How to Do Social Selling on LinkedIn w/ Patrick Ward

UX Marketing

Patrick Ward - MI Podcast

Blake: [00:00:00] welcome to the podcast today, Patrick Ward, who is a director of marketing at Rootstrap. Patrick, how are you doing today?

[00:00:07] Patrick: [00:00:07] Thanks for having me, Blake.

[00:00:09] Blake: [00:00:09] Thank you very much for coming on. Really excited to talk to you about LinkedIn and B2B lead generation. And specifically just giving advice to help micro-influencers and entrepreneurs and people that are building something in this particular area.

[00:00:22] But before we get into that, I do want to get a little bit of context on you, just so that we can have a little social proof, if you will, of who you are, where you've been. So first and foremost, what's your professional super power according to you?

[00:00:35] Patrick: [00:00:35] Oh, that's a great question. Like I would say my professional superpower is being able to connect with audiences regardless of industry.

[00:00:45] And what I mean by that is. In a cross, I think nine different industries now and all using the same foundation of marketing, specifically writing. I started as a copywriter in the insurance space. Then went through food and beverage, tech, travel, finance, real estate in name, and I've done it. And what I've been able to do is take those core fundamental skills of writing and then apply them to different industries so that yes, there's a little bit of a change with , language or across those different industries.

[00:01:19] But at the end of the day, we are still communicating to few months and if everyone can understand that, and that's really where you can start to see some success. One of the things I often notice as I've gone through my career. people try and make it too complicated. They try and think that one area is very unique and another area is also exceptional.

[00:01:43] And really at the end of the day, who are you selling to? You're selling to people. People. We have way more similarities than differences. Do you understand that you can be very successful? Well, I'm

[00:01:56] Blake: [00:01:56] curious, according to you, what percentage of the industries you've worked in would be considered boring.

[00:02:02] Patrick: [00:02:02] Oh, easily 80 to 90%.

[00:02:05] I think I do travel and food and beverage for a bit, but every single other one, insurance, real estate, finance, even the tech I'm doing, it's not even a quote unquote sexy tech. It's all, beta, beta app development. It's all talking in terms of how do we scale it. So very numbered space. it's all. On part, as you say, very boring.

[00:02:29]and the funny thing is that's what, that's where I really shine because I'm able to bring a perspective of, Hey, we can bring entertainment, we can bring content, we can bring, you know, an exciting level of value to the people. That we are communicating to because at the end of the day, they are still humans.

[00:02:49] You might say, Oh, well it's a CEO. They want to be serious. Well, next CEOs on always serious. They do last too. You know? They are still people, so you don't have to communicate in a boring way just because it's, you know, someone who's a C suite or a decision maker.

[00:03:09] Blake: [00:03:09] Yeah, for sure. I mean that's ultimately, that's why I was curious because.

[00:03:13] We get in our heads that just because something's boring, you know? That's how it is, but sometimes you just got to disrupt the way that we write and speak and communicate with other people. And I think, I'm sure going to get into that a little bit more tactfully, especially with how we do this for LinkedIn to generate leads for B2B specifically.

[00:03:33] Mmm. Before that though, just want to get a quick reference on a snapshot of your career so far, where you started and how you got to where you are now.

[00:03:42] Patrick: [00:03:42] Yeah, totally. So I started as a copywriter in an ad agency. Home country of Australia and Sydney and was there for a while. And then once I finished college, I moved over here to the United States.

[00:03:57]it was a very bold decision on my part. I literally left that job even though I still had it. My whole family thought I was crazy for doing that, but I decided to take the plunge and I moved over here, took a digital marketing role with a finance company, and then very quickly into tech. Fairly easy to do.

[00:04:21] So mainly predominantly because Silicon beach here in LA is a. You know, it's obviously right there and there was a lot of opportunity. so I worked, for a previous, app and web developer agency, contract Gates for some ad tech companies. Now, where I am at Rootstrap, which is an app and web development agency, like my previous experience.

[00:04:47] Blake: [00:04:47] Awesome. So let's, let's dive into the B2B lead generation then. Now that we have an idea of who you are and that you're not just going to be totally lying to us about everything we're about to talk about. Mmm. Let's, let's just start right in with basically the key question that anybody has when you are a bootstrapper or you're, you're just kind of starting out, which is, how can I start advertising when I don't have any money?

[00:05:12] Patrick: [00:05:12] Absolutely, and this is very much the classic conundrum that I was facing when when I first got into this, I was specifically told in an interview, all right, which social media platform are we going to do and how are we going to generate revenue from it? So naturally I was a tough question to answer, but I stuck with my gut and it was LinkedIn.

[00:05:38] Now, I chose this for one very specific reason. One that I knew that B2B generation was likely to be more successful on LinkedIn because that's where the decision makers are. Your average net worth of your LinkedIn user is about three times that Twitter or Facebook. But then on the other hand, the whole reason for me focusing on just like one platform I was just spreading across was this was a lesson that I've learned early in my career that I used to have to manage four or five different platforms pumping out content across the mall.

[00:06:16] And the one thing that I found. No engagement. One like two likes. And of course that happened because you aren't mastering a platform. So if you don't have ad dollars, you need to find where your audience is. And I don't just mean all my audiences across all platforms know which platform has the majority of your audience go to that platform and then master it.

[00:06:42] So talking in this, how do we muster it? So once I started getting on LinkedIn, I'm thinking, okay, well I can't just talk about tech all the time because it's going to be very painfully obvious that I'm trying to set up. So what I came up with was, because I'm a rhino, I started doing content around words, and that was something I could come up with.

[00:07:08] Fairly easily. This is something I advocate everyone to do. Come up with the content they need that has, let's just say, if I asked you what could you come up with 10 posts right now, that is your content thing, because it's something that is so effortless that you can keep going. You can keep being consistent with that content and not stop after two weeks or three weeks.

[00:07:32] So once you've got your content thing, then I started. Putting out this content very much not related to app and web development, but as because it was so natural and easy to me. I start building a community and then what I'm measuring on is how many people have now going over to my profile and then from there they're sending me direct messages saying really loved your content.

[00:07:59] Really finding it very interesting and insightful, but I noticed you work at an app and web developer. We need to talk because my company needs that, and this is the mistake that so many people make starting out. They think that they have to talk about the business or the service that they're selling all the time.

[00:08:19] Well, we're humans, right? When you go onto social media, you don't want to be talking business all the time. If you lead with the humanity aspect, the areas that you're really excited about. Then you can, ironically enough, even though it doesn't upset you, focus on what you, what you're selling. In the end, you'll actually end up generating more interest in your business or service.

[00:08:47] Blake: [00:08:47] So ultimately, I mean, to start out with two key principles that I found in there. First and foremost, make it easy for yourself as easy as possible to create content, to create ad content. Whatever you're doing on social, first and foremost, make sure you can stick to it by making it easy for yourself. And then secondly, actually, you know, mastering it and getting to, getting to that place where you know where your audience is and you're actually speaking to them.

[00:09:13] So. I mean, it can be tough, especially when you have no money. It's certainly possible to start spending a little bit here and there when on platforms like Facebook, where you could spend five bucks a day and that could suffice for your needs on LinkedIn. It's a little bit more expensive though. So what type of person should be looking, or what stage should a person be at start looking into actually paying for LinkedIn ads.

[00:09:38] Patrick: [00:09:38] If you're looking to pay for LinkedIn ads, I think you need to have already got a baseline of context. So I would be saying, let's say you've been consistently posting let about six to nine months since Dalton. And that was, that was what I'd done with my previous app and web development agency. I did it for six to nine months.

[00:10:03] I had proven that we were getting leads from them, and then when we started doing ads, it was supplementing. It wasn't replacing, it was supplementing. So how was it supplementing? Because I'd already generated, at that time, $650,000 worth of business using that model on LinkedIn. Which for a, an agency of 2.2 million in revenue is it's a sizeable bucket of, of that revenue.

[00:10:33] And then when we started to do ads, we used it for different types of content that could not necessarily be put out. Bye. someone who's putting out a personal style posts. So leads are things like white papers are, these are things like, yeah. Yeah. Presentation, templates, desks, those sorts of materials.

[00:10:56] That is what we tended to. Keep towards ads. And then for the personal side, that's where we still use this storytelling approach, right? Because what we're trying to do, particularly in B to B lead generation, you're trying to have enough touch points with that prospect so that when you invite them onto a phone call or a video conference and not going to say no.

[00:11:24] Right? Because this is when B2B is always been different to B to C, I can sell you a $10, maybe even a hundred dollar product over a Facebook ad or an Instagram, but I cannot sell you $100,000 app development over, a simple app. I need to have a conversation with you. So, because that is our measure that is, and North star of what's going to.

[00:11:52]validate that we are being successful. We're really just trying to use out content to warm a cold prospect. That's the way I conceptualize of it. Yeah. This person is completely cold. They don't know of us. Okay. Now they know of us a little bit and then through enough touch points without content. They will eventually be warm than us.

[00:12:17] When we say, can we from the phone? They don't say that's not happening. Because that happens very much in, in beta Bay industries. It's very common that everyone looks quite important, very similar, and it can be very hard to differentiate. So in that environment, the traditional tactics of you can't just send a colleague.

[00:12:41] Now that doesn't work anymore. You can't even, you know, use traditional forms of media, right? You need to use they elements very hyper-personalized in order to build multiple, one to one relationships.

[00:13:01] Blake: [00:13:01] I'd like to take some time to reverse engineer some of your success stories, because I, I'm sure that you have certain campaigns that stand out on LinkedIn that performed particularly well or that you're proud of based on their creativity.

[00:13:14] I love to just dive into the elements of maybe one success story, successful campaign that you've run that stands out.

[00:13:21] Patrick: [00:13:21] Yeah, absolutely. I think the number one. Campaign that stands out is easily the one we have. We have successfully run with my, my boss, Ben Lee, so he's very proficient on, on the LinkedIn platform, and he's generated, at the moment it was for the last calendar year at one point $5 million worth of business from LinkedIn.

[00:13:48] And how do we do this? We did this through. Not even an excessive amount of content. The only, we only post on his behalf about two to three times a week, but the way that we've done it is we've crafted based on stories. Now, it'll sounds very simple. Everyone tells you you need to do storytelling, okay?

[00:14:10] Very specifically of how we focus on storytelling is we focus on being provocative. Because being provocative and making very bold statements is what gets supported by the algorithm, allows you to get, generate what we have, which has been in the realm of 4 million views a month on his, on his LinkedIn.

[00:14:33] And then through that we are measuring through, tying it to HubSpot. Our CRM. How much revenue is then coming through at the end of the day from someone who asked first touch attribution was LinkedIn. And the reason that we focused on being provocative rather than just simply, doing, you know, fairly standard stories or even things that are quote unquote spoke positive is because there's too much of that LinkedIn and that we need to.

[00:15:06] Substantially disrupt. So how do we do this? These are things, like we said once that RFPs are bullshit. That is the nature of our industry. There's a lot of people who invest very heavily in doing RFPs, and yet we talk the counter approach naturally to say that post itself got a lot of people. Very outright, very angry, but...