Get your digital Rolodex ready as we traverse the online networking landscape with James Donovan, whose expertise in LinkedIn prospecting is truly unmatched.

For those eager to take their B2B marketing to the next level, this episode is a wellspring of actionable insights and a clear pathway to connecting with a marketing virtuoso ready to share his playbook.

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Read the Blog Post: How to Target the Perfect B2B Prospects on LinkedIn?

B2B Targeting is Huge

The targeting for B2B is incredible and, I think, highly overlooked on LinkedIn.

It's amazing how targeted you can get for who you want to get in front of on LinkedIn, especially business owners. So, for example, our accounting firm, if they're looking to get in touch with HVAC companies, we can target either nationwide, state, specific that's common on most platforms.

But getting in front of owners, founders, presidents, you can choose how long they've been in business, for how long they've had that title, for what their company headcount looks like and how active they are on the platform.

That makes it hyper targeted to get in front of your ideal prospects you want to speak to. And then that way, when you start reaching out to say, 100 of those people per day, you know they're going to be active because you can check that they.

One of the filters is that they posted on LinkedIn in the last 30 days. So that alone tells us they're checking the platform more often than someone who maybe logs in once a month.

Target the Active Users

Honing in on a person's activity levels in the last 30 days is really important when looking for potential clients. It's going to drop your overall search by a lot, but that's fine because you know it's again hyper-focused.

I would look at job titles of who you actually want to speak to - very important. And then how long they've either been in that position or how long they've had their company.

There's definitely some targeting you can do where you may get in front of someone who just started their business, say two weeks ago, or they just created their account, probably not the best fit like on a on a larger scale, not saying that person wouldn't be a good fit kind of the one-off, but in general they're probably not a great fit.

So if you can focus on people, I always like to go at least three plus years in business, three plus years in that position and they've been active on LinkedIn in the last 30 days. You're likely to have a really solid conversation with someone.

Consistency Succeeds

I always say to our clients and prospects we're speaking to, and the more of the right people you can speak to consistently on a daily basis, the better off you're going to be, because more and more people now know what it is you do and the problems you solve.

So if you're consistently getting in front of those people who have common pain points that your product or service solves, you're only benefiting. If you're not telling people what it is you do, You're almost doing them a disservice.

Build a Network

The more and more people you continue to connect with on LinkedIn, if you think of it as a longer term play as well like SEO, every time you add new people, you're building up your network there.

When you continue to post content and comment on other people's posts, add value wherever you can.

You're always redirecting your profile back in someone else's newsfeed, which can in turn, bring them back to your page.

And if you set it up properly with all your contact information, now they're going back to your sales funnel and hopefully they'll book a call with you.

So continue building your network on LinkedIn and you're going to get a lot more sales opportunities and continue to grow your business.

Make Your Profile Stand Out

Use a professional headshot, a relevant cover photo of what you're doing. A lot of people either have nothing on there, so their profile looks very boring. They send out a connection request. They're like, "I don't want to accept this person."

There's nothing that stands out about them, so have what it is that you solve right in in your cover photo.

Have your contact information. Far too many people are afraid to give out their information, but how is anyone going to get in touch with you if they're interested in your services?

Have your phone number and your email on your page, ideally in your cover photo as well, and I would have in your bio section exactly what you do, so your elevator pitch.

There's a really cool feature that's often overlooked as well the pronunciation section that you can do on your mobile app. A lot of people use that to pronounce their name; really boring way to use it. You have about eight to 10 seconds.

Use that to pitch what it is you're doing, or invite people to look at your page or invite them to schedule a call with you, so it adds a lot more animation to your profile, and then have a calendar like where people can get a call with you. So it adds a lot more animation to your profile.

Then have a calendar like where people can get in touch with you, I would say those are maybe five or six.

Where to Start on LinkedIn

First off, get your profile set up so that if someone wants to come across it, you look like the leader in your space. That's number one, because any outreach you're doing, it's all going to come back to your page.

And if your profile looks very boring and it's not selling itself, it's going to be hard to be taken as a serious business owner. It's going to be hard to be considered for that hire, for that contract.

Next, I would recommend using the free month trial that Sales Navigator offers on LinkedIn.

And then from there just start filtering and playing around with the filters to figure out who's my ideal client, put in those filters and from that list you're going to get on the right, just manually go down the list and start messaging these individuals.

Ideally other, other profiles who are also premium users because they're paying to be on the platform, they're investing to be there. They're more likely to see your message faster than someone else.

Take Action

You can't just send out messages to people all the time.

But if you're also popping up in their newsfeed providing value, taking polls, asking questions, commenting on your competitors' posts, commenting on other businesses' posts, you're again providing value to your network which, in turn, when they get a message from you, it's gonna connect and hit a lot more.

From a prospecting standpoint, every time you take an action on LinkedIn it is going to pop up in all of your connections newsfeed that you either like to post, that you commented on something, that you post something.

So again, you can always redirect traffic back to your page and when set up properly they can just go through that sales funnel and book a call and now you're having more qualified conversations based off of those consistent actions.

It's boring, it's not pretty, but that's the stuff that converts and gets you paid.

Messaging Doesn't Have to Be Messy

The more you can get out in front of your ideal audience, the more people are going to know what what you do. But you're also going to get feedback on what types of messages don't work.

Biggest thing, I would say, is pique someone's curiosity with a really short message and kind of agitate the pain point that you know your audience has. Far too many people are sending novels in their cold messages.

That doesn't work and I think everyone who's probably listening to this has a ton of messages in their inbox that it's terribly long, they're replacing first name, they're replacing company name and it's all about them.

Have a conversation, be human with them and see if you can help them and if you can continue on the conversation. But enough with the novels, like just two to three sentences max.

About James Donovan

James Donovan is the driving force behind Nine Two Media. James specializes in streamlining B2B interactions and he offers concise insights demystifying the power of LinkedIn.

• Visit James Donovan's Website: Nine Two Media.

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