Braden Wallake, Author at HyperSocial

The Best Humanizing Strategies for B2B Marketing

In this day and age, B2B marketing has become a monotonous drone of an industry. With so much technology and opportunity at our fingertips, B2B marketing has become kind of a burden to both the salesperson and the person being sold to.

Automation has brought a world of opportunity to the B2B industry, but it’s also been detrimental to some companies as they’ve chosen to go the robotic route versus the human one.

In this blog, I’m talking about why it’s so important to keep the human aspects of B2B sales alive, how we do it here at HyperSocial, and how you can take away some of our tips and tricks to create a more human-focused process in your own B2B business.

Let’s dive in!

Why focus on the human aspects of B2B marketing?

The era of technology, no matter how we see it, has taken away the human aspects in almost every industry. Whether it’s B2B marketing, sales, or manufacturing, tech has been both a blessing and curse for many, but there’s not a clear cut line between what is good and what is bad, which is why it’s so important to set those standards for your business yourself.

At our company, being human is in every aspect of what we do. From writing our messaging campaigns to our clients, to sending personalized weekly check-ins for every campaign, to writing content that sounds like real people on our website…we try to add as much human in as possible to scale our growing business and yours, too.

Focusing on the human aspects of B2B marketing is the new trend and it should be because:

It shows your audience that you’re a real person doing real things.
It creates trust that a robot can’t.
It sounds like a real person, not a bot that’s spam calling or emailing, which enables you to be seen in a better light and have better open rates, closing rates, and more.
It allows you to put more of yourself out there for your business which is exactly what your customers want more than ever.

It all sounds like common sense. You don’t like being sold to like a robot. You hate spam calls as much as the next person and you want your business to succeed, so why would you participate in any of this, right?

Well it’s easy to fall into the trap that you’re not when really you are. That’s why we have a process here at HyperSocial that helps us stay out of that trap when we think things are going right, when they really might be going wrong.

How We Keep It Human at HyperSocial

At HyperSocial, we have a loose process that helps us stay the course when we want to ensure that our human is showing. From our writing to our automation processes, we want to ensure that we’re delivering a human-focused campaign, and not an automated-focused campaign.

We use a ton of software at our company to ensure we’re keeping everything in line, but we also know that having a human touch to every part of the process is crucial. So, whether you’re an SaaS company or someone who has never touched automation before, you have to have a strategy (that’s scalable) to ensure you still have some human through every step of the process.

Here’s how we do it:

A human writes every single messaging campaign, every single blog post, every single email.
Another human (usually two or more) reviews each campaign, blog post, and email.
Each campaign is set up in our automation software by a human and at least one person every day is inside our customer accounts looking at messaging, analytics, and making notes about what was seen and done.
At the end of every week, a human sends out analytics, reviews specific metrics, and shares wins with every customer.

Boy, it sounds like a lot of time, right? And it is, but it’s important. Even though we do all of this for every single campaign and every single client, we have created a system that works for our team to ensure that a human is touching every account every. single. day.

But you may be wondering, how do they get it all done? How do they have time in the day to do this? Is there a way that I can scale this type of model for my business?

And yes, there is!!

How You Can Create Human-Focused B2B Marketing Processes (Without Pulling Your Hair Out)

So you know that you need to keep a human focus inside your business, but where do you get started? Here are a few tips that may be helpful to you when you start out on the path to a more human-centric business.

Read everything you write out loud: Take a few extra minutes to ensure that what you’re sending out to your customers sounds like it was written by a human. Taking this step allows you to hear what it sounds like when your audience is reading it and (spoiler alert!) it shouldn’t sound like a robot.
Ask yourself questions from your customer’s point of view (or better yet, ask your customers for feedback!): It’s easy to get caught up in your own business, so it’s imperative that you get feedback and take feedback from your customers to make your processes more human focused. What part of your process seems like it’s automated? What are some areas that could be improved? These questions and more will give you the answers you need to start implementing human-centric actions.
Think about a time when you felt really seen as a customer: Write down all the examples you can come up with. See if you can implement one of these ideas or at least create a step in your process that could yield the same results: feeling seen, heard, understood, inspired, etc.,.
Look at what your competitors do: If I had to guess, as with all industries in the B2B sector, your competitors could be doing something differently and much, much better. Be that different, much better business and add a human touch to it. What can you put into place that will outdo your competitors by bringing the human into what you do.
Use video and content: Creating content, especially video, with real people in it shows your customers exactly who you are, what you do, and why you do it. The emotion is felt ten times over in a video than in an email. Here’s an example from our team that went out to our customers!

Play Video

Be a Human.

At the end of the day, the best advice we can give you is to be yourself. Be the human that you are and everything else will fall into place. B2B businesses fall to the wayside now more than ever because they’ve lost sight of what really matters.

The fact that we’re all humans who make mistakes, who care about people in our lives, and who want to succeed, makes it easy for us to forget that what we’re looking for in our personal and professional lives is connection and relationships.

When we can connect and develop a relationship with someone, we are always better off than we were before. And that’s exactly how we feel at HyperSocial and the way we hope you feel, too.

If you’re willing to give it a shot, adding human-centric processes to your business can make all the difference in the world. We’ll be back with more actionable tips on how to create human-focused processes to show you exactly what we mean, but for now, soak this all in and start brainstorming on the ways you can get started on being human again in your B2B business!

What are LinkedIn Connections and How Can They Help Your Business?

What are LinkedIn connections?

LinkedIn connections are professional contacts who are in your network. You can have three different types of connections on LinkedIn: 1st degree, 2nd degree, and 3rd degree. The degree of your connection with a person determines the type of interaction you have with them on LinkedIn.

Here’s what you need to know about what the varying degrees of LinkedIn connections mean and how they can help grow your business.

What Are LinkedIn Connections, and How Do They Work?

A connection on LinkedIn is a person in your network who you know and trust on a professional level. Your network includes the people connected to your connections. How you can communicate with them depends on how closely connected to them you are.

You can communicate with connections and learn more about them by sending them messages or seeing their updates on your LinkedIn homepage.

Connections on LinkedIn imply that you know the person professionally and they are a trusted business connection. There is a difference between a contact and a connection on LinkedIn. To change a person from a contact to a connection, they must accept your invitation to join your network.

1st Degree

1st-degree connections are people who invite you to connect or people you invite to connect. Once either side accepts the invitation, they become 1st-degree connections.

2nd Degree

These are the people who are connected to your 1st-degree connections.

3rd Degree

These are people who are connections to your 2nd-degree connections.

What are the Benefits of Connections?

When you grow your LinkedIn network and increase your number of valuable connections, you are more likely to appear in peoples’ search results, regardless of their degree of connection. You also appear on your connections’ homepage updates whenever you create a post. These are huge benefits that can significantly increase your LinkedIn presence and increase lead generation/sales.

Limited connections mean limited visibility. Your visibility significantly increases when you have an extensive network of connections. When you publish a post, LinkedIn notifies your connections, meaning that the more you have, the higher the chances that users will see your content, which can boost your LinkedIn presence and significantly improve your marketing efforts.

When your visibility improves on LinkedIn, a wide range of potential customers and thought leaders in your industry see you.

Building Your LinkedIn Network

To start building your LinkedIn network, you must begin accepting invitations to connect with people you know and sending out connections to professional contacts. Having an extensive network can significantly increase your exposure and help market your business, which is why growing a network of valuable connections that include other people and businesses in your industry is essential.

When you nurture your connections and put in the work to create a valuable network, you get more targeted connections to people in your industry, which helps your business reach the people it needs to reach to increase its exposure.

Creating a network on LinkedIn can help your business build credibility. Over 30 million businesses use LinkedIn to market, sell, and connect with other professionals in their industry, reach potential customers, and connect with other thought leaders. A dormant LinkedIn profile could cause you more harm than good. Do not miss out on potential leads and increased business exposure with a LinkedIn profile.

HyperSocial Can Help You Build Your Network and Generate Qualified Leads

At HyperSocial, our goal is to change how you do your B2B marketing and sales.

Many businesses underestimate the importance of LinkedIn. We can help turn your LinkedIn profile into an automated lead generation machine that customizes and suits your business goals.

LinkedIn is the number one place for B2B sales. It is crucial to have a LinkedIn profile to help connect you with clients and grow your business. We can create a customized outreach campaign for your business by optimizing your LinkedIn profile for social selling, singling out your ideal prospects, and connecting you with hundreds of leads every month.

Learn more about how we can help you here.

Liked this article? Here are three more!

The Best B2B Lead Generation Tools
Our Most Successful B2B Clients: What They’re Doing on LinkedIn to Reach Crazy Results
5 Easy Ways to Better Your Sales Copy

How to Increase B2B Sales Using Effective Lead Generation Tools

An effective B2B sales funnel requires a constant stream of new, qualified leads, and there are many tools and techniques geared toward helping sales teams achieve just that.

Of course, the efficacy of those same tools and techniques will depend on how you actually put them to use.

A hammer is a very effective tool, unless your goal is to paddle up a river.

Likewise, lead generation tools can help you grow your company and find that constant stream of qualified leads – but only if you’re using them in the right place, at the right time, and in the right way.

So, let’s take a look at how you can increase your B2B sales using these tools as effectively as possible.

Use the Right Tools on the Right Platform

All the kids may go on and on about TikTok or whatever the latest social media trend is, but it shouldn’t take more than a glance to realize that most of these platforms aren’t exactly the ideal platform to generate B2B leads.

LinkedIn, on the other hand, is the #1 place for B2B sales. There are more than 260 million active users on this platform and it’s estimated that nearly half of them are CEOs, VPs, and Directors.

In other words, if you want to get in touch with the real decision makers leading companies, LinkedIn is the platform best suited for finding new B2B leads.

Optimize Your Landing Page with the Right Messaging

A lead-generation landing page is likely going to be one of the first points of contact between your leads and your company. This page needs to be fully optimized to provide the information your prospects are looking for.

What are their pain points? What are their concerns? How does your product resolve their questions?

Most importantly, does this page make it easy for every potential client to contact you and take the next step through the sales funnel?

Make Sure You’re Targeting the Right Audience

While lead generation tools are designed to help you automate certain processes and streamline your sales funnel, they still rely on some input that only you can provide.

And if you want to use these tools as effectively as possible, you need to make sure you’re connecting with the right audience. If you’re not talking to the right people, it won’t matter how effective your lead generation tool is. It’s as simple as that.

This will require a little research and a lot of follow-through, but you can filter through your potential leads to make sure you’re speaking to the right people, in the right place, in a company that can actually use your products and services.

Always Humanize Your Approach

No matter what tools you use to generate B2B leads, you should never forget the human touch.

The right tools allow you to generate more leads in less time. They can even help you nurture some leads at the top of the funnel, providing common answers and resources for prospects who are just starting to explore their options.

Automation can only take you so far, though.

Let’s just say it’s really hard for a chatbot to build real trust in a brand. (Though they can definitely get the ball rolling.)

When you personalize your efforts – go beyond the automation and focus on humanization – you can build better, longer-lasting relationships while gathering insights into your potential client’s needs and concerns.

Use Tools that Increase Interactions

Going right along with the humanized approach, it’s critical to use tools that help you engage person-to-person with your contact.

An email may open a conversation, but it rarely closes it.

There are a wide range of tools out there that allow live chat and live video that have the potential to help you make better connections with potential leads.

Through live video you can deliver webinars, hype product launches, or host Q&A sessions. Live chat, on the other hand, can help you build a better customer experience by providing direct answers to important concerns where your customers are online.

Put the Tools to Use

Many companies sign up for different services and tools because they sound like a great idea at the time. However, if you don’t have complete buy-in from the entire team, a lot of those great tools can fall by the wayside.

Before you know it, you’re paying for an entire portfolio of tools that aren’t paying for themselves.

When you begin using a new tool for B2B sales, make sure you are pushing it to its limits so you can get the full value out of it. This will help your sales team jump on board and continue using the tool.

For example, our LinkedIn outreach system can send out up to 100 personalized connection requests every day (2100 per month). This ensures that you can constantly make new connections without any business from LinkedIn.

As your team sees the ongoing success through these efforts, they’ll make sure you get your money’s worth from your tools.

Measure Performance

Any lead generation tool that’s worth its salt should stand up to repeated testing over the years.

Take a look at the tools you’re using and don’t hesitate to cut out those that don’t measure up to your expectations.

Are you getting the responses you expect? Is your sales funnel constantly filled with new, potential leads? Are these leads showing interest in your products and services?

If you’re not getting the results you want, it may be time to take another look at your lead generation tools and see where there’s room for improvement. Don’t just keep using a tool because it’s the one you’ve always used. Make sure everything is serving a purpose.

Building Up Your B2B Sales Pipeline with the Right Tools

An optimized sales funnel is a critical part of your company’s growth and development, and that means finding new ways to effectively use your lead generation tools.

It may take some time to get everything running smoothly and efficiently, but the results will be worth it.

These tools and techniques can help you develop the approach that will maximize engagement, encourage follow-ups, and increase your ability to close more sales.

The Best B2B Lead Generation Tools for the B2B Buying Process

With so many tools and software options out there, you can easily feel overwhelmed when you need to streamline your B2B buying process. Thankfully, our team at HyperSocial has tested endless apps, tools, and systems to help us build our B2B empire.

Here’s a list of the most tried and true tools and software for every step of the B2B buying process that we love and think you will, too.

The B2B Buying Process

Before we take a deep dive into the software you need, you should understand the B2B Buying Process first. Here’s every step of the process before we get down to the things you need to do business.

Prepare & Educate: Take time to prep and educate you, your sales team, and your customer about what makes the industry tick, what value you bring to the table, and why you solve problems better than your competitors.
Look for Prospects: Start looking for future customers that fit your demographics and price point.
Know Your Target Audience: Understand your prospects to determine if they’d make a good fit for your product or service.
Build Trust & Prove Your Worth: Create powerful content that demonstrates your business’s authority to your customers.
Overcome Objections: Take your prospect’s concerns and turn them into solved problems instead.
Close the Sale: Have your newest customer sign on the dotted line and move forward with your contract.

Follow-Up: Stay in contact with each customer to keep their business and upsell them at the right time.

Now you know the basics, let’s get into the details to give you a better idea of what you need to succeed in B2B. (Was that too many rhymes or just enough?)

Phase 1: Prepare & Educate

The first step for any sale starts at the preparation and education level. At this stage, you should educate yourself on the market’s trends and expectations and also be prepared to educate your prospects to help them understand why they need your product or service.

Remember, not every business is the same so it’s important to have an understanding of each business you want to pitch before you start. You always want to be prepared to answer any questions related to known industry issues related to each industry you intend to serve.

The Best Tools for Preparing and Educating Your Team & Your Clients

Here are a few tools to help you prep and educate for the rest of the buying process.

Zoho CRM: Zoho’s CRM system is one of the most robust systems out there to help you keep track of customer information, automate your sales processes, and analyze the results. Setting up a CRM system prior to starting outreach is important to keep all of your valuable information safe and ready when you find your first prospects.
Hubspot CRM: Hubspot offers a freemium to paid CRM that is great for businesses just starting out. From managing your contact list to creating email and advertising campaigns, you can put your best foot forward before you even start your B2B sales process.
Google Keyword Planner or ahrefs: Not sure what the latest and greatest is in any industry? Use a keyword planner like Google’s or ahrefs to determine what your prospective customers are searching for online.

Phase 2: Look for Prospects

After you know the ins and outs of your market, it’s time to find qualified prospects that are ready to buy what you’re selling. This can be one of the most difficult parts of B2B sales because it requires you to do some serious digging to find “true” customers who are open, engaged, and able to make the decision to buy from you. To help you find those prospects, you need the right lead qualification and generation tools.

The Best Tools to Use When Looking for Prospects

Here are some of the best tools to use when you’re on the prowl for your next prospect:

LinkedIn Sales Navigator: LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator is the tool to use when looking for your next B2B client. With filters that narrow down your search by demographics like
OptinMonster: Keep your prospects on your website, lead form, or landing page longer by providing (almost) endless ways for them to connect with you, subscribe to your email list, or download value-add freebies with OptinMonster.
Snov.io: Not sure where to find your next prospect? Google it with the snov.io integration and find email addresses for relevant customers based on your online search.

Phantombuster: This amazing tool allows you to get all the data you could ever need to grow your audiences without having to code. With Phantombuster’s “growth-hacking” tool that allows you to scrape an insane amount of data on your ideal audiences in a matter of minutes, you’ll have enough data to find more leads online.

Phase 3: Know Your Target Audience

Now you have a prospect (hopefully more than one!), but how do you know if what they need fits your specific product or service? All you have to do is ask.

There are also other ways of getting the information you need to qualify your next customer, like using databases, that help you know more about your prospect before they reach out to you.

The Best Tools to Learn More About Your Audience

To help you better understand the needs and possible objections that your prospects have, there are several tools to help you find the information you need.

Drift: Get in touch with your prospects to know what they need with Live Chat, Video, Email, and Automated Email and Chatbots.
Pathmonk: A website assistant that allows inbound marketers or sales reps to identify high value leads, immediately connecting them with sales reps, shortening the sales process, all while saving resources. You can easily turn your qualification process into a people friendly experience without changes to the website.
Clearbit: Have visitors on your site that you don’t have on your prospect list? Gather anonymous data to help you piece together your prospective clients and their needs before they reach out to you first.
Google Forms or Survey Monkey: Need to qualify a lead that’s interested in your product? Send them a form or survey to learn more about their business before giving them a call.

PageSense: If you already have a website or landing page setup, Zoho’s PageSense tool can help you identify what prospects are after before you even have a conversation with them. Site heatmaps, engaging polls, and web page personalization allow you to maximize your authority in ways that your competitors don’t.

Phase 4: Build Trust & Prove Your Worth

Once you qualify your prospects through a needs assessment, it’s your turn to prove your worth. No one wants to do business with someone who can’t back up what they’re offering.

The Best Tools for Creating Trustworthy, Valuable Content

To help you build trust and credibility, look to these tools to help you shine:

Buffer: Social media is king (and queen!) of the digital marketing world. Buffer allows you to schedule and optimize your social media posts in a way that builds authority on each platform without all the hassle of logging in and out.
Google Keyword Planner or ahrefs: These tools help you create value-add content easily by helping you find the perfect keywords your prospects are searching online. Use these tools to help you find what’s trending to deliver value where it matters most.

Adobe Creative Cloud: Create digital pamphlets, flyers, and graphics with Adobe Creative Cloud products like Photoshop and InDesign. Visual content is a great way to showcase what your business is and what makes it unique.
Allbound: Create personalized campaigns and landing pages to provide more information, build trust, and keep your messaging fresh all with Allbound.

Phase 5: Overcome Objections

No matter how much trust and confidence you bring to the table, there will always be objections. Budget and uncertainty are two of the most common objections when selling, but you can easily overcome those obstacles by being empathetic while reframing the situation in a way that makes sense for both the customer and your business.

The Best Tools to Help You Overcome Objections

Overcome objections by providing value with these tools:

Zoom: Hop on a conference call when objections arise to show that you’re a real professional they can trust. A little (digital) face to face time goes a long way if you can’t be there in person to answer customer questions or concerns.

Artesian: Know the ins and outs of every prospect and client by taking a deep dive into Artesian’s database. Know what each prospective buyer expects, how they work, and their history by taking a look through their insights to have solutions in mind before objections arise.

Livestorm: Easily demonstrate the power of your product or service with an online demo. Answer customer questions, share files, and manage your webinar events all in one place!

Loom: Record and share your screen to deliver high-quality demos that help your clients understand why they need your product or service whether you’re in-person or away from the office.

Phase 6: Close the Sale

Closing the sale is the best part of the process. Your prospect is ready to hand over the cash and you’re ready to deliver.

The Best Tools to Help You Close the Sale

When you get ready to close a sale, look for these tools to make your life a little easier:

PandaDoc: Send over custom proposals digitally with PandaDoc to get the ball rolling.

DocuSign or Adobe Sign: Create digital contracts and get all the signatures and approvals you need to get your client setup and ready to go virtually.
Chargebee: Take payment and setup monthly subscription charges through Chargebee to make it easy to bill clients and track revenue.

Phase 7: Follow-Up

Closing the sale might seem like the last step in the B2B buying process, but there’s still one last step. Following up with your clients shortly after you make a sale is important for keeping their business for the long haul. Whether you ask for feedback, referrals, or just spend time visiting with your clients, the follow-up step is where you continue to build your revenue stream without having to start the B2B buying process all over again.

The Best Tools to Use for Follow-Up

Here are some of the best follow-up tools to make staying in touch with your clients easy:

Klaviyo: Set up email flows with Klaviyo to keep in contact with your current customers and clients to upsell or ask for referrals easily.
Zapier: Connect all of your web apps to provide a seamless follow-up experience. Automate your processes by setting up triggers to create email lists, build out automated task lists to deliver what your clients need, and more.
Lemlist: Personalize your messaging and campaigns even more with Lemlist. Create and schedule dynamic, highly customizable messages that make follow-up emails fun (and effective) again.

Build B2B Success with the Right Tools

Creating your own process is important to the success of your B2B-focused business. Thankfully there are tons of tools and software out there to help you make the best use of your time and resources. The apps, databases, and tools listed above help us keep our lead machine going, provide our clients with a seamless experience, and deliver the best results.

Success may come with hard work, but why work harder than you need to? Use these tools to help you work smarter and deliver more than your competitors.

Why You Should Be Publishing LinkedIn Articles

LinkedIn articles are a great way to increase your visibility, reach a wider audience, and market yourself and your business. Not only does publishing content on LinkedIn allow you to position yourself as a thought leader and authority in your industry, but it also helps create trust and build more connections.

As an extremely powerful tool for both businesses and job seekers, LinkedIn helps you connect with other professionals and stay on top of industry trends. Every successful LinkedIn campaign should include published content. Here are the benefits of publishing on LinkedIn.

Here’s Why You Should Be Posting LinkedIn Articles

1. LinkedIn Articles Help Establish You as a Thought Leader in Your Industry

Posting valuable content on LinkedIn establishes you as a thought leader and expert on the topic you are writing about. Anyone who sees your posts will be more likely to view your content, give you business, or hire you.

LinkedIn ensures that the content you publish becomes visible to a relevant audience, which increases exposure to the people in your industry. By sharing your expertise, you can create engagement and increase your exposure by getting a conversation going with people in your industry.

2. LinkedIn Articles Help You Reach Your Audience

Publishing on LinkedIn is a great way to reach your audience. The best part? Your audience is already following you on LinkedIn. Because of this, you already have an easy way to reach your target audience without having to worry about lifting a finger.

If you’ve put in the work to create a strong network of connections, your published posts will go straight to your connections’ feeds. If your connections like or comment on your post, these likes and comments will get sent out to their connections.

Connections and non-connections can start following your posts and receive notifications every time you post new content. Content that is strong enough can help you develop a larger audience and develop even more connections.

3. Publishing On LinkedIn Increases Your Exposure

LinkedIn is a great tool to use to get your content and name out there. Not only does it make you more visible to your connections and help you gain followers, but it also creates engagement with other people in your industry. You can also post and share professional insights in your area of expertise onto your profile to improve your visibility.

You can also use LinkedIn as a platform to publish blog posts you originally published on your website. Doing so can help you reach a more targeted audience.

4. LinkedIn Pulse Increases Your Potential Reach

Articles are a great way to promote your content. Not only does your network see your content, but when you publish on LinkedIn, it improves your chances of being featured on LinkedIn Pulse, which is an excellent opportunity for millions of people to see your content.

LinkedIn Pulse is a news feed that generates stories and insights from people and businesses and can significantly help extend your reach. It is a great way to increase your trust, build your reputation, and expose your content to an extensive network and audience.

HyperSocial Can Turn Your LinkedIn Profile into a Lead Generation Machine

LinkedIn improves your visibility, helps you reach a wider audience, improves your branding, and increases engagement. By publishing LinkedIn articles, you can build your brand and help develop yourself as an expert in your industry.

At HyperSocial, our goal is to change how you do your B2B marketing and sales. We can help you build a LinkedIn profile that connects you with clients and enables you to grow your business. We can optimize your LinkedIn profile to help you reach your ideal prospects and connect with hundreds of leads each month with our LinkedIn messaging service.

Learn more about how we can help you here.

Liked this article? Here are three more!

The Best Humanizing Strategies for B2B Marketing
The H2H (Human to Human) B2B Approach
You’ve Got LinkedIn Response. Now What?

You’ve Got LinkedIn Responses, Now What?

So, you have gotten a new connection, they read your LinkedIn message you sent, and they have responded. Yay!

But, now what?

If they are the awesome “yes, I would love to talk to you more about how you can help me!” they are the ideal reply because you can just go in and set up a time for a meeting.

But if they reply in a meh or negative way, then what? How do you engage these people?

We’ve been doing this for awhile so we have some tips and examples of ways to take meh and uninterested into a new piping hot lead!

1. Find personal information they have on their profile and include it in your conversation.

Some people are just going to respond messages with a *thumbs up* or *thanks* and while those are not ideal, taking 30 seconds to look at their profile and find something to respond back with and see if there’s any interest can be game changing to their interest level. Below is an example of finding personal info on their profile and taking someone who was just happy to connect and turning them into a highly interested lead!

Example: This client is the head of marketing for a Van Conversion company and wants to get people interested to pass along to their sales team aka ‘van gurus’.

She took the time to look at this guy’s profile after he said “That is great Kaylee! Glad to have you aboard!”

Kaylee then found a unique thing about his profile, that he is retiring to fish, included it, and look how the conversation turned out!

2. Utilize different aspects of messaging to personalize and separate yourself!

B2B doesn’t have to mean boring to boring. Especially because you are a person, connecting with another person! On LinkedIn on your computer, you have the ability to attach pictures, PDFs, GIFs, and emojis.

On your phone, you have the ability to be even more creative. You can send them a personal video, and even send voice messages. You can get really creative!

Example 1: Braden, HyperSocial CEO, and Connor, HyperSocial CSO, get creative with memes to add in some humor to messaging.

Example 2: Connor, HyperSocial CSO, also loves using the voice messaging option to respond to people.

3. Apologize and be honest if someone has a negative response to messaging.

Not everyone is going to take your messaging exactly how we intended for them to take it. (That’s why we optimize copy and target audience along the way). Ignoring them makes the chance of them reporting you as spam higher, and responding with an apology, can even turn them into a lead!

Example: This client is a copywriter and with his original messaging, we did not see the COVID-19 crisis coming. With a simple apology, he actually turned this lady into a lead!

Overall, once someone responds, be yourself, don’t be pushy, and just connect with people in a real way. They will appreciate that you are a real human and it will take your results to the next level.

5 Benefits of Using LinkedIn Messaging Automation For Lead Generation

LinkedIn messaging automation is a great way to generate leads, connect with professionals in your industry, and reach your target audience while saving you time and money.

Sounds great, right?

Picture this: you’re running a business and need all the time you can get to manage it effectively. Well, you’re a business owner, and time isn’t something you have on your side.

In fact, not only is time your issue but so are your resources.

You just don’t have the resources to message your leads one by one. Can you imagine writing out hundreds of connection requests yourself, having to input the names one by one, draft a personalized message, grab their contact details, and then finally send?

This would take up too much of your time, and that’s no way to run a business or marketing campaign.

As the saying goes, time is money. And the answer to your problem lies within LinkedIn messaging automation.

Messaging automation allows you to send connection requests to CEOs and other professionals in your area who work in marketing and your industry. You can also send messages to ideal prospects to generate leads.

If you’ve never tried LinkedIn messaging automation and are considering starting, you’re in luck!

Here’s everything you need to know about LinkedIn Messaging automation:

What is LinkedIn Messaging Automation?

LinkedIn messaging automation is a great way to automate messages to prospective clients. You can wave goodbye to endless hours of typing out messages, and use automation to do it for you. Messaging automation lets you automate the tasks involved with messaging people in your target audience, including:

Personalized connection requests messages
Personalized messages targeted towards your ideal customer’s profile information
Following up on social selling campaigns
Creating a list of your target audience, which you can customize for each outreach campaign
Gaining insights and metrics from campaigns

One thing we all can agree on is the fact that LinkedIn is one of the best platforms (if not the best) to generate leads and promote content in the B2B space. You can use LinkedIn to find sales opportunities and get in touch with your target audience and other professionals in your industry.

The key to LinkedIn messaging is creating personalized messages that are not spammy. We’ve all been there – those emails or messages that are so obviously automated that it makes you cringe.

When a message is not personalized, or when it’s inauthentic, it becomes highly ineffective. In fact, it can work against you.

But there is a way to get around this. With the right outreach messages, you can significantly increase leads and reach your ideal customers.

Here are more benefits of LinkedIn messaging automation.

What Are the Benefits of LinkedIn Messaging Automation?

1. Saves Time

Time is a hot commodity, and LinkedIn messaging automation saves you time by automating your messages in the background while you’re working on other, more critical (and fascinating) parts of your business.

Like we said above, typing out messages and responding to them one at a time is time-consuming – and not to mention boring. When you automate your LinkedIn messages, you free up valuable time that you can spend on other parts of your business (like planning fun Zoom happy hours or a brand new product for your customers). Messaging automation also saves you money on hiring someone to do that specific job.

LinkedIn messaging automation tools can mimic human behavior, personalize specific target locations, set action limits when you have campaigns running in the background, and more.

Remember, folks: social selling is all about building relationships and engaging prospects, which is why spammy messages are a terrible idea. With the right messaging automation tool, you can create personalized messages that leave a mark.

2. Improves Reach

Messaging automation helps you reach your target audience by extracting information from where your audience is most active, whether it is a Facebook group, a comments section on a blog, or anywhere else.

It takes a lot of time and effort to copy and paste prospects’ information and names manually into LinkedIn to send them connection requests. If you’ve ever spent hours copying and pasting data into or out of an Excel sheet or other type of document, you are probably very familiar with how time-consuming that can be. It’s long, it’s painful, and it’s downright annoying. Well, LinkedIn messaging automation tools can do this for you!

3. Provides Valuable Metrics

One of the great benefits of messaging automation is that you can view and analyze your campaign results, including how many people acted or replied. With these metrics, you can tweak your outreach messages to create campaigns that bring the best results.

4. Helps Create the Best Outreach Strategy

The right outreach strategy can help increase leads and get the results you want.

Focusing on creating a great strategy will give you results. Automation tools can help you build a specific strategy that works, whether that be retargeting audience members who liked a particular post, using tools to filter your audience and everything in between. In addition, these tools can help you analyze what strategies work and which ones need improvement, helping you create the ideal strategy to reach prospective clients.

5. The Human Touch

We all need a little bit of TLC, don’t we? One of the most significant drawbacks of messaging automation is that it can take away that human touch.

You have to remember that you’re selling to people. Effective messaging automation tools help you achieve that much-needed human touch to get better results.

HyperSocial Can Turn Your LinkedIn Profile into a Lead Generation Machine

HyperSocial’s goal is to change the game on how businesses do B2B marketing and sales. We can optimize your LinkedIn profile to help you connect with prospective customers and reach your target audience. In addition, we have lead generation tools, including a LinkedIn messaging service that can help you reach hundreds of leads every month.

Learn more about how our amazing team can help you here.

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5 LinkedIn Profile Tips To Optimize For Lead Generation

Are you looking for LinkedIn profile tips that will take your profile from sub-par and boring to an out-of-this-world lead generation machine? Look no further because the experts at HyperSocial are here to amp up your LinkedIn game!

Before we start, there are some things you need to know about LinkedIn and how important your business’s profile is to generating leads and accumulating new clients.

Think about it this way: your LinkedIn profile is kind of like the interview room to your dream job (or, in this case, your ideal customer). It’s the snazzy but chic outfit you wear when you’re interviewing for your dream job or pitching an idea to a new client.

Your profile is what you use to tell people more about yourself, your experience, how you can benefit them, and, most importantly, how you can solve their problems. You’re the answer to all their problems – and they’d be stupid not to hire you.

Well, folks, despite all this, a lot of businesses continue to misjudge the importance of a stellar LinkedIn profile. As a result, they fail to recognize that their profile is their chance to promote their brand or business.

That’s why the LinkedIn pros at HyperSocial decided to come together and help save the day. As the premiere lead-generation solution for businesses looking to spend less for more, we understand the importance of having a LinkedIn profile that wows potential clients or business partners and shows off all your incredible skills and experience.

Here are five LinkedIn profile tips that will improve your LinkedIn game and help you achieve success.

5 LinkedIn Profile Tips to Optimize for Lead Generation

1. Capture You Visitor’s Attention With a Great Photo

Your profile and cover photos are your first chance to show off your business’s personality. First, make sure that your profile and cover photos are engaging and show off your brand. Then, optimize your profile picture (that means no selfies and definitely no filters – sorry, Snapchatters!) using a compelling image that shows off your brand.

2. Write a Compelling Headline

Your headline should be a one-liner that captures a visitor’s attention. Show visitors that you can help people solve a problem and use persuasive copywriting to show them how you can do it.

Your headline should be your value proposition. It is your chance to write a compelling statement about what it is that you do.

3. Show Off Your Experience

Use your LinkedIn summary to show your potential clients how your invaluable experience can help you meet their needs. Convince them that you are the solution – the only solution – to all their problems.

Your summary is your chance to prove just how credible you are. Show off how experienced you are and your level of expertise by using images and copy that enhance your credibility – whether that be a photo showing you speaking in front of a large audience, published articles you wrote, testimonials or referrals from clients, or anything else that will show potential clients just how amazing you are at your job.

Tell potential clients your story. Tell them about the products and services you offer – add a little bit of spunk to it, and don’t forget to show off your business’s brand and personality.

4. Call to Action

You’ve brought people to your page, you’ve told them about your business and experience, and now it’s time to get them to make a move.

Determine what you want your call action to be and what you are offering. For example, are you offering a free trial? A free consultation? An eBook? Once you determine what your call to action is, add it to your profile.

5. Optimize Your Profile for LinkedIn Searches

LinkedIn has a built-in search engine for people who are looking for jobs, content, or businesses. By optimizing your content with keywords that people are using to search for businesses similar to yours, you can significantly increase your chances of having your profile land in front of potential customers.

Make a list of five keywords and add them to your headline, summary, experience, job description, and anywhere else on your profile to help increase your visibility.

HyperSocial Can Turn Your LinkedIn Profile into a Lead Generation Machine

These LinkedIn profile tips should get you on the right track to generating leads and increasing your business’s visibility. Remember that people use LinkedIn to search for business connections, and it’s your chance to promote and show off your brand. So perfecting your LinkedIn profile is one of the first steps to success.

Learn more about how our amazing team can help you here.

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The Sandler Training Case Study: Meaningful Conversations Through Humanized Outreach

The Business

The Challenge

Jared Lockwood needed to be reaching out to new prospects, but knew he would not be able to sustain cold calling. Cold calling was all the rage when Jared started in sales over 13 years ago, but ever since technology and social media advanced, he has found that fewer people pick up the phone. And when they do, the process of deciding whether they are a good prospect takes a long time. Cold calling is draining and takes what feels like forever to have an effective turnover rate.

Sandler believes, and Jared condones, that for every 100 calls, you’re lucky if 6 people go to the next steps. So they needed to leverage other ways of outreach.

Jared knew LinkedIn was the hot place to be but did not have the time, energy, nor expertise to approach people on the platform in a productive way.

But “productive” can be defined in a few different ways. After Jared’s years in the sales space, his definition is to build good relationships to grow his business over time. But to get that started, he knew he needed help. So when he found HyperSocial, he was ready to get the ball rolling.

The HyperSocial Solution

Jared came to HyperSocial prepared to run a successful campaign and excited to watch it grow, evolve, and nurture it all the while.

We crafted a profile optimization for his personal LinkedIn page, wrote messaging to send to his target audience, and built his target audience with LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

For his automated messaging campaign, we took a hyper-personalized and pre-qualifying approach. The first message asks for their input on a class that Jared teaches. If they have any input, that starts a conversation. If not, they weed themselves out.

The hyper-personalized aspect included a photo of Jared holding a coffee cup. The first name of whoever is receiving the messages is automated onto it as if he picked it up from a coffee shop for them. This unique touch catches the eye and directly targets prospects who may have not seen prior messages.

HyperSocial essentially took on the role of “cold calling” for Jared. LinkedIn outreach may not be the traditional cold call, but it is more time-efficient and up to date considering so many people don’t pick up the phone nowadays.

This approach is saving Jared hours on hours of prospecting so he can just talk with people who are interested. After that, it’s all about having meaningful engagements and triaging those to decide who of this batch is a good fit. The wider net you cast, the more prospects you pull in.

The HyperSocial Results

Jared started with HyperSocial in early December, and despite the holidays and the general lull sales often go through during that time of year, Jared closed a client in his first few months working with us that covered our costs for a whole year and then some! Everything else he has and will close is now profit!

And he couldn’t have closed that deal without HyperSocial’s outreach. The prospect had heard about Sandler but had never gone the extra mile to research more in-depth. When Jared reached out directly to the prospect through our humanized automation, it was a no-brainer.

Jared’s campaign is buzzing. With our outreach, in 3 months, his network has grown by 1000+ people, meaning Jared’s LinkedIn connections have skyrocketed 233%.

That means he has grown his second-degree network as well as his first degree. His posts will be more visible, and more people will be interested in having those conversations.

Jared has had hundreds of meaningful conversations and met tons of new people through our outreach. And conversations are the key to closing deals.

In 3 months, HyperSocial has started over 260+ conversations.

People like to buy from people, not businesses. So those conversations have been the driving force of Jared’s campaign. He’s got a ton of people in the pipeline, and calls scheduled left and right.

Don’t take our word for it, here’s what Jared had to say about HyperSocial:

How do you feel about HyperSocial and where you currently are on your campaign path?

“What HyperSocial does is an art, it’s a science, it’s a time management tool, it’s a differentiator, and it provides a return based on conversations to close the outcomes.

So for me, it’s a no-brainer.

One of the unintentional outcomes of my campaign with HyperSocial is connecting with centers of influence or businesses that complement what we do and it ends up we actually can help clients together. So we’ve been calling those ‘center of influence conversations.’”

Any specific thoughts on your experience with HyperSocial?

“Where HyperSocial moves the needle is in its ability to maximize your time in connecting with people, engaging them in intelligent conversations, qualifying the right people into a meaningful conversation that they’re comfortable having, and allowing others to self-select out.

So you’re only spending time with the people who want to have a conversation with you. I personally believe that content creates credibility, and conversations create opportunities. How do we get people comfortable having a conversation with us? Because without that, nothing really meaningful happens from a business development standpoint.

So we figured out how to accurately and appropriately represent me, my style, and my brand through my messaging, while also creating a series of touches to allow people to be comfortable connecting with me.”

3 Month Campaign Statistics:

How To Nurture Your LinkedIn Connections To Make Sales

Do you nurture your LinkedIn connections?

If you don’t, well, it’s time to start!

LinkedIn connections can help you expand your business connections, generate leads, improve your brand awareness, reach out to potential customers, and more – which is why it is so important to nurture these connections.

Everyone needs a little bit of love sometimes – especially prospective clients.

By staying connected with your leads during the buying process, you can create a more personal relationship that can help influence their decision-making.

So how do you do that, you ask? Well, we’re the pros when it comes to helping businesses grow using LinkedIn, and we’re here to help!

Here is everything you need to know about nurturing your LinkedIn connections to make more sales.

How to Nurture Your LinkedIn Connections

1. Notes

LinkedIn allows users to keep notes about each of their connections, making it easy for businesses to remember certain things about them, such as attending events or interest in particular products. For example, you can make notes on their profile based on something they have attended or purchased and can use these notes to remind them of upcoming events, sales, and promotions.

2. Email Your LinkedIn Connections

Emailing your LinkedIn connections is a great way to remind them of sales, events, promotions, or anything relevant. In addition, you can export their names and email addresses and create email lists that can help guide them in the buying process.

Using these email lists, you can send different types of personalized emails that can help you nurture leads and build stronger relationships with them.

3. Like and Comment

To build better relationships with your prospects, like and comment on their updates. It’s a great way to keep your business on their mind and shows them that you have an active interest in their content.

Now, we don’t mean liking and commenting on everything they post – that’s a little bit creepy. But engage with relevant things they post so that they see you care.

4. Reminders

It can be hard keeping track of all your leads and LinkedIn connections (trust us, we know!), which is why setting reminders is a great way to help you remember when and how to connect with them.

You can set reminders for follow-up calls, sales, or any other important dates. When you do this, it helps you keep track of your connections and also enables you to build a more meaningful relationship with them.

5. Messages

Sending a direct message to prospective leads is a great way to develop rapport with them. But remember: you shouldn’t be messaging out of the blue (that’s never a good idea). Instead, try to find a good reason to message them. For example, youDoingould email them about the content they posted on a specific subject, or you could send them a link to an article or blog post you wrote that might interest them.

6. Learn More About Your LinkedIn Connections

Find out what drives your connection and prospects. What do they read? What do they post? What interests them?

When you get to know your connections, you can use the information to personalize your communications with them and connect with them on a more personal level.

You should also learn their pain points so you can show them how your product or service can be the answer to their problems. When you do your homework, you show your prospects that you care – and this goes a long way when it comes to closing sales.

7. Take Conversations Offline

Taking conversations offline is a great way to have a more meaningful conversation with your prospect. It’s also a great way to get them to take the next step – whether that means meeting in person, going to an event or conference, or making a simple phone call, taking it offline can go a heck of a long way.

HyperSocial Can Turn Your LinkedIn Profile into a Lead Generation Machine

There are many different ways you can connect with leads, nurture them, and close sales. By using the right strategies, you can find many low-cost ways to close sales and nurture leads. These tips should help you close more sales and increase your business’s presence on LinkedIn.

Learn more about how our amazing team can help you here.

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Why Your Linkedin Marketing Strategy Needs a Messaging Campaign and How to Get Started

A LinkedIn marketing strategy needs a messaging campaign to help build and nurture relationships with prospective clients. Learn more here.

Does your business have a great LinkedIn marketing strategy?

Do you struggle to find leads or generate revenue from LinkedIn?

Well, at HyperSocial, we help businesses develop LinkedIn marketing strategies that grow their professional network and generate leads and promote their business.

With a well-planned LinkedIn marketing strategy, you can get your business from zero to hero in no time.

So how do you stand out above your competitors on LinkedIn? Well, it’s also about creating strategic business relationships with other professionals in your industry as well as prospective clients – and it all starts with creating a messaging campaign that connects you to them.

Here’s the rundown!

Why Your LinkedIn Marketing Strategy Needs a Messaging Campaign

Every great LinkedIn marketing strategy should focus on ways a business can effectively communicate with prospective clients – and that’s where messaging comes in.

LinkedIn messaging allows businesses to send messages and requests for connections to CEOs, other professionals, and prospective clients so that they can expand their network and generate leads. It helps businesses reach the right people, target prospects, create personalized connection requests and follow-ups, complete outreach campaigns, and more.

The Importance of Building Trust With Prospective Clients

Many businesses write generic ad copy to reach prospects – but this approach often doesn’t work.

The fact is, most people are not ready to buy right away, which means that if you message them and they are not ready to hear your offer, they will shut it down.

This is where messaging comes in handy.

Before making an offer, you should focus on building relationships with prospective clients. You should also focus on nurturing these relationships. This way, you build trust with them and position yourself as an expert in your specific industry.

When you establish trust with someone, your chances to convert them significantly increase.

How to Build and Nurture Relationships

A positive experience with a prospective client is a great way to convert them into buying customers – but how do you create that relationship?

You must help your customers by finding out their problems and offering them solutions to their problems.

Find out their needs and provide them with solutions that fit those needs.

Remember: prospects respond best to the people they have stronger relationships with. Once prospects start to trust you as an expert and as someone who can provide you with a solution to a problem, it can fuel growth.

How to Start Your LinkedIn Messaging Campaign

Your message doesn’t have to b complicated – all you have to do is open the door to your potential client. Get clear on who your target audience is, and start to build trust with them.

Let them know about your business and what you can offer them. Remember that your first message is an introductory message to prospects to let them know about your business and what you can offer them.

Here’s how to do it:

Thank them for connecting
Provide value by linking to a quality resource
Link to a group discussion
Request a phone call
Always follow up

A great LinkedIn marketing strategy should always have a messaging campaign – it can help your business get its foot in the door and reach clients by developing relationships with them. LinkedIn messaging is a big part of any LinkedIn marketing strategy and should never go unnoticed.

HyperSocial Can Turn Your LinkedIn Profile into a Lead Generation Machine

Learn more about how our amazing team can help you here.

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The Key to Automation for Lead Generation: Human Connection

Lead generation attracts potential customers to your business, sparks interest in your product or service, and can turn prospects into paying customers.

Lead generation takes up a large chunk of any marketing strategy and plays a significant role in a business’s success. While some businesses approach lead generation differently than others, automation is one strategy that every business should take advantage of.

You don’t want to miss out on any potential leads, right?

We all know what they say about automation—people seem to have a love/hate relationship with it. One downside to marketing automation is that it tends to eliminate (or at least diminish) the human connection.

I mean, we’ve all seen those automated emails or newsletters that so clearly look like a robot wrote them.

Well, automation doesn’t have to be so robotic. Any marketer knows how meaningful human relationships and connections are with consumers. And whether you like to admit it or not, automation helps save us time, money, and resources that we can put into other more important parts of a business.

So how do you use automation for lead generation without losing that much-desired human touch?

Your trusted friends at HyperSocial are here to help! Read on to find out.

Lead Generation and the Human Connection

While many businesses stray away from specific marketing automation strategies because of its lack of human connection, there are ways that you can use personalized automation to make your marketing efforts more engaging and value-driven.

Improving the Customer Experience

By personalizing marketing automation for lead generation, a business can provide value and generate leads through personalized methods, improving the customer experience.

When businesses create personalized content, they can send the content across many platforms and channels, including LinkedIn, email, and everything in between. They can cater these messages to specific people, demographics, and users interested in what a business offers.

Just some examples of personalized marketing automation include:

Personalized email lasts
Dynamic landing pages
Follow up notifications
LinkedIn messaging automation tools

Keep it Human by Focusing On Your Audience.

While some forms of marketing automation do take away from the human connection we all strive for, when done the right way, businesses can create campaigns that provide a solution to a customer’s problem while providing value at the same time.

To humanize marketing automation, businesses must first understand how their prospects and potential customers are thinking. What problems are they trying to solve? How can your product or service help them?

To answer these questions, a business needs to do its part—they have to understand and get to know their audience and get an idea of their pain points, goals, and needs. Finding the answers to these questions can help businesses develop campaigns that offer a more human and personalized approach.

The data that a business can gain from marketing automation can help it target the right audience. This type of information gives businesses insight into what people are searching for, their questions, and the types of services and products they need.

When you focus on your audience and use automation to get information about them, you can create better, more personalized campaigns and create more meaningful interactions with prospects.

Marketing automation doesn’t have to be robotic.

A business’s automation approach should engage people and build brand awareness. Businesses can be creative and use it in engaging ways to reach customers who need help solving a specific problem.

Saving Your Business Time and Money

Marketing automation saves time and money so that you can focus on other, more important parts of your business. Through marketing automation, the key to lead generation is creating value and a personalized approach that helps solve a consumer’s problem. One way to do this is by creating humanizing strategies that mimic a deeper human connection—and we can help with that.

HyperSocial Can Turn Your LinkedIn Profile into a Lead Generation Machine

Learn more about how our amazing team can help you here.

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