Creating A LinkedIn Profile That Sells For You

Transcript

With a LinkedIn profile, there are multiple things going on here on… multiple levels with the profile. 

The LinkedIn profile is nearly always going to be the first place a prospect goes when they get a LinkedIn message from you or even when they get an email from you. Right. Because when someone is getting the email follow up from you, they’re going to want to see who’s this person emailing me before they reply to that. Right. So when they when they’re getting that message, whether it’s from Linked-In messaging, whether it’s from email, they’re going to come and check you out on your LinkedIn profile before they reply to you. 

And so the role of the profile is really important and the profile has to do multiple things. 

So firstly, it has to hook in their attention, build their interest in what you do and progress them  through to a call to action so they want to jump on a call with you. It has to make that impact there.

Secondly, it also has to credentialize you and build you up as an authority and an expert in the space. Someone who’s worth actually speaking to and actually spending that time on the call with.

And thirdly, also has to build a personal connection so the prospect feels comfortable reaching out to you and talking to you about their business and sharing information with you.

And so a strong LinkedIn profile really needs to build multiple elements and devices into the copy. And so a lot of times you will see that, you know, the best profiles start off with an eye-catching statement that catches the attention of the target audience. And so that’s what I call a niche specific hook. It basically calls out the niche that you’re speaking to. For example, HVAC, businesses, business owners. So they think, yep, this is relevant to me. And it opens with an interesting statement that makes them want to keep on reading the rest of the profile.

In LinkedIn, you have a see more option right after the first two lines of copy in the about section. And so the hook ideally needs to work its magic inside those first two lines of copy there so that the prospects is basically inclined to click on that, see more button and read the rest of the profile. And ultimately, that profile can then work its magic from there.

So once you’ve got that niche specific hook in place at the start, the next element in the about section is really calling out the problem. And this is basically talking about the key issue that most of these business owners identify with in their business in terms of growth. Right. And this is always unique to the niche and to the current state of the market. But it could be, you know, something like for HVAC, for example”

“Countless HVAC business owners have tried and failed with lead gen experts and Facebook marketing agencies.”

Right. So that’s calling out the painful problem that these guys are facing right now. And the next thing that you want to do once you call that a problem is you want to delve into that a little bit more, delve into their situation and intensify that pain. And this actually does three powerful things here, because it first of all, kicks their bruised knee a little bit by dredging up that pain that they’ve experienced in the past. And that ties in some emotion here as they read this.

And emotion creates motion.

So what this does is it makes them want to move away from that painful situation that they have right now or that they had in the past. And so it provides that momentum leading up to the call to action, which we’ll get to the end. So they will actually do something about this, take you up on your call to action and book a call with you.

The second thing this does here is it builds your authority, because when you’re able to speak in a relevant and compelling way about their industry and about their business and about their problems in such an intimate and accurate way, they they start to then view you as an expert and an authority in the niche, someone who, you know, could have the answers they need to the growth problems in their business.

And the third thing that this does is it actually builds a personal connection as well, because they kind of get the sense that you understand them and their problems and their situation. And so it starts to build that sense of mutual understanding that is needed to really create that sense of trust. And that’s a trusted relationship in the interaction. Now the next thing we’re going to do here is reignite the possibility of their desired outcome.

And what this means is you’re really going, now you’ve kind of showed that you understand the challenge that they face… You’re now going to kind of reignite the possibility that they can solve that. They can break through that barrier and they can actually get the outcome that they need that they may almost be kind of giving up hope on. Or, you know, maybe. Maybe kind of just feeling out of their reach right now.

And so we’re flipping the copy on its head now and we’re juxtaposing the pain and the negative situation that we’ve talked about with the positivity and the desirability of what they really want and can achieve with their business. And so to substantiate that kind of. 

That kind of desired outcome that we’ve used here to respark their – to spot their interests and get them interested in the copy and get them thinking, oh, you know, maybe this person can actually help me really grow my business and achieve what I’ve been trying to achieve.

We’re going to actually give them in the next section insight into what they’ve been missing so far in that business that’s actually held them back from achieving that desired outcome that they want, right? So what have they been missing?

What capability in their business, what processes, what kind of systems, what have they been missing that’s been holding them back in the past?

And for you guys moving into AGS 3.0, positioning yourselves more as an expert marketing consultant. This is probably going to be more about a holistic approach between marketing and sales and not just relying on seemingly simple lead gen fixes and point solutions, but instead taking more of that strategic view, taking more of that view across process systems, you know, mindset and culture.

OK, now the next stage, once we’ve done that is to call out the solution, which of course is going to be in some connotation working with you as an expert strategic partner to to help them fill those gaps that they’ve been missing. 

And this is kind of where you’re really going to spark that desire to work with you, to talk with you, to get more of the insight that you’ve been giving, to get more depth on that. Get more information about how that relates to their business. And, you know, how can this solution and the insight you’ve been talking through. How does that apply to them specifically? This is really where your spark and desire in the copy here.

And this is also a good opportunity to build in a little about your personal story and why you do what you do and work so hard to get such great results for your business and kind of give a little bit of the origin story behind how you able to deliver that solution and why you do what you do. And that just helps to further kind of solidify that sense of personal connection and start to kind of make them feel that they are building that that relationship and that sense of comfort with you. So I like to drop in a bit of personal story there into the copy if there’s space and if it fits.

And then finally, to round this off, you round things off with a call to action, which is always for them to reply to you or to book a call.

And you can see here that, listening to those different sections of outline there, this conforms pretty closely to the tried and tested attention, interest, desire, action, AIDA copywriting formula. But there’s more than just that going on because this works on an authority building and a kind of connection and rapport building level as well. So, you know, you don’t have to kind of cram all of those elements into the profile.

But you know, when you’re creating your profile and of course it’s a free form copywriting exercise when you’re creating your profile. Those are the elements in the devices that you can look to incorporate. And you want to just bear in mind that it’s working on those multiple levels there.

And so it’s more than just kind of talking about what you do and offering the call. It’s really about taking the prospects on that journey. And, you know, not only kind of building their interest and desire, but also credentializing yourself as an authority in the space and starting to build that connection in that relationship. And like I was saying, this is a really important part of the outreach process because this is really where the persuasion happens. 

The days are long gone where you can include a lot of information in a LinkedIn message. You can’t really include a huge amount and an outreach email because it just comes across as spammy and pitchy. So really, what you are looking to do with the outreach strategy is to almost just direct their attention to your profile, use that to do the persuasion and to position yourself. 

And between those, you know, between that message and the profile working together, getting those people onto a call.