In our last article we looked at the current state of play for digital marketing professionals. What has been a fairly consistent and predictable gig for the past decade has become so much tougher, seemingly overnight. SEO, Google Ads, Social Media And EDMs – all of a sudden, we aren’t seeing the same results that we used to a decade ago.
On top of that, there’s been another complicating factor for many in marketing and sales – the big “C”. Yes, COVID – the one common factor theme of our collective disruption as a community since early 2020. I want to share my own personal journey over the past three years, and how it led to an “aha” moment for scalable, predictable B2B lead generation on LinkedIn.
A little about me. I’m based in Melbourne, which turned out to be the lockdown capital of Australia – if not the world – during 2020-21. And as the operator of a boutique digital marketing agency who relied heavily on cold calling and networking to grow my business, that threw a significant spanner into my works.
I couldn’t get in front of clients for events and coffee meetings. We weren’t allowed to. I discovered pretty quickly that Zoom calls and phone catch ups were okay, but didn’t really have the same impact as in-person.
I had to think on my feet – and fast. The good news was that I’d already been thinking about better ways to get my message in front of the right people, at scale, even prior to COVID. So I wasn’t starting from scratch.
I was finding it really hard to scale the business when I was sticking to cold calling and networking to generate leads. My income was inconsistent and I was always conscious that losing just one client could throw everything into turmoil.
I had already decided to explore new ways of using LinkedIn for reliable, consistent lead generation. As a tech platform, it’s perfect for the job of defining and locating your perfect buyer avatar or persona – it’s as close as you’re going to get with the available tools. However, the main challenge is scalability. By the time you’ve built your list, connected with the right people, followed up, sent personalised messages and so on… you can easily spend three hours per day, just on your prospecting work.
Does anyone have three hours per day – or 15 hours per week – to focus on prospecting? I know I don’t. So how can you streamline and automate at least some of the process? Account-based management platforms will help you with some of the work, such as reminding you of the steps you need to take and with which prospect, but they won’t actually do the work for you.
My “aha” moment – a LinkedIn managed service
I realised I needed a managed service to combine the best of the software, with the human touch required to keep things ticking along. That means not only connecting with the right people, but keeping track of the hot leads vs the warm leads, booking meetings into my calendar, keeping me honest with responding to people in a timely fashion and keeping the whole process “human” rather than looking like a shameless sales pitch.
It took me a few months to develop our one-of-a-kind LinkedIn Lead Generation tool and bring in the right people to help deliver it. I’m glad I did it, because it has been a game-changer.
The biggest benefit I’ve noticed is the consistency and volume of activity coming through LinkedIn, without an overwhelming investment of time at my end, which is delivering a better quality pipeline.
Since I started using it in 2020, I’ve been able to scale Higher Ranking in a way I’d only dreamed about before. I’m generating up to ten times more leads than I did before, and I’m spending a lot less time doing it. I’m closing more deals over time and focusing on retaining and delighting customers.
I can say quite happily that this tool has transformed my attitude to my business, and made life better for my family. It can do the same for you, too.
How can we help?
Higher Ranking is an Australian digital marketing agency that supports Australian businesses of all sizes to drive quality leads which generate revenue for your business.
We are proud to bring our LinkedIn Lead Generation tool to the market. It’s a one-of-a-kind solution that takes away most of the ‘heavy lifting’ of the traditional methods of LinkedIn lead generation, without compromising on the quality of the leads.
We’d love to show you how it works – you can book a demo using the link below.
