4 Steps to Generating Leads from LinkedIn

For businesses, LinkedIn can be a goldmine for those who know how to use it. Here are four ways your business might benefit from using LinkedIn for generating leads:

Participation.  Encourage your staff to participate with LinkedIn.  Your business will have more visibility when staff creates an account so more professionals will associate with  your business.

Presence within LinkedIn.   Make an effort to spread the word about your availability in LinkedIn.  Promote your profile on your blog and Twitter feeds.  Add a QR code to the back of your business card that drives traffic to your LinkedIn profile.  Include the LinkedIn link on your email signature.  Add clients as connections to see their contacts (aka, new potential prospects).

Group Think.  Contribute to active group discussions and position yourself as an expert in your field.  Don't waste time on groups that have low member counts and little or no participation.   Give thoughtful and expert responses to questions.   Don't pitch your services on LinkedIn, there will be other opportunities for that.

Follow Up.  Track who is viewing your company website and your profile.    These people may be potential leads researching your company.  Follow up leads with an email, LinkedIn's InMail or phone call.

Lead generation within LinkedIn does require some investment of your time.  But by engaging with professionals from relevant industries on social media sites, your list of prospects will grow.

Branding on Social Media

Social media is a trend that is not slowing down in the branding world.  Almost everyone is using one type of social media.  Not everyone has signed  on to social media but they have utilized social media almost every day.  Creating a company page is another way to advertise your brand.

Before  you jump into creating several social media pages and posting random tweets or comments on Facebook, think about how your business wants to use social media.  Identify what you intend to achieve with each social media outlet.  Facebook could be used for customer service comments and Twitter can be used to express your industry expertise.  Even if your business is not ready to go ahead for a  social media campaign ,  create a page in each social media outlet to claim your business name.   You don't want to wait to sign up and then have your business name taken.

Try to be consistent with using social media outlets.   Try to interaction with your followers as much as possible to engage them in your brand.   Be careful on the content you publish, if your company is a longstanding traditional brand, don't post something that  is not consistent with the way your business operates. 

Remember to post on a regular schedule.   By jumping into social media outlet and then not posting or replying to followers can potentially hurt your brand.   The more your business brand displays on  computer, ipad or phone screens,  the more your brand is being instilled in your followers minds.

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Streamline all your Marketing Channels

Streamline  all your marketing channels campaigns to help your customers identify your brand.
If your customers are familiar and can identify your business based on your branding, it is a better chance your customers will feel comfortable with your business.

Design all your business materials such as letterhead, envelopes, business cards  to be consistent with your branding.   Before you create your next marketing material, ensure they all match with your brand’s color scheme.   

Take a look at your  in-store signage and other promotional pieces.   Do they have the same look and feel?  Does the in-store signage match what your website or social media accounts are saying?  Point of purchase should match your email marketing too.

When creating your direct mail flyers,  remember to keep these pieces  should connect with the rest of your marketing materials.    When you send out direct mail flyers, you want  your flyer to jog a prospect’s memory of seeing your branding before. 

The two most important elements that need to be streamlined is email and website. The  color scheme in your email message ought to complement your website’s colors.   If you catch a customer’s attention from your website, expect an in person visit.  Thus the in-store theme should match the website.

Streamlining all your marketing channels is important for customer retention and closing a sale.  Link  every element to keep them hooked.

Visit our website for more information, www.austinmmp.com

Generating Leads on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a professional networking site businesses need to know how to use.  We came across a few ways businesses can use LinkedIn to generate leads.

Create a company page as we did for MarketMailPrint and fill out your profile as much as you can.  Have the staff participate by creating an account to help get more visibility to your company page and name.    Remind the staff to maintain a professional image of their profile.  LinkedIn should not be used to post party pictures or silly personal information.  

Once you have a company page created, do not let it go dominate.  Promote your company page profile on your blog or twitter accounts.  Do you have a blank side on your business cards?    Since you are handing out your business cards, have your business cards have a dual purpose.   On the blank side, print  a QR code that drives traffic to your LinkedIn profile.  Another idea is to include a link to your LinkedIn profile on your email signature.  

Be active with LinkedIn profile by joining groups and participate in some discussions. Select your groups wisely.   Look for groups that have a lot of participation.   Stay away from groups that have lots of members but little activity.  

Use Google analytics to track who is viewing your LinkedIn profile.  Track those people who have viewed your profile, these may be potential leads that are researching your company.   Follow up with an email or phone call to see if they may be a viable lead.

Generating leads from LinkedIn will need some investment of your time but it will help introduce potential customers.

Do you need a new Marketing Plan?

Has your company been doing the same marketing strategy for years?   If so, it may be time for you the change.  Social media  and QR Codes have introduced several  new marketing strategies.  See which ones may work best for you to help grow your business.

You will need to figure out  what marketing activity worked from your marketing plan last year.  There is a simple way to find out, just  ask how you are doing.  Publish an online survey, phone calls or ask customers in-person.    Feedback may be difficult to hear sometimes but listen to everything your customers are saying.  They will give you a different view of which promotions worked and which ones did not work as well as you had planned.  

When considering changing your marketing plan, remember to consider your Return on Investment.   Look at each marketing activity and evaluate if it was worth the Return of Investment instead of evaluating your marketing budget.   Make changes to marketing activities that were lacking.   Keep the marketing activities that had a good Return on Investment, you may want to think of ways to improve them.

Customer Stock

Customer Stock might sound familiar if you have ever bobbed around a print shop briefly. Customer Stock is material (paper, envelopes, etc) that a customer brings in to have printed on, instead of ordering through the shop. This happens a lot when someone wants to use specialty papers, if someone has a rush order and doesn't want to wait on paper delivery, or if by some odd chance it would be cheaper to bring their own paper.

The number one important thing to consider when bringing in 'customer stock' is always bring extras. It can take anywhere from 1 sheet to 25 sheets just to set up a job... especially if it's being printed on the press. So, if someone is having 500 envelopes printed the smart thing to do would be to bring in at LEAST 525 envelopes... or 550 if they wanted to play it safe!

When paper is delivered to us, or any other print shop, the boxes that the paper come in have all the specific details we need in order to send it through the printer without jamming (size, paper weight, textures, etc). But when a customer brings in a different kind of paper, a majority of the time the package doesn't give the necessary details in order to get the prints going. We pretty much play a guessing game until we get all the right settings. If the settings are wrong, the printer will inevitably jam.

This extra paper is not only for setting up the printer... it's also used for any other special requirements that may have been requested (scoring, booklets, numbering, stapling, drill holes, etc). Depending on what specifically the job entails depends on how much extra paper will be used. For example, setting up the scorer takes more extra paper than setting up for drill holes. Or a job that requires being printed on the offset presses, is scored, and stapled will obviously use more set up paper than a job printed on a digital printer and is only cut down.

Unless you are the person printing, there's really no worry in HOW MUCH extra paper is being used, just as long as there IS extra available. It's all trial and error when setting up, so it's really hard to peg an exact number of extra sheets, that's why (like earlier) we suggest to have at least 25-50 extras.