As a business, it’s always hard not to come off as sale-y.

Even right now, some of you already think there’s something to buy in one of the links below - none btw.

Reason is, most business communications whether it’s emails, calls, articles, videos, podcasts, all have something to sell.

Now everything even a simple LinkedIn connection request feels like a sales setup.

That’s why today I want to share with you another way of communicating - one we are starting to appreciate.

In the last 3 months of 2019, through meaningful conversations, we were able to network, engage and meet with more people (in our target market) than the rest of the year.

With replies like this:

Table of contents:

The old means (cold call & email) didn’t work for us
The unexpected
Defining target customer
The best channel to reach them
Become a resource
Have conversations

The old ways (cold call & email) didn’t work for us

Humanlytics provides growing businesses with marketing analytics services.

Including multichannel customer journey mapping, data-driven attribution models, metrics standardization - Helping our clients utilize their marketing data to meet business goals.

In B2B, if you are trying to reach your target customer, the most preferred means are either cold emails or calls.

And the recommended approach used is: make your pitch as soon as possible.

Whether it’s a cold call or email, state what you do, why it’s important and how you aim to provide value early enough.

If your prospects are interested, they can schedule a meeting with you to learn more, maybe turn that into a sale.

But if they are not interested (even if they meet your target profile), they are not shy to show how displeased they are with your cold email.

These are some of the responses we got:

We tested different subject lines, messages, images but the results were always less than expected.

Who can relate?

The unexpected

While all this was going on, our evangelizing efforts on LinkedIn were getting us into conversations with our target customers without a single email sent.

See, on the side, Bill (our CEO) offers free marketing analytics help solving issues with analytics tools, attribution models, metrics accuracy and a lot for people on LinkedIn.

People were sharing their experience

We were having genuine conversations with about topics we all care about, freely helping solve people’s challenges and if necessary, talk about our analytics services.

This was not something we were doing as a strategy to generate sales, our aim was to build meaningful connections in the industry.

But as a result:

Schedule more meetings
We’ve had more meetings with our target customers than cold emails could have landed us in the same period.
Learned more about our customers’ challenges
Through open conversations, we’ve learned more about our customers and their analytics challenges - helping us create a better solution.
Improved our communication
These conversations have helped us communicate with our customers without sounding sale-y.
And where needed, communicate our value proposition as a solution to an identified challenge rather than a service/product.

The problem with cold calls and emails is; the person you aim to have a conversation with has already been labeled: Prospect.

And however much you change the messaging, you will always seem to be pitching a sale.

It is hard to have open conversations when the person on the other end is just a metric that you need to move up or to the next (pre-determined) stage.

With this realization,

As an early-stage company, our main goal was (still is) to learn about the challenge we are trying to solve, the people facing it and how to communicate with them.

Since our evangelizing efforts were already getting us to where we wanted, we decided to double down.

And create a replicable approach that other businesses can use to have open conversations with their potential customers.

Here is how we did it:

Define your target customer

Knowing who exactly you want to talk to is really important.

Even with cold emails, you need to who is your target customer, which company does he/she works with, what their roles are and what topics they are most interested in.

As a company with long term clients, this was easy to figure out.

We were already serving two types of customers helping them understand and utilize their marketing data for revenue growth.

Our customers are mainly marketing agencies and eCommerce businesses like William Painter and Realeats.

We narrowed it further by looking at the attributes of customers who were gaining the most value from our service ie ROI generated for every customer.

That turned out to be eCommerce businesses with a monthly Ad budget not less than $5k.

But this is not enough, because you still need to know who exactly to approach at the selected target company.

Since we provide marketing analytics services, the best people we can have relevant discussions we are marketing managers, directors, and VPs.

Define your channel of communication

Channels are the platforms and mediums used to reach and communicate with customers.

In B2B that has been emails and calls but since things were not going well there, we decided to focus on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn has been amazing for because:

1. The whole point of the platform is to connect and network with other professionals.

Which can be done in a number of ways like connection requests, content posts or in-mails.

2. Linkedin offers the best profession-based targeting.

Through LinkedIn search and sales navigator you can find people who meet a specific work profile

For example, we were interested in connecting with marketing managers for eCommerce businesses in the US.

We found 1000s.

3. Linkedin also provided us with reliable data to work with.

Anyone who has ever done cold emails/calls knows that this is a real issue.

Most B2B data providers never have the most recent information about prospects.

Information like contact details, most recent job title and most recent place of work. Which only hurts your chances of really connecting with them.

That is why we chose linkedIn, you don’t contact info because you can reach through in-mails and work-related is always updated by the prospect.

Choose a channel that makes it easier for you to reach and communicate with your target audience.

Become a Resource

If you have followed the last two steps, then you know exactly who you are targeting and the channels to use.

But this is not enough, you need to show expertise in topics your customers are interested in.

Here is a simpler process of doing it:

Identify topics relevant to your product that people in your target market would like to learn about.
Research the content formats that your target market engages with most on the selected channel.
Create content and share it with your audience

Here is how we do it.

Identify a topic

Based on our earlier conversations with various leads - those that eventually became clients and those that didn’t.

We realized that they all had common challenges around attribution models.

So we decided to create content explaining every aspect of attribution model like:

Whatever topic you choose, make sure the content you create answers a question for the customer.

The idea is to be helpful, not to sell.

Help a customer solve a challenge and maybe they will pick an interest in what you do and how it can help them.

Content format

We researched the best performing content formats in marketing on LinkedIn, which turned out to be videos and PDFs.

Ever since then, we have been producing and posting videos and pdfs about attribution models including:

Here is an example of the content we share:

Content engagement is important on LinkedIn, one of the best ways to build engagement is by creating content in a format people have engaged with most.

Create and share

Create the content and you can promote it with ads but don’t send it to people who haven’t asked for it.

Being connected doesn’t give every right to send the automated in-mails with links to your content - this is not different from cold emails.

Instead, only share your content when people show interest in the topic during a conversation with you.

With in-mails or during meetings, only share a piece of content if it’s relevant to the recipient at that time, otherwise, let people engage with it organically.

Remember the point is to have meaningful and valuable conversations not to sell your products or distribute your content.

Any efforts to share your content with people on LinkedIn randomly or in automation will always look like a sales approach.

And marketers will smell you a mile away.

Have conversations

This is the final and most important step, getting people in your target market to like the idea of a meeting with you.

You know that saying: “Things come to those who ask”? - or something like that.

Well, all you have to do is ask.

The ask to meet can be done at any time, in an in-mail or through a connection request. If you followed the last three steps then your acceptance rate should be satisfying.

The key, however, is to be human.

No one likes those automated connection requests with a name, job title, company, and sometimes region.

Today, these are the standard of a fully automated connection request and they are horrible.

If your target customer is also a marketer, they will spot your sales lingo from a mile that you won’t have a chance.

Instead, give the recipient a reason to connect and then agree to meet with you.

Put some thought into why they should meet with you and communicated that in the most natural way possible.

No metrics, no numbers. Just words and maybe some emojis.

Remember:

The goal is to have meaningful conversations with people in your industry who might be your potential customers.
Just because someone agreed to meet with you doesn’t mean they are interested in a demo.
Even if the conversation doesn’t lead to a sale, you have had a good conversation about an industry that you are probably passionate about with another person who gets it.

Conclusion

Becoming an attribution model resources on LinkedIn has helped us connect and meet with marketing pros from some of the fastest-growing eCommerce businesses.

And some of the things we have learned are:

You can learn more if you are not always trying to push your agenda.
Our best customers are the ones we’ve created value or provided a good experience for even before they were customers.