Building Your Brand On LinkedIn

Building your thought-leadership and brand presence on LinkedIn is quite straightforward but often overlooked.

Imagine inbound inquiries from key people inside multi-million dollar companies who reach out because they recognise you as a leading influencer in your sector?!

This is entirely possible with a few simple strategies in place.

Forget BNI, meetup.com, and even regular business events and conferences. LinkedIn is your networking and brand-building platform 24/ 7.

The following these steps can help you boost your brand presence and authority on LinkedIn and facilitate more business conversations with the right people.

First, add the right people to your network.

If you go to an event or conference at which all the attendees' names, roles, and companies are published in advance you probably spend quite a while analyzing the attendee list and prioritizing people to engage over break-time coffee, lunch, or after-drinks.

You can make sure you’re in the right break-out sessions with the right people and you can message delegates ahead of time to suggest a meeting.

LinkedIn is like this but it never switches off.

You can find pretty much endless lists of people in your niche by role title, company, geography, revenue, industry, and many more variables.

You can reach out and directly engage them, add them as connections, ask them questions, and suggest short meetings.

Second, engage meaningfully with your network’s posts and content.

Each day, spend a portion of time [30 mins or more] liking, commenting on, and otherwise engaging with the content of your target demographic.

When at a conference you will attend sessions, keynotes, break-outs, and display stands of businesses in your sector, take some time to browse and engage with your network.

The more important leads or connections are to you, the more you want to pay attention to what they are posting, commenting on, or how they are behaving on LinkedIn.

By knowing more about them and the challenges they are facing you can present yourself in a manner that is relevant to them and show you are positioned to help.

Moreover, by simply interacting with their posts and content, they are more likely to see and engage with your content and are more likely to be open to warm conversation and connection when the time is right.

Third, post meaningful content regularly.

By regularly I don’t mean several times a day. Once per week is enough.

By using LinkedIn articles, you can write long-form content that both educates and inspires your network to think differently about their challenges and potential solutions.

Videos and short-form content are very powerful as well.

Most importantly focus on topics related to challenges your ideal client is facing and give insights based on your own expertise, as to how they can solve these problems and move forward.

By sharing high-value content, educating, and inspiring your network, you effectively advance your presence as a thought leader in your sector and become and focus point for inbound inquiries.

Fourth, make direct invitations to talk to you.

This does not mean spam or pitch your network until someone says yes.

It does mean don’t hold back inviting people directly to a chat, in which you can explore their challenges and in which you can offer them relevant advice, tips and strategies that help them immediately.

By engaging one to one and in direct conversation, you manage to create warm relationships with leads who now can see that you can help them solve some of the prickly problems they face in their business or life.

If you are able to maintain these four steps with regularity you will be assured of a strengthened brand presence, authority and profile in your sector and both inbound and outbound leads will be more plentiful !!

How do you build your brand on LinkedIn?

Jen Bishop Consulting best lead generation agency

Growth Is An Evergreen Investment

As the global economy slows down there is one area of business that should never slow down.

New business development.

In fact, many businesses flourish during a recession or crisis [GFC, Covid19, Great Recession, wartime],

….. if they can take advantage of the opportunities that open up during these unique times.

Here are several ways your company can grow during tighter economic conditions:

1. If your competitors retract, you can gain market share. Focus on industries that grow during crunch times such as IT and SaaS, digital services, information products and DIY. Consider expanding to new verticals or geographies.

2. Innovation if done well can position your company for new business opportunities and revenue streams. Focus on new models of business delivery such as remote services and subscription models etc.

3. Be the person offering value, information and support at a time when people are otherwise pessimistic about the world [you shine brighter]. Focus on strong brand storytelling, community give back and powerful marketing to set yourself apart.

4. Consider offering freemium or discount services to appeal to new market segments and expand your client base.

If you would like a free strategy session on how you can focus on growth even during an economic downturn, comment below and we can set up a short chat.

Be bold, invest in growth.

Jen Bishop Consulting best lead generation agency in London UK

Should I Wait Until January To Start Business Development?

This is a common sentiment around this time of the year.

This is the Thanksgiving to New Year period where many businesses slow down, even close down for several weeks.

Nothing happens until the new year.

Decisions are delayed, vacations are taken.

No new business is made, so let’s meet again in January and discuss.

However, this goes against several secrets of new business development that strongly point in the opposite direction.

Let me explain.

First - don’t pinch the pipe.

New business is described as a pipeline, and this very name indicates that leads are funneled into a long[ish] pipe through which they pass to transition into clients.

By nature of being a pipeline, time is required for most leads to transition from cold prospect to paying clients.

Water needs to go into the pipe today, to come out of the hose in several days, weeks and months.

If we pinch the pipe - stop prospecting our outreach activity - we don’t feel the effect immediately because the pipe still has water in it..

However, in several weeks or months, exactly the time when we need water, we find the flow stops.

As such, water input needs to be consistent to gain water output consistently.

Second - quiet periods are in fact fertile periods to reach decision makers.

While indeed many businesses do not sign contracts or make large business decisions during quiet periods such as the end of year.

This period is in fact a good time of the year to reach decision makers who have down time to read emails, reflect on plans and who are scheduling their new year push for targets.

Reaching out during quiet periods, even on weekends, evenings and during vacation periods, is indeed fruitful for catching decision makers as they reflect and consider their next steps.

You might not sign new business during this time, but you may well get meetings booked, even if these meetings are pushing into the new year.

Third - new campaigns require incubation periods.

If you are considering a 2024 push for new business, you do need to count back several weeks to account for incubation.

This means time to buy new domains and warm up inboxes, time to research leads, plan messaging and set up campaigns.

Quiet periods are perfect periods to START new campaigns because the incubation period is best completed BEFORE a peak period.

As such, incubation periods during summer break, winter break and other low market periods is a great time to get your ducks all in row.

If you would like to start your 2024 new business year strong, reach out and we can book a call to discuss further.

Jen Bishop Consulting best lead generation agency in London UK