A common challenge for many sales representatives doing cold LinkedIn outreach is standing out through the noise. In today’s B2B Marketing Agency Insights, ATAK’s CEO Austin LaRoche talks about the most effective strategy to shining through and reaching your leads.
Video transcription below:
Welcome back to B2B Marketing Agency Insights. Today, I want to talk about standing out in a crowd – particularly on LinkedIn. LinkedIn has evolved over the years to a lot of different things. One thing that’s clear about LinkedIn is that there is a lot of spam, a lot of noise, and many people who want stuff from me.
I have been thinking a lot – how do you stand out in that crowd? When you are doing LinkedIn outreach, you are doing everything you can to make a name for yourself. It hit me the other day when a nice guy sent a request to me because all of a sudden, it was like, “There. That worked.”
I always say that cold outreach has to be serendipitous. Somebody has to be offering you something that they have – that is what you want – at a time when you really need it. Just from a cold lead perspective, a complete cold call.
So this guy, who reached out to me on LinkedIn, did not ask me for anything. All he asked is if I wanted to be on his podcast. A lot of people like to go on podcasts and shows to talk about themselves. He was offering me a forum. I don’t know how many people listen to his podcast, but what I can tell you is, I said yes – “Yeah, that sounds cool. I’ll go on a podcast. I’ll talk about what I do on a podcast.”
What is funny is that years ago, I went on someone’s radio show, and it was a lot of fun. We had a good time, and it was a good setup. I never really got a lot of details. I just went on-air, and it was on one of these Sirius stations or something like that. I didn’t know that the radio show even existed. I didn’t know anyone who listened to it. I doubt anyone ever did. But what I know is that after I was a guest on that guy show, he had an associate who was calling me quite regularly to see if I needed his company’s services. This associate was just annoying; he wasn’t good. But, if he was better and I needed those services, I would probably be interested in moving forward with him because he had done me a solid – I was on his radio show.
What it comes back to is that if you are going to reach out to somebody on LinkedIn or any of these other channels, instead of going in and saying, “Hey, this is who I am. Do you need me?”, offer them something of value. Give them an opportunity to speak about something in their industry that they have always felt strongly about but never really had a forum for it. It can even be just as simple as a podcast.
If you are going to reach out to people to try and connect with them, stop going in asking for stuff. Go in and see what you can give to them – if you even want them to enter your orbit. This is a little tip on standing out on LinkedIn, where it is so saturated: don’t go in and say, “Hey, I think our companies would be aligned. I think that what you do is really interesting to me. We’ve helped people just like you in the past.” Go in and say, “I got this really cool thing that you might like and would make you look good. Tell me if you wanna be a part of it.” Now that is a heck of a LinkedIn outreach strategy.
That’s it for today. I’m Austin LaRoche. This is B2B Marketing Agency Insights, saying good luck growing. Thanks, guys.