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12: Why Linkedin 'Value' Content Isn't Enough + Information Gaps (LINKEDIN Series)
41 Plays1 year ago
Linkedin buying happens in places you can’t track. And yet, so many base their strategy on content engagement. In this very contrarian episode, we discuss how buyers are driven by information and how to be intentional about it to ensure maximized buyers from our content, profile, and landing page.
To see the video with visuals, click the second video on this page: Home | Rekorded
Drop me a message if you liked this one :) Dylan Ciaccio⏳ | LinkedIn
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Transcript
Filling Information Gaps for LinkedIn Buyers
00:00:00
Speaker
In this episode, we're going to talk about how filling information gaps is the only way to drive buyers from LinkedIn and how you're probably already doing it just in a very inefficient way. We're going to talk about how these information gaps are filled with more than just LinkedIn content. It's also filled in your LinkedIn profile and website or landing page. Also going to talk about some examples of information gaps that we need to fill in order for our audience to see things the way we do, guiding them in their journey and realizing how valuable our service is because it solves the valuable problem.
00:00:30
Speaker
Content is only one component in the buying journey.
00:00:33
Speaker
The profile and landing page are equally important in this journey because it gives even more information that's needed to motivate buyers to reach out with high intent to
Challenges in Tracking LinkedIn Buyer Behavior
00:00:41
Speaker
buy. So why are all these three components equally important? Well, the problem is that LinkedIn buying happens in places you can't track. What can you track? Likes, comments, reposts, impressions, DMs, when they happen from an actual lead and not just a cold pitch. And because that's all you can track, you let that lead your strategy. But the problem is that this has very little correlation with how people actually buy on LinkedIn.
00:01:03
Speaker
in. 97% of my high-intent inbound calls never interacted with my content before booking a call. The profile was the most important step for 75% of my high-intent inbound calls. 88% became leads on my landing page while only 12% in my DMs. And I mean leads in the best sense where they actually want to buy.
00:01:25
Speaker
These are stats you likely don't have or any others on LinkedIn because you focus only on what LinkedIn gives you, which is content engagement. So why did all of these buyers reach out to me? Because they found information about how I solved their problem with my service and proved that I solved their problem with other clients, which they found in my content profile and landing page.
The Role of Self-Reported Attribution
00:01:44
Speaker
But none of this data was found from tracking engagement with LinkedIn. I found this data with self-reported attribution. I simply asked these people about the journeys they took before booking a call with me.
00:01:55
Speaker
So despite what people on LinkedIn say, posting valuable LinkedIn content isn't enough to attract buyers for your B2B service. That's because LinkedIn users aren't motivated to reach out for information about your service. They're motivated to reach out because of information about how you solve their specific problems.
00:02:11
Speaker
How do I know? Because each time a buyer booked a call with me, they explicitly said, I saw X in your content or X in your profile and realized you might be able to solve X problem that I have. By simply posting random content that gets likes and comments without intentionally filling these information gaps, your audience will never go out of their way to figure out why your service is so valuable for them.
00:02:31
Speaker
I follow tons of LinkedIn creators whose content I love, but I have no idea what they actually do nor how it can solve my problem because I'm not going to go out of my way to figure that out. It means I will never buy from them and I will be stuck in what I call the freeloader loop where I just consume content and never buy from them because they do not fill the information gaps needed for me to want to become a buyer.
Identifying and Filling Information Gaps
00:02:51
Speaker
So with recorded, we fill these information gaps by strategically selecting the right questions for our recorded interviews to extract this information from you and package it into the right content.
00:03:01
Speaker
So what are some examples of information gaps? So to fill the information gaps in your audience's buying journey, you need to educate about these kinds of things. Painful problem that they have that your service solves, how it shows up in their life, why it's so important to solve, what their life would be like without the problem, misconceptions about the problem, how the problem can be solved, prove you've solved the problem with other clients, aka results, misconceptions about the solution to the problem.
00:03:26
Speaker
Notice how a lot of these things are very focused on the problem. You might just market benefits and that is not why people buy from you. They buy because they have a problem. And so that's why it's so important to figure that out and then educate people about that problem. These are all pieces of information that are both at the same time valuable to the audience to consume while also providing information that drives the audience forward in their buying journey.
00:03:49
Speaker
It's not one or the other. The first is just value without helping ourselves and the second would be just selling, which they're not going to consume if it doesn't give them
Critique of Current Content Strategies
00:03:59
Speaker
any kind of value. So that's why we need both. These two are equally important in a LinkedIn strategy and most on LinkedIn aren't doing this. Why?
00:04:06
Speaker
because the reason lies in how LinkedIn content creation started. When people first started posting them, it was very self-centered. Companies made announcements about their achievements, they posted content that was just ads in disguise, and they posted links to their blogs, aka link dumping. It brought in a bit of traffic, those few numbers made it worth it, until people realized that this isn't actually content.
00:04:27
Speaker
And it's not at all valuable. It's just selling and has created the value movement. We're currently living in this time period. Give value, give more value and expect nothing in return. This is the complete opposite of the self-centeredness. It's a form of overcompensation and just a complete readjustment on the spectrum. And it kind of sucks because it's not effective.
00:04:46
Speaker
Posting random content that gives value but never provides certain pieces of information that's needed for someone to actually want to buy your service. And the only way to make the strategy work is posting more and more and more. Spraying and praying. I call this making the volume assumption. I talk a lot about it in my content.
00:05:03
Speaker
because eventually you'll post so much random value content that you might accidentally provide information needed for someone to want to buy your service. But instead of spraying and praying, filling information gaps is more efficient and effective when it's intentional. By doing this, we're creating a bridge from attention to consideration to conversion, these three stages of buying in a way that is balanced between both extremes of the spectrum. We're not selling our service. We're helping our audience learn about a problem and how we can solve it.
00:05:30
Speaker
which is itself valuable to them. And only after doing that will they see the value in reaching out to us with the
Impact of Context on Buyer Behavior
00:05:36
Speaker
intent to buy. I mentioned earlier that it's not just about content. And if anyone tells you that it can be done with just content, they're either selling you some kind of content service and is incentivized to make you believe this. They're still using lead magnets to get leads and those numbers look great until you see how few of them actually convert.
00:05:52
Speaker
or has done tons of networking along with the content and isn't being very truthful about how much time they put into it to make it work. Recorded used to only help with content but I found that this wasn't enough and I realized from talking with so many of my own buyers how important the profile and landing page was in filling information gaps. So many booked a call with me and told me I saw your LinkedIn cover and realized that you might be able to solve my time problem to make LinkedIn content. Essentially saying I saw X information and it motivated me to want to buy.
00:06:21
Speaker
LinkedIn users don't want to send you a DM to talk to you. The way I think of it is like it's jumping into a dark abyss. There are so many different risks attached to that. Is this person going to sell to me? Will they be able to give me all the info that I want now? How can I learn about this quickly?
00:06:36
Speaker
Well, I have to have a five day conversation just to figure it out. It's going to be, is it going to be a really uncomfortable and awkward situation talking to this person? There's nothing invaluable about this for them. And the reason why so many people on LinkedIn make the call to action and send me a DM for more info is because it's easier for them to sell to you. It's easier for us, the sellers, but it's not easier for them to buy. They just want information. The reason the profile landing page are so important is because of context.
00:07:03
Speaker
There are pieces of information that you can provide in the profile and landing page that you can't do in content. When you talk too much about your service in content on LinkedIn, people are turned off and that's because of the context where it's happening. In content, there's only so much we can hint about our service. While that's not at all the case on our profile landing page or website.
00:07:22
Speaker
And the problem is that there's certain info about our service that is absolutely necessary to know in order to be interested. But if we can't put that into our content and people won't send a DM to find out, then there's an extremely low chance that they'll ever reach out if we only have content.
00:07:37
Speaker
And that's why the profile and landing page are so important. Because if we don't have that, if we don't have that specific information, they'll never be interested in our service. And the second part of context is that user behavior is different in a feed on a profile and on the landing page. Kind of what I just said. So when you call your audience to action, they will behave differently depending on where they are. On the LinkedIn feed, they're a bit more value focused. So if you tell them to book a time with you on a post, they won't. But on a landing page, they are much more buying focused and calling them to book a time makes more sense to them.
00:08:06
Speaker
You could also see things in terms of comparison, the next best action. If you're asked to book a call on the feed, the next best thing is to just keep scrolling, which is perceived as more valuable. Whereas on a landing page, asked to book a call after having just read all this information about your problem and how to solve it booking that call is now perceived as very clarifying and valuable. And so because of this user behavior, we have to play by the rules and how they perceive the information we provide them.
Principles for Maximizing Conversion
00:08:33
Speaker
So when we design your profile and landing page, we use the conversion quartet. This is a group of principles I've given a name to ensure maximized conversion for our profile and landing page. To give a bit of proof that it works, 28% of my LinkedIn profile visitors click to my landing page or my website.
00:08:48
Speaker
which I kind of consider my landing page because there's only a couple of pages. A 28% click-through rate off-site is pretty good when you compare it to other average click-through rates on the web. So basically our goal with the profile and the landing page is to get them from point A to point B. And curiosity is the driving force that takes them from point A to point B. And we can define curiosity as the promise of value or the promise of solving a valuable problem. So for the profile it's from
00:09:15
Speaker
landing point A to clicking to the landing page point B. That is our objective. For the landing page, it's getting them from landing point A to point B, clicking to book a call. Basically, the strategy here is that you want them to read all the information needed to know for them to be convinced enough to click or book a call. But this curiosity can't be reached if the value offered isn't clear. If there's too much friction or effort to consume the information, sometimes there's too much information.
00:09:43
Speaker
and when their attention is directed to too many different things. And so when we put everything all together, when we fill the information gaps, the audience is driven forward in their journey on their own. We're not forcing them. We're not tricking them with lead magnets. We're simply giving them the information that allows them to see the value and go into the next step until they decide on their own that they want to buy.