LinkedIn · 2017-10-26 · time focusing on moving them into your sales funnels. Also, here I want to address the importance of knowing and learning as much as you can about your

LinkedInStart GuideThe essential, step-by-step guide to finding and

rapidly connecting with high- quality leads on

LinkedIn, busting through the “Connection Hell”

phase and converting your LinkedIn leads intoclients and sales.

by Mirna Bacun

LinkedIn Lead Generation & Marketing Expert

www.mirnabacun.com

But, what if I told you that I’ve used LinkedIn to make $47,040.46 in recurring

revenue and get over 10,000 high-quality leads for my business, without paying a

dollar for advertising in just over a year?

And if I told you that you can do it, too, you'd probably be a little more

interested in LinkedIn, right?

Well, it’s true. I did make almost $50K with LinkedIn without spending a

dollar on ads, and I even did a case study where I explain step by step how I did

it and how you can do it as well.

Today, I help 6-figure businesses generate quality leads with LinkedIn and converting them to clients, so they can grow their businesses, have more revenue

and live the life they’ve always dreamed of.

I want to show you how to get started, find targeted leads with LinkedIn and

build your LinkedIn connection base the right way so you can convert those leads

into clients and sales more easily.

This cheat-sheet will teach you how to find highly-targeted leads within

LinkedIn’s 450 million member audience and how to target the ones that would be

a perfect fit for your business – so you can start getting a higher connection

acceptance rate (between 40-60%) every single time.

LinkedIn Start Guide

My name is Mirna Bacun; I’m a business coach and a LinkedIn lead

generation expert and just a couple of years ago I struggled to get my business off

the ground.

I tried every strategy you can imagine to get high-quality clients in the

shortest amount of time while having almost no money for marketing. I did cold

calling, cold emailing, some FB ads, personal messaging over Facebook,

Pinterest, blogging… you name it.

And then, I discovered how to successfully use LinkedIn as a lead

generation, marketing and sales tool for my business on autopilot and -

everything changed for me.

Most biz owners, entrepreneurs and even marketers don’t see LinkedIn as

a social media for generating quality leads, but as this boring, un-

engaging and dull "resume site".

Building your connection base with the right prospects on LinkedIn is one of the

first steps to turning LinkedIn into your lead generation and client aqusition

machine.

That's why in this cheat-sheet I will focus on the things you need to do BEFORE

you push the "CONNECT" button, which will enable you to have the best results when

it comes to finding the right, quality leads and building your LinkedIn connection

base.

Also, this cheat-sheet is going to help you to position yourself as an expert, build

trust with your high-quality LinkedIn leads and answer the question: ”How am I going

to be different then all the other xy in the space?”

In my opinion, LinkedIn is the best B2B (but also B2C) lead generation tool, but

when it comes to getting results over LinkedIn, most people struggle.

The problem is that 90% of business owners rush into connecting with their

prospects over LinkedIn without fully understanding the essential steps they need to

do before hitting the “CONNECT” button.

This usually results in poor connection acceptance rate, or (if the connection

request is accepted); prospects seem un-interested, non-responsive and unengaged.

By using this cheat-sheet, we are going to avoid all these problems, and answer

the questions:

1) Who is your ideal target market, who are they on LinkedIn and where can you find them?

2) How to optimize your profile to get a higher connection acceptance rate

3) What do you want your new connections to do (your desired results) and a plan of how you are going to get there

This will leave you without wonder, and enable you to get just a taste of what

LinkedIn is capable of when it comes to lead generation.

So, let’s get started.

One of the most important questions you need to answer before you start

utilising LinkedIn as a lead generation platform for your business is - who is

your LinkedIn target market? Who are your ideal leads and clients on LinkedIn?

This question seems pretty basic, but a lot of biz owners, coaches or

even marketers don’t know the answer to this question when I start to dig a bit

deeper into their business model.

They have a pretty vague and broad idea of who they want to serve or sell to,

but when it comes to very specific questions, they get confused.

So, I have good news and bad news for you.

The good news is that LinkedIn has the most powerful, laser focused search,

that will find the perfect prospects for you and your business.

The bad news is; if you are not entirely sure of who you want to work with and

who your ideal client is very specifically, you won't be able to use the full potential of

LinkedIn search options.

And that means you'll continue to connect with the wrong leads, waste time

and money, and – get very bad conversions into sales from LinkedIn (if any).

Understanding your target market, and understanding how would they appear

in LinkedIn is imperative, and it is the BASE of getting started on LinkedIn.

Knowing exactly who you want to work with and which type of client would be

ideal for your business is not easy to determine, but you need to do it before

you even think about doing anything else on LinkedIn, because you’ll be wasting

time and resources on the wrong leads.

You cannot skip steps if you want real results with LinkedIn, so make sure you

give this question your full attention.

Fill out this table and answer these questions. It will help you to understand

who you want to target over LinkedIn specifically.

Step 1 Who is your LinkedIn target market?

Who is your LinkedIn target market?

How would your describe your ideal client in just one or two words? What is his/her

job title? (Be as specific as possible). e.g. business owner, consultant…

What keyword would you use to describe him/her? What word would this person need

to have in his/her profile to help you qualify them even more (e.g. "Fortune 500")?

Use this as a Keyword in LinkedIn Search (available in Sales Navigator).

Where is your ideal client located (write all the locations)? E.g. USA, Washington,

Australia, Florida…

In what industry does your ideal client work in? E.g. accounting, marketing, cosmetics

In what LinkedIn groups you might find your target market?

(If you haven’t joined those groups already, identify them and join them now)


How much does your ideal client’s company make per year?

How big is your ideal client’s company?

E.g. 1 person, 2 - 10 people…

Which seniority level within the company are you targeting?

E.g. Director, owner, Manager, CTO, CEO, COO, VP marketing etc.

What would be the last company your ideal client has worked in?

E.g. Microsoft, IBM, Google, not specified etc.

Where can you find them on LinkedIn?

E.g. though LinkedIn search, looking into LinkedIn groups where they hang out, looking at connections of my idea clients…etc.

Okay, answering these questions was the first step in understanding who you

are looking for on LinkedIn. It’s the basis of what you need to know about your

target market in order to find really high-quality leads and make your prospecting on

LinkedIn fruitful.

The idea with prospecting on LinkedIn is to enable LinkedIn to find those laser

focused and high-quality leads for your business, so you can spend your

time focusing on moving them into your sales funnels.

Also, here I want to address the importance of knowing and learning as

much as you can about your target market. I would definitely suggest making a

LinkedIn customer avatar, or if you already have one for your business - go through

the questions above and see how your current customer avatar would fit into your

desired LinkedIn target market.

Knowing your market’s habits, behaviors, wants, needs, desires, problems and

everything else will help you to make wise decisions as you move forward with

building your connection base on LinkedIn.

Now, use what you filled out in the table above, go to LinkedIn and find your

ideal clients on LinkedIn.

You can use the regular LinkedIn search bar or you can use the

LinkedIn's Advanced search with more filters (available in LinkedIn Sales Navigator).

Put on the information you filled in the table above and start prospecting.


A lot of the times when I consult my clients about LinkedIn, they already have a

pretty good understanding about their product and what they are selling, but they

rarely know what they're offering and what the benefits for their clients are.

Knowing what you are OFFERING, instead of selling is crucial for LinkedIn

because it's the thing you’ll communicate to your potential clients through your

LinkedIn profile.

Communicating the benefits and the opportunity in a non-salesly way is the key

to building trust, positioning as expert on LinkedIn and getting people to accept your

connection invite.

The reason for this is simple.

When connecting over LinkedIn, people usually ask themselves two questions:

- What’s in it for me?

- Do I like this person?

So, before you start optimizing your profile by putting a bunch keywords in

(did some LinkedIn guru tell you that this is important!?), sit down and consider:

1) What are you REALLY offering (An experience? A transformation? A better

version of themselves?

2) What are the benefits of working with you or using your product (Saving time? Being more productive? Financial freedom? Etc.)

One really important exercise I would recommend is; when you explain what

you are offering and the benefits - don’t use bullet points, but rather communicate it in a way as you were writing a letter to your best friend.

Imagine your best friend in front of you. Try to explain what you are doing and

why/how he/they could benefit from working with you. What results can you

guarantee?

Remember, DO NOT pitch them anything right now, just focus on telling a story and

addressing the benefits, the results and crushing the objections they might have.

Now, write your “story”.

Step 2 What am I offering and what is the benefit my clients will get?

Some people use their LinkedIn profile as a sales page, and if you think your

market reacts pretty good to aggressive sales pitches - go on and implement that in

your LinkedIn profile.

But, most people don’t respond well to hard-core sales pitches and have

become immune to sales copy. And turning your LinkedIn into a sales page where

you talk about yourself instead of your target market is a mistake I see many people

do with their LinkedIn profile.

They turn their LinkedIn profile into a glorified long form sales page, filled with

keywords, and people just perceive those people as sleazy salesmen. They

talk about themselves and what they’ve achieved, and this is where the second

problem comes in.

Second problem I’ve found while working on LinkedIn is that people get

bored really easily when they come on someone else’s LinkedIn profile and just

hear: "I did this, I am working on that, I, I, I…"

Most people consider LinkedIn to be this awfully boring resume site, so having a

sales page as your LinkedIn profile and talking about how awesome you are is even

worse. As we all know, nobody cares about you or your product, people only care

about themselves, and this is what your LinkedIn profile should be about.

Your LinkedIn profile should be about them - your ideal LinkedIn leads.

It should serve as a door that your potential clients want to open and explore.

You can do this through building rapport on your LinkedIn profile and making them

like you by appearing similar to them.

Or, as I suggested before, giving them the benefits, and just bombarding

them with value. Your LinkedIn profile, optimized the right way, will make

them click the connection button - because they like you, or have something to

gain.

Remember, on LinkedIn, you are connecting with complete strangers, and

it’s okay. Just be sure to make an impression when they land on your LinkedIn

profile.

So, BEFORE you start connecting with your prospects over LinkedIn and AFTER

you’ve found them through LinkedIn search, take a couple of minutes to fill these

questions below.

What am I offering and what is the benefit my clients will get?

1. What am I offering and what is the benefit for my LinkedIn target market?

Write this in the form of a letter to your best friend. This is a valuable exercise. Try to

explain all of this without mentioning your product and focus on what’s in it for your

best friend. This is important because it takes you away from your sales pitch mode

and enables you to talk to your ideal client as a human being.


YOUR OFFER AND THE BENEFITS

2. Use this formula: “I help x do y with/without z” and add it to your professional headline on LinkedIn.

YOUR PROFESSIONAL HEADLINE

I help x do y with/without z

Now that you’ve identified the benefits of your offer - it's time to optimize

your LinkedIn profile.

I suggest you start by filling your professional LinkedIn headline with

the sentence you’ve written above (“I do x do y so with/without z”).

Then, use the ‘benefit letter’ and put it in different parts of your LinkedIn profile - summary being the most important, because most people just look at

the professional headline and summary section.

Be sure you optimize other parts of your LinkedIn profile so that it matches your

professional LinkedIn headline and the summary/benefit part while focusing on

benefits and your ideal clients.

Also, make sure you fill out the WHOLE LinkedIn profile because this

enables LinkedIn to rank you higher in the LinkedIn search.

If you know keyword optimization, you might want to play around with keywords

and add them in your different parts of you LinkedIn profile.

But, what's important to know is that keywords won't help you if your

LinkedIn profile doesn’t communicate the important benefits to your LinkedIn target market - because, they will look it through the lenses of likeability or

certain benefit they might get from connecting with you.

Keywords will maybe help people find you, but make sure your focus is

on optimizing your profile towards your LinkedIn target market and that

keywords come as an icing on the cake, not the other way around.

After you have found your ideal target market and finished optimizing your

LinkedIn profile, you might think it’s time you finally start hitting that “CONNECT’

button.

BUT, there is one more EXTREMELY important thing you need to do before that.


Most people think that when they hit the “CONNECT” button on LinkedIn; clients

will start rolling in like crazy, and then get disappointed when that doesn’t happen.

The reason that you get stuck in the “CONNECT HELL” phase is because you

didn’t think about one really important thing, and that is - what do you want

those high-quality, targeted LinkedIn leads to do after they've accepted your

connection request, and how are you going to get them there?

In other words, you need have a plan in order for everything to work and

BEFORE you start connecting with your potential clients over LinkedIn.

So, I made this simple cheat-sheet to help you understand what you want them

to do, and how. This will be the holy grail for your LinkedIn lead generation success

so print out this cheat-sheet and tweak it as you go and experiment with what I call -

your LinkedIn goals.

Let me give you a couple of examples.

Maybe you are a business or marketing coach, and the ‘funnel’ you’ve used

so far to acquire clients is to offer a free 30-minute strategy call and then up-sell

them your coaching services. Or maybe your strategy was to get people on your E-

mail list and into your e-mail drip campaigns before you offer them a strategy call and ask for the sale.

Also, maybe you have a product and you focus your efforts on your front-end offers (which marketers usually do to cover their traffic costs), and you have a

really good lead magnet you want them to take.

Then there are people that focus on building communities and groups

on Facebook or LinkedIn and have a huge following so they can validate their

business ideas or just position themselves as experts and sell their products.

As you have different strategies and funnels for your other platforms, you need

to have one for LinkedIn as well. But, if you want to continue past the "Connection Hell' phase, it's CRUCIAL to know what you'll do AFTER your LinkedIn target market connects with you - and where you want them to go.

Step 3 What do I want my LinkedIn target market to do after they connect connect with me and how am I going to make it happen?

What do I want my LinkedIn target market to do after theywith

connect with me and how am I going to make it happen?

MY LINKEDIN ACTION/FUNNEL PLAN

1) What specific result do you want with LinkedIn?

Be as precise as possible:

Do you wish to build a community?

Get people out of LinkedIn and on your e-mail list?

Schedule a strategy call?

Build authority?

e.g. “I want my high-quality LinkedIn leads to download my lead magnet and get

into my email drip campaign I’ve built in Aweber”.

What do I want my LinkedIn target market to do after they with



2) What is the most successful lead generation, marketing or sales campaign in

your business right now, and how does it work? What parts of those processes

you can apply to LinkedIn and how?Explain as detailed as possible, so you can come back to this question, use parts

of what you already know is working and apply it to your LinkedIn campaigns.

What do I want my LinkedIn target market to do after they



3) Write down and explain the process of how you currently get clients? Outline your current funnel.

Be as specific as possible - do you focus on content marketing?

E-mail drip campaigns?

Building your community?

Free 30 - minute strategy session?

E.g. “Right now, I pay traffic to Facebook to get people on my Landing page where my lead magnet converts at 45%. Then they get a 5-day email drip

campaign….etc.”



DAY x Action 1

DAY y Action 2

DAY z Action 3

I suggest that if you have a funnel, lead magnet or an automated email campaign that is already working for your business - you use it for LinkedIn as well.

Start with something that you've already tested out and know gets results. Then, you can start tweaking different things specifically for LinkedIn.

If you don’t have a funnel or a drip campaign and you don’t know your target

market very well, you might want to either make a LinkedIn group and start

asking people to join after they've accepted your connection request. Also, you can try and get them on a call where you could research more about the market

and your potential client’s habits.

Whatever you decide, and in whatever stage you are in - don’t skip this step.

You need to know what you want your potential clients to do and you need to

have a plan how to get them there.

I will share a simple table for your Simple LinkedIn Funnel.

In this table focus on ONLY ONE ACTION/RESULT/GOAL you want to achieve with LinkedIn. If you want different results (E.g. for leads to download

your lead magnet AND to schedule a strategy call), print this cheat sheet into

multiple copies and then use a different one for a different Action/LinkedIn

funnel/Goal. This way you’ll have multiple copies of this table for one Action/Goal and it will help you to test things out.

Your Simple LinkedIn Funnel

Okay, now that you’ve identified what result/action/goal you want to achieve with LinkedIn, how you’ve been able to do that outside LinkedIn - and now it’s time to make your own simple LinkedIn funnel buy using the table above.

Don’t think of it as rocket science or that it needs to be as sophisticated as

your existing sales funnels. No, that's not the point.

The point is to see what already works in your business as far as funnels,

campaigns and lead magnets go, so you can replicate parts of the process and

get your potential clients out of LinkedIn and into your tested marketing machine as

soon as possible.

I wouldn’t suggest trying to keep the conversation within LinkedIn (unless you

are building a LinkedIn group), but rather to focus on moving the conversation out of

LinkedIn — to either e-mail, phone or Skype.

The point here is to outline your plan about how you'll get your

connections to do specific actions, by using LinkedIn resources, until they have fulfilled your desired LinkedIn goal.

I am going to give an example here of one simple LinkedIn funnel I've made

for myself to get your creative juices flowing.

One more thing. LinkedIn is a huge platform with a lot of options. The more you

learn about LinkedIn as a platform, the more ideas you’ll have about your

simple LinkedIn funnels, and you might add more steps to them.

At this point, the most important thing is to just outline the process, so that

you don’t get stuck in the “building your connection base” hell phase.

So write your LinkedIn funnel, even if it’s two steps and super small.

Just start, and you’ll see you’ll begin to get ideas to get those leads out

of LinkedIn and into your funnels.



Desired LinkedIn Result: Get my high-quality prospects out of LinkedIn and into my

e-mail list by downloading my lead magnet. My drip campaigns and funnels are

already tested and will do the work automatically.

Mirna’s Simple 4-Step LinkedIn Funnel



DAY 1 Send a connection request

DAY 2. - 3.

Invite connections intoto my LinkedIn group. Put

my best lead magnet in the group as a featured

article and ask group members to download it.

The link in the group’s article links to my landing

page. Result - get their email address and get

them on my e-mail list from the LinkedIn Group.

DAY 10.

Send a LinkedIn message to all my LinkedIn connections with a link to a content-packed

blog post on my website. Make sure I have my

pop-ups and opt-in boxes working. This will

position me as an expert, make them trust me

and move them out of LinkedIn and on my e-

mail list.

DAY 15.

Post a blog post on LinkedIn, and put in links for my lead magnet in the post. Post to my group,

and other groups where my target market

hangs out.

LinkedIn Simple Funnel

This is just an example I provided you with, and as you see, all of my steps

are focused on my desired result - to get people to download my lead magnet and

end up on my e-mail list.

So, if you are, for example, a consultant, then your desired outcome might be to

get people on a free strategy call. Use the simple LinkedIn funnel to outline a couple

of steps that will ensure you that you are hitting your connections with small actions

that will, eventually, take them to schedule a call for you.

The same thing goes if you are offering a service, software or some other

product.

Your LinkedIn action plan can have two steps, or six. It doesn’t matter.

You can use some of the steps that are currently working in your business, and

mix it up here on LinkedIn as well.

For example, if you plan to do a webinar to generate leads and sales, you might

want to make a LinkedIn campaign that will, through a combination of your group,

your blog posts and posting in groups where your market hangs out - get people to

sign up and register for your webinar.

Or you might want to test things out, and focus on sending personalized

messages to your connections to join your webinar.

Be prepared to test things out until you find the best “LinkedIn funnel” for your

market. In some markets, people are keener on being in a network and

communicating with a group, in other markets - people just want to pick up the

phone and get down to business.

So be creative, and test your LinkedIn funnels. The worst you can do is to do

nothing, and make your connections forget about you.

You need to make sure that you're in their head-space once connected, but not

to spam them - especially if you’ll focus most of your efforts on sending

LinkedIn messages.



Be sure that you don’t message them every day, but once per week or 10 days.

ALWAYS provide value in your messages (nobody does that, everybody pitches

their products - and how boring is that?) before you ask them to do any action.

Experiment, and when you find the best LinkedIn funnel, just replicate it and do

more of it, because those will be completely FREE, high-quality leads going to

your business on autopilot AND converting to clients more easily.

And that's why it's important to know what you are doing BEFORE you push

the "CONNECT" button.

Okay, now when you have an understanding of who you want to target, how they

can benefit from your product or service, and more importantly - what are the steps

you want them to take after they accept your connection request; it’s time to

start connecting with your LinkedIn target market.

Check your LinkedIn profile once again, and see if it’s optimized.

See your action plan and your LinkedIn funnel - and start sending invotes to connect to your LinkedIn target market.

Don’t forget to send out personalized messages as an invite to connect,

because you’ll have much better results.

Be sure to experiment, be patient and build your long term LinkedIn strategy

because it will give you unbelievable return on your investment, whether if it's your

time or money.

What do I want my tLinkedIn arget market to do after they with


I hope you got tons out of this cheat-sheet and that you now understand

what you need to do to target the right leads on LinkedIn and convert them to sales.

There is one more thing I want you to think about.

Even though I give away 90% of my content for free, you probably know that

there is a limit of what you can do alone.

Now when you have this blueprint, you might be thinking – “I don’t need

help, I’m just going to go and crush it on LinkedIn”, but let me remind you that I spent almost three years testing out different LinkedIn lead generatuion strategiesto find the ones that are actually working.

So, if you:

Cringe when you think about doing all of this work by yourself (trust me, you’ll

still need to do A LOT of testing, and this takes time),

Just don’t have the time to do it but you know your clients are on LinkedIn and

that you are losing leads and sales by not taking advantage of the platform,

Want to implements LinkedIn lead generation strategies and funnels that areproven to work,

Want an automated LinkedIn lead generation funnel working for your

business 24/7 but don’t know how to get started

Want to position yourself on LinkedIn to grab the best, high-quality leads

that will have the problem you can solve with your service or product

…then jump on a free 15-minute call with me and let’s see if I can help you and how.

You can book your free 15-minute call here.

Cheers,

Mirna



[email protected]

https://hr.linkedin.com/in/

mirnabacunlinkedinexpert

www.mirnabacun.com

mailto:[email protected]

https://hr.linkedin.com/in/mirnabacunlinkedinexpert

https://hr.linkedin.com/in/mirnabacunlinkedinexpert

http://www.mirnabacun.com

https://calendly.com/bacun-mirna/15minfree

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LinkedIn · 2017-10-26 · time focusing on moving them into your sales funnels. Also, here I want to address the importance of knowing and learning as much as you can about your