and Founder of Mod Girl Marketing and Luminetics, shares valuable insights on how to optimize your LinkedIn profile and leverage the platform for generating new business leads.
[MUSIC]
Welcome to Demand Gen Visionaries.
I'm Ian Vazan, CEO of Cast Mein Studios.
And today I'm joined by a special guest, Manny.
How are you?
I'm good.
How are you?
I am doing great.
I am super excited to chat with you today.
Goodness gracious.
We all need help with our LinkedIn branding, with our marketing,
and every single marketer these days.
And sales team needs help with that.
Super fun episode.
I'm really excited.
Let's get into it.
How did you start in marketing?
Yeah, it was random.
After college tried to get a real job like everyone else.
And I did.
I didn't try.
I successfully got a job.
And then realized I didn't like working for other people.
And I wanted to do my own thing.
So I googled how to make money online, like everyone else,
and taught myself online marketing.
I was an affiliate marketer for a while, SEO, blogging,
et cetera, selling all sorts of things, dog treats, fitness
books, 2007 era, the Wild West of Black Hat SEO,
before social media was even a cool thing,
or even a thing that you needed.
And then decided that making money off of affiliate marketing
wasn't really going to pay my bills.
Let me put my job.
So then I started offering small business owners
help with their websites and SEO back in Kansas City, which
is where I started my company originally.
And then that grew into my agency, Mod Girl Marketing.
Yes, so tell us a little bit about Mod Girl.
Yeah.
So Mod Girl is a social media consultancy.
So we have been in business since 2010.
And so now what we do is we provide strategy and training
for teams on social media teams, short form video, primarily.
So TikTok strategy, Instagram, YouTube,
and then obviously LinkedIn.
And so that's the Mod Girl side of things.
And then we have another brand, Luminex, which
is our LinkedIn training company.
And so on that side of things, our main specialty
is training sales and marketing teams
on how to maximize the power of LinkedIn
to land predictable meetings month after month,
and obviously grow their personal brands
and grow the company brands at the same time.
So a lot of social media consulting and training
all the way around, but LinkedIn is one of our main focuses.
Yeah, and we'll get into a bunch of that today.
But just off the top, how bad do you think people are at this?
Because I feel like we're--
Pretty bad.
Yeah, we're pretty bad at this.
Yeah, most people are not.
Because they don't know any better.
It's not their fault.
It's not your fault.
No one's ever really shown them why a--
what's the point of spending my time and resources
on having a good LinkedIn presence and profile?
Why is it important?
What's the opportunity?
And be how the hell do you even do that in the first place?
So people are just not educated on it.
And it hasn't been a priority for so many companies.
So I'm not surprised that here we
are with so many struggle buses on LinkedIn.
Totally.
And especially with how many senior leaders
at companies that we're also managing who are even worse
than we are.
Let's get to our first segment.
The Trust Tree, where we go and feel honest and trusted
and share those deepest, darkest demand
and marketing secrets.
I'm curious.
Tell me a little bit more about the two customer
bases that you serve.
Yeah, so Luminetics primarily we
are trying to get in front of-- it really depends.
So CMOs.
So a lot of times the budget comes from the marketing team.
So we're training teams of SDRs and BDRs, primarily,
with some marketers thrown in.
And so it's mainly sales teams, but it's a demand-gen initiative.
And so a lot of times it's coming out
of the marketing budget.
So we are getting in front of CMOs.
Marketing directors, VPs of demand-gen, et cetera.
And then also sales leaders.
So sales enablement, VP of sales, and side sales, et cetera.
So those are our main target focus, usually 10 or more sales
people.
VDRs are our sales.
So we're looking at medium, small, medium-sized tech
companies, primarily--
SaaS, a lot of SaaS.
But it's really across the board any B2B company
that has an active target market on LinkedIn.
That's who we can help.
But they need to have a team of usually at least 10
or so people to attend our customized training.
And then on the Mod Girl side, it can really--
it's a bigger kind of market there.
For example, we have a luxury real estate firm
in addition to some B2B firms.
So basically, anyone who knows that they
have a target audience on multiple social media channels,
not just LinkedIn, and they want to capitalize
on the power of short-form video,
and they have the bandwidth to do it,
they just don't know how exactly to do it.
So they need strategic insights, help coaching,
guiding along the way in order to capitalize
on the short-form video.
I would say movement, but it's really
the way that everything's going now is video in general,
but those short-form videos.
So that's how it's our target market on the Mod Girl front.
How do you think about your marketing strategy
to acquire those two groups of customers?
LinkedIn, obviously.
LinkedIn star.
Number one, channel, clearly.
And I've been blogging and doing what we're--
you and I are doing right now for years, right?
So I have guests on multiple podcasts.
I'm guesting in blogs and digital marketer and social media
examiner, and I've spoke on stages,
and I have a lot of SEO juice, too,
from just putting out content for so long on my website
and social media.
So we get a lot of inbound traffic, too,
just coming from all sources.
But obviously, LinkedIn is our number one driver.
And then also, we do some email as well.
So some email outreach.
And some LinkedIn ads, when we have promotions.
So if I'm wanting to promote something,
but the LinkedIn ads trick is I don't send people
to a landing page or anything, I send them to my profile
on LinkedIn.
So we do LinkedIn ads from the company page,
but then we had a sales kickoff offer, for example.
So I was promoting-- this was late last year--
to speak at sales kickoffs, either virtually or in person.
And so I had a video of me in Hawaii
just walking around talking about my offer.
So we put the video on LinkedIn ads,
and we just sent people to my profile.
And we got super cheap cost per clicks.
And so it was significantly cheaper
than sending them to the landing page, for example,
that we had for this offer.
So when we do LinkedIn ads, we are
strategic to make sure that it's super good in the most
bang for our buck and making sure that it's
attracting attention for the cheapest possible way,
and then obviously driving people to my profile, too.
So we're doing stuff like that, too,
that's not your traditional throw up a landing page
and pump some ad dollars behind it.
All right, let's get to our next segment, the playbook.
This is where we're going to spend the majority of our time
today talking plays so you can open up that playbook,
talk about the tactics that help you win,
but not only just you, help your customers win, too.
You play to win the game.
Hello.
You play to win the game.
You don't play to just play it.
Let's start first with LinkedIn, because I
think that it's a part that people are messing up a lot.
So why should LinkedIn be a core element of someone's strategy?
And why the heck is this an uncutable budget item?
Yes, solid question.
First of all, it's the only B2B social media network
in the world primarily focused on B2B.
It has loads of decision makers.
Four out of five decision makers are on LinkedIn.
It is where the C-suite is going to consume information.
It's literally where people go to keep up with their industry
trends and to network.
So if you are in B2B, your target market is on LinkedIn,
and it's only getting bigger and bigger.
It was already growing, but then COVID hit,
and it just has taken off.
So it's not going away, and it's only getting bigger.
So if you're not on LinkedIn and you're in B2B,
you're missing out on a massive opportunity,
not to mention it's so unique in the fact
that it's not like any other social media network.
It literally is meant for networking, where Instagram,
you're just throwing up beautiful pictures and videos
and reels, you're not spending a ton of time
actually building relationships on Instagram.
That's not what it's for, right?
Or LinkedIn, it is meant to build relationships.
So it's the best place that you can possibly go to,
before you pick up the phone, before you email people,
to try to build that relationship ahead of time,
engage with their content, et cetera.
So that is why everyone needs to be there.
- What are people doing wrong and how can they fix it?
- Love this question.
So first and foremost, the number one mistake,
the 99% of LinkedIn users are making is their profile.
So before you can do anything or achieve what you want to
with a LinkedIn platform, your profile needs to be optimized
and amazing.
So it shouldn't be a glorified resume,
you shouldn't just put your job title in your headline,
you need to make sure everything's optimized
and it almost acts like a mini sales page,
like a mini landing page that pre-sales people ahead of time
before they even talk to you.
And so that's a mistake in Numero Uno
that the majority of people are making
and it usually starts with a headline.
So instead of just putting your job title,
put the value that you provide to people
and maybe something that makes you stand out from the crowd
and not just look like everyone else,
especially salespeople.
And like no one wants to talk to salespeople.
So when I'm training salespeople, I'm like,
don't put SDR, sales development wrap,
and you don't put that.
And you keep it at the end if you want, if you're a headline,
but then you should never lead with the fact
that you're a salesperson.
And like, you're helping people, you're providing value.
Yeah, that's sales, but you don't need to screen that
right out of the gate.
You know how many people are not gonna accept you
just because of that alone,
because that's what all the people see
is your face and your headline right away
till they click on your profile.
So that's the mistake number one is the profile.
- I don't feel like I need to do that because--
- Yeah, it's a little different.
- CEO of Coenee, and I definitely could do that
and I've thought about it, but the difference between that
and like an SDR, if you're like a--
- Yes. - Whatever,
Chief Marketing Officer or VP of Demand Gen
or whatever it is.
- Executive titles are a little bit different.
Good point, I'm not gonna mention that, yes.
- But if you're an SDR, yeah, exactly.
And especially if you're doing like cold outreach
or anything like that, it's just pretty--
- So that's key number one.
And then the second thing is they think that content
is more important than networking.
That's mistake number two.
And so they're so caught up or worried or concerned
about what to post and posting and trying to get views
and stressing over that,
that they neglect to build relationships in the platform.
So when I'm training,
teams, content is the last part of what I talk about always,
right?
Like you need to know how to actually profile,
how to actually talk to people to not be a weirdo
on LinkedIn, right?
Like how to actually give people to respond to you.
And then how to engage with people effectively
to where you're actually getting responses
and building relationships.
Like you have to know all of that before you even attempt
to start posting content consistently.
And engage with people ahead of time,
leverage sales navigator,
I'm a huge sales navigator fan,
I do a lot of sales navigator training.
You can find people who are actively using LinkedIn,
but you can use the spotlights feature,
drill down on people who have posted on LinkedIn
in the last 30 days, focus on them first.
They're using LinkedIn obviously,
find what they're posting about,
engage with them, leave comments,
act like a real human being,
send them a custom connection or a cross mission.
And there's so many things that people just don't take
the extra step to do,
and then they get caught up on the details
that really don't matter,
or they're just spamming people.
And so instead of building relationships and engaging,
they're just blasting out a bunch of annoying messages
that no one is going to accept because they look spammy
or in-mails, right?
And so they're just not using it in the right capacity.
- Yeah, my LinkedIn, I don't know how many requests
I get today, probably 10 from people who write three paragraphs
with like five different links in there.
And I'm like, y'all are wild.
Like this is crazy. - Does that work?
- You are wild.
- Like, just stop doing this.
Like, no, I'm not gonna find time on your calendar.
Because you send me five links in a LinkedIn message.
And it's just, it's super presumptuous and weird.
And I fundamentally believe like cold outreach
should be very personalized.
And I don't mean that in a buzzwordy way.
I mean that like in a literal like this exact type of person
has, I believe that you have this sort of burning need.
And we've done research on your company specifically
that you fit into the categories of XYZ.
And like we do, that's how we do our cold outreach.
But gosh, the spamming on LinkedIn stuff,
it's just, it's almost wild. - You know, it's terrible.
Yeah, I don't understand how that even works either.
And that's the thing is that it gives everyone
about taste in their mouth a lot of people because they're
unlike, but the fact is when you do it right,
you stand out because there's people that are half ass
using it and there's people like that who are abusing it.
And so when you actually do it right and you personalize
something, even if that's something to do with business.
Do you know how many times I've landed clients just because
of something personal that they posted?
Or, you know, where they worked at work or where they went
to college, something like really random has nothing
to do with business that I built relationships from
just because it was a personal starting the conversation
outreach message where they knew for a fact that I actually
looked at their profile, you know?
And so that alone, the majority of people just aren't taking
the 30 seconds to go and look to see what can I mention
in this message or even after the fact to ask the right
questions just to your point of like, we've done our homework,
right? Whether you're mentioning about the company
or you're mentioning about the individual, you need to know
that you've done your homework.
The same goes for LinkedIn, the same goes for email, you know,
phone, etc. So yes, that is, you know, a big issue that I think
is slowly changing, but there's always going to be
spammers, unfortunately.
But that's okay. Like people, again, like that's a feature
not a bug at this point. Like you said, every crappy spam piece
that you get allows you to stand out that much better.
Like we get all the time with our code outreach.
Hey, I normally don't respond, but this is awesome.
And yes, we'd love to take you up on that because we offer a
lot of people at Caspian isn't an opportunity if they have a
series to audit it because most people want like individual
feedback on their stuff and people take you up on that
because they're like, hey, yeah, for sure, you're going to do
something for free for us and we're going to do it. And it's,
we have a bunch of experts on our team that can actually do
that. But anyways, to say that's an opportunity for you to
stand out. And like you said, that's what you want to do.
We're sitting here talking about it and it seems pretty basic,
right? Like you and I are talking about this, but
the fact of the matter is there's not a lot of people doing what
you're doing with your outreach and what I'm talking about doing
on LinkedIn. It seemed like that's what you need to do. But like,
we're talking about it for a reason because there's just not
that many people doing it, which is why I do what I do in
training people. It's almost shocking, but there are way more
people that are just clicking as many as they can and doing the
messages that you're getting than there are taking the time to
personalize it. And so that's a huge challenge that a lot of
companies are facing right now.
Yeah. So zooming out from a strategy perspective, how does
this fit within? We have a bunch of CMOs who manage STR teams
and outbound falls under them. So I'm curious, like, where does
this fit within if you're managing a team of SDRs? How
should you be doing LinkedIn outreach? What should you have
your SDRs be doing?
In the sequences, if you use outreach, sales loft, whatever
platform that you use, everyone always where you're starting
with email, a lot of times, phone, etc. And LinkedIn's either
used for research beforehand or LinkedIn's like down the road.
So what I'm helping teams come in is let's re shift this, let's
change everyone's mindset about LinkedIn. And the step number
one should always be LinkedIn always before you pick up the
form for email. Because then you can start to build that
relationship ahead of time. So the step number one should
actually be find people that are actively using it engage with
them, engage their content like comment, and then come back
send a connection request. And then from there, whatever needs
to be done, if you need to actually email them if they're
not responding, whatever, I'm a big proponent, obviously still
of leveraging email and phone, clearly. But LinkedIn, when you
start with LinkedIn, it makes everything so much easier
because then you have a point of reference that you can bring up
on the phone in the email, you can mention LinkedIn. And so I'm
like, LinkedIn shouldn't be an afterthought. And you shouldn't
just be using sales now for research, it should be a major
part of the outreach plan that y'all are having your SDRs run.
It needs, it should and most of them are just using sales
navigator for research. And that's it. They're not actually
looking at the post that the prospects are posting, they're
not paying attention to what the companies, the prospects, the
companies are posting, they're just doing the bare minimum. And so
my thing is let's put a bigger emphasis on LinkedIn, let's have
it in the beginning of the sequence and not just a research
part or hey, if they didn't answer or didn't answer the email or
pick up the phone, then we'll go to LinkedIn. No, that should be
in the very beginning.
Is it? Hey, you should like comment 10 times before you send a
code emote, you have over there data, is it just sort of?
I say like one to three posts, it all depends, it depends on how
you comment, what the post is, you first is active, sometimes it
might just take one and you can do it that same day and they see
your comment and they respond and then you instantly start the
relationship other times it might take two to three. So there's no
like magic rule, but there's definitely definitely not 10.
Like, I would say a couple would be good if they're posting
actively, but you don't want to be random and awkward and be like,
oh, there's a desperate from a post three months ago. So you
also have to like, if it's a recent post, then yeah, go for it
within the last few weeks, but don't try to go back three months
ago and be like, oh, this was so fascinating. Talk to me now.
There's a fine line there and then not everyone posts content
clearly. But yeah, that's good rule of thumb is make sure it's
recent. And I would say if you can do two, awesome, you can do
three. Cool.
I would almost disagree a little bit on the recency thing and
just from this standpoint that because I have people hit me up
all the time of like old podcast episodes and stuff like that,
if you go back and actually listen to something that I've
created from like years before, and then you're like, comment on
that. And my thing is, yeah, let's just say the average sea
level executive has been on like 1.7 podcasts. And the average
like VP has been on like 0.8 or something like that, let's just
say, or has spoken conferences or whatever it is. And you could
go find an episode where they've been on or some piece of like
a solidorship, whatever. And you go and post that to your
LinkedIn. Hey, I was listening, I was recently listening to an
old episode of a podcast with Jane Doe, who's now the CMO of
XYZ. And like this quote, I thought was really cool, whatever
like hashtag marketing hashtag whatever. Go do that shows.
That's go. 50 times more effort and initiative than the
other stuff. Go the extra one.
I agree. And I guess when I'm talking about old posts, if they
posted a company update four months ago, do you know what I
mean? But the podcast works. I've but I've done that exactly what
you said. And it was so simple. Like, hey, just listen to your
podcast episode with first name last name. I loved what you said
about APC. That's it. Didn't say anything. Connect start of the
conversation. So that's an amazing way to get in front of
people. And hardly anyone is doing that, you know, and it's
everyone literally 99% of people if you sends them a message, then
they know that you listen to a podcast episode. They're going to
accept your connection or bust and they will most likely respond
to you. So people at times say like, Oh my gosh, I had the most
persistent SDR. And I finally booked a deal or I finally booked
a call with them just because they were really funny and clever
and creative. And that's great. But let's say you're like, if
you're a team, if like, maybe you're, I don't know, worried that
you don't have every single person has that skill set, that
sort of like it factor. If you all just get in and like their
stuff, especially if you go from LinkedIn to Twitter, where the
vast majority of these people, if they are posting have no
followers or likes, there's so many senior level executives that
have whatever 300 followers and their posts get five or six
likes, just get in there and start hitting that like button.
Like at least that adds value to them. Get their cloud up a
little bit. Whereas the opposite is I'm just going to keep spam
emailing you even worse phone call. Like I personally, I'm like,
I think we should never call anyone personally. That's just my
how I view things. And I'm totally okay with people doing how
things that they want. But I'm like, at least that adds value,
get those likes up totally in comments. Now the way that
comments work now that with LinkedIn's algorithm, like comments
help resurface it to new people. So like at least you're adding
value there. Well, I tell people you should be commenting at
least five times a day, meaning full comments, especially on
your prospects, because yeah, LinkedIn's rewarding commenting.
And I'm a fan only when you use the phone when you have something
to talk like mentioned like, Hey, I love saw your tweet, saw
your LinkedIn posts, not just randomly like that's how I like
using the phone. But I agree with you completely because they
are going to notice when you like their tweet when two other
people did. And we this is what my SDRs are doing. And like, we
just got a message to their day. One of my SDRs, I noticed you've
been liking a lot of our company posts like smart a week to her
and then started the dialogue with her and we have a conversation.
So this stuff works. It's just people don't take the time to do
it. And especially if you're using a tool like qualified, our
amazing sponsor, qualified signals when they're hitting the
website, they're engaging with stuff like things like that
where you know, you have even more things that your fingertips
here to be like, I know this person has done all these
different engagements, they come to the website and know what
pages they're going to I know all this stuff, you know all this
stuff about the person. If you get in front of them in meaningful
ways, that the next time they come to that site, if you can
figure out a way to drive them back to the site, hey, they're
back on the site. And now you can go engage with them.
Yeah, it is. I love that. Yeah, the marketing tech stack and with
the intent based data and everything when you mix these
tools that we're talking about, it's pure gold. So I'm glad you
mentioned that too.
Okay, any other pieces on the strategy part of if you are a
marketer that's managing an SDR team of like do's and don'ts.
Yeah, so everything I talked about obviously, which they need to
be trained on, but when it comes to the marketing side also with
a content, you just need to give your you need to have enough
content on the company page being posted like multiple times
a week every single day would be awesome. So that it's enough
content for not just content in general, but good content with
the different pillars, you got the educational value, the
customer behind the scenes, the culture, everything, all of it.
A great content strategy, but you need that for your sales
team because they need to be posting content. And the easiest
way for them to post content is to share the company content
with their own thoughts, whatever, two cents. That's the easiest
way for them to share it and or make sure that you have great
case studies and videos and blogs if you could give them a
repository of not only can you share this company content, but
here's access to this content that you're free to share at
any time on your LinkedIn profile. So just make it so easy for
your sales team or a tool, plenty of tool employee advocacy
tools that do this as well.
Tweet has a version of four enterprise where they could come in
and do all sorts of things and post schedule posts out.
LinkedIn lets you schedule posts. So it's there's so many ways
that marketing teams can empower their sales teams better with
content, but making sure they have good content to post.
I'd love to zoom in on this a little bit. And I'm curious what
you've seen with Luminex and the types of companies that you're
working with. What is the best types of content that those sales
teams are sharing?
Anything that is I say this all the time, but it's like humanizing
the brand, right? So anything like case studies, anything that
can like show the actual people that they're helping, they're
on video testimonials, case studies, and then also the team
members, right? So what really works in this is for any company,
but it's like when you have everyone together, or you have
an event or you're at the office behind the scenes, whatever it
is, but when you can take your people and spotlight them, which
is like where are the name come from came from anyway,
Luminex. That's where we're shining a spotlight on people
bringing light to your people. And that's what works well. But
it's a different type. So video video makes a lot of people
stand out. So a lot of SDRs that we work with are they're
demoing even their videos. So they're doing like loom videos
themselves and they're like demoing their platform real quick,
and they'll post that on LinkedIn. Or like, here's how to do
this with our platform. And then like little bite size videos,
which is amazing. And so those are working really well. And so
it's it really is like a lot of kind of new video and like
people put people in there. And of course, like how to's, but a
lot of marketing companies, they're not as great as the
LinkedIn influencers with those catchy text only valuable posts.
It's just not the same.
It's really hard. And no, we definitely were over indexed on
that stuff because you just don't know the craft that goes into
it. You don't know the following and you don't know all
that stuff. So you see those and you're like, yeah, I could
crank those out. And you're like, yeah, but it's a numbers game.
There's a bunch of stuff going on there. They're gonna see
personal anecdotes, people they've already done like you take
your LinkedIn, for example, where you're like, you have a
massive following that you spend years and years building up.
So it's like the SDR with 230 connections, like, yeah, them
posting. Yeah, about them. And that's why I'm like, I we can't
expect them to do that. We can't expect an SDR to even want to
be like that level on LinkedIn. And that's why like I'm all about
content curation. Let's curate the content the company already
has instead of trying to turn you into the next LinkedIn
influencer. That's cool. If you want to make your own content
before it, but you don't have to if you don't want to. Let's make
it super easy for you all to post content on LinkedIn
consistently that it literally only takes you like five minutes
a day to do because your company already has all this amazing
content. They're making it really easy for you to share.
So we do this a ton with our customers because we're creating
video series for them. And so what a bunch of the sales folks
love is when we give a get like you're gonna get like when you
get a video after this and you post it on social and then the
sales reps can go common and share that post from that person
that you really get a great engagement there because this
person has had multiple touches throughout the process coming
on the show and the prep call and interview and then their
PR team is going to share your PR teams going to share it. It's
going to share from the main accounts there. And then you
get that extra sales touch where they get to comment on it,
share from their account like, Oh, this was my favorite quote
from the episode. And then when they reach out back and just
hey, I loved seeing you on this. This part was really cool. By
the way, I know that you're not ready to buy yet because you
said April, but just wanted to say I miss you or something.
No, I'm glad you mentioned that too, because LinkedIn lives and
like this type of thing that you're talking about like anytime
that you're collaborating podcast, LinkedIn live, anything like
that where you can bring people in from the industry and do
exactly what you said is obviously working incredibly well
on LinkedIn for companies right now.
Yeah, when we had Melissa Rosenthal, who's the chief
creative officer at ClickUp on here, she was saying that she
made a she brought a great stat that LinkedIn restricts
traffic so that it's 80% user generated. And so using this
model of making your executives and the people and not even just
your executives with the people on your team, a core part of
your own strategy is so important. And if you think about
how SDRs play into that, let's say you're selling to developers
and your head of engineering is someone that you've been like
creating a bunch of content for if your SDRs are sharing her
content and you're selling to that demo, that is who they
actually want to hear from. So if you're amplifying and doing
that piece, you're going to see really good results. And like
again, you need sharp SDRs that sort of understand how this all
fits together and the content like co creating content with your
customers and prospects is one piece of this using your own
employees as influencers for lack of a better term is another
piece of this. And then their efforts is the final piece of
this that has to be all fit within that. And then you get
so many touches within a period of time. And like that's
really account based and really exciting. Yes, definitely.
Any other stuff that SDR teams could do better or SDRs could do
better? I would just say an emphasis on sales navigator
understanding how to maximize it because hardly anyone is using
it the way it should be used. They're mainly using it bare
minimum. Like they're not building out detailed lists, they're
not using the alerts function to every single day, log in and
see like what's been happening. And sales navigators amazing
because you can curate your entire feed. And you can do
everything from that main dashboard, you don't even need
LinkedIn.com or LinkedIn.com, you're like sorting through God
knows what sometimes you're like, what am I looking at? You know,
where on sales navigator, you're only going to see stuff from
people and companies on your lists. And then you can instantly
go through, okay, this prospect of working on you posted a
day, go like comment next, you know, just go down the list
right then and there. And it just saves so much time that you
have to do it, you have to build out these strategic lists, you
have to be paying attention. But most SDRs are just not
capitalizing the power of sales navigator at all. They're
barely even scratching the surface.
You're so right. And you just motivated me. Gosh, you're so
right. Because I never log into sales now. I never do it. And I
should. It's so silly. Yeah, that's a great point. It really is a
great point. It's such a huge part of the problem with SDRs. They
just don't have enough focus. And that's not always their fault.
But part of the thing that sales now does is it focuses you
you're so right. Wow. Yeah, great point.
Get after it. Okay, anything else on LinkedIn? I know we
covered a ton of ground there.
Yeah, I think there's a lot I can talk about this so far.
So long, right? Those are the good points or the important
points that people need to know. Yeah, it's super cool. And
obviously, we'll continue to follow along on luminatics in
that piece. Switching gears just a little bit towards some of
the other lessons from Mod Girl marketing and some of the
things that that you've done there that are slightly not quite
as tailor focused just to LinkedIn. Any things that you're
seeing from your perspective that are like best in class,
uncuttable budget items where people are seeing high ROI.
I would also say the strategic content. And I'm not talking
about the we're going to share white papers, right? I'm talking
about like good content because I feel like we're in a day and
age now where people expect that from companies. And if you
have a marketing team, then you need to be putting an
emphasis on it doesn't have to be all the time. But like you
need some decent videos, for example, like you have to keep up
with what's happening right now with the advancement of AI. I
mean, it's only getting crazier. And so if you're not putting an
emphasis on good quality content that stands out from the
crowd, that's a problem. And so I think that's an it's
uncuttable. But it's also something that companies need to
work on because it's just not good right now. It's like,
actually, they need to cut what they're doing now and completely
redo their content strategy, if I'm being honest, you need to
stop completely what they're doing now and start over and maybe
even do weight less than they're doing now to make it really
good. Because what they're putting out now is just jump that
no one cares about what you said earlier. And you wrote a
great blog post on this on mudgirlmarketing.com about in your
top B2B marketing transfer 2043. And the number one thing is
humanize your B2B marketing. You know, chat sheet you can never
do is humanize your marketing. Because they're not making videos
of your customers faces and publishing them, right? And like
you can write an article on that. And again, that's not to say
that chat GPT and other type of AI things are not insanely
powerful and interesting and all that sort of stuff. But the
idea is like, they're not cranking out videos that humanize
your brand. It ain't happening.
Exactly. So the long form like blog post content with no
videos and no humanized images like AI can do that now, like
it's not going to stand out. And so yeah, you have to humanize
your content in ways that it actually is resonating with
people.
Yeah, and then the authenticity piece is really important, which
you also put in your blog. And I think that the hard thing that
people have an issue with is humanizing and authenticity to do
those consistently repeatable is really hard for people a lot of
times. Like, how do we maintain this authentic cadence when you
have to keep the cadence consistent? And that's that can be
really hard.
Yeah, well, especially for people that have been doing it this
old school way for so long, it's like they've been ingrained that
this is how you do it. Like, this is how you post content on
social media and things are changing and a rapid pace. And so
that's it's almost like they have to not relearn it, but they
have to start thinking differently. And so it is hard for
them, but it all comes back to leadership and what kind of
leaders do you have your organization that are pushing
authenticity and company culture and the values and all
those things. And if it's not a priority, then like, we can't
expect your marketing team to prioritize it in your
content.
Any sort of I don't know, case study or results or anything
like that that you've seen over the past couple years with
companies that have been able to do this really well and stuff.
You I know you can't share everything, but anything.
Yeah, I mean, when companies are doing this consistently, like
the companies we're working with, they're exceeding 120% plus
quota, quarter after quarter from their SDR teams and marketing
all is one. And they're just it works. Right. But the thing is
is marketing sales have to be aligned also. There's great case
studies, but these are from companies where they sales and
marketing teams were working together. If it's disjointed and
once doing something there isn't or they don't all agree on it
and they're not working together, those numbers aren't the
same. But then this stuff does work and it does take time. But
if you get everyone on the same page and leadership is
driving those initiatives and there they believe in it. And
everyone is ready to take action and actually stick with a
plan. It works every single time you will notice numbers
consistently go up conversion rates, everything, lower,
cost per click, cost per acquisition, all those things. But
it's a consistency piece. It's harder to do than what I'm
saying that it is, especially for teams that have been, again,
doing things their own way for so long, it's like a shift. And
so it's almost easier for newer companies, to be honest, or
companies that hired a bunch of new people starting maybe from
scratch than it is people that have had teams that have been
there for 25 plus years. Yeah, marketing team has been there
for 20 years and salespeople that are 20 year plus veterans,
it's going to be a hell of a lot harder to do that versus newer
people. But yeah, it is very powerful. When done, right?
Let's get to our next segment, the dustup, where we talk about
healthy tension of that's with your border shell seems your
competitor or anyone else. Do you have a memorable dustup in
your career? The most memorable and very beginning, it's
always the most memorable in the beginning. And why I got a
business insurance is I had a competitor mad at me because I
took his copywriter, which is a freelancer. So he tried to
sue me and wrote a letter from an attorney like threatening to
sue me because I used his copywriter like something so silly.
And that's when I learned about business insurance and attorneys
and all the things. So yeah, that was the most memorable, I
would say, only because it was in the beginning stages where I
didn't really know what it was like to be a business owner. I
was like, Oh, okay, noted, noted. All right, let's get to our
final segment. Quick hits. These are quick questions and quick
answers, just like how quickly qualified helps people generate
pipeline faster, go to qualified.com to learn more. How you can
tap into your greatest essay, your website to identify your most
valuable visitors and instantly start sales conversations.
Quick and easy. Just like these questions, go to qualified.com
to learn more. Mandy, are you ready? Let's do it. Number one,
what is a hidden talent or skill that's not on your resume?
I can create really yummy food from the most random things.
I'm pretty good cook. And if you have some random stuff in the
kitchen, I can whip up something pretty tasty, even though you
might think it's weird. I might need that because it's a good
one. Lunchtime right now. What about a favorite book or
podcast or TV show or something that you've enjoyed
recently? Yes, my friend, Richie Norton, his book
anti time management was a game changer and amazing. It's
basically about how to reclaim your time and completely
turning old school time management mindset on its head and
flipping it around to prioritize what's important in your life.
So highly recommend it anti time management. Do you have a
favorite non marketing hobby that maybe makes you indirectly
a better marketer? I just like to be outdoors a lot. So I'm
constantly outside. That's why I'm in Portugal right now in
Algarve and Southern Portugal because it's beautiful. So anytime
I live in Hawaii part time, so I'm just constantly hiking,
exploring, walking around, and it does make me better
marketer because I get a lot of good ideas when I'm not on a
device and I'm able to be outside in the beautiful sunlight.
And so that's, I would say that helps.
What would your best advice for a CMO or marketing leader be on
how to figure out their LinkedIn strategy?
Best advice, empower your people. That's my best advice. So get
everyone on the same page. First of all, you can't just do it.
Now say this is what's going to happen. It's a team effort. So
everyone needs to get on the same page, you need to empower
them and encourage them and give them the proper training and
tools and resources to do that. But you have to get all
customer facing team members involved and have meetings ahead
of time before even attempting these initiatives. So everyone
knows the importance of it, why they're doing it, and you're
almost pre selling your internal team ahead of time on why it's
important, then you give them the resources to actually do it.
So you have to set them up for success too. So there's a lot of
steps that need to be taken before anything is even actually
done on the LinkedIn platform.
I love it. Many anything we missed, any stuff that we didn't get
a chance to talk about?
No, I think we covered a lot. Yeah.
We did indeed. Well, for our listeners, you can go to
modgirlmarketing.com to learn more about Mod Girl and you can go
to luminetics.io as well. And we'll link those up in the show
notes. Many, it's been awesome having you on the show. Any
final thoughts, anything to plug?
Thanks so much for having me. I would just say anyone listening
I'm more than happy to connect with you on LinkedIn. Send me a
connection across and mention that you heard me here. And if
there's anything good to help you with your linked in
presence, I know and I'm happy to help. Sounds great. Thanks
again. Take care.
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