marlasantana
Orca leads prospects through an automated sales process by re-engaging prospects continuously,
based on their interactions with your social media messages and emails. More info at https://useorca.com/
Source: https://useorca.com/
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
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.
You’ve got a killer sales process that keeps reps productive and easy to manage.
But you can’t help but think things could be more efficient. What’s the answer to this?
Sales automation.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to use sales automation to make time-consuming tasks more efficient, generate more leads and close more deals .
What is Sales Automation?
Sales automation is the practice of taking repetitive and timely sales activity and transforms them into automated processes through the use of technology.
These tasks can be executed on a daily, weekly or even monthly basis. The benefit of sales automation? Allowing sales reps and managers alike spend more time on the tasks that make more of an impact to the sales pipeline.
The Benefits of Sales Automation
Now you understand what sales automation is, why should you even care?
There’s a lot of time and effort in implementing automation in your sales organization. So you’ve gotta be sure the benefits are worth it.
And they are! With sales automation, you’ll start to reap the following rewards:
Cost reduction: It’s highly likely that your current processes are a huge drain on resources. And it’s harder to acquire new prospects than nurture existing one. With sales automation, both ends of the sales process can be optimized for greater efficiency.
Conversion boost: The follow-up process is an important activity in the art of sales. Yet so many of us drop the ball on it. With sales automation, you’ll never become a forgotten name in your prospect’s inbox.
Time efficiency: Spend time focusing on the leads that are most likely to close. Sales automation means working on the activities and prospects that bring the biggest rewards.
Customer loyalty: A scalable approach to personalization means your customers will feel like they’re getting a truly tailored experience.
Supercharged revenue: Sales activity is scaled up, more leads are being nurtured and reps focus on the juiciest opportunities. The results? More deals closed and more revenue.
Conducting a Sales Activity Audit
Now you understand the benefits of sales automation, it’s time to get planning.
Here’s the thing: sales automation relies on the right technologies.
This means that you need to understand what you’re going to automate before you put in place the tools to do so.
Running regular sales activity audits will shine a light on any processes that can not only be automated, but also optimized or even thrown out altogether.
Part of the day-to-day challenge for sales reps is the need to continuously enter huge amounts of data. This often leads them to take shortcuts, entering only the minimum amount of information necessary.
Which then leads to inaccurate sales data and unenriched contact information. Which is why sales automation is so important.
Here’s a five-step process to running a sales activity audit to identify areas in your sales process for automation:
Evaluate: Map out every activity and process used by your reps. Ask yourself, which of these things are menial tasks that can be automated? What are the highest-impact activities that lead to real sales results? Do the same with the data being collected within each activity, too.
Cut the fat: Sometimes, processes are there simple because “they’re the way we’ve always done it.” Identify any activities that are redundant and discard them immediately. This will require some digging through your CRM to uncover the right data.
Accountability: Who is in charge of managing and executing on these processes? Look at how data is being handled both up and down the sales funnel.
Minimization: Look at your key processes. Identify any steps or data fields that could be stripped down or amalgamated.
Identify automation opportunities: With your key processes and data-points identified, it’s time to see what can be automated.
Creating a Sales Automation Strategy
So, you’ve identified the sales activity that can be automated.
Now it’s time to put a strategy together.
Why is this important?
Without a strategy, you may end up selecting the wrong tools for the job. This mistake can waste you months of work and thousands of dollars.
Sales Journey Mapping
It all starts with an understanding of the sales journey.
How do your customers go from the awareness stage to becoming a won deal?
This is where journey mapping is key. Once you have a map of your sales journey, you’ll know exactly where to put your efforts.
Of course, there’s no “one-size fits all” when it comes to mapping. All customers are different, and the way they consume content and research their challenges will vary.
By breaking each stage of the sales cycle into funnels, you can ensure you cover every eventuality.
Let’s say a lead signs up for a trial of your software. The next step might be to wait 2 days and send an automated customer success email. What happens if the user doesn’t respond? You’ll need two different paths in order to lead the user to your desired outcome.
For this particular journey, the map could look something like this:
There are several ways the journey can go based on the behavior of the user. As you can see from the “Exit” nodes, each journey map can overlap depending on the actions your customer takes.
Your sales process journey maps should illustrate all possible outcomes based on your communications and the behaviors of your prospects, leads and customers.
Let’s check out some example funnels that might apply to your organization:
Lead Qualification: Once a prospect becomes a lead, it’s important to qualify. This can be done with a phone call to learn more about their needs. The first three steps to this sequence, then, would be:
User fills a form
Automated email is sent
Sales rep calls up new lead
Lead Nurturing: These are best for prospects further up the funnel or leads who have not yet purchased or taken another action. These usually involve sending educational material via email e.g. blog posts and lead magnets. Every time a prospect interacts with these education emails, they’re given a lead score.
Presentation: This usually involves a formal presentation, either in-person or via digital communication (e.g. using Zoom). This stage would involve scheduling steps, personalizing the presentation to the prospect’s needs and any post-presentation tasks to get the lead closer to becoming a customer.
Creating Your Sales Journey Maps
As you’ve already evaluated steps in the process, you can quickly begin the process of creating your map.
These maps should resemble flowcharts, and are easy to put together with tools such as SmartDraw and LucidChart.
When creating your journey maps, keep these tips in mind:
Start with all the ways new contacts enter the top of the funnel. How does data enter the system and what processes are used to enter that data?
Identify all triggers that move contacts along the sales funnel.
Include all core products to your map. This should also include how prospects navigate the research process for each.
Remember to map out any manual tasks. This includes the presentation and proposal creation.
Be sure to map non-interactive tasks, especially any prospecting and data enrichment processes.
Once you’ve mapped your sales journey, it’s time to identify which areas can be automated using sales automation software.
To help you, we’ve prepared a list of 14 tools for you to evaluate.
You find the right prospects and accounts, identify the right executive and conduct outreach through email or social channels.
Much of the prospecting process still involved collecting and managing data. Instead of continuously diving through LinkedIn, copy-and-pasting information into spreadsheets, let’s look at how to automate it.
Prospect.io
Prospect.io helps you identify the email addresses of contacts on LinkedIn and websites. It’ll show you contact details by job role and validates email addresses in bulk.
Growbots
Growbots has access to over 200 million contacts. Using their platform, you can enter granular targeting information to find your ideal customers. From job titles to area of interests and seniority, the level of targeting is vast.
Sales outreach based on bad data leads to poor productivity and bad results — both on response rates and your SPAM score.
UpLead
Similar to the tools above, UpLead helps you identify the right contacts at your target accounts. Most importantly, it helps you enrich your data with the most up-to-date information. Every time you access a new contact it will perform real-time email verification.
Datanyze
Datanyze bridges the gap between sales data and CRM. Integrating with all major CRM platforms, Datanyze enriches lead and contact data to provide “actionable insights” on your target accounts.
Email is the biggest communication channel when it comes to sales. It’s how we book meetings, gauge interest and close deals.
But when it comes to outreach at scale, automation can make it far easier.
Mailshake
MailShake is one of those lean and easy-to-use tools that seem too good to be true. With scalable templates, A/B testing and real-time analysis tools, it’ll make sure your outreach emails are ready to generate a healthy response.
Growlabs
Growlabs works in a similar manner to Mailshake, but provides trigger features to create intelligent email sequences based on your prospect’s actions based on machine learning technologies.
Whether it’s LinkedIn, Twitter or even Facebook – your prospects are there to be found. Here’s how you scale the process.
Orca
It only feels right we give our own sales automation tool, Orca, a shoutout. With Orca, you can automate your LinkedIn engagement and outreach. Use powerful targeting features to segment your campaigns and get the right message to the right contacts.
Mention
Keep an eye on the conversation with Mention. Their platform provides social listening tools, allowing you to monitor certain keywords and topics. Whenever your brand is talked about online, you can be there to join the conversation.
The phone is still a highly effective method of communication with leads, prospects and customers alike. But it’s never effectively been done at scale.
Luckily, there are some innovative tools to help you automate your sales calling activities.
Close.io Calling Platform
Close.io’s call platform promises to double your outbound call volume using their powerful automated dialling. Using their “Power Dialler,” Close.io will call through a list of leads automatically and connect you with the first person who picks up.
HubSpot Calling
Using HubSpot’s calling platform, you can prioritize and line up a whole day’s worth of sales calls straight from the HubSpot CRM system. Call logging and call recording features also allow for more effective sales conversations and analysis.
“How about Thursday at the same time?”
Nobody loves to play “calendar ping-pong.” And yet scheduling is a huge part of the sales process. So why does it have to be so long-winded?
In truth, it doesn’t. Here are some of our favourite tools for automating the meeting and scheduling process.
Calendly
Calendly allows you to add available slots in your diary to your emails. This way, prospects and customers can select the time that works for them, and boom — it’s all scheduled.
x.ai
x.ai takes the same principles as Calendly and wraps it in an AI interface. Simply cc in “Amy” or “Andrew” (x.ai’s AI assistants) and they’ll execute on the scheduling tasks you give them.
Which is why sales proposals are key. They outline the individual challenges of the prospect and tailors a solution to them.
Despite it’s personalized nature, it’s still incredibly time-consuming. So let’s look at ways we can intelligently automate the process.
Bidsketch
Bidsketch helps you save time on proposals by creating a drag-and-drop content system, tailoring your proposals with the content most critical to your prospects. It also includes digital signing features and analytics, allowing you to see how your prospects share and interact with the content.
Proposify
Proposify provides salespeople and agencies with powerful, easy-to-manage and beautiful proposal templates. You can embed rich media (such as video) and they respond to any device, meaning your proposals will look slick on desktop and mobile alike.
Let’s Get Automated
With your sales journey mapped out and a list of tools to automate time-consuming tasks, you should have everything you need to boost revenue and create a hyper-productive sales force.
Unlike many manual activity-led organizations, you can run rings around your competition by nurturing more leads and closing more deals in half the time.
How are you currently using sales automation to supercharge your sales efficiency? Share your processes and tools with us in the comments below.
Hey guys, Sanja here, checking in for the first time with my first ever social selling growth hack through Orca. It’s taken me a minute, but you know what they say…
Good things take time.
I didn’t want to share anything until I had something really valuable to share. There’s justway too much garbage and noise out there already, right?
That said, I’m super excited and a bit nervous at the same time to share this little social selling hack with you. Fingers crossed that you get something out of it.
Let’s splash in (see what I just did hehe 😂)
In this article, I am going to show you how to scrape and engage members of LinkedIn groups with automated social selling sequences in Orca, but first let me share some thoughts on this hack.
Why scrape LinkedIn groups
“Is this hack even worth my time?” you’re asking.
I’ve been running this hack for the past week, and have been making some mental notes that I am now going to share with you into writing.
Here are two reasons why scraping members from Linkedin groups rock my socks…
#1 Build ginormous lead lists in under 5 minutes
You can build a lead list of 500,000+ leads in under 5 minutes unless of course, you have really slow internet speed, type slow, or just do things slow…that I cannot help you with dear sir or madam.
Plus, you can literally find a Linkedin group for any niche, vertical, market, segment, etc. There are teeny tiny groups to supersized groups. Take your pick.
#2 More data = better segmentation = improved messaging in your campaigns
The lead data you get back from this scrape is for a lack of words: “Woaaah”
You’re not only going to get the basics like name, position, LinkedIn URLs, but also top 3 skills, current companies they’re working at, previous companies, the industry, titles and the different groups they’re in, which btw you can probably run a follow up scrape on. 🤔
Why is having more data better? Well, when you have a list of a few hundred thousand leads, you’ll want to segment and bucket them into smaller categories. So with all this data in your CSV, you’ll be able to narrow your lead list into more precise segments… I highly recommend playing around with different combinations of interests and professions.
Once you’ve narrowed down your groups, you will be able to do a much better job personalizing messages in your social selling campaigns. Write engaging copy and use the data to generate real conversations to help you start building relationships with potential buyers and followers on Linkedin.
Convinced yet? Keep reading…
So, to run this social selling hack, you will need the following tools:
Phantombuster
Orca and, of course…
Positive vibes and some creativity 🤘
Okay, let’s not wait any longer and get going with the hack!
Step 1
Create a Phantombuster account on. You’ll get a 14-day free trial — trust me that’s plenty of time to scrape a few Linkedin groups. After that, you’ll need to upgrade. If you got some value from this hack… it might make sense to take the leap,
If you don’t subscribe, you can still scrape one Linkedin group per day with some heavy call limits. So… keep that in mind.
Step 2
Once your account is created, go to the Phantombuster’s Linkedin Group Members API. Read through the API if you must, but if you’re ready, simply click on the bright orange button to Use this API.
Clickity-click.
Step 3
Next, you’ll be redirected to your dashboard (aka My APIs) where you can configure the Linkedin Group Members API.
Click on Show More designated by the three dots next to the Launch button.
Step 4
Next, we’ll need to insert your Linkedin session cookie and the group URL into the configuration.
But Sanja… “How do I get the session cookie?”
No worries homey, I got your back… just follow these steps:
Open LinkedIn, right-click anywhere on the screen. A drop-down menu will show up.
Select Inspect from the list. A side window will open.
Under the Applications tab, click on Cookies from the left panel and select “https://www.linkedin.com”.
Locate the li_at cookie from the table and copy the alphanumeric string under the Values column.
Go back to Phantombuster and paste the string into the Season cookiefield.
Tada! And there you have it… on to the next.
Step 5
Next, copy and paste the LinkedIn group URL into Group URL field into configuration form.
Note: You need to be a member of the group in order to scrape it.
Step 6
Give your list a name.
Step 7
When ready, Launch the extractor and watch growth hacking magic happen right before your eyes.
Step 8
Once it’s done scraping, you can download your CSV by clicking on the Download button.
Step 9
Once you’ve got your lead list, head on over to your dashboard in Orca and create a campaign.
I recommend choosing the Upload CSV campaign because that’s the one I’m going to use for this hack. Alternatively, you can also use Zapier, though I’d like to reserve those campaigns for lists that are generating leads dynamically through on-going hacks.
Note: Make sure your CSV has a column of Linkedin profile URLs.
Once you’ve uploaded the CSV and set up your social sequence in Orca, Publish the campaign.
Uploaded leads will be in pending approval status, during which Orca will be working in the background to verify the profile URLs. Once verified, leads will move from pending status to approved status, which basically means they’ve been passed into the sequence.
This can take anywhere between to 30–60 minutes depending on the number of engagements scheduled ahead of this campaign.
***** Update *****
I’m currently running two campaigns with this social selling hack, I’ll be updating this post at the end of my campaigns with the results and after action review.
If you enjoyed this post, give it a little 👏
Source https://useorca.com/blog/blog/how-to-scrape-and-connect-with-members-from-linkedin-groups
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
You don’t need me to tell you how popular LinkedIn has become over the last 18 months.
With 250 million active monthly users, it’s likely your ideal customers are waiting to be found.
In this in-depth guide, you’ll learn how to create the perfect LinkedIn marketing strategy. Positioning your brand as an authority, creating killer content and getting your teams on-board — it’s all here.
Let’s get stuck in.
Step 1: Defining Your Strategy & Setting Goals
You can’t execute on a strategy until you’ve defined it. And you won’t know where you’re going until you’ve set clear goals.
Which is why this is the first and most crucial step of this process.
Why?
Without setting clear goals, you’ll end up trying a whole host of tricks without any clue what you’re shooting for.
According to LinkedIn themselves, 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn:
Furthermore, 94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content. Even more reason to ensure your LinkedIn marketing strategy is locked-in tight.
As a growth, marketing or salesperson, what are you trying to accomplish? Is it:
Increase lead generation?
Get more eyeballs to your content?
Drive more traffic to your website or landing pages?
Build brand awareness?
Attract and recruit the best talent?
Whatever it is, start with that metric, as it will ultimately drive your strategy.
And don’t worry, every step of this guide will include examples that contribute to each of these goals.
Now it’s time for the maths. Let’s say your goal is to generate 100 leads from LinkedIn next quarter. You need to reverse engineer the process that will get you there. Let’s say 50% is 100 new leads next quarter and your current metrics are as follows:
1,400 blog visits from LinkedIn a month
5.2% conversion rate from reader to newsletter subscriber (73 subscribers)
19.5% nurture rate from subscriber to MQL (15 leads)
Which means you’re generating 45 leads each quarter on average. Therefore, you’d need to generate an extra 55 leads next quarter to reach your goal.
Which brings us to the next set of questions:
Which content performs better than others?
Which LinkedIn marketing activity brings in the majority of those leads?
What new activity can you test to generate leads (with a positive ROI)?
The rest of this guide will aim to answer these questions. Each step will show you how to fill your strategy with the activities that will help you to reach your goals.
If you don’t yet have a defined content strategy, or are yet to truly tap into the power of LinkedIn, then there’s even more opportunity for you.
Step 2: Setup & Optimize Your Company Page
Many of the tactics and approaches taught in this guide are best practices.
Optimizing your company page is one of them.
Your company page will be looked upon by potential clients and recruits alike. It’s a chance to showcase your values, content and culture to those who are interested in working with you.
Here’s how you make your company profile as appealing to those people as possible.
Use Killer Imagery
Your profile picture and banner are the first two elements that visitors to your company page will see. Therefore, it’s important to have these as polished as possible.
Here are the dimensions and specs you should use for both:
Profile picture: 300 x 300 in .PNG format
Banner image: 1536 x 768 pixels in .PNG format
Both images should not exceed 8 MB.
For example, Drift use a simple yet high-quality version of their logo as their profile picture. They also use their banner space as an opportunity to promote their Hypergrowth conference:
Twitter, on the other hand, use their banner space to highlight their work space and celebrate their culture:
Finally, ServiceNow put their people first while making sure their signature brand colors are prominent where possible:
Your banner image is the perfect spot to put your end-goal forward. Use this space to generate leads or include a call-to-action for an eBook or other collateral.
Is recruitment your goal? Use this space to celebrate your culture and give potential hires a peek at day-to-day life at your organization.
Write an Engaging “About us”
Once you’ve hooked people in with your image, it’s time to share your story.
Your “About us” section should put your values, culture and most important value proposition front-and-center.
Here, Drift use their About section as a way to simply say who they are, how they help and a few social proof points (e.g. “venture-backed company”):
In this next example, HubSpot drop as many social proof points as possible – including the number of customers they serve and offices they have located around the world:
Here are some elements to consider including in your About us section:
Number of customers/clients you serve
Name of big companies you work with
Your core value proposition
How you help your clients solve their challenges
The services you specialize in
Any awards (including any workplace-related awards)
Calls-to-action
Including a compelling call-to-action (CTA) can compel visitors to take the next step. Looking again at HubSpot, they use a simple CTA to drive potential customers to their website. Then, they offer a secondary CTA for any potential recruits.
You can also link to a free eBook download, webinar or events. It all depends on what your end goals are.
Create a Robust Profile
There are many areas of your company profile to fill out. These include:
Website
Year founded
Specialties (an opportunity to be found for keywords in LinkedIn search)
Featured Groups
As well as these things, you can also expand your company profile with the “Life” tab. This is the perfect opportunity to lift up the hood on what goes on in your company.
With the Life tab, you can showcase elements such as:
Company photos
Company leaders
Culture insights
Custom modules
Drift have executed this tab perfectly. Each section highlights exactly what it’s like to work with and at their company, attracting new hires and investors alike:
Use this section to highlight your core values. Show prospects and new hires alike what you’re up to and the new, innovative solutions you’re working on.
Step 3: Getting Employees On Board
The term “pod” has been thrown about recently. These are groups of professionals with similar audiences who share each other’s content on LinkedIn to mutually extend their reach.
Your current employees are your greatest advocates on LinkedIn.
The problem is that many don’t see how it benefits both the company and themselves.
So, how do you enable your teams to create and distribute your content or messaging? Just follow this process.
Promote it Internally
Encouraging your teams to get involved is a continuous job. Which is why it’s important to appoint someone to lead the charge.
Ideally, this should be someone from your marketing team who believes in the importance of LinkedIn as a marketing channel.
This might even be you!
Then, find some internal advocates who are enthusiastic about getting involved. Again, these might be in your marketing department. But look outside to your sales or even customer support teams.
And don’t forget to search through your company LinkedIn page for those already active on the platform!
Share Your Vision & Benefits
Now you have people on board. It’s time to share why you’re doing what you’re doing.
This is where having a documented strategy comes in handy. But the other important factor is sharing what’s in it for them.
Why should they adopt your LinkedIn marketing strategy? Why should they care?
There are two possible ways to do this:
Tie company benefits to employee outcome, e.g. more customers equals more profit, which leads to bigger employee bonuses.
Educate them on how this may benefit their careers. By positioning themselves as a reliable figure in their field, they’re more likely to get attention from upper management within the organization.
Of course, your employees will get attention from outside the organization as well. But this validation will just serve as proof that the process works.
Don’t choke their potential for fear they’ll jump ship.
Employee & Sales Enablement
With your employees all on the same page, it’s time to get them to work.
Of course, not everything outlined in this guide will apply to every employee within your organization. So here’s a checklist of basic activities you can encourage your teams to take on a daily, weekly and monthly basis:
Optimize Profiles: Show employees how to create rock solid positioning through their LinkedIn profile. Our guide to social selling will show you how to do this step-by-step.
Claim their URL: A shorter “vanity” URL will make it easier for them to share their profile.
Link Current Position: This will expand the network of the entire company and increase the company’s page rank.
Update contact information: Especially important for sales executives.
Endorsements are a huge social proof point and authority booster on LinkedIn. Encouraging staff to endorse each other will help everyone exponentially increase their credibility on the platform:
Furthermore, encourage team members to recommend each other. These act as “professional testimonials that shows other team members vouch for them:
Employees should also expand their own network by connecting with their teammates and peers in other organizations and industries. When the time comes to share content, this will expand its reach.
Speaking of which, keep your teams in the loop whenever new content is published. Show them how to share company posts. Encourage them to create their own posts by repurposing blog posts (see our social selling guide for more on how to do this).
Step 4: Building Your Audience
You now have a strong foundation for your LinkedIn marketing strategy.
It’s time to expand your audience.
Here, you’ll learn how to give your audience something worth following and how to attract them in the first place.
Give Them Something to Follow
On LinkedIn, creating great content is key.
When building an audience, you need to give them content that’s worth following. At time of writing, there are two forms of content that perform best on LinkedIn:
Native posts
LinkedIn video
Let’s look at examples of each and dissect them. First, here’s an example of a “native” LinkedIn post created by Josh Fechter:
Here, he recounts a conversation he had with the founder of a German startup. As you can see, he includes takeaways on this discussion to add as much value to his audience as possible.
There are dozens of other ways to structure this kind of content, including:
Lessons from your own experiences (both wins and failures)
Lessons learned from mentors
Stories from your day-to-day life (and how they apply to your business)
Lessons learned from other brands you’ve observed
Here, Aaron Orendorff talks about a recent failure and what he learned from it:
This post ended up generating over 400 engagements, extending the reach of his content and expanding his audience in the process.
Then there’s video content. This is doing extremely well on LinkedIn right now. We’re visual creatures, and video helps build a more personal connection with your audience.
There are several different ways to go about LinkedIn video. Allen Gannett, CEO of TrackMaven and author of The Creative Curve, simply shoots on his iPhone when in the company of interesting people to share nugget of wisdom:
Or, you could go a similar route to Neil Patel. He follows a similar direct-to-camera format, but does so with high-quality production:
Is there a wrong or right way? Absolutely not. It all depends on your budget and personal style.
If you’re just starting out, it doesn’t hurt to use a simple iPhone set up. It works well for Allen — his videos generate between 300 and 1,500 engagements!
The lesson here: it’s all about the content.
Finding Your Audience
Now you’ve got something to offer your ideal audience.
It’s time to find them and build connections.
First, it’s important to understand who you’re aiming to attract. This all depends on your goals.
For example, if you’re aiming to generate new customers, users or clients, it’s important to connect with your ideal buyer personas.
If, however, you want to expand the reach of your content, you can be a little more liberal with your targeting. Again, it all depends on your goals.
There are several ways to build your audience — both manual and automatic. For example, you can use LinkedIn’s search function to find those with certain job titles in specific locations and find those you want to connect with:
Then there are Boolean search strings, which gives you more flexibility on your targeting. These look a little something like this:
How do they work? Here’s a quick-start guide to using Boolean logic in your LinkedIn searches:
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).
Check out our full guide to Boolean searches in our Medium article here.
Finally, there are automated solutions (like our very own Orca platform). Using the same principles above, you can hyper-target your audience without having to manually connect with them one at a time:
It also allows you to automate the connection process. Simply write a personalized connection request (we recommend creating new searches for specific job roles/geos) and away you go.
Building a Relationship
Automating the LinkedIn marketing process is great. But LinkedIn is all about building relationships.
So, how do you go about building these relationships effectively?
While automation technology will give you a platform to scale, the most important missing piece is what you say and how you reach out.
Here are a handful of tips to help you execute effective LinkedIn outreach:
Do your research: Be on the pulse of the pains, challenges and desires of your target audience. For high-volume outreach, focus on job titles. However, if you’re looking to build connections with potential clients (ABM style), it’s important to personalize it to the individual.
State your purpose: LinkedIn is getting noisier, so it’s important to ease skeptical minds. Why are you connecting with them? Whatever the reason, it should always be to give value upfront in some way.
Don’t start cold: You don’t have to start with strangers you don’t know yet. Why not test your messaging on your existing connections? This way, you can validate whether or not your message will resonate.
Target second-degree connections: It’s easier to find common ground with second-degree connections than third-degree connections. Focus on the things you have in common — both the people you’re connected to and brands/events you’re affiliated with.
Third-degree outreach: Yes, this is a little tougher. But the potential rewards are still high. Focus on personalization through the challenges and desires of the persona.
From here, you’ll have a content and audience-building sequence.
As you and your team generates more connections, the more eyeballs there are on your content. And the more content you create the deeper the relationship you build.
Not to mention: the more connections you generate, the further the reach of your content. As people engage and share with your content, their connections will see that content, too.
You may even find you get an influx of connection requests as a result.
Step 5: Tapping Into LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn Groups has got a bad rep in recent years.
But they’re making a comeback – and for good reason.
By creating and engaging with Groups on LinkedIn, you’re tapping into an audience of marketers interested in the topics and solutions you have to offer.
This step will be segmented into two sections:
Creating your own LinkedIn Group
Engaging with existing Groups
Let’s get stuck in.
How to Create an Awesome LinkedIn Group
First, let’s address the obvious question:
Why bother creating a LinkedIn Group at all?
There are several benefits, including:
Credibility boosting: Build authority among your peers by sharing your thoughts, opinions and expertise on relevant topics.
New content ideas: LinkedIn Groups are a treasure trove of insights for your content, sales and marketing messaging.
Customer insights: Get a broader picture of your target audience. Map pains to job roles/personas by listening to conversations happening within your Group.
Distribute content: Share your owned content to an already active audience.
On top of all this, LinkedIn recently announced they were investing more time and resources in improving the Group experience.
Which is why now is the time to jump on them.
Start by choosing a topic that your audience cares about. There are thousands of groups already dedicated to high-level topics (e.g. “Social Media Marketing”). So, focus on narrow topics instead.
Using our brand as an example, we might focus on creating a Group on social selling – or better, social selling through LinkedIn.
Don’t create a Group around your product. It’s more likely our audience would be more interested in discussing new social selling techniques rather than their thoughts on the Orca platform.
Here’s a Group dedicated to bringing CRM experts together. It has over 110,000 members:
This is a great example of just how niche you can go.
Once you’ve chosen your topic, it’s time to create the Group itself. To create your group, head here: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/create
You’ll need to complete each field as thoroughly as possible:
Group title: What’s your group called? Make it relevant to the topic you’ve chosen.
Group logo: Create something that stands out.
Description: What’s your group about? What’s your mission? Talk about who the group is for and what you’ll be discussing.
Group rules: What content and discussion is allowed? Are members allowed to share content? Make them clear to understand.
Group membership: Do you want to be found or is this a private, unlisted Group?
Here’s the description for the “Inbound Marketers” Group:
It’s simple and to-the-point, but quickly describes what they’re about and who the Group is for.
And here’s a quick look at their Group rules:
As you can see, the expectations on each member is clear.
The next step is to create message templates. These include automated welcome messages your members will see once they’ve been approved to join your Group (if approval is required).
Here’s an example from the Wired Advisor Group:
Once you’ve got everything set up, it’s time to invite members to join. Start with your first-degree connections by sending them a message. Again, you can use automation technology to do this.
You should also promote it through other channels. For example, a short email to your list or a pinned tweet.
Finally, make sure you have some discussions started for your new members. Create two or three discussions and get your teams to chime in. This will ensure your Group appears to be bustling when they investigate and, eventually, join.
How to Engage With LinkedIn Groups
If creating a LinkedIn Group seems like to much work, you can always tap into someone else.
Bear in mind, you lose several benefits (such as getting your own posts into your members’ email inboxes). But it can still work wonders when tapping into a wider audience.
Here’s a process to follow when engaging with other LinkedIn Groups:
Identify the right Groups: This goes back to your defined strategy. Who are you trying to attract and for what purpose? For sales generation, I’d recommend Groups that bring relevant job roles together. For content distribution and audience building, aim for Groups gathered around specific topics.
Engage in discussion: Like any online community, start by engaging with the community first. Reply to discussions and comment on content shared by other members. Do this a few times before sharing your own content.
Follow the rules: Similarly, make sure it’s okay to share content. If it’s not, then focus on creating discussions that attract your target audience.
Be relevant: Don’t use Groups as a dumping ground for your content. Make sure the discussions and content you share are relevant to the Group.
Message members: You’re likely to attract the most engaged members over time. Use this as an opportunity to make new connections and get them into your lead nurturing sequence. You can browse members by clicking the “X members” link in the right-hand pane:
LinkedIn Groups can quickly get ruined by members sharing useless content and spamming the group with whitepapers and self-serving calls-to-action.
Don’t be one of these people!
Instead, add value to the group whenever possible. This is how you build credibility and establish intimate relationships.
Step 6: Testing the LinkedIn Ads Platform
As you can see, the organic capabilities of LinkedIn are vast and full of benefits.
But there’s an entire paid media platform waiting to be tapped into.
Using LinkedIn ads, you can get your content and offers in front of your ideal prospects with a thick, profitable ROI.
Here’s a quick beginners guide on how to get started.
Setting Up Your LinkedIn Ad Campaigns
First things first – head to LinkedIn’s “Advertise on LinkedIn” page and click “Create ad:”
Then, create a new account and associate it with your LinkedIn page (where possible). You’ll then be taken to the Campaign Group section:
Click “Create campaign” to begin the wizard. First, select which ad product you want to use. This will depend on your goals. For example, if you’re driving traffic to a landing page or piece of owned content, choose “Text Ads:”
For this example, we’ll choose “Sponsored Content.” This will serve our ad within the LinkedIn newsfeed and is more likely to generate more eyeballs. They’ll look something like this:
Choose what you want to accomplish with this campaign (in this case we’re looking to drive traffic):
Next, you’ll want to select an “Ad format.” These come in three formats:
Article, image or link
Carousel
Video
Experiment with different ad creative. Article, image or link formats are easiest to set up, as they require only static images and compelling copy. Start here, and test with video once you start seeing results.
Next, you’ll need to create your sponsored content. Here’s what you’ll need:
Name your sponsored content (for internal use)
A relevant, engaging image (1200 x 627 pixels in size)
Introductory text
Landing page URL
Ad headline
Ad description
Serving Your Ads to The Right Audience
So, you’ve got your campaign set up. This next step is where the power of LinkedIn’s advertising platform truly comes into play.
Let’s go through each targeting variable step-by-step. First, you have the ability to select a previously created targeting template or create one from scratch:
If this is your first time using the platform, stick with “the audience below.” Next, select the location you wish to target e.g. “San Francisco:”
Then, you can select specific criteria — which is where your targeting starts getting super specific:
For example, let’s say I wanted to target senior marketers within specific industries and had a specific company size. My targeting might look something like this:
Select whether you’d like to include the LinkedIn Audience Network and Audience Expansions, then save your audience as a template for later use.
Finally, set your goals and budget. Website visits is a bare-bones-basic metric to measure effectiveness, while conversions will optimize billing for CPA.
Choose a daily budget by calculating your monthly budget by the number of days you’ll be runnin each ad. For example, if your monthly budget is $500 and you intend to run your ads on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, your daily budget will be $40.
Enter your billing details, and away you go!
Creating Effective LinkedIn Ad Creative
Of course, you’ll want to maximize your results as much as possible.
Whether your job is to promote content or generate more leads, your ad copy and creative is what will make or break success.
To show you what makes great LinkedIn advertising, here are two examples and what they did well for you to takeaway and apply to your own efforts.
For example, this promoted post from IBM Analytics shares stats around hybrid data warehouses in an infographic-style video:
They use value-driven copy to demonstrate what the viewer will learn, and the video itself uses sleek, flat design elements.
This example from Bizible shows you don’t need fancy graphics to get results. In fact, this simple ad generated a 600% ROI for their efforts:
The reason it worked so well? They targeted a super-specific audience of 2,000 LinkedIn users, ensuring they were reaching those who were most likely to need what Bizible had to offer.
Success with LinkedIn ads is similar to Facebook Ads: it’s all about using the right copy, imagery and targeting to get results. Get a perfect storm with all three and you’ll generate a positive ROI with ease.
Step 7: Measuring Effectiveness with LinkedIn Analytics
With all this activity going on, it’s important to measure the effects your LinkedIn marketing strategy is having towards your goals.
Luckily, LinkedIn comes out of the box with some powerful analytics features.
Here’s how to measure your LinkedIn marketing effectiveness.
Measuring Awareness
Let’s start at the top of the funnel with connection and content engagement metrics.
Here are the metrics all LinkedIn marketers should be measuring:
Number of connections: Make this part of your team-wide LinkedIn marketing programme. Encourage your employees to share their connection growth on a monthly basis.
Content Engagement: Measure how much engagement your content generates. As a company administrator, you have a top-level view of which posts generate the majority of your engagements:
Follower Metrics: What is your month-on-month follower growth? How many followers engage with and share your content? Keep an eye on these key metrics to see how well your content is resonating with your audience.
Consideration Metrics
Moving down the funnel, it’s time to see what impact your LinkedIn marketing strategy is having on your goals:
Referral Traffic: How much traffic is coming from LinkedIn, and from which areas? For example, are you generating more traffic from LinkedIn Group engagement, or organic posts on LinkedIn ads? To segment these data out, use UTM codes.
Content Engagement: Using the “User Flow” feature in Google Analytics, you can measure how your LinkedIn audience is moving through your customer experience. Furthermore, segment content by channel and monitor engagement metrics such as avg. time on page and bounce rate.
Conversion Data
Finally, how is this all contributing to your business-critical metrics?
Connections to Leads: How many connections turn into real sales opportunities? It’s likely your sales reps will be generating the majority of LinkedIn leads, but ensure you have systems in place to track opportunities coming from all employees.
Subscriber & Lead Conversions: How many visitors to your website are turning into leads? Are they converting higher up or lower down the funnel? Measure how many LinkedIn visitors are converting into leads at all stages of the cycle.
Conclusion
If you’re looking to generate new B2B leads, setting up a LinkedIn marketing strategy is an absolute most.
Unlike Facebook, your target audience are there looking for content and advice that you have to offer them. Provide them with the information they need, add value wherever possible, and you’re bound to turn LinkedIn connections into loyal customers.
How are you currently using LinkedIn to generate new business? Share with us in the comments below!
Source https://useorca.com/blog/blog/how-to-build-a-linkedin-marketing-strategy
