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ORCA leads prospects through an automated sales process by re-engaging prospects continuously,
based on their interactions with your social media messages and emails.
The #1 sales automation tool for increasing your lead response rate by 10x.
If you’re a B2B salesperson, you’ve got to be using social selling on LinkedIn to engage with your audience. With over 400 million users, there’s a ton of opportunity to generate new leads.
But with the amount of noise on LinkedIn, how do you stand out from the crowd? How do you use LinkedIn as an alternative to cold email and other channels?
In this definitive guide, you’ll learn how to use LinkedIn to build a social selling machine. Once you’ve followed these steps, you’ll have an efficient and effective lead generating machine that builds real sales opportunities.
Contents
Foreword: What is Social Selling?
Chapter 1: Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile for Ultimate Positioning
Chapter 2: Creating Content & Building Your Personal Brand
Chapter 3: How to Find Red-Hot Prospects on LinkedIn
Chapter 4: How to Engage & Build Trust with Your LinkedIn Leads
Chapter 5: Getting Key Insights on Leads, Competitors & Influencers
Chapter 6: 4 LinkedIn Tools for Automation & Efficiency
Foreword: What is Social Selling?
Let’s kick things off with a simple definition:
“Social selling is the art of connecting, engaging with, and nurturing leads through social media channels. Whether that’s on Twitter or LinkedIn, the primary goal is to create real-world sales opportunities by being active through these channels.”
So, why should you even bother paying attention to social selling? This next stat is a pretty good reason: according to LinkedIn, 78% of sales professionals who use social media outperform their peers who don’t.
If you’re still not convinced, here are three more reasons why social selling is advantageous:
Your leads are there: LinkedIn has exploded in recent years. Users are more engaged than ever. Which includes your ideal clients. According to a study conducted by IDC, 75% of B2B executives use social media as part of the buying process.
So are your competitors: That’s right, if 78% of salespeople are already utilizing social selling, you can bet that includes your competitors. These statistics from eMarketer drive this point home:
Your competitors are already eating up the attention. Luckily, the rest of this guide will show you how to outperform them.
It leads to lifelong relationships: Relationships are the foundation of successful selling in 2018. By engaging with your leads on LinkedIn, you can add more value and build stronger relationships while boosting your sales teams’ credibility at the same time.
You know why social selling is important, and the benefits it will bring to you and your sales teams. Let’s dig into the seven-step process to becoming a social selling rockstar on LinkedIn.
Chapter 1: Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile for Ultimate Positioning
Your LinkedIn profile is the first thing your prospects will see.
Which is why you’ve got to optimize it.
Why? Here are a few reasons:
It’s what your connections will judge you on
It will boost your credibility as an expert
It will convince your leads they are in safe hands
It’s the perfect vessel to boost social proof
Let’s break down each element of your profile and what they must include for ultimate optimization:
The Perfect Profile Picture
In a perfect world, we wouldn’t judge a book by its cover.
As humans, however, we do it all the time. Which is why your profile picture must be high-quality and professional looking.
But what does this actually mean? Let’s break it down:
Use the right expression: You want to appear warm and friendly to your prospects. The best way to do this is to “smile with your eyes.” Don’t put on a Cheshire-cat grin, but don’t come across too seriously either.
Dress the part: Wear the clothes you’d usually wear in a work setting. Depending on your personality and target market, that might be a traditional shirt (or even suit), or perhaps something more casual. Allow your personality to shine through.
Take up 60% of the frame: Your profile picture is all about you. This means no landscape photos where you’re somewhere in the background.
Use a simple background: You don’t want the background setting to be too distracting. Make sure that you are the focal point.
Credibility Boosters for Killer First Impressions
Once you have a polished profile picture, it’s time to show your audience why they should pay attention to you.
To do this, you must quickly demonstrate that you’re a credible figure in your industry or subject matter.
Do this using these two LinkedIn profile elements:
Your header image
Your headline
For example, Matthew Howells-Barby, Director of Acquisition at HubSpot, uses a simple header image to illustrate his public speaking ability in front of a large crowd:
Karola Karlson, Marketing Manager at Taxify, uses this space to showcase the publications she has contributed to:
Then there’s your headline. You can use this to show off your work experience, accomplishments, and, most importantly, how you help people.
This is exactly what SaaS marketing consultant Siddharth Bharath does. Instead of simply telling his prospects what he does, he shows how he helps them:
Write A Clear and Compelling Bio
The bio section is where you can truly sell yourself.
Use this to expand upon your accomplishments, add more credibility boosters, and talk about how you help your clients.
Josh Fechter, founder of BAMF Media, is a great example of this:
He lists out the services he offers, as well as the companies he’s worked with.
What about an example from the SaaS world? Here’s how David Cancel, founder of Drift, positions his company’s value proposition:
Include this value proposition in both your bio and company description. It’s more likely to get read if a prospect scrolls past your header section.
Recommendations & Endorsements
Receiving recommendations from your peers are like testimonials for your LinkedIn profile. It shows that people vouch for you:
In the example above, people talk about the value they received from working with Oli Gardner, founder of Unbounce. These people not only vouch for his expertise as a marketer, but his ability as a leader – something that will appeal to potential candidates.
To receive recommendations, you’ve got to give them first. People are more likely to write a glowing testimonial if you write one for them.
Start with those closest to you. These include colleagues, existing clients and friends within your industry. You should also endorse them for relevant skills:
You should now have a LinkedIn profile that boosts your credibility and shows why you’re an expert in your space.
The next step is to add value to your audience.
Chapter 2: Creating Content & Building Your Personal Brand
These days, there’s only one way to build lifelong business relationships:
Deliver an insane amount of value upfront.
The best way to do this is through content. Content that goes above and beyond the call of duty. Content that helps people solve their specific problems.
Here’s how you do it on LinkedIn:
Create Killer Owned Content
In 2018, I recommend that all salespeople start building their personal brand with owned content.
This is content that you publish on your own blog or website. You can either do this on your company blog or your personal website.
For example, Tito Bohrt, CEO of AltiSales, created an in-depth guide on sales development for the Sales Hacker blog:
By doing this, he boosted his own authority within his industry, while creating content for his ideal prospects at the same time.
The first challenge to doing this is coming up with topic ideas. As a salesperson, you’re in the best position to uncover content ideas.
You’re talking to prospects and clients on a daily basis. Keep an ear out for common complaints, questions, and challenges. What hurdles are your prospects trying to overcome?
Keep track of these challenges in a spreadsheet like so:
Next, you need to create the content itself. There are several formats you can use to frame your content, including:
How-to guides: Create an instructional guide on how to solve a problem step-by-step.
Case studies: Show how a client or someone from within your industry solved a problem.
Opinion pieces: Write about your thoughts on a certain area of expertise.
Proprietary research: Use owned data or research to create a unique piece of content.
Struggling to write this yourself? Interview subject matter experts from within your organization. These include senior decision makers, marketers, and product designers.
Interviewing these experts will help you fill in the gaps and create content that serves your prospects.
Publish Content on LinkedIn
Did you know LinkedIn has its own publishing platform?
It allows anyone to post content and share it directly with their connections.
Now you know how to create killer “owned” content, you can re-publish it on LinkedIn.
To do this, click the “Write an article” button under the status text box at the top of the page:
Then, you’ll need to create a header image. My favorite method of finding a relevant image is to head to Unsplash and search for relevant keyword:
The optimal size for header images is 1200 x 644 pixels. You can use a tool like Canva to upload your photo from Unsplash and resize it to perfection.
Once you’ve uploaded your header image, simply copy and paste your existing content into the article:
You now have owned content published on LinkedIn to share with new connections.
Writing Engaging LinkedIn Posts
As well as LinkedIn articles, it’s also important to write posts that appear directly in the news feed.
Publishing native posts on a regular basis is the perfect way to nurture leads over time. Here’s an example from Aaron Orendorff, Editor in Chief at Shopify:
The results? Over 250 likes and 90 comments (so far):
So, how do you create engaging posts like this? There are several formats you can adopt:
Stories where you’ve overcome tough hurdles
Stories of mistakes you made and how you fixed them
Stories from people you’ve met or interviewed
Short, instructional guides on new strategies, tricks and hacks
Stories are very popular on LinkedIn. They generate the most attention as it allows your audience to connect with you.
Let’s take a look at another example from Gaetano Di Nardi, VP Marketing at Sales Hacker:
He hooks readers in with an attention-grabbing question. One that speaks to the pains of his main audience.
He then leads into a polarizing opinion on the nature of cold calling.
Instead of talking about what’s wrong, he then gets into the crux of the post: actionable advice on what to do instead.
He then wraps it up with a question to spark engagement with his audience.
This short post has generated over a hundred likes and dozens of comments. This engagement gets him extra exposure, as the connections of those who comment will also see the post.
You can also create engaging video content. For example, Quentin Allums uses LinkedIn video to spread his message and educate his audience on the power of storytelling:
Creating content in this manner is simple. Simply stand in front of a camera (or iPhone), hit record, and talk about a topic that matters to your ideal clients.
Add subtitles to your video to capture mobile browsers. This engages users who can’t watch with the sound on, and has been proven to generate a higher engagement.
Chapter 3: How to Find Red-Hot Prospects on LinkedIn
You now have an optimized profile and killer content that delivers value to your leads.
It’s time to go and find them.
Prospecting for the ideal customer on LinkedIn doesn’t have to be difficult. Luckily, LinkedIn provides tools that make it even easier.
Finding the Best Leads with Advanced Search
The first and most obvious tool is LinkedIn’s advanced search. With it, you can run searches on criteria like location, keywords and industry.
To access advanced search, click the search button followed by the magnifying glass icon:
Click “All filters” along the top bar to access the advanced search:
You’ll see a list of advanced filters to refine your search, like so:
For example, if you wanted to find prospects with a job title of “VP Marketing” who work for IT companies in the San Francisco area, your search would look something like this:
You can also use Boolean logic to construct better search queries. By using Boolean search, you’ll generate more refined results.
Here are five variables you can use in your Boolean search strings:
Quoted searches: You can use quotation marks if you want to find someone with a multi-word title or exact phrases. For example: “senior product manager.”
NOT searches: If you want to exclude a particular term, you can use an uppercase NOT immediately before the term. For example: programmer NOT manager.
OR searches: To see results that include one or more terms, separate the terms with an uppercase OR. For example: ceo OR “chief executive officer” OR founder OR cofounder.
AND searches: To get results that include two or more terms in a list, you can use the uppercase word AND as a separator. For example: manager AND director.
Parenthetical searches: To do a complex search, you can combine terms using parentheses. For example, if you want to find people who have “VP” in their profiles, but you want to exclude “assistant to VP” or SVPs, you can type: VP NOT(assistant OR SVP).
Boolean search must be constructed in this order:
Quotes [“”]
Parentheses [()]
NOT
AND
OR
A few other things to note when running Boolean searches:
LinkedIn search only supports standard quotation marks. Stop words such as “by”, “in”, “with” etc. are not used or recognized in a search.
The + and — operators are not officially supported by LinkedIn. Using AND in place of a + and NOT in place of a — makes a query much easier to read and guarantees that LinkedIn will handle the search correctly.
When using NOT, AND or OR operators, you must type them in uppercase letters.
LinkedIn does not support wildcard searches.
Boolean search will only work in the keyword word field.
Sophisticated Prospecting with Sales Navigator
If you have the budget, Sales Navigator is well worth investing in.
With it, you can run advanced searches, get invaluable insights on your leads, and save your searches for later use.
Use these techniques to get the most out of sales navigator and supercharge your lead generation efforts:
Integrate with your CRM: You can bring your CRM data into Sales Navigator (and the other way around) thanks to LinkedIn’s various partnerships. Below is an example of how this looks in Salesforce:
No more tab-switching when looking for insights on your leads!
Advanced Filters: Sales Navigator ramps up the power of advanced search with more sophisticated filters. These filters include: Years at current company, Years in current role, Years of experience, Company type, Seniority level, Keywords found in posted content
TeamLink: Using the TeamLink filter, you can find prospects that share an acquaintance with you. This includes both first- and second-degree connections.
Save your InMails: Some users have marked themselves as “Open Profiles.” These are people who want to be approached, meaning you don’t need to be connected with them (or use InMail’s) to send them a message.
Tag Prospects: Keep track of your leads by tagging them with their current status. This will help you keep track of several contacts within the same target account:
Use “Shared Experiences:” This filter allows you to find leads who have something in common with you. This could be a place you lived, a company you both worked for, or a group you’ve both engaged with.
Once you’ve found the perfect criteria, click the “Create search alert” to save your search. You can then decide if you want to be alerted to new leads on a daily or weekly basis:
4 LinkedIn Prospecting Tricks
LinkedIn contains several features that can aid with prospecting. These are peppered around the platform and can help uncover new opportunities:
Look at competitor networks: Competitor customers often make the best prospect. These leads already see the value in the problem you solve. You just need to convince them why your solution is better
See who comments: People interacting with your leads posts are likely to be within your target market. Use Sales Navigator to monitor prospect content and identify those who engage with them.
The “People Also Viewed” sidebar: Head over to an existing prospect’s profile and look in the “People Also Viewed” sidebar. This contains similar profiles that may be worth reaching out to.
Send Free InMails: Did you know that you can message 2nd degree connections if you’re in the same group together? When you find a prospect, check out which groups they’re in and join one.Then, browse the list of members in that group and find the prospect you wish to reach out to. Click the “Message” button and you’ll be able to message them without using InMails:
Chapter 4: How to Engage & Build Trust with Your LinkedIn Leads
Once you’ve identified your ideal leads, you need to begin a relationship.
Due to LinkedIn’s explosive growth, people are constantly bombarded with sales messages on a daily basis.
If you want to stand out, you need to approach your engagement differently. As you’ve already started creating content that positions yourself as an expert, half the work is already done.
The next step is to execute intelligent outreach. Here’s how:
Step 1: Create Conversation Starters
Your connection request is the first point of contact you have with prospects.
Use these conversation starter scripts as a guide for reaching out to new connections. For example, in your connection request, you can reference a LinkedIn post or a piece of content they’ve shared:
“Hi [NAME], I loved your post on [TOPIC]. I agreed with your point about [THING]. I’d love to connect to stay up-to-date with your future posts.”
Here, we’re personalizing the connection request by referencing a post they’ve recently made. We’re then going the extra mile by stating exactly what we found useful about the post. Finally, it’s wrapped up by stating why we want to connect with them.
There are dozens of ways you can personalize your connection request, including:
A company you’ve both worked for/with
A group or skill you have in common
A mutual connection
Engagement on other channels (e.g. Twitter)
An upcoming event you’re both attending
It’s key you include a viable reason to connect that’s personalized to them. Here’s an example of what not to do:
“Hi [NAME], I’m looking to connect with other marketers and found your profile interesting.”
This includes no personalization and is far too generic. While it can work, your acceptance rate will drop significantly. Use a personalized approach to ensure your connection requests get accepted.
Sound like too much work? Don’t worry. You’ll learn how to automate this process in chapter six.
Step 2: The First Message
Once a connection accepts your request, it’s time to begin a conversation.
Remember all that content you created in chapter two? This is where it becomes fuel to light your lead generation on fire.
Wait a day or two after your connection request has been accepted. Then, send them a message including a piece of content you (or someone in your organization) has created. This can be an article or LinkedIn post.
When choosing content, pick a topic that matters to them. For example, if you’re messaging a CMO, you should send something strategic in nature. Tactical and how-to guides may not resonate as well.
Here’s an example message you can send:
“Hi [NAME], thanks for connecting!
Just wanted to send this over, as I think it would be of interest. It’s an article on [TOPIC] that shows how CMOs in SaaS companies overcame [CHALLENGE].
[LINK TO ARTICLE]
I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Thanks,
[YOUR NAME]”
It’s simple, to the point, and most importantly, it’s specific to their needs.
Step 3: Move Them to The Pipeline
Once you’ve added value, it’s time to turn your prospects into sales leads.
To do this, it’s key you take the conversation away from LinkedIn. Whether that’s by driving them to a call, email thread, or landing page.
Create sales-driven scripts to help you guide prospects into the sales pipeline. Use these as frameworks to send to your prospects. Don’t copy-and-paste the same thing to each and every lead.
This is the perfect opportunity to send content lower down the funnel. This includes whitepapers, case studies, and eBooks. Here’s an example script you can adapt for your own use:
“Hi [NAME],
As [JOB TITLE] at [COMPANY], I thought you might find this new [CASE STUDY] of interest:
In it, we show how [CLIENT] overcame [CHALLENGE]. As [CLIENT] is in a similar industry to you, I thought it would be well worth reading.
I’d love to send it to you. Is [EMAIL] the best address?
Regards,
[YOUR NAME]”
From here, it’s important to follow up. Once you’ve sent this piece of content, it’s time to move into a sales conversation.
Here’s an example script:
“Hi [NAME],
I hope you found [CASE STUDY] useful.
At Orca, we help B2B companies like yours automate their social selling using omni-channel sales tools. I’d love to chat with you to see how we may be a good fit to work together.
Would this be of interest?
Thanks,
[YOUR NAME]”
This moves the conversation into a sales context. From here, follow your usual sales process to nurture each lead.
Voila! You’ve turned an unknown LinkedIn connection into a real business opportunity.
Chapter 5: Getting Key Insights on Leads, Competitors & Influencers
LinkedIn isn’t just a great lead generation tool.
It can also provide valuable insights on contacts at target accounts, thought leaders, and your competitors.
This approach is also useful for account-based marketing (ABM) efforts. LinkedIn provides a host of insights on contacts and companies you can use in all aspects of social selling. Here’s how.
Use Sales Navigator to set up alerts on specific leads and target accounts. First, save the leads and accounts you want to monitor.
This will display updates from these leads and accounts within your Sales Navigator news feed. You can then keep tabs without the clutter of the regular LinkedIn news feed.
Use this real-time insight to fuel your follow-up outreach.
Have they just been featured in a publication? Share the content.
Did they just secure a fresh round of funding? Email them and congratulate them.
This is publicly available information, so don’t worry – this form of “spying” is 100% white hat.
Here are the specific ways you can do it:
See who they interact with: It’s likely you’re connected with someone who works for a competitor. Set your viewing setting to “anonymous,” check out their profile and see who they’re interacting with.
Analyze company pages: Companies advertising on LinkedIn must tie their account to a company page. You can use this to determine if a company is spending on LinkedIn ads.For example, if a page has thousands of followers but a scattered posting schedule, it’s likely this audience was built from ads. Similarly, if some posts have significantly more comments and likes than others, it’s likely these posts were amplified using sponsored posts.
Be the audience: Want to see what ads your competitors are running? Amend parts of your profile to look like your competitor’s target audience. This can include job title (at a fictional company) and bio.You’ll start to see competitor ads over time. When making these changes to your profile, make sure to check the “Share with network” setting to “Off:”
LinkedIn is the perfect place to find target influencers and research them. Finding influencers is simple. Search for a relevant keyword and then click on the “Content” tab:
On the results page, make sure the “Sort by” filter is sorted by “Relevance.” LinkedIn usually organizes results by how popular they are. And more engagement means more popularity:
Have a list of influencers you want to engage with?
Great!
Now you can use their profile to understand the topics that matter most to them and where they hang out online.
Look at the following profile areas to generate influencer insight:
Articles & Activity: Look at the articles they publish and posts they engage with. What do they write about? What kind of content do they comment on the most?
Experience: Where do they currently work? This is useful, as it’s likely they’re publishing their own content on their company blog.
Skills & Endorsements: What areas of expertise do they focus on? These skills can fuel your outreach efforts.
Accomplishments: This often includes third-party content they’ve published in other publications. Sharing and commenting on this content will help you get their attention.
Groups: If they’re active in certain groups, join them and contribute to the conversation. Find content and questions they share post to get on their radar.
This insight is invaluable when driving your influencer marketing efforts. It can fuel your outreach and show you which publications and communities they’re active in.
Get on these channels and contribute to their conversations. Comment on their content and share it to your own audience. This is how you warm up strategic influencer relationships.
Chapter 6: 4 LinkedIn Tools for Automation & Efficiency
You now have a complete system for generating, nurturing, and understanding your leads.
The question is, how can you make this process more efficient?
To wrap-up this guide, here are four social selling tools to help you automate your LinkedIn processes.
For example, you can connect with users with specific job titles in a certain location and industry using a mixture of Boolean searches and criteria. Orca will then autodiscover 1000 new leads for you every month.
You can then create advanced sequencing. View your prospects profile, connect, and send initial messages (see chapter four). Insert snippets to your messages to add personalization to every message:
Want to try it yourself? Get started with 200 free leads today.
It also integrates with Gmail, helping you write more effective emails based on a prospect’s personality type. This helps you create messaging that resonates with each contact on an individual level.
The extension shows snapshot information on your target contact and the company they work for, as well as insights from other social networks they engage on.
This includes updates and tweets, providing contextual information without having to leave your inbox.
Datanyze
If you sell software, then you should check out Datanyze. It lets you know when a target account stops using a competitor’s product or solution. Meaning you can reach out to them and strike while the iron is hot.
Nudge.ai
If you have a list of target accounts, then Nudge.ai can help fill in the gaps. Instead of a cold outbound approach, Nudge.ai helps you find opportunities in your network to facilitate warm introductions with the best contacts.
Your turn
Building an effective social selling system is all about adding value up front. Create excellent content and position yourself on LinkedIn as an expert. This makes outreach far more effective.
Unlike cold email, prospects on LinkedIn want to be engaged with. Do this in a contextual manner using the tools and techniques we’ve shared here.
Now it’s your turn: how are you using LinkedIn to generate new sales opportunities? Share your ideas with us in the comments below.
Source https://useorca.com/blog/blog/the-definitive-guide-to-social-selling-on-linkedin
Sup guys, in this post I’m going to show you how I scraped members from my competition’s Facebook group to engage and connect on Linkedin.
Before we get started, here’s the stack you’ll need:
FB Group Scraper Extension (only works in developer mode)
Phantombuster LI URL
Orca
Let’s get started.
Click on the link above to download the FB Group Scraper Extension and unzip.
Open Chrome extensions and toggle on Developer Mode.
Select Load Unpacked
This will open Finder if you’re on a Mac or […] on Windows. Locate the unzipped fb group scraper extension and upload it. This is what you should see:
Turn the extension on, if its off. You should extension in the toolbar.
Head on over to your competition’s facebook group.
Once you’re in the group, simply click on the extension. It will take a few minutes to scrape the members and will automatically download it to your computer as a csv.
The next step is to create a trial account on Phantombuster and utilize their LinkedIn Profile URL Finder to generate the LI urls for the members you just scraped.
Once you’ve generated the LI urls for the group members, go to your campaign dashboard in Orca and click on Create Campaign in the navbar.
There are four types of campaigns in Orca:
Search on Linkedin
Upload a CSV of Linkedin URLs
Send Linkedin URLs by Zapier
Send Linkedin URLs from Growlabs
For this hack, you can either upload a CSV or pass leads through Zapier.
BLUF: don’t be that idiot that sends a paragraph long pitch in a connect or follow-up.
Dux-soup User Group — winning
Why winning? To give your campaign some positive vibes. :)
Once your campaign is published, the leads will be in pending status while Orca verifies the URLs are valid. Note: make sure that your Linkedin account is connected with Orca, otherwise… all the leads will be invalid because Orca won’t be able to login to your account and verify.
Verification will start within 15–30 minutes, unless that is you’ve already ran Orca all day and it needs to rest. Yes, robots need sleep too.
Orca runs around 200 engagements per day for premium users and half that for basic users. I don’t know the exact number because we randomize it to keep your account safe from being flagged.
Don’t get flagged. Set up a automation schedule under Automation Settings in Preferences
Okay, cool. So what was the result of my scrape? Well, I managed to generate around 300+ Linkedin URLs, 230 are still pending verification. Out of the 91 profiles that I’ve engaged with, I connected with and started conversations with 52.8% …. when was the last time you saw email opens or response that high?
Better get cracking on your Linkedin game before everyone and their mothers start running social selling campaigns on Orca. There’s a shelf life to every growth tactic. Don’t be a damn laggard.
Source https://useorca.com/blog/blog/how-i-scraped-my-competitions-facebook-group
Loving Orca? Learn how you can save up to 100% on your subscription by sharing Orca with your friends and team members. Deets below:
When you open your dashboard you’ll see a link in the navigation bar next to the Create Campaign button with the text Share the love (save $$$).
When you click this link you’ll be taken to the referral section under Preferences. Simply copy your unique referral link from the Share thissection (highlighted in the screenshot below), and share it with the world to start
As soon as one of your friends, colleagues or followers uses your unique referral link to subscribe to Orca, both of you will get $5 off your subscription, for as long as both of you keep your subscriptions to Orca.
How can your friends use the code?
When your friend clicks on the link, they’ll be sent to the signup/login page, where they can sign up for an Orca account. After creating an account and subscribing, the discount will be applied to both of your accounts automatically.
Ta-da! Magic.
I’m long overdue on this one… it’s been about month since we launched our integrations with Growlabs, a super powerful lead gen and email automation platform, and we still don’t have an announcement post, but hey, better late than never… right?
Originally, when Anson and I first set out on building Orca we envisioned a tool that could do everything from lead generation to prospecting on social and email. We didn’t like the idea of having to string together all these different sales enablement tools.
We were using Dux-soup + Massplanner to automate social engagements on Linkedin and other platforms. For cold outbound emails we were using several different tools from Yet Another Mail Merge to Mailshake. I’ve since stopped running cold email campaigns. Don’t get me wrong, I still run email campaigns, I just do it differently now, but more on that later.
Anson and I still believe in our vision, we’re just approaching it differently now. Rather than going it alone and competing with existing tools in the sales enablement space, we’re instead collaborating with other companies. This enables us to focus on what we do best, which is the social selling aspect, while enabling our partners to do what they do best, relationship management, lead generation, and email outreach.
Why did we integrate with Growlabs?
Simple. Our lead generation tool is shite, and I’ll be the first to admit it’s shite. With lead generation, you need a tool that can help you get more precise. Our tool is basic, but Growlabs’ isn’t… their audience search filters enable you to get more targeted.
Growlabs’ audience filters are broken out into five buckets; most common filters, company lists, financials, technographics and more contact details. I’m not going into details on how to use their filters, but if you’re interested, here’s a really awesome post they’ve put together: Lead Generation Filters Overview.
I just want to quickly show you how you can now automate and sequence LinkedIn profile views, connect requests, and follow ups by pushing leads from Growlabs into Orca before, or in parallel with, sending your email sequences.
We use this integration a lot at Orca. We know this is definitely something that will help your team get noticed faster without them having to manually engage leads on Linkedin.
Alright, without further adieu, here’s the webinar I did with Jeff from Growlabs. Feel free to fast forward to 5:50 for the demo on pushing leads from Growlabs to Orca.
By now, most of us sales guys, marketers, growth hackers, whatever you want to call yourself, have come to terms with the fact that cold emails just aren’t as effective as they used to be 2–3 years ago.
It’s the truth. Open rates and replies are dropping. Sure, you can tighten up your subject line or improve the copy, but it’s still not enough.
The cat is out of the bag. I repeat. Everyone knows about email automation and everyone (and their mothers) is out cold emailing everyone.
That leaves you unnoticed by potential customers who are immune to your email sorcery.
But what if…
What if email isn’t the only way to reach potential customers and get your foot in the door?
Most of you are already using platforms like Linkedin to find leads.
Some of you even know about the “look back” and are actively engaging leads with soft social touches, namely profile visits and invites.
Many of you are doing this manually yourself or hiring interns, possibly even sales development reps, to run these engagements.
A few of you are ahead of the curve using basic tools like Dux-soup to automate some of these soft engagements.
Why it works
The concept of inbound marketing is predicated on others seeking you out. When other professionals look at your profile, it’s an invitation for you to check them out.
The trick is to get the right people to look at your profile so you can take it from there.
When you get a notification that someone looked at your Linkedin profile, you will almost always look back to see who they are. Potential customer? Investor? Competitor?
What do you think happens when you look at profiles of potential customers?
Chances are, they will look back and checkout your profile.
The more profiles you visit, the more people will look back. The more people who look back at your profile, the more likely you’ll get connected. And the more connections you make, the larger your network and opportunities to do business.
How many of you out there are sequencing soft social touches as you would with emails?
I’m willing to bet that number is very small in comparison. Meaning, now is the perfect time to start orchestrating these types of social touches on Linkedin before the word gets out and the tactic is adopted by the rest of the market.
You know what they say, “Early bird catches the worm.”
Imagine creating a sequence like this:
That’s already pretty cool in and of itself… but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Here are a few future Linkedin hacks we plan on building:
Auto-skill endorsement
Auto-request recommendation
Auto-withdraw connect requests
Post like and commenting
Direct message sequences
There’s a few more hacks we’re keeping under wraps. Stay tuned.
So here’s the thing. Orca is a team of techies and growth specialists who believe in leveraging technology to help companies scale faster by automating the small, but monotonous and repetitive tasks that we think robots can handle just as well, if not better than humans.
We’re doing this, even if it means breaking the rules, because we know running a business is a ton of work and there’s definitely way more important things you’d rather focus your attention on.
There’s still a bunch of features we need to build to make Orca more powerful, but we’re pretty pumped with what we’ve built so far.
Source https://useorca.com/blog/blog/automated-sequences-on-linkedin
Here are some ways to use Boolean logic and construct your searches:
Quoted searches: For an exact phrase, enclose the phrase in quotation marks. For example, type “product manager”. You can also use quotation marks if you want to find someone with a multi-word title.
LinkedIn search only supports standard, straight quotation marks (“). Other software or websites may use special symbols that our system does not recognize. Curly quotation marks (“), also known as smart quotes or typographer’s quotes, aren’t supported.
In order to optimize overall site performance, stop words such as “by”, “in”, “with”, etc. aren’t used.
NOT searches: Type the word NOT (capital letters) immediately before a search term to exclude it from your search results. This typically limits your search results. For example, “programmer NOT manager”.
OR searches: Type the word OR (capital letters) to see results that include one or more items in a list. This typically broadens your search results. For example, “sales OR marketing OR advertising”.
AND searches: AND searches: Type the word AND (capital letters) to see results that include all items in a list. This typically limits your search results. For example, “accountant AND finance AND CPA”.
Note: You don’t need to use AND if your search has two or more terms, you’ll automatically see results that include all of them.
Parenthetical searches — To do a complex search, you can combine terms using parentheses. For example, to find people who have “VP” in their profiles, but exclude “assistant to VP” or SVPs, type VP NOT (assistant OR SVP).
When handling searches, the overall order to precedence is:
Quotes [“”]
Parentheses [()]
NOT
AND
OR
Things to keep in mind:
The + and — operators are not officially supported by LinkedIn. Using AND in place of + and NOT in place of — makes a query much easier to read and guarantees that we’ll handle the search correctly.
When using NOT, AND, or OR operators, you must type them in uppercase letters.
Linkedin doesn’t support wildcard “*” searches.
Boolean search will work in the keyword field in Recruiter and Linkedin.com, and will work in the Company, title, and keyword field in Sales Navigator.
Source https://useorca.com/blog/blog/using-boolean-search-on-linkedin
Hey! Dan here. I’m one of the founders of Orca and I was tagged to write our first blog post ever 🎉… Yippie!
Full disclaimer. I’m a sales guy, not a writer. So if you’re expecting Pulitzer quality blogs, thank you… but you are sadly mistaken.
😂 I write at about the fourth grade level, you’re just gonna to have to bear with me on this one.
Now that expectations have been set, let’s kick this thing off with the question that’s on everyone’s mind:
What is Orca and why did we build it?
Hold up. Multi-tasking. Thinking, writing, coffee in belly. Need to process.
I’m gonna assume you do sales like me and you’re starting to see a drop in email opens and responses.
I know what you’re thinking. No, it’s not you… it’s the The Law of Shitty Click-Throughs. 💩
Coined by Andrew Chen, a ex-Growth at Uber, the law states: “Over time, all marketing strategies result in shitty click-through rates.”
The same law applies to email automation. Cold emails are ineffective because everyone and their mothers are doing it.
That brings us back to Orca. What is it exactly?
Orca is a social selling tool that automates engagements on Linkedin, like visiting profiles and sending connect requests, and emails all in a sequence.
Say what 😱? You read that right… with Orca you have the ability to not only automate and sequence emails, but also Linkedin engagements and eventually across other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Angellist, etc.
Why should you automate your Linkedin?
For starters, LinkedIn is a gold mine. Professionals all around the world use it to find and engage leads and interact with their network.
And you know this… chances are you’re already using Linkedin as we speak to find leads, visit profiles, and send connect request to potential customers.
Most of you are probably doing this manually, one tedious-ass click at a time. Some of you even hired interns to do this for you because it really is that boring 💤.
But guys… no finger should ever suffer the fate of 1000 clicks.
Thank God for automation.
But let’s get honest here… sales is not about automation, it’s about real conversations with real people. Everything you do up to that point is simply trying to get your foot in the door.
But getting your foot in the door ain’t that easy anymore. It’s gotten harder and harder over the last few years.
Cold emails alone just aren’t as effective as they used to be. So you gotta somehow make yourself standout in the crowd.
What do you do? You gotta warm them up through social selling.
In other words, you’ve got to use Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, etc. to engage and build rapport with leads.
In my opinion, Linkedin is the best platform to engage and warm up leads. There are several things you can do to get noticed, or initiate what I like to call a look back.
A look back happens when you do something that causes someone to visit your profile.
Most people don’t know this… but your Linkedin profile page is really just a landing page. There are ways to optimize your Linkedin profile, which I’ll talk about in a future post.
Here are some actions you can take to trigger a look back:
1️⃣ Visiting a lead’s profile
2️⃣ Sending an invite to connect
3️⃣ Endorsing skills
4️⃣ Liking or commenting on posts
The best way to think about a look back is to think of it as if it were a billboard on a highway. You’re taking small actions here and there that gets you noticed by potential customer. These actions add up over time.
In marketing, we call this orchestration. Hence the name, Orca 😹.
We’ll talk more about orchestration, but generally speaking, orchestration is a strategy used to control consumer touch points across different channels or platforms.
There are several tools out there on the market that one can use to automate engagements on Linkedin, here are few:
Dux-soup
GPZ Linkedin
Linkedhelper
Linkedomata
These tools are awesome. I’ve personally used Dux-soup and GPZ Linkedinand they are great, but both lacked the functionality to sequence across multiple channels.
For example, if you wanted to visit a profile, wait a day, and visit the profile again, the only way to do this on Dux-soup is visit the profiles, save the profiles, literally wait a day, and visit the saved profiles again.
Furthermore, if I wanted to visit a profile, send a connect request, then send a few emails in sequence… I’d have to use other tools along with Dux-soup to do it.
I’d have to use a lead gen tool to generate work emails. Then I’d have to take the lead list, upload it to cold email tool, like Mailshake, and set up a sequence there…
That’s already too much work for me. I’ve got more important stuff to do like talking to customers… and organizing my desk 😱.
This leads us to the second part of the question we asked at the beginning.
Why did we build Orca?
The answer is simple. I’m lazy, which is normally a bad thing, but sometimes some good can come out of it.
We built Orca to create an end-to-end sales development experience, a TOFU(top of funnel) sales tool that handles lead generation and prospecting plus all the social stuff you can do on Linkedin.
Sales the traditional way:
Currently, sales peeps are either buying lead lists or scraping the web for leads and uploading it to a lead gen tool, like FindThatLead or Hunter.io, to generate the emails, downloading the list and importing it into a CRM or email automation tool to sequence emails and calls. To run any social selling engagements, they’ll have to use a different tool to visit and connect with leads.
Whyyyyy? 😫
That’s so much work… not to mention how tedious and repetitive it is.
Orca makes prospecting easier by taking out all unnecessary in-between steps from finding a lead to generating emails to sequencing emails and calls, minimizing your stack the same time. And because it’s all automated, Orca frees you up to focus on the most important thing that is talking to leads and closing deals.
Orca literally handles everything. Tell Orca WHO you want to talk to and define HOW you want to do it and Orca will execute.
It’s like having a virtual sales development assistant. 🤖
“Ask and you shall receive.”
What Orca can do for you…
Auto-visit leads
Orca will auto-visit profiles and automatically retrieve data such as name, role, company, size, and most importantly, emails.
Yeah, you read that correctly. We will grab work emails for you… You don’t have to worry about downloading a csv file and uploading it into a third party tool or Google sheet add-on to get emails.
All the profiles you visit will get a notification indicating that you’ve visited them, some of them may even visit you back or possibly even connect with you.
That said, make sure you work on your Linkedin profile. Optimize it and treat it like a landing page or website. Offer value upfront and you’ll start getting new connections, introductions, and leads without lifting a finger.
Auto-connect with leads
Instead of manually clicking on the “connect” button and writing out an invite, Orca will auto-connect you with leads.
You can personalize your messages using magic snippets.
Orca also has a feature, where you can automatically follow up after you’ve made a connection.
My connection rate is about 46%.
And now that they are in my network, I’ll be able to add value in a number of different ways to start building rapport.
If you’re looking to get the most out of your connections on Linkedin, you’ll need to go beyond just automation… you’ll need to invest some real quality time to build value.
Remember automation gets your foot in the door, the rest of it is up to you.
Cross-platform sequences
This is our bread and butter and by far the coolest feature we have. Instead of talking about it, watch the video below to get a sense of how you can use Orca to automatically scale your reach and land more meetings.
Source https://useorca.com/blog/blog/things-youre-not-doing-on-linkedin-but-should
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