Episode 333: 10 Steps to B2C Success on LinkedIn

Intro

0:00:18 – (Bob Woods): Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynne Tillman, and me, Bob Woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests teach their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. This episode of the Making Sales Social podcast is brought to you by Social Sales Link, the company that helps you start more trust-based conversations without being salesy through the power of LinkedIn and AI. Start your journey for free by joining our resource library. Welcome to the show.

0:00:00 – (Brynne Tillman): In a B2C world, you can ask tangential or parallel questions that lead back to your solution. Not leading, not like what is your favorite product? But if you talk about what is your biggest challenge.

0:00:22 – (Bob Woods): Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynne Tillman, Stan Robinson Junior, and me, Bob Woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests are teaching their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. Enjoy the show. Greetings and welcome everyone, to Making Sales Social live.

0:00:55 – (Bob Woods): Coming to you from the social sales link virtual studios. I’m Bob Woods, and I’m joined by my SSL teammates, Brynne Tillman and Stan Robinson. How y’all doing today?

0:01:06 – (Brynne Tillman): Great, Bob. How are you doing?

0:01:08 – (Bob Woods): Well, Stan. What’s up?

0:01:11 – (Brynne Tillman): Sup?

0:01:12 – (Bob Woods): So, LinkedIn and B, two b, sales or business to business? Sales are a winning combination. And we discussed that, as you know, pretty much constantly. The thing is, LinkedIn can also be a powerful tool for businesses, entrepreneurs, and salespeople who want to connect directly with consumers. That b, two c, or business-to-consumer crowd. Today, we’ll discuss ten LinkedIn strategies for attracting and engaging with customers, specifically in that b, two C space. So we are just going to get rolling right into this with item number one. And that’s something that everyone should be doing on LinkedIn anyhow, and that is creating compelling content, which, you know, LinkedIn is a content-driven platform.

0:02:03 – (Bob Woods): Everybody likes to check that feed all the time. So when it comes to creating compelling content, it should be content that your customers want to need and hear, not the stuff that you want to talk about. So, in other words, you’re leading to your product or service and not with your product or service. And there’s a really quick story that I’m going to tell about that. What happens when you lead to your product or service? So, and we’ve told this before, but I think it’s worth reiterating here.

0:02:35 – (Bob Woods): Once upon a time, we had a financial services professional who was posting content that was leading to their product or service. Yeah. Leading with. Yes. So. That’s right. Thank you for that. I was. I was getting things mixed up still not completely over my cold yet. So, um, they were leading with the product or service. So because of that, the only engagement that this person was getting was likes and comments from other people in that person’s sector. So, in other words, their competition.

0:03:12 – (Bob Woods): That’s probably one of the main reasons why you don’t want to lead with your product or service. And that’s a great story.

0:03:21 – (Brynne Tillman): So I love to just kind of add on to this. Right. When you lead with, it’s not content, it’s pitch. So it’s very, very important that our content is educational and insightful. When it comes to social selling, it really needs to hit five points. Number one, it needs to resonate with your buyer. There is so much noise that when they are scrolling, in order for them to stop and want to read it, they have to immediately say, yes, this is for me.

0:03:53 – (Brynne Tillman): Number two, it needs to create enough curiosity that not only is it for me, but I want to keep reading. Number three, it needs to teach them something new that they didn’t know before because if it’s the same old, same old, it will not convert. Number four, so it needs what they just learned. They now have to start thinking differently about their solution. And number five, it needs to create a compelling moment.

0:04:23 – (Brynne Tillman): Now, how does that relate to B2C? Well, your product as a B2C does one of two things. It either fixes a problem or creates luxury value, something I want. So I either need it to fix the problem or I want it because I’ll look better if I wear it or I will. Or financial services, maybe I’m not positioned for my personal retirement. And so you’re fixing a problem. So whatever your target audience is, you have to identify what, first of all, are you fixing a problem or are you providing luxury value?

0:05:08 – (Brynne Tillman): And once you’ve done that, you need to do exactly what Bob is saying is we now need to create content that engages them. And even from a b, two c, like we had a client a long time ago, that was b to c in the hair salon world, I won’t talk about the name of the product, but it was b, two c. And how do you do B2C in a hair salon world? Well, it’s tips. What do you do not to, you know, break breaking hair and how to show up for women, in this case, right?

0:05:47 – (Brynne Tillman): To a business meeting and having consistency. Right. So there’s so much education that could go along. So even though LinkedIn is this B2B place, every single executive, and every single professional is also a person. So there is a place for that. I know I said we had to go through this one fast because we have a class starting soon, and I just took forever on the first one. So let’s go through the other nine faster than that.

0:06:17 – (Bob Woods): All right. So, yeah, let’s absolutely do that. So, number two, utilize the LinkedIn video. And what we’re talking about here is not linking out to, like, a YouTube or a webpage that has a video embedded. This is what’s called LinkedIn native video, where you’re actually uploading a video to LinkedIn itself. And besides the fact that the LinkedIn algorithm loves it and you get more, you know, hopefully, you get more exposure because of that.

0:06:46 – (Bob Woods): LinkedIn is now rolling out that new reel style format. If you know about Instagram or if you’ve been on TikTok, it’s a similar type of experience on mobile. So videos are getting much more exposure through that, too. And if you don’t have that yet, don’t worry about it. It is coming. So, um, you know, just getting the word out using what we just talked about in point number one, LinkedIn video is huge, and it can be huge for B2C, especially. Cause, you know, sometimes when it comes to B2C, you have a very visual product.

0:07:22 – (Bob Woods): It’s. It’s something that really helps people. So, I mean, I think that. I think that video is just astounding for B2C on LinkedIn.

0:07:32 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. And I’ve also heard from LinkedIn that Day in the Life is doing really, really well. So if you have a product or service that is a visual day in the life of someone using it, a day in the life of your executives as they’re. Or as it’s being manufactured or if it’s been whatever that is. So I agree completely. Stan, anything you want to add to that?

0:07:55 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): No, just at the same. The same guidelines that you mentioned in point one apply to video. So same thing. Whether you’re. It’s text or video, you still got to capture attention right away. You’ve got to create curiosity and so forth.

0:08:10 – (Brynne Tillman): Love it.

0:08:12 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, love it. And there’s. There’s one quick thing that I want to add here, and we’re talking about not pushing our stuff. I’m going to push something really quick from us. If you go to socialsaleslink.com library and sign up, our most recent masterclass had to do with everything that we’re just talking about. So go to socialsaleslink.com library, and sign up for it in the masterclasses session. The most recent one whose name I’m forgetting. Bryn, do you remember who it was?

0:08:41 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, but that’s what. Keep going.

0:08:43 – (Bob Woods): You’re good, Shamar. Yeah, that’s right. She’s fantastic. Next one, is LinkedIn polls. I’m going to let Brynne take the lead on this, because although we really love LinkedIn polls, Brynne has the explanation of this down, especially because they are still alive. And now that not everyone the, in the world is using them, and there are really good polls out there nowadays, I think.

0:09:09 – (Brynne Tillman): Well, so I love LinkedIn polls because people are compelled to vote. They just are. And so here’s a couple of things. In a B2C world, you can ask kind of tangential or parallel questions that lead back to your solution. Not leading, like, not like, what is your favorite product? But if you talk about, you know, what is your biggest challenge? Maybe it’s, you know, I have this hair client, the hair product client in my head, which is so B2C. Right.

0:09:46 – (Brynne Tillman): But, you know, it might be as a woman, what it, you know, as a. Well, it doesn’t have to be a woman. I guess I’m being very sexist, but I. But, you know, in this case, that was their target audience, so. But as you know, as a woman, what is your number one frustration on video? Is it consistent hair? Is it makeup? Is it shiny? Is it lighting? Right. Whatever. Right. And now you’re engaging people. You’re talking about it almost from a professional perspective. Right on Zoom. What do you see in your meetings?

0:10:27 – (Brynne Tillman): But you’re still selling in the B2C. You’re selling B2C in the B2B space. So you’re overlapping that conversation if possible. Polls are a great way to do this. What’s your biggest challenge? Let’s say you are a travel agent. What is your dream vacation? Mountains, beach, you know, whatever, right? Or other. It’s okay. You can say this, right? Like ccso. Or when you go on vacation, do you still answer emails?

0:11:05 – (Brynne Tillman): Do you still write, like, questions like this, but they’re leading back to vacations? So polls are great and you can get to know people, and you can start conversations and understand where there’s opportunity to start trust-based conversations.

0:11:23 – (Bob Woods): 100%. 100%. So let’s keep this train moving. The next one is going to be leveraging LinkedIn articles. So these are the actual articles. Rather than posts, you can actually publish articles as well. When you go on your feed page, one of the options is the right article. So think of this as like a blog post, essentially. So this is especially good for entrepreneurs and salespeople who don’t have access to the company blog.

0:11:54 – (Bob Woods): What this does is it not only lets you get out your opinions and how you help people, and actually helps people with and with a regular blog style article. Google loves LinkedIn articles, and I think that that’s important. You actually have a better chance of being discovered through Google, through what you publish rather than LinkedIn for whatever reason that is. But I think that that’s a really strong case for B2C to use, to use articles, because in the B2C space, there is so much competition on Google for eyeballs. And to have an article pop up alongside potentially some of your major competitors or competitors out there is just a really good thing, I think.

0:12:48 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. And that title matters a ton. That’s what Google’s looking at the most. So make sure that the title matches what people are googling. And if you’re interested in what people are googling, go Google something that you think they’re googling. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of that page and it will give you what they’re actually googling. Then use some of those terms in the article title and inevitably Google will index that and you will get found.

0:13:26 – (Brynne Tillman): Anything you want to add to what makes a good article there.

0:13:29 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): Stan, good deal with an article. You do have more formatting flexibility. So it’s not quite like WordPress, but you can do things as far as font and formatting and making it look much prettier than you can with a basic post.

0:13:48 – (Brynne Tillman): I love that. That is very true.

0:13:50 – (Bob Woods): That’s a great tip. That’s a great tip. The next item on the agenda is hosting live events, which, hey, if you’re listening to us live right now, watching us live right now, that’s exactly what we are doing. We are using LinkedIn live to pump this out to not only LinkedIn but to some other social channels and YouTube as well. So there are two ways to do lives on LinkedIn too. That’s with LinkedIn lives just like this and also the LinkedIn audio room. So if you remember, if you remember, what is that called?

0:14:26 – (Bob Woods): Clubhouse. Thank you. This is kind of LinkedIn’s version of Clubhouse, except it’s all within LinkedIn. So there are many, many different reasons why you would want to potentially do a live event. Stan, do you have any thoughts on that?

0:14:46 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): With B2C, we talked about things being visual and you can take advantage of the fact that people can see you in a live like this. Plus when you go live on LinkedIn, people can come back and see the replay as well. And you can invite up to 1000 people a week to it. And if you co-host and invite someone to co-host with you, please encourage them to invite up to a thousand people a week. And, you know, if you have good friends, you can also ask them to support you.

0:15:21 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): Go ahead and join the event. You know, say that they’re going to attend and invite all their friends as well. So it’s a powerful tool. Yep. That’s probably underutilized by a lot of us.

0:15:35 – (Brynne Tillman): Nice that. That you know, that thousand people a week is absolutely game-changing if people are doing that well. And so from a B2C world, I think you’re spot on, both of you. All right, Bob, what’s next?

0:15:50 – (Bob Woods): Engaging with comments, which this is. This is another kind of bringing over from. From the B2B world. But at the same time, no matter who you are, no matter what social platform you’re on, too, quite frankly, unless you’re just getting thousands and thousands and thousands of comments, you should be engaging with the comments that are coming into the content that you post. And with LinkedIn, it’s especially important because not only are you acknowledging the fact that the person who is commenting actually commented, and you’re thanking them for their comments and taking their time because it is a time commitment when someone makes a comment. So you really should thank them.

0:16:31 – (Bob Woods): You also have an opportunity to comment on what they’ve commented on, whether it’s. Whether you are going to what we call. Yes. And which is. Which is. Which is what we take from comedy, improv, and like. And let’s add to a point that they’ve already made or bring up another point on what they’ve said as well to really expand your reach and let people know that you are an expert in whatever B2C field that you are selling in.

0:17:01 – (Brynne Tillman): Great. Love it. What is next on our list?

0:17:06 – (Bob Woods): Next. So, Brynne, because you’re a little bit more familiar with this one, and this is, like, the first time that I’m hearing of it, I’m going to let you handle this one. Running online challenges.

0:17:18 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. So this is really fun, and I have been part of them, but it could be. So if you’re, let’s say you’re b, two C and you run a challenge, right? So let’s say it’s financial services and you run a challenge. It doesn’t have to all be public, but it could be day one, you’re gonna use this prompt to create a budget. Right. And so do this. And then. So that’s your challenge, day two. So maybe. Maybe it’s the seven-day challenge to, you know, your financial plan.

0:17:59 – (Brynne Tillman): And then every. So then you come on. Maybe you do a live or you do a hosted webinar, and every day, maybe for 15 minutes, you’re like, here’s the challenge. Go. Here’s the challenge. Go. And then once you’ve done this, go into the challenge, maybe it started as an event. Right, as a challenge, and then put in comments. Done. What did you take away from this? Whatever it is. And so that you’re building on that challenge event for seven days and every day, everyone that’s part of that challenge is coming in and they’re working through it. And so it’s a lot of fun. It’s great from a, B2C if you have a more complex solution, not necessarily a product, but, you know, something.

0:18:47 – (Brynne Tillman): But even if your product serves something, you can think about what challenge could lead people to my product as a solution for that. It could be a membership, it could be, I mean, there could be a lot of things, but that challenge is really fun and you earn the right to get the business.

0:19:11 – (Bob Woods): Very good. Very good. So, Stan, I’m going to let you take this next one, and that’s collaborating with influencers. So these are people who are known within the target market that a B2C person is trying to reach, but the influencer has more like it says in the name, influence over these people. So, you know, you may want to try to reach out and collaborate with that person to extend your network even more.

0:19:40 – (Brynne Tillman): So I think Stan is frozen again, so I’ll take it until he comes back.

0:19:47 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): Yep. So when we talk about collection, you want to start supporting their content idly.

0:19:51 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, that’s not. Yeah, and I’m just getting alerts that actually cell service is, is, a problem. I don’t know if that’s affecting him specifically, but that’s just interesting, I think.

0:20:06 – (Brynne Tillman): Nope, you’re not. So I’ll just finish this real quick so we can get through it. I’m sorry, Stan, you’re just not coming through. But collaboration with people on content, collaboration on events, collaboration on a challenge, and finding other influencers that are attracting the same buyers is a great way to go to market on LinkedIn. So we’ll move on from that. And I’m sorry, Stan, that you’re not. We can’t hear you.

0:20:36 – (Bob Woods): I’m not sure what’s going on there. The next one is to highlight customer testimonials and success stories. This could be really easy to do. First of all, if you’re going to do this, even if you’re mentioning them kind of generically if you’re in a B2C type of thing where you really can’t mention someone specifically, always get their permission before you start talking about how they were successful and things like that.

0:21:04 – (Bob Woods): But you can tell a story about how what you did or what you offer really helps them out. And you can do this actually in video as well. And you don’t even need to get them on video to do this. If you have screenshots or maybe a shot of them, it could be even a still photo or whatever. The person who you’re highlighting doesn’t necessarily really need to give you a lot of stuff to do this because you’re more in storytelling mode at this point.

0:21:35 – (Bob Woods): So highlighting customer testimonials and success stories, I think is really important because it shows not only that, you know, that, that other people are using your product and they’re using it successfully, but they’re also putting their hand up to a certain extent, like I said, depending on the situation, that they want to be seen as using your product or service too. And that’s, and that’s really big, especially nowadays when there’s trust issues on social and things like that. So that’s really good.

0:22:03 – (Brynne Tillman): I just want to add, before and afters are great. What if you have, so even if it, and if you have imagery, before and after are great? If you have people like, and even the day in the life of one of your clients using whatever it is or doing whatever it is adds to that, that client success stories. The other thing at its easiest is getting a recommendation on LinkedIn. So their recommendation on LinkedIn, you can actually read in a video, right? You can actually. So if they have a recommendation, you can hop on video and say, oh, I really want to thank Stan Robinson Junior for his recommendation. And then you can read it by showing the recommendation, right? There are lots of ways to do that. So I love that.

0:22:56 – (Bob Woods): Yep. And for the final one, number ten, we are going to dive back into the influencer pool again really quick. And that’s with influencer engagement. So I believe that this is going to have to do with going into a post from an influencer and actually commenting on not only the original influencer content but also engaging in conversations with people who are commenting on the influencer as well. Again, great way to extend and expand your network as long as you are adding value with whatever it is that you’re doing.

0:23:41 – (Bob Woods): You know, I always say a, you know, hey, great post. An influencer’s name is not valuable at all. You definitely want to add to or bring up something slightly different or like that type of thing, essentially, really add value to whatever is being discussed, whether you’re responding to the influencer directly or you’re responding to someone else’s comment.

0:24:08 – (Brynne Tillman): I love it. Let’s bring it in for a landing.

0:24:10 – (Bob Woods): We are bringing it in for a landing. So by implementing these strategies, you could effectively use LinkedIn to reach and engage your consumer audience, expanding your business’s reach beyond traditional boundaries that are unique, unique to your B2C audience. And we do love B2C here. We have helped B2C before. We love them and we definitely expect to continue to help B2C as well. So thank you again for joining us on this episode of Making Sales Social live.

0:24:39 – (Bob Woods): If you’re with us live on LinkedIn, YouTube, or any other social network right now, we do this every week, so keep an eye out for our live sessions. If you’re listening to us on our podcast and you haven’t subscribed already, go ahead and hit that subscribe or follow button. We would definitely appreciate it. Info on our podcast is available at socialsaleslink.com. podcast we do two shows weekly, this one and our Making Sales Social interview series where we talk with leaders and experts in sales, marketing, business, and many, many more areas.

0:25:10 – (Bob Woods): So when you are out and about, be sure that you are making your sales social. Yeah, Stan is back. And make it social whether you’re B2B or B2C. Thanks, everybody. Bye bye.

0:25:27 – (Brynne Tillman): Bye guys.

0:25:29 – (Bob Woods): Don’t miss an episode. Visit socialsaleslink.com/podcast and leave a review down below. Tell us what you think, what you learned, and what you want to hear from us next. Register for free [email protected] you can also listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play. Visit our website, socialsaleslink.com for more information.

Outro:

Thanks for watching and join us again for more special guest instructors, bringing you marketing, sales training, and social selling strategies that will set you apart. Hit the subscribe button below to get the latest episodes from the Making Sales Social podcast give this video a thumbs up and comment down below on what you want to hear from us next. You can also listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Play. Visit our website, socialsaleslink.com for more information.