Dan Lok

The Ultimate Social Media Guide For Influencers To Build A Global Empire

March 31, 2020 by Dan Lok

There’s no denying the power social media has when it comes to building your brand and growing your business. Strategizing a complete social media guide is therefore essential to the success of your brand and business.

Building a real following on social media is key to growing your business, and everybody knows it.

Every single day, millions of people, who happen to be your exact target customer, are scrolling through social media. What will catch their eye? How can your social media content grab their attention?

You might also be wondering, Which social media platforms are the best ones to focus my social media marketing efforts on? This is one of the many questions that makes influencers and business owners feel overwhelmed about developing a strategic and comprehensive social media guide.

That’s why I want you to think of this article as the influencer’s complete social media guide for building a global empire.

But why should you listen to my advice when it comes to social media? Well, I have built a personal brand from scratch and I’ve become a social media influencer with millions of followers. I have over 1.5 million followers on Instagram, and over 1.7 million followers on Facebook. I also have over 2.4 million subscribers on my YouTube channel. That’s why so many people want to learn my social media secrets.

My massive social media following is a big part of the reason why I’m so successful. You see, you could sell the best product or the most valuable service, but it means nothing if nobody knows your product or service exists.

Social media is the best way to make sure your brand and product are both highly visible and well-known among active consumers. Customers can’t consider purchasing your product or service without first knowing that it exists. Social media is one of the best ways to spread the word.

In this day and age, formulating a social media guide isn’t just about being “tech-savvy”. It’s about understanding your target audience and knowing which social media platforms will work best to engage them. You also need to know how to best maximize the potential of each of those social media platforms.

Social media marketing is also about consistency, brand image, and let’s not forget about conversion rates. One million Instagram followers, for example, doesn’t mean much if your followers are not converting into actual customers. However, if you post content that converts your social media followers into customers, you’re heading towards next-level success.

Why Should You Be Using as Many Social Media Platforms as Possible?

Some influencers focus too heavily on only one or two social media platforms. But why shouldn’t you engage as many as possible? It’s kind of like the basic principle of diversifying your assets. You never want all of your eggs in one basket when it comes to investments, so why wouldn’t the same principle apply to marketing?

Part of the reason why many social media influencers focus solely on one or two social media platforms is because they don’t really understand how to use or maximize the other ones. Nobody ever provided them with a comprehensive social media guide. Perhaps they know how to use Instagram and Facebook, but they don’t know how to use YouTube or LinkedIn.

Knowledge is power, and that’s why I’m offering this comprehensive social media guide to help you understand how to use other very powerful social media platforms that you are not currently maximizing or using. By not using them, you’re leaving money on the table, and I want to help you stop doing that.

In this social media guide, I’ll explain exactly what social media can do for your business and brand. With a well-established plan and commitment to long-term consistency, you’ll be building your own global empire in no time.

Creating a Personalized Social Media Guide

Before we get into specific social media strategies for different social media platforms, consider your brand’s specific goals. The best brands are authentic ones. Therefore, crafting a personalized social media guide that aligns with your brand is essential.

Recently, I revealed some of my insider secrets on creating a personal brand based on your own unique superpower. Your superpower is your special skill, gift, or area of expertise. Your brand story often involves the story of how you became an expert in your specific niche.

It goes without saying that your personalized social media guide will be based on your personal brand and your signature style. An influencer who’s personal brand revolves around outdoor adventure and sells survival kits, for example, would probably have a certain theme in mind for all their social media platforms. They’d post plenty of exciting videos and photos of beautiful scenery. They’d evoke excitement in their target audience with videos of stunning hikes, waterfalls, and cliffs.

Understand that while this article’s general social media guide is helpful, it still needs tweaking based on your personal brand in order to be effective. For example, Apple’s Instagram feed should look completely different from your own, because their brand is completely different from yours.

And, how you engage the consumer on Instagram will be completely different from how you engage them on YouTube. An effective social media guide requires research on the various social media platforms, and how they work.

Branding Strategies

While exposure is good, great press is even better. Crafting an effective brand strategy is vital to your success, but what exactly is a branding strategy?

The way I like to think about it is finding your target audience, and researching everything there is to know about them.

Unless your product is sliced bread, it’s unlikely that your business will appeal to everyone. Instead of trying to please the entire marketplace, narrow your focus to your target demographic. Choose your niche, and choose it wisely.

Target your marketing efforts on social media, with the eventual goal to find loyal brand advocates. Brand advocates are defined as anyone who would vouch for your business without being paid to do so. They recommend your brand simply because they love your brand. Finding brand advocates on social media is even better, since they are likely to have an audience of their own to promote your brand to.

Think of it this way: As a musician, would you rather have five ultra-dedicated fans, or twenty fans who are only somewhat invested in your brand? You’re likely to be better off with five dedicated fans since they’ll promote your music on their own, play your songs for their friends, and drag their friends to all of your concerts.

Brand advocates also help build your brand’s credibility, and improve your brand’s reputation. Positive marketing about your brand is better when coming from a secondary source other than your own self-promotion. I’m much more likely to trust a recommendation from my close friend, than the brand that is recommending itself. Makes sense, right?

One of the best ways to get brand advocates is to connect with your audience on a deeper, emotional level. This requires that you have a very strong and relatable brand image, and great personal branding.

First, Hone in On Your Personal Brand

If you haven’t done so already, the first thing you need to do is get crystal-clear on what your personal brand is all about, what your signature style is, and what you want to be known for.

You need to take the time to consider what your brand voice sounds like, how your brand comes across, and what your central themes are. Figure out how you stand out in the marketplace, and which pain points you solve for your audience. In turn, crafting a personalized social media guide will give you a clear image of your brand and where it fits in the marketplace.

It’s also crucial to gain clarity on who your target demographic is. Why? Because certain demographics use certain social media platforms more than others.

This will certainly require effort, but remember, in order to get somewhere you’ve never been, you have to do something you’ve never done.

Investing in social media in itself is useful since it forces you to establish your brand in entirely new ways. Once you start maximizing the potential of all the social media platforms that are available to promote your brand, the results might surprise you.

Perhaps the conversion rates from one social media platform will be much higher than you expected, and it could simply be that your target audience uses that platform more. TikTok, for example, is a video-sharing app that has a lot of Gen Z users. Gen Z users are under the age of 25. Perhaps that generation is your target consumer, and that’s why your social media marketing efforts on TikTok paid off.

In general, when it comes to a social media guide, I typically advise that people get crystal-clear about their personal brand and what it stands for, first. Now, let’s go over some of the most popular social media platforms that carry the highest potential for return:

Facebook Marketing

Facebook is still considered to be royalty in the social media world, with 2.3 billion active users. Since it’s one of the most popular social media platforms, it’s a no-brainer that you include Facebook marketing in your social media marketing strategy. Best of all, you can share photos, sales copy, videos, and blog posts on this platform. In that sense, think of Facebook as the swiss-army knife of social media.

According to a 2019 study conducted by Pew Research Center, 3/4ths of adult Facebook users visit the site on a daily basis.

One of the many benefits of marketing on Facebook is that you can post a wide variety of content so your consumer won’t feel unengaged. So, how do you create different types of content that still feel aligned with your brand?

The key is to alternate. If you’re marketing your brand on Facebook, don’t post two videos in a row. Maybe one day you’ll share a video, but the next day you’ll post an insightful blog post.

On Facebook, I’d also suggest sticking to a specific posting schedule in order to stay consistent. My loyal followers always have a new piece of content to look forward to, and they generally know when to expect a new post.

Instagram Marketing

While you should do your best to market yourself on as many social media platforms as possible, Instagram is a great place to begin. Why? Because Instagram has over 1 billion monthly active users, making it the perfect platform to start building your global brand.

According to Oberlo, Instagram users spend at least one hour daily on the platform, making it the second-most engaged social site underneath Facebook. Instagram uniquely utilizes solely videos and photos, which are likely to receive higher engagement than text alone.

Clearly, mastering Instagram marketing is vital to the success of your business. Instagram is also one of the easiest platforms to partner with influencers and brand ambassadors.

Building your following on Instagram is also in your best interest because marketing on the platform gets even easier once you have at least 10,000 followers. You’re able to share embedded links driving traffic to your website directly from your Instagram stories once you have 10,000 followers or more.

A picture is worth one thousand words, so make sure your Instagram images stand out from the crowd. For example, the popular American grocery store Trader Joe’s clearly spends a lot of time strategizing their Instagram content. Each photo Trader Joe’s posts is beautifully shot, and valuable, giving the consumer valuable information while still advertising their brand.

Growing your Instagram following will require dedication and patience. Remember that growing an impressive social media following takes time. That’s why you can’t get discouraged if the growth isn’t happening fast enough for your liking. Is your goal to be an influencer with over 100,000 followers? Be strategic and consistent, in order to achieve these loftier goals in due time.

Video Marketing

A whopping 87% of video marketers say that their brand videos have increased direct to traffic to their brand’s website. You may be wondering, What is it that makes videos so powerful?

Well, for one thing, videos have the ability to engage multiple senses at once. The consumer is able to both see and hear your brand’s message, making it that much more engaging. And, evoking that much more emotion.

Think of it this way: Is your phone harder to ignore when it both rings and vibrates when a call comes through, compared to when it rings with the vibration turned off? With more stimuli comes more capacity for grabbing your prospect’s attention.

I’ve learned from experience that creating videos across various social media platforms, maintaining a consistent brand voice, is an extremely effective branding strategy. Moreover, many social media platforms offer more ways than ever before to embed videos in posts. Instagram developed the ‘Instagram Story’ which allows influencers to market themselves to their Instagram following in video format, and other platforms like Facebook allow videos to be posted as well.

Some social media platforms are entirely about video content, such as YouTube and TikTok.

Video-focused platforms such as YouTube will be covered more in-depth below, but the first step is to understand the power of video marketing. When developing a social media guide to follow, make sure that video-focused platforms such as YouTube are part of your plan.

If your competitors utilize video marketing and you don’t, that’s where you could lose a lot of followers and customers.

YouTube Marketing

YouTube has a shockingly massive, dedicated user base. As of last year, this social platform reported having over 2 billion monthly active users. This is the number of people that are actively using YouTube on a regular basis, and actively watching YouTube videos in their spare time.

2 billion monthly active users is huge. Clearly, it’s imperative to produce video content on YouTube if you want to grow your business, build your brand, and build a global empire.

A wide variety of audiences, demographics and communities use YouTube. That’s why YouTube is the perfect place to target your audience. And, since videos are so engaging, your video content is likely to produce higher rates of return when crafted the right way.

In other words, if your YouTube content is good enough, it can generate loads of qualified leads, sales, and brand advocates. Your YouTube channel can also become a source of passive income on its own through YouTube’s partnership program.

Why else is using YouTube important for building your social media empire? Since YouTube is owned by Google, that means your YouTube videos will automatically have a high chance of getting ranked on Google.

All you have to do is come up with a plan to make sure your videos stand out, have value, and engage viewers.

You could hire a copywriter to create engaging video scripts, rather than winging it when you create your videos. Or, get some training from a YouTube master on how to succeed at video marketing.

Whatever you do, make sure that your video content remains true to your brand. Keep your brand image and brand voice consistent across all of your social media platforms.

What About TikTok?

TikTok is one of the newer social media platforms that features a never-ending feed of 15-second videos. Impressively, the app already has 800 million active users. However, how are you going to use just 15 seconds of video content to your advantage?

As it turns out, 15 seconds can be just enough for certain brands and influencers to promote themselves. Stars like Loren Gray and Spencer X have emerged from the TikTok app with fully-fledged businesses, just by showing off their unique personalities and talents via these short video clips.

You could use TikTok videos to incorporate your product or service into a funny skit, or to connect with your consumers. These short videos help you connect with your audience on a more personal, lighter, more humorous level. Moreover, there are a number of TikTok influencers you could collaborate with to improve your own exposure.

Though TikTok is a young platform, it’s important to get involved before the market becomes too saturated. In other words, since TikTok is newer, that means many of your competitors aren’t yet using TikTok. If you start using it now, that’s just another way that your brand can get ahead.

Social Media Copywriting

Though we are in the age of photos and videos, do not underestimate the power of copywriting. Learning the art of crafting persuasive sentences can make your business appear more elevated and professional. Advanced copy also helps you position yourself as an expert and helps you communicate your message to your target audience.

But what if you simply don’t have time or the interest to learn copywriting? Consider hiring a professional copywriter to help you write your social media copyl. Not only can copywriters save you time, but they can also optimize your content making it more search-engine friendly. Social media copywriters and SEO copywriters can help you maximize your social media marketing campaigns.

Copywriters can write video scripts for YouTube, copy for Instagram captions, persuasive Facebook ad copy for better Facebook advertising results, LinkedIn posts, and more.

Improving the quality of your content and copy on social media is one of the best strategies to include in your social media guide.

If other brands, influencers, and businesses are posting social media content that has not been well thought-out, and they don’t have copywriting skills, what does that mean for you? It means that if you develop copywriting skills or hire a professional social media copywriter, you’ll have a competitive advantage in the form of extra-persuasive copy on your social media platforms.

Remember, anything you can use to set yourself apart from other businesses is to your advantage.

LinkedIn Marketing

As said by Bill Gates, “Power comes not from knowledge kept, but from knowledge shared.” Apply this helpful piece of advice to your marketing strategy. By teaching your followers valuable information or sharing knowledge, you can drive traffic to your brand and build credibility.

One of the best social media platforms to do this on is LinkedIn. The platform features many blog-style articles usually regarding business or branding advice. If you can teach other like-minded professionals in your industry something they’ll find valuable, they’re more likely to purchase or recommend your product.

Moreover, LinkedIn is also a great way to network with those in similar industries who may be a bit further along than you are. Use this to your advantage by using LinkedIn to find mentors, or people to collaborate with. Offer to take someone you admire out for lunch, to hear about their journey.

A presence on LinkedIn is also a great way to get clients, since LinkedIn is full of professionals with money.

The Art of Persuasion

You should aim to build your social media following even when you’re offline. Your goal should be to wake up every morning to new followers – but how can you persuade people to follow you on social media? One popular technique is to incentivize loyal consumers to follow you online in exchange for a discounted good or service.

For example, perhaps your local coffee shop offers a free baked good to any patron who shares a photo of their coffee on their Instagram account, and tags the coffee shop.

Tagged posts are a great way to drive traffic to your business and build brand credibility.

Take some time to consider what powerful words or phrases you can use when persuading others to follow you on social media. Shift your perspective to that of a consumer. What words or phrases would lead you to buy a product after viewing it on your social media feed?

Social Proof and Influencers

What is social proof and why is it important? The term ‘social proof’ refers to the expectation that people tend to follow accounts that already have a large following, lots of positive reviews from the public, or follow accounts that have been endorsed by a celebrity or public figure.

You may be wondering how the concept of social proof relates to your branding strategy. Well, for starters, 97% of consumers report that online reviews affect their buying decisions. Therefore, building a sustainable brand requires testimonials from people not affiliated with your business. Simple enough, right?

One of the best ways to utilize the power of social proof, is to invest in brand endorsements from popular influencers. These social media influencers typically have a large, highly loyal following who listen to everything they say, do, and recommend.

Is it worth the money you might have to spend to get one of these public figures to promote you on their social media? Yes. Do your research, first, though. Ensure that their following is loyal, legitimate, and engaged. You should also ensure that their following is composed of the type of people you want to target.

You can always start by partnering with less expensive, micro-influencers, and work your way up to big-time social media influencers for brand endorsements.

Which Social Media Platforms are the Best for Building Your Empire?

You may be wondering which of the platforms are the best for your social media brand strategy. In short, all of them. However, you’ll want to make sure that you target a select few first to maximize your engagement.

In fact, I’ve learned that there’s essentially a holy trinity of social media platforms based on their engagement and content output. For these reasons, I recommend Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn as your focuses on social media branding.

For one thing, Instagram and YouTube have the most active monthly users which make driving up your engagement easier. They also allow notably longer videos than other sites like TikTok. While TikTok is still great for connecting with a certain audience, longer videos mean more time to explain your brand. Makes sense, right?

LinkedIn is set apart from most other social media sites in that it’s a huge community of professionals. Dedicating yourself to branding on LinkedIn will improve your copywriting skills making you a better business person overall.

These three media outlets also have another vital factor in common: They all work well to utilize social proof. All outlets have comment sections and ways to network with similar businesses and influencers in your community. The more credibility you build, the better.

Social Media Marketing Education

While you create your social media branding strategy, don’t stop learning. You may feel like seeking out information could distract from your marketing technique. However, don’t make this mistake.

Instead, use new information to your advantage. I’ve learned to adjust my strategy as I take in newfound social media marketing insights with great success. While it is tough to learn and act simultaneously, you’ll be a better business person for it.

The only reason successful businesses thrive is their underlying commitment to adaptation. As any branding expert, my success has largely fluctuated over the years. I keep at it, although because I trust my ability to adapt to a new normal. Evolution is only possible when you’re open to change.

So, is it worth the money to invest in some social media marketing training, coaching, or educational course on social media? If you want to be an influencer, then yes, it’s definitely a good idea. This is you investing in yourself, which is smart if you want to achieve your goals faster.

Learning to harness the power of social media takes time. Rome wasn’t built in a day, so neither will your global empire. Continue to educate yourself, follow through consistently with your branding strategy, and watch as your business begins to grow.

Are you ready to maximize your social media platforms for ultimate growth? If you’re ready to build the kind of social media following that grows your business and takes it to the next level, enroll in my High-Ticket Influencer Program here.

Have You Ever Wondered What The Most Popular Social Media Influencers Do That Works?

Many people ask me,

Dan, how did you do it? How did you get over 1.5 million followers on Instagram, and over 1.7 million followers on Facebook? How did you get over 2.4 million YouTube subscribers?

When I’m constantly asked these questions, I realize that people don’t just want a social media guide from me. They want my social media secrets.

So now, for a limited time, you can access my most closely-guarded social media secrets by ordering your personal copy of my Social Media Secrets Vault. Here, you will gain access to my Instagram secrets, my YouTube secrets, my copywriting secrets, and even some closely-guarded persuasion secrets.

These social media secrets are what you need to build a global empire, and build the kind of social media following that will take your business to the next level.

In my Social Media Secrets Vault, you’ll learn how to get your first 10,000 followers fast, along with an Instagram checklist, a coveted YouTube cheat sheet on how to create superior videos, and many other social media secrets. I tend to guard these secrets with my life, so consider this a limited-time offer. Order my Social Media Secrets Vault here.

Are You Building Your Personal Brand By Accident?

March 25, 2020 by Dan Lok

Do you consciously think about how you’re building your personal brand? Are you aware of the impact it’s having on you and your business? If you’re not sure of the answer, let us help you find some clarity.

If we were to talk to people you do business with, what would they say about you? Think about your customers, vendors, team members, or your employees. Reflect on how you converse and interact with them. Do you think you would like what they have to say about you?

If we asked them to describe you in only three words, do you think their three words would match yours? If they’re not the same, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. But you may want to ask yourself, “How close would it be?”

You see, this exercise shows how you see yourself versus how other people see you. And if there is a big difference, it means there’s a gap between who you believe you are and how other people perceive you. This gap can be a problem when it comes to building your personal brand.

“Your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room.” – Jeff Bezos

This gap indicates what people are saying about you and your brand, behind your back. Why is this so important?

A survey by HubSpot found that 69.5% of companies say review sites, social media, or word-of-mouth directly drive leads for their business. There’s a common misconception that a personal brand is a name or a logo. It’s like saying a country’s flag is a bunch of shapes and colors. In reality, it represents the history, people, values and much more. A personal brand goes far beyond the superficial name or logo. What matters is the meaning behind it.

Every person or business has associations tied to them, allowing you to describe them with just a few words. But not everyone recognizes this, and this is the disconcerting part.

Every Action You Take is Building Your Personal Brand

Imagine you have a friend, we’ll call her Stephanie. And let’s say you have been friends with Stephanie since childhood. She always says she will meet you at a certain time, but she’s always late.
Every time you meet, you know you’ll be waiting for an extra ten minutes. This has happened so many times, you’ve learned to come prepared with work to do during the wait. This a personal brand. How?

Because when you need something done you may start thinking, “I don’t know if I want to call her.” You’ve developed an association with Stephanie being late as not dependable. But what’s interesting is she probably does not view herself the same way.

Instead, she’ll say things like, “It’s no big deal, you know, we’re good friends. You’ve known me for a long time. If I’m 10 minutes late what’s the problem?” But if you value your time, it is a big deal.

“How you do anything is how you do everything.”

Because after so many years, you don’t know if you can trust her. Something as simple as being ten minutes late can turn into much bigger problems. And you may start thinking, If I cannot trust her with my time, can I trust her with my money? or Can I trust her to meet deadlines? Can I trust her with handling clients?

This uncertainty becomes an issue, causing unnecessary stress that you could easily avoid. Every action we take, big or small, affects the way people perceive us. Can you see how everyone has a personal brand?

“All of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.” – Tom Peters in Fast Company

Having a personal brand doesn’t require a large number of followers on Instagram or Facebook. Within your circle influence, you have a personal brand. Your friends, family, and coworkers all have developed an idea of who you are. And this is why it’s important to be conscious of how you’re building your personal brand.

What Exactly is a Personal Brand?

Your personal brand is the perception of who you are as a person. The keyword here is perception because a personal brand is not actually a person. It is the public’s perception of certain aspects of a person. Why?

Your consumers cannot know you entirely. They only see the strongest attributes you present to them. And it’s important not to confuse your personal brand with your personal image. What’s the difference?

Your personal image is what people instantly see, hear, or perceive of you at a glance. Think of it as a first impression. On the other hand, your personal brand is what people think of you over the long term. It is a more developed understanding of who you are.

Think of it this way: When someone describes you, they can use positive words such as: Dependable, honest, and intelligent. Or, they can use negative words such as: Flakey, disorganized, and procrastinator. Or, they could use a mixture of positive and negative words to describe you.

Positive or negative, these words add up to your personal brand. They are not what words you think of, but what words you are known for. Your personal brand is your personal reputation.

Why Building Your Personal Brand Is So Important

In today’s noisy world and oversaturated marketplace, it’s hard to stand out without using a strong personal brand. There is so much competition in the marketplace, and everyone makes the same generic claims.

Everyone is saying, “We’re better”, or “We’re faster”, or “We’re more reliable”. But how can the customer know this is true before trying your product or service for themselves? This is the reason why being better doesn’t provide enough motivation to make a sale. These days, consumers seek a stronger connection.

If people like you they will listen to you, but if they trust you, they'll do business with you.– Zig Ziglar. Share on X

People aren’t buying your products and services. Why? People prefer to buy from people they know, like, and trust. Which means people are actually buying you. They’re buying because they like you, not just because they like your product, and that’s what personal branding is all about.

Without a clearly defined personal brand, your customers don’t know what they’re buying. And a confused prospect doesn’t buy. But what happens when you have a strong personal brand?

What a Strong Personal Brand Can do for You

When you see the name Michael Jordan, what comes to mind? He’s the world’s greatest basketball player, of course. And if anyone is thinking of buying basketball shoes, Air Jordan products are known as top of the line. Customers can feel the connection to his greatness, even from a small logo stitched on a headband.

What about George Foreman? Even though he was an amazing boxer, you’re thinking of the George Foreman Grill. Many different brands of grills are on the market claiming to be better. But whether they are, or not, doesn’t matter. George Foreman built a strong personal brand with a fat burning reputation. It’s what everyone knows, so naturally, it’s what most people buy.

This is the power of building your personal brand. It gives you the ability to influence purchasing decisions. Even before customers are aware they need your product or services. How does it do this?

It’s All About Emotions

Personal branding emotionally predisposes consumers to enter into a business relationship with you. It appeals to their desires and touches their emotions. Instead of having a lifeless product or service, it feels more human when a personal brand is attached. This makes it more relatable. Then something very special happens. This allows you to position your product or service in a way where people feel compelled by an irresistible urge to buy. And it takes no convincing or persuading. They just love your brand that much.

In other words, a great personal brand pre-sells people. Before they meet you, your customers will already be aware of your strengths and personality. You’ll have the power to influence the decisions, attitudes, and actions of your audience. And in turn, you will receive many benefits.

7 Benefits of Consciously Building Your Personal Brand

Become Master of Your Perception

When it comes to doing business in the marketplace, perception equals reality. It doesn’t matter how great your abilities and skills are if the marketplace does not perceive them the right way.

Harris Interactive conducted a survey. It showed how 45 percent of consumers did online research and found content that made them decide not to do business with the person. This is why your online representation is so important.

Consciously building your personal brand allows you to keep growing in the direction you want. And if you are in control of your perception, you can switch directions at any time. When you determine how you are perceived, you are in charge of your destiny.

What else does this do for you?

Attract Your Ideal Audience and Opportunities

Imagine you were stuck in a business you hated, serving customers you don’t like. And it forces you to put on a facade every day. What’s worse is if the business is successful. You may start feeling conflicted. If you do, this can have a serious negative impact on your mental health and your happiness.

With the right personal branding, this is something you never have to worry about. It sets clear expectations on what your audience should expect. And this acts as a pre-filter, which attracts your ideal clients and rejects potentially bad ones.

Either they resonate with you, or they do not. Which is a very good thing. If you are selling to everyone, you are selling to no one. And it also provides a win-win situation.

Are You Building Your Personal Brand By Accident? Share on X

Building your personal brand enables you to spend more time serving clients you like. So you can focus on building the business you enjoy. And the clients that would be a bad fit will not waste your time. Your headaches become your competitor’s problem.

Create Your Own Category and Dominate

Many businesses believe having a better product is all they need to succeed. The problem with this is when you’re seen as a comparison, you’re stuck in the generic pile. To get the most sales it’s best to be in a category of your own.

Think of Apple with its iPhone and iOS. It’s a cool looking product, fun and easy to use. Even the unboxing creates a premium experience. And beyond that, there is the Apple ecosystem: iCloud, iTunes, iMessage, etc. Once you join the team Apple, it becomes difficult to leave.

So while all the other Android devices are battling each other. The iPhone’s premium positioning in its own category allows them to stay on top. This is one of the biggest benefits of building your personal brand. Even though you may be offering the same product or service, your personal brand is unique to you. It’s something your customers can not get anywhere else. And this exclusivity allows you to charge more.

Increase Your Perceived Value

This benefit can add a lot of money to your bottom line. Think about the difference between a bag from Coach, and a bag from Hermes. Are the materials different? Yes. Are the designs different? Of course. But are they different enough to justify the price difference? Objectively speaking, probably not. But the fact remains the increased perceived value of Hermes bags is remarkable.

According to Fundera 43% of customers spend more money on brands they are loyal to. And with the correct personal branding, you can reap these rewards too. It can influence and persuade your customers to justify higher pricing automatically.

Build Trust With Your Audience

Getting your audience to trust you is very valuable when building your personal brand. According to Invesp, 31% of consumers say trustworthiness is the most important brand attribute. Even more important than creativity and intelligence.

Trust is what creates lifelong, loyal customers and brand advocates. According to Fundera, 56% of customers stay loyal to brands who “get them” and 89% of customers stay loyal to brands who share their values. These are the customers who happily spread awareness of your personal brand without you asking them to. Why?

Because your personal brand will give them something to relate with. They will know who you are, what you stand for, and what you believe in. They won’t perceive you as a stranger. Instead, you’ll feel like their friend. And since both of your views are in alignment, they don’t see it as advertising. Why wouldn’t they share something they value with friends and family?

Be the Thought Leader Within Your Area of Expertise

The leader in any group does not necessarily have to be the best. What matters is if the market perceives them as the best. This is important because according to a survey done by Harris Interactive, nearly half (42 percent) of people said they Google’d someone before doing business with them.

Being recognized as the thought leader provides you with extreme credibility. Spending more time building your personal brand makes proving your claims easier. Because you are already your consumer’s main source of information.

They look to you first for their answers. Because you provide them with reliable knowledge they can trust. This further differentiates you from your competitors and increases your perceived value. But there’s one more benefit that is really exciting.

More Sales with Less Selling

Imagine gaining more sales with less selling. Or no selling at all. How is this possible? Referrals.

Are You Building Your Personal Brand By Accident? Share on X

What other people say about you is infinitely more powerful than what you can say about yourself. People will even believe the word of complete strangers over those of the company. According to a study done by BrightLocal, 76% of consumers trust online reviews as much as recommendations from family and friends. Talking about features and benefits pale in comparison to when your customers are praising your products and services. In a world as skeptical as today, building your personal branding is a necessity to thrive.

It’s Never Too Late to Start Building Your Personal Brand

With all these benefits, it’s surprising to find out that only 55% of marketers think their internal and external brand are aligned. This disconnect leaves a lot of money left on the table. But this also represents a huge opportunity to position yourself as an expert or authority figure in the marketplace. That’s why you need to start building your personal brand today.

Promoting and maintaining your personal brand does require work. You must remain consistent and transparent at all times. Otherwise, your consumers won’t know if you’re authentic.

It’s difficult to be conscious of all the actions that can affect your personal brand. Some are not as obvious such as the way you walk, talk, and the way you dress. Others are more complex such as your ability to meet obligations, customer service, or your presentation skills.

It can be overwhelming at first to identify and keep track of all these actions affecting your personal brand. But it is necessary to make a plan so you are projecting the attributes you want through all your channels.

This is why we created a digital training series where we reveal to you all our personal branding secrets. Inside you will find all of the techniques Dan Lok still uses to grow his business today. So if you’re interested in building a powerful personal brand, then check out this Personal Branding Secrets Video Training Series.

How To Get Consulting Clients Fast At The Beginning Of Your Career

March 23, 2020 by Dan Lok

If you ask any new consultant what their biggest fear is, they’ll probably all say the same thing: I have no idea how to get consulting clients fast. At the beginning of your career, it can feel impossible to get anyone to choose your business over someone else who’s more well established.

If you’re like most entrepreneurs, your goal is to scale your business as fast as possible. But if you want to earn high paying clients, you must be willing to do things out of the ordinary. The issue is, many new entrepreneurs are not selective with the clients they take. They think that anyone with money is a potential lead for their business.

Here’s the truth, if everyone is your customer, then no one is your customer. Share on X

So what do you need to do to get consulting clients fast?

Is Networking Really the Answer?

Most publications on the internet begin to answer this question by telling you to build your network, get involved in local business communities, and talk to everyone you know. But is this really the smartest way to do this?

Imagine you spend hundreds of hours talking to prospect after prospect just to close your first client. Not only did you waste your time and energy, but your client may not even want to pay you. You might even have to offer some advice or services for free, just so you can earn your first testimonial.

According to Forbes, 58% of freelancers have experienced not getting paid for their work. So you might be thinking to yourself, what’s the harm for working for free for the first couple of clients? After all, you’re trying to build your portfolio. Setting the bar low early on can be a vicious cycle. Do you think you’re worth nothing to the market? And what about your rent, phone bills and electricity? They aren’t going to pay themselves.

Don’t get me wrong, this strategy works perfectly if you’re trying to grow your business slowly. But that’s not why you’re here. You want to learn how to get consulting clients fast. Is there a way to fast forward your results?

Back when I was just entering the market as a freelance copywriter, I was trying to get any client I could. I was all over the place. I would do work for anyone who hired me. However, over time I learned that this strategy did not work. In fact, it was quite demoralizing. I found myself swamped in work, and only being paid a fraction of what I was worth. That is until I started applying the Kingpin strategy to my business. Are you ready to learn how to get consulting clients fast? Let’s get started.

How to Get Consulting Clients Fast – The Kingpin Strategy

Let me ask you a personal question. Who is the one business, or person that if you got, it would change the rest of your career? You see, that’s the key of how to get consulting clients fast. In my first few years struggling as a freelance copywriter, I came across this book called Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson. It’s a very famous book series on small business and marketing.

Jay Levinson is a well-known author who has sold over 20 million books worldwide. At the time, he was one of the most well-known educators in the marketing space. So what do you think I did? I approached Jay.

On his website, Jay was marketing a Guerilla Marketing Association membership. When I visited his website for the first time, I noticed that it could use some work. So I took the initiative upon myself to rewrite the entire page and sent it to the Guerilla Marketing Association.

To my surprise, Jay personally responded to my email. He thanked me for my hard work. So what exactly did I do? I delivered value up front without asking for anything in return. Jay ended up using the material I sent him to generate more sales by running a much more successful marketing campaign. Instead of asking Jay for money, I asked him if he could give me some kind of recommendation and endorsement? He was more than happy to do so.

Why Recommendations Work?

That was my first kingpin client. By getting Jay Conrad Levinson, a well-known marketing guru who has sold over 20 million books in his career, I could approach potential clients and leverage the endorsement Jay gave to me. This reference impressed client after client.

This is how you get consulting clients fast. You see, at the beginning of your career, you’re working on establishing credibility and a reputation in the market. Chasing client after client just won’t cut it. More often than not, they will question your ability to write good copy.

According to Help Scout, it is anywhere from 5 to 25 times more expensive to acquire a new client than it is to keep a current one. That’s why I followed a different route. I invested my time into one person or company that I knew if I could get would change everything. From there, I leveraged their name and brand for the test of my career. Before I knew it, I went from a nobody, to a somebody.

If you were reading carefully, you might have picked up on a few strategies that I used to earn my first kingpin client. Can you name them? Here are three strategies you can use to earn your first kingpin client, and kickstart your freelancing career.

Deliver Value First: The Winning Formula to Get Consulting Clients Fast

If there’s one thing I want you to take away from all of this, it’s the importance of delivering value first. This has to be the sole reason as to why Jay responded back to me in the first place.

Let me ask you this. Let’s say instead of rewriting Jay’s webpage, I emailed him saying, “it looks like your webpage can use some work, let me rewrite it for you”. Do you think Jay would have even read the email, let alone reply?

This is why delivering value first is so crucial. Remember, Jay never asked me to email him, nor was he looking to make his webpage better. That’s why I needed my value proposition to be remarkable, and give Jay a reason to talk about it.

Aaron Scildkroud, CEO of How About We said that, “Everything we do is oriented towards making good on our value propositions. To the extent that we achieve this, we believe our target market will love our product or service and our business will work”. Do you see what I mean? This is how to get consulting clients fast. Here are three reasons why delivering value first can give you an advantage in the market.

Grabs the attention of your client.
Gives your client a reason to pick you over your competitors.
Allows you to show off the quality of your work.

Why does this work?

By delivering value first, I grabbed the attention of Jay’s team. Why? The answer is simple. I provided my expertise without asking for anything in return. I pointed out an area of their business that could be improved and improved it for them at no cost. This simple action gave Jay’s team a reason to talk about me.

Let’s say you are in a crowd filled with 500 people who are all trying to get the attention of one client. Do you think yelling “pick me, pick me” is going to work? Of course not.

When you are establishing your credibility early on, you don’t have a massive portfolio or hundreds of customer testimonials to back you up. But what if you somehow got a mega horn, and was able to overpower everyone else around you. Imagine what that could do for your freelancing career.

That’s exactly what I did. I became the 1% in the market and delivered value first. And look at the result. I got a personalized response from Jay, and afterward got an endorsement.

Create a Compelling Offer No One Can Turn Down

One of the most important steps of how to get more consulting clients is to have a compelling offer. The challenge is, most businesses sound the same to their competitors. They often only differ by offering their products or services for a lower price. These offers are not very compelling.

Let me ask you a question. Do you think the market is oversaturated with freelance writers?

According to Forbes, as of 2019, 35% of U.S. workers are now freelancing the report found. The total number of freelancers in the U.S. has increased to 57 million, up by 4 million since 2014.

Don’t let these statistics discourage you. Instead, let it motivate you. You can be part of the 1% group who take it upon themselves to add value first. So what do you need to do?

You have to stop and think about how you can make your offer as compelling as possible. Think about what your target really wants, and why they would benefit from it. In the early stages of your career, you need to do everything you can to build your portfolio.

Portfolio Building

Let me give you an example. Let’s say you are in the coding freelance business, and you want to get your first Kingpin client.

You look online and find an article about how Google’s firewall was recently breached. So you take it upon yourself to code an updated, more secure firewall and send it to the Google headquarters. You wait patiently. One day passes, two days, a week, a month, you never get a reply. So what now?

The good news is, you have a piece of work in your portfolio to show potential clients. Additionally, Google isn’t the only Kingpin client in the coding world, maybe next month you take a shot trying to earn a response from Facebook.

This is the secret of how to get consulting clients fast. Stay consistent, and continue to build your portfolio. Remember, everyone’s Kingpin client looks different, and you may not even know who yours is until you least expect it.

Make a Memorable First Impression

Making a good first impression can make or break a business. Positive experiences tend to create long-lasting relationships when negative experiences create doubt, uncertainty, and confusion. Studies have shown that once you make a good first impression, people tend to ignore any information that could disprove it.

The key to getting consulting clients fast revolves around this idea. So you might be thinking to yourself, what if I don’t plan to ever see my clients face to face, how can I still make a good first impression?

The answer is simple: take the time to write memorable emails to your clients. A Memorable email is one that drives emotion and encourages action. It’s the first step to building a relationship with your client.

Here are three ways you can write enticing emails that will leave your clients with a great first impression.

1. Personalize your emails.

Marketing Land concluded that US companies send more emails per month than the global average of 1.38 million.

That’s a staggering amount of emails. How do you think you can get your emails to stand out in your clients’ filled inbox? Start off by adding a personalized touch.

Taking into consideration the person’s name, business, and even time zone can significantly improve your reach to them. This removes the idea that you’re sending out emails on an automated basis.

2. Keep it short and use enticing headlines.

Would you open an email with a headline that said, “Open this right now – urgent”. Chances are you would completely disregard it, and treat it as spam.

Your clients are humans too. Avoid giving them a reason to ignore your emails. The second you sound desperate or sound like a robot, you’ll leave a bad first impression.

Focus on using short catchy headlines (5-7 words at most), and keep your emails short. Your call to action should also be clear and concise. This way, you remove any confusion and make it clear why you are emailing them.

3. Delivering unexpected value.

Delivering unexpected value is the equivalent of exceeding your client’s expectations. Don’t get me wrong, businesses send out free webinars, trainings, and videos all day long. What makes this approach any different? It’s because you are providing value that is specific to your clients’ business.

This is why I took the time to understand Jay’s business, and write copy that resonated with his brand. I didn’t just send him some random web page I created, I sent him a webpage he could use today for his business.

Judy Sheindlin, more well known as Judge Judy said, “Number one – and I want you to emblaze this on your brain – you only have one chance to make a first impression”.

Your first impression colours your future interactions. And believe it or not, it’s crucial for your success. This is the key of how to get consulting clients fast at the beginning of your career. And want to know the best part? You can use this advice in both your business and your life. The options are endless.

Summary

So are you ready to apply the Kingpin strategy to your business today? It’s the strategy I used to get consulting clients quickly and fast forward to my results.

Here are the three ways I earned my first Kingpin client:

Deliver value first
Create a compelling offer no one can turn turn
Make a memorable first impression

Once you’ve identified the one person or company that could change everything. Use these strategies to earn their respect and endorsement. From there, you can leverage their name and brand for the rest of your career. This is how to get consulting clients fast at the beginning of your career.

Before you know it, you’ll go from a nobody who was making a couple of hundred dollars a month, to somebody who is earning thousands a month. If you’re someone who is looking to advance their consulting career further, click here to view my High Ticket Influencer Program.

This program is for serious entrepreneurs, influencers, and forward thinkers who want to scale their business to 7-figures and beyond. If you’re hungry and want more, High Ticket Influencer is the answer. We’ll talk soon.

The Future Of Marketing Automation

March 21, 2020 by Dan Lok

Marketing automation has become a fundamental building block necessary for productivity and efficiency. But what is the future of marketing automation? Marketing automation has been talked about a lot lately, but many people are still in the dark when it comes to the details of how automation will benefit marketers now and in the future.

Embracing technology is an absolute must in today’s digital landscape. It can be the key that enables small startups to compete alongside larger corporations. As we’ve ushered into the new decade, marketers and entrepreneurs should understand the fundamentals of marketing automation – as strategies update towards the current reality. But to do this well and receive the full benefits of this strategy, you must know your social media inside-out. Stay with me, and I will show you just how you do that.

What Exactly Is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation refers to the automation of otherwise time-consuming, repetitive tasks that marketers must do. It refers to the software and technologies designed for automating these processes for marketing departments and marketing agencies.

This could be automated data collection, automated email newsletters, automated customer support chat, and more.

Marketing Automation Has Been a Hot Topic Lately

As more tech-savvy tools come about, companies find themselves overwhelmed with dozens of tools with API integrations. It’s cumbersome and not as easy-moving as the market matures. And because of that, more companies will shift to a solution that has complete core functionalities that are available under one roof.

Since our inboxes are now filled with dozens of newsletters, offers, and pitches that come from marketing automation – they will very soon lose effectiveness. For example, the bulk generic newsletters that are still common amongst larger corporations will soon cease to exist.

With that said, companies are realizing that. So, to walk into the future of marketing automation, an increased focus on segmentation is one of the paths to victory.

Larger Corporations are Already Implementing Advanced Behavioral Analytics and Algorithms

The future of marketing automation is clearly in online communication. Interaction data in your emails, heat mapping on your website and web search behavioral activities to create specific consumer profiles.

Marketing Automation By Focusing On Segmentation

Why should you focus on segmentation?

Although it takes additional effort, time, and money to shape your marketing strategy into implementing marketing automation, it is the main element for your return on investment. Automatization will create a much more satisfying journey for your customers or visitors to your website. It’s like a digital touch-point, with tailored emails and pre-filled forms.

So what is segmentation? It basically means that you’re creating to understand and address different segments within your contact and visitor lists. By doing that, you’re creating a conversation that adapts personalized speeches with your customers in an automated way.

Marketers say that the biggest benefit of automation is saving time. Share on X

Focusing on your segmentation means, you’re segmenting a group of people or profiles with common characteristics. So, when you create different customer profiles – you find out what they are interested in within your products and what are their expectations from you.

With that said, of course, it’s mainly for your potential customers. But, once you’ve defined your customer’s profile (or sometimes it’s called “buyer’s persona”) you must also adapt it over time, as your strategy evolves. But as your strategy evolves – your customer personas evolve with it too.

Personalizing Information According to Offers

Have you ever wondered how does a corporation or a brand knows so much about what you want? You magically receive an email with the exact information you had in mind… Well – that’s good marketing automation segmentation. It means personalization of the information and offers according to your customer’s characteristics and expectations.

Keep in mind, in 2020, you should find a way to make the most of the artificial intelligence-powered tools. Have two-way communication by listening to customers’ needs and engaging with your customers – this is a natural language processing to improve customers’ experience. It is one of the most popular methods for creating personalized customer experiences.

Achieving Greater Consistency

As marketers, you’re always looking out for ways to automate, optimize and make things simpler. It enables you to produce more content to achieve a higher return on investment.

To survive and thrive in the future of marketing automation in 2020 – the corporations must evolve in their marketing strategies. Share on X

One of the biggest challenges companies are facing with marketing is generating traffic and leads. According to HubSpot’s report, 46% of marketers with well-planned lead management strategies have sales teams who follow up on more than 75% of the leads.

With greater consistency, you might be able to bump up revenue in 6 to 9 months’ time. This is good news for you because businesses that nurture leads make 50% more sales at a cost of 33% lesser than those that do not. And nearly 90% of agencies say their marketing automation strategy is successful.

86% of buyers are willing to pay more for greater customer experience Share on X

The thing with marketing automation today is that everywhere you turn, people are talking about customer experience(CX). In fact, 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a greater customer experience, according to research from PWC. The research also shows that with greater consistency, 49% of consumers make impulse buys, after receiving a personalized recommendation.

Increased Expectations of the Shopping Experience

The thing is, consumers expect highly personalized shopping experiences from online retailers or corporations. They are willing to spend more money if the brands deliver targeted recommendations that match their buying preferences.

Retail sales are projected to hit over $5.68 trillion by the year 2021. But, what if you’re not in the retail business? What other industries could look into generating money with marketing automation?

Maximizing Your Return On Investment

When you’ve fully utilized a robust tool that combines a customer relationship management (CRM) system with marketing automation – your sales and marketing-related activities will be available in one centralized place. But many marketing professionals lack the advanced skills they could use to boost their return on investment (ROI) – despite realizing that marketing automation is the way forward.

So, if you’re reading this article right now and you’re a business owner, you should know that customer relationship is the key to retention. Therefore, by automating your activities, you’re able to develop and foster those relationships to achieve a higher return on investment.

Understanding your return on investment campaigns is the key to success as it gets harder and harder to stand out in today’s crowd. Share on X

But, to increase response rates and sales – you must implement a single customer view (SCV).

Single Customer View (SCV)

In order to send the most effective marketing campaigns, single customer views enable powerful use of optimal sending time, fully automated personalized customer journeys, and granular segmentation of your audience.

Since buyers are demanding more personalized interactions – implementing reward incentives into your clients’ marketing automation will increase conversion rates and drive new business referrals. On top of that, it also shows customer appreciation and increases retention and brand loyalty.

Gifting is one of the hottest and most effective strategies that help your clients with their challenges. Watch this video about how to harness the power of a marketing funnel – Nathan is an entrepreneur who does animation for the environmental industries and this is where he leverages information and creates a lead magnet offer – achieving 200 visits to his website in just a day.

Customer Journey

When it comes to customer journey automation, from a marketing perspective, let’s talk about the most important stages – front-end and back-end. As you already know by now, creating a more satisfying journey for your customers and visitors is the key element when it comes to marketing automation. This automation tool could help scale your return on investment by generating new lead and turning them into your well loyal customers.

Lead Generation – Front-End

Set your mood for demand generation – converting anonymous visitors from your website into your contacts with just their email addresses.

Sometimes, you don’t need to create a landing page to capture lead information – short and simple user experience is equally important. HubSpot’s free marketing tools will be able to do the job with this. The moment a lead shares their email address, you’ll know where they work, who they are, and what pages they visit.

For example, you will know what they view and what sort of activities are going on between that particular customer on your website. With that, you’ll be ready to follow up right away. So if you wondered – How a corporation or a brand knows so much about what you want? – now you know.

You might find this video helpful as you go – How to attract more business by using lead generation advertising.

Lead Nurturing – Back-End

When it comes to lead nurturing, it’s about constantly involving new tools and techniques. Despite the fact that some aspects remain the same, like using emails to nurture contacts down your funnel.

However, the content and positioning are ever-changing and you have to constantly keep a lookout for effective lead nurturing tactics. Although a standard set of workflow automation tools exists, if you’re looking for something that’s more innovative in creating nurturing content – there’s a new tool you can try.

Vidyard is great for creating and hosting video content for lead nurturing. What makes Vidyard great? Its variety of video tools enables you to create astonishing content. So, if you’re a marketer looking to jump on the video bandwagon – Vidyard’s a brilliant tool. From live features to its studio content creation products and its free tool – viewedIt.

Marketing Automation Saves Time

As I mentioned earlier, although it takes additional effort, you will feel some burden only in the beginning, during the setup period. However, in the long run, marketing automatization is time-saving because it eliminates all manual efforts. With just “one click” – all your messages are sent according to your entire database or selected cohorts.

This means, you no longer need individual communication with different segments of your customers. You can leverage marketing automation and implement a solid customer journey strategy. And If you implement this correctly, you can build a large profile of leads.

Walk them through an engaging journey you’ve designed according to your strategy and convert them into customers. The growth hacking strategy has never been about short-term spikes. It’s about consistent, long-run growth. But if you’re automating marketing campaigns using customers that have not gone through your customer journey – you may not achieve a consistent growth rate in that way.

Achieving greater consistency is crucial when it comes to maximizing your return on investment. Share on X

So, how do you know when you should invest in marketing automation? When you begin to see a steady flow of new visitors from organic search results and when you’ve put together a customer journey strategy, you can automatize. That’s when you start to invest in marketing automation.

Criteria To Consider When To Invest In Marketing Automation

You’ve converted your visitors into leads
You have a steady traffic flow of new visitors
Producing engaging content to offer to your leads
Manual sales process vs the huge number of leads
Sales team unable to generate more revenue
Spending too much time on social media management
You want to leverage influencer marketing and content
You want to increase revenue by scaling
Develop better relationships with customers at any stage of the sales funnel
Incentivize your customers and implement solid gamification strategy

If your business meets any of the criteria above, it’s time to plan your marketing automatization.

Marketing Automation Tools And Techniques That Give You An Edge In 2020

With more and more options emerging, as a business owner, you might want to know what tools and techniques are available to find the best one. It’s obvious that we have to embrace technology and the future of marketing automation.

Marketing itself is key to success of your business and, as I said in the beginning, marketing automation has become a fundamental building block of productivity and efficiency. Therefore, more companies will shift to a solution that’s available under one roof. But, as your customers evolve, so does your marketing strategy.

Defining your customer’s profile makes them adapt to your strategy – They Evolve As You Evolve Share on X

As I mentioned earlier, once you’ve defined your customer’s profile – they must adapt as your strategy evolves. But, if your customers evolve, this means, you’re more likely to spend more time trying to keep up with the best tips and trends. You must always be ahead of the curve. Does that make sense?

On top of that, as a business owner – you only have 24 hours in a day – cramming business development, marketing, production, customer service, financials and everything else could be a disaster. (Not to mention lack of sleep…)

And if you don’t know the tips and techniques to implement a good marketing automation process, you’re most likely to be left behind in today’s digital landscape. This is why I put together a list of things you should keep an eye on if you want to stay on top of it all.

Best Marketing Tools For Every Business And Budget

If you’ve been looking for new easy ways to streamline your marketing process, here is a list of some marketing automation tools I’ve curated for you.

All-in-One Marketing
Email Marketing
Social Media
Customer Journey
Advertising Automation
Pricing Automation
Loyalty and Referral Marketing Automation

But, I have to tell you this…Even though it sounds good to have a solution that’s “All-in-One Marketing Automation Tool” – sometimes, you may not need everything.

So, before you decide which tool to go for – return to your criteria list. You don’t want to waste your time and money on something you don’t need.

All-in-One Marketing Automation Tools

Generally, all-in-one automation is when you’ve already hit on a handful of marketing channels. Regardless of which channels – you’ve seen success across more than two or three channels or you’re already investing financially in scaling your business.

Is it time to scale your business with a marketing automation tool? Share on X

If that sounds like what you need – email automation, ad-buying, and lead nurturing – all-in-one can help scale every aspect of your marketing process.

Marketo

They claim to offer marketing automation that covers any channel. Their full-featured software can handle everything from digital advertising to social media to account-based marketing.

With that said, Marketo is a good option for the larger marketing process.

Eloqua

This is a part of the Oracle suite of tools – works with nearly every other tool under your marketing belt.

Eloqua has more than 700 integrations making your every step of the process more personalized and streamlined.

The beauty of this tool is that it’s one of the few all-in-one tools that explicitly emphasized serving B2B companies.

HubSpot

Ideally, it’s for growing companies who want to use Inbound Marketing to increase traffic flow, convert leads and improve return on investment.

HubSpot is an all-in-one integrated platform that comes with its own marketing automation toolkit. Its premium workflow tool allows you to centralize and automate key marketing actions within your business.

Pardot

Here’s another marketing automation tool that’s tailored to the needs of B2B companies – with the support of analytics and account-based marketing solutions.

The partnership between Pardot and Salesforce – creates a more robust suite of products that help sales and marketing teams to be more effective.

ActiveCampaign

If you’re thinking about “processes of real humans”, ActiveCampaign does the best job at working automation.

In reality, there are aspects of marketing that need a human touch and you can’t handle everything with just marketing software.

Email Marketing

Email automation is the first thing that most people think of when they hear “Marketing Automation” – despite the high-profile of all-in-one tools. They are a lot cheaper compared to the whole mumbo jumbo package. That’s why I said, sometimes you don’t need everything and return to your criteria list if you’re unsure. Now, what is the task involves email marketing automation?

You can send triggered emails and build complex automated campaigns by personalizing audience segmentation. In other words – emails to promote your business. It cultivates relationships with potential customers and by doing that, your customers will be well informed with updates on your brands.

For instance, you can offer coupons to claim their free trial (depending on your product and service). It’s a “direct form of marketing” and it’s efficiently cost saving. Not forgetting, you’re also contributing to the environment since it’s totally paperless.

Watch this video on 7 powerful ways to write better sales copy to implement in your emails.

Now, this may sound interesting and easy. You might be thinking that this is just what you need for your business – nothing more.

Int hat case, you’re leaning towards email marketing automation. Learning how to write direct response emails is essential. There’s no point if email marketing automation works well for you but you or your team is unable to craft brilliant emails. The whole point is to turn your well-qualified buyers into loyal customers – Increase return on investment.

Now, let’s get into Social Media.

Editorial Credit: Solomon7 / Shutterstock.com

Marketing Automation for Social Media

From content publishing to monitoring to analytics – social media encompass one of the broadest fields – it automates various aspects of social media marketing. Your brand is probably active in more than one social media channel – more than one person publishing under your brand’s social media account – using social media for multiple purposes – such as paid advertising or providing customer support.

If this is not the case, you probably don’t need a full-fledged social media marketing automation tool. Then you focus only on what you need.

Hubspot Social Inbox

A new feature by HubSpot called Inbox is meant to help you better prioritize your time on social media. It elevates your content that resonates best with your most engaged customers. This also means, your personalized message is being shared with your customers based on their persona. On top of that, it improves the customer experience. (CX)

Hootsuite

With features that help you schedule content, monitor conversations about your brand and industry, Hootsuite is what you need for a unique presence to your brand. On another note, it’s one of the most comprehensive and full-featured social media automation tools.

Buffer

It’s a simple web application that allows you to schedule your post across a variety of social platforms. Basically, Buffer is a stripped-down version of Hootsuite – focusing mainly on post scheduling. While it can be integrated with other social platforms, this application is easy to use and relatively popular.

But if you want to integrate Buffer to Facebook, keep in mind that it only allows you to schedule posts for pages and groups – not Profiles. Unlike LinkedIn, you can post on both profiles and pages. However, for Instagram and Pinterest – you need a business account or a premium Buffer subscription.

CoSchedule

One of the best solutions for planning and strategizing social media content in advance. By doing a bulk map out of your content throughout, it gives you a bird’s eye view of your complete social process. In addition to that, you can reuse and create more content with analytics and CoSchedule’s suggestions.

Sprout Social

With individually tailored solutions from social management and marketing to customer care, employee advocacy, and data and intelligence. Sprout Social has one of the widest features among other social automation tools. This kind of solution is great if you have a sales team – making it easy to collaborate with strategy and executive.

Now, let’s talk about advertising marketing automation. Since you’ve been well informed on the essence of customer journey automation. This next step is the key to make everything work.

Advertising Automation

If you’re investing in several different platforms, such as Google, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn – it’s a hassle managing ads campaign across different social media networks. Thanks to the ever-evolving digital landscape, there’s always someone creating a valuable tool to help marketers take away the hassle.

Adstage is one of them – helps with automating, create and manage your campaigns across major pay-per-click (PPC) platforms and it allows you to report on your results. This powerful automation tool comes with visual features and not only it’s recommended to pay-per-click (PPC) experts, but also newbies.

Of course, there are other marketing automation tools that are available for you to choose from. And some tools work best for certain social media platforms but not for others – like, Zalster – they only handle Facebook and Instagram ads. However, despite their limitation – it’s a remarkable tool that truly handles your ad campaigns from end-to-end.

Other Advertising Automation Tools

AdRoll: Run ads across every channel from the display and social to emails. In addition to that, they offer retargeting campaigns, so you stay top of mind with new and inactive prospects by re-engaging with them.

Metadata.io: One and only tool that enables B2B marketers to run account-based ads. With the help of AI and multivariate testing, in order to get the best results for your ad budget – Metadata.io identifies the most effective combination of ad creative, copy and placement.

Shoelace: This tool focuses on the customer journey and they make it easy to use ads throughout every stage of your buyer’s journey. The good thing about this tool is that it continuously nurturing and pushing leads towards a sale. On top of that, their software offers segmentation that allows hyper-targeted ads and prevents ad fatigue

Pricing Automation

Should you keep your prices competitive as your competitors shift or optimize your price from top-down? For some small companies, this may not be necessary but for larger companies – pricing automation software makes it easier to react towards competitive pricing changes.

This can be an advantage to your pricing strategy. Generally, it’s designed with an eCommerce mindset. With that said, companies that will most likely benefit from this tool are eCommerce and those that are selling competitive products to the marketplace.

If you’re interested in starting an eCommerce business, watch this video

Loyalty and Referral Marketing Automation

Did you know that the most powerful marketing tool is “word of mouth”? When you think or talk about marketing automation or marketing itself – very often, loyalty and referrals get left out. And when you combine both together, it can be a good fit for your business.

But how to know if it’s a good fit?

If you’ve seen results from word of mouth or extensive research or negotiation is not required then this tool is an added advantage to upsell or increase your return on investment. Leverage your referral and loyalty program in this digital landscape with some of these tools

TapMango

Offers flexible reward structures and plenty of choices for promotions. TapMango opens the door to inspire customers and reward loyalty and referrals.

Ambassador

By hand-selecting your preferred customers to automate and testing reward incentives – find the right mix with Ambassador. If you want a tool that’s like an auto-pilot, this is it. I personally like this because the platform offers plenty of integrations and pre-built templates. You can just choose one and go.

Get to the Top With Marketing Automation

As I said, marketing automation is not for every company or marketing team. Not everyone is ready to automate their operation.

Needless to say, in today’s digital world, you can take your sales marketing strategy to a whole new level with marketing automation tools. If you go back to the criteria and you see your business is heading in the direction of failure with the current marketing strategies – automation is a surefire way for small businesses to prevent this from happening. Not only does it save you time and money, but it also maintains brand messaging while reaching thousands or millions of people.

The key is simple: Determine which platform fits your company best so you can save time and money. Each platform you use must be utilized to the fullest potential and run in such a way that your customers feel taken care of and enjoy the best customer journey you can build.

If you don’t know where to start, click here to discover the best-kept secrets of my success and all I know about social media. This vault has everything I learned and used to grow businesses and turn leads into loyal customers.

5 High Return Investments That Can Make A Fortune With Low Risk

March 15, 2020 by Dan Lok

Are you looking to make high return investments? And minimize your risks at the same time? How do you decide which one is best for you? Today I will help you clear the noise in the marketplace.

This is a burning question that I get asked every day.

What investments should I make?

I say…

It depends on what kind of investor you are.

You see…

It’s a matter of growth vs security. If you know how to properly manage your money like the rich, you may know this:

You know that you have to look for investments that provide a comfortable balance of high return and low risk. Low risk means that there is a reduced chance of losing your principal.

However, if you are looking to up your investment game…

You may want to know more about high return investments. And while making such investments you have to consider all the options available to you. Even the ones you may not have heard of before.

Today I am going to give you some options.

Ultimately, what you invest in depends on your:

Likes and dislikes
Understanding
Strengths and weaknesses
Investment amount

Always remember:

Rich people only invest in something they understand. Share on X

What makes sense for me may not make sense for you. So, do your due diligence before you consider any of the high return investments that I am giving you.

You need to have clarity as an investor.

Don’t buy into the whole “get rich quick” or “you’re going to miss out” mentality. Anyone who does that is a very amateur investor.

But first, I want to clear something…

High Return Investments Do Not Have To Be High Risk

You know that not all investments are equal. No matter what type of investor you are…

When you think of high-return investments, you think there have to be a lot of risks involved.

Well, that does not have to be.

You’ve probably heard the following…

“If there’s no risk – there’s no reward.”

“You gotta go big, or go home.”

“You just gotta ride the wave.”

Let me give you an example…

Look at what happened to Blackberry stock in 2008 and you’ll know exactly what I mean.

Thousands had their portfolios decimated as Blackberry plunged from $138 dollars all the way down to a measly $7.50.

Yet at the time, no one would have thought twice about their investments.

Talk about risk.

Let me clear some common myths about High-Return Investing:

You don’t need a lot of capital
Can be done from anywhere in the world
You don’t need to have a good credit record
You don’t need to borrow money
And you do not (and definitely shouldn’t) be taking on a lot of risks

With that said, let’s look at some high return investments that offer low risks:

1. Peer-to-Peer Lending

In P2P lending, borrowers and lenders connect on a platform. There are several P2P investment platforms available such as Lending Club and Prosper.

You directly connect with borrowers and fund loans to them. Banks do not get involved here.

Borrowers can make an application for loans anonymously. They prefer these platforms because they have to pay lower interest rates compared to banks.

You as an investor can get higher returns than what you can get with traditional investing.

And you can select from hundreds of different loans you want to invest in. Loans are graded from the high-rated to lower-rated.

The higher-rated loans pay lower interest rates.

You can decide on borrowers based on:

Minimum credit score
Minimum debt-to-income ratio
Loan term
Loan type

Once you lend money…

The borrower will make monthly payments (the principal and interest) to you.

This will be done within your investment account on the platform. Returns can be anywhere between 6%-36%.

You need to invest a minimum of $25 as individual loans. These platforms offer you to diversify your investment.

So let’s say…

You decide to invest $10k. That means you can fund 400 separate loans if you wish to.

This minimizes the impact of a default associated with any given loan.

Lending Club claims to have provided historical returns of 4.83% to 6.37%.

2. Dividend-Paying Stocks

You have two different ways to make money in the stock market.

One way is through appreciation – an increase in the stock price. For example, you buy stock for $100 and it goes up to $150. That’s appreciation.

Then there are dividend-paying stocks. This investment gives you the option to participate in capital gains. Dividend income and capital gains combined can be high return investments in the long-term.

What’s more…

A high dividend makes it easier for you to hold a stock through a declining market. Because you receive regular cash flow from the dividend.

Here…

You’re investing money in the stocks that pay you even if the stock doesn’t make any money.

So let’s say…

If you buy a stock for $10 a share and its value remains the same for the entire year…

You still get paid in the form of dividends when a company reaches a point where they are cash solvent.

For high return investments, look at stocks that have a history of increasing their dividend over time.

These are called Dividend Aristocrats. It’s an index of 57 S&P 500 companies that have raised their payouts annually for at least 25 years.

Here are 10 that offered a projected upside of at least 10% in 2020.

To reduce risk, you could go with companies that have never decreased their dividend in the last 60 years.

That is historically they have proved to do so. There’s no guarantee that they will not in the future.

3. Preferred Stocks

These are a special type of stock. Unlike common stocks, they are high return investments.

But, you don’t get any voting rights. So when it comes time for a company to vote on any form of corporate policy, preferred shareholders have no voice in the future of the company.

However, you have a higher claim on the company’s earnings and assets.

Hence, when a company declares a dividend, preferred stockholders get paid first i.e. before the common stockholders.

And if a company is liquidated and after the bondholders and creditors are paid…

Preferred stockholders are paid ahead of common stockholders.

In other words, these are high return investments with lower risk because there’s more assurance you’ll receive the dividends.

Think of it this way…

Preferred stocks are a cross between common stocks and bonds. Because preferred stocks have a more predictable dividend income. They have a certain dividend level.

If you buy a common stock you get returns (dividends) only after a declaration by the company board. They may even reduce or remove the dividends entirely.

On the other hand…

Let’s assume you have a preferred stock with a stated annual dividend of $10 per year.

You will receive the $10 per share dividend each year before the common stockholders can receive any returns. But you will get no more than the $10 dividend, even if the corporation’s net income increases multiple times.

4. Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT)

Real estate is what we call a hard asset. It has the potential to perform well even when the financial markets are fluctuating.

Now you may not be ready or have the desire to take on the work of a landlord. But, you can still invest in real estate.

That’s where REITs come in. They give you the chance to invest in real estate without the hands-on work.

Sites like Fundrise allow you to collectively invest in real estate properties. It’s like crowdsourcing with real estate investing.

You can choose to invest in a single property or in various real estate developments.

What’s more…

Often you get better returns over the long-term. Think of REITs as mutual funds that invest in real estate.

You can even do it with a small investment (say $1,000).

Hence, REITs can be excellent high-return investments with low-risk.

Because they pay dividends and receive special tax treatment.

REITs tend to have more stable values than stocks. And like dividend-paying stocks, they add the potential for capital appreciation to regular dividend income.

They pay at least 90% of its revenue in dividends to its shareholders. Those dividends are tax-deductible, enabling the REIT to minimize or even eliminate income taxes.

Returns can be in excess of 10%. Therefore, making them a great source of regular income.

You can invest in REITs directly, or trade on major exchanges. Like exchange-traded funds (ETFs) which hold positions in several REITs at a time.

You can buy and sell positions when you decide it is appropriate for you.

5. Tax Lien Certificates

When you buy a Tax Lien Certificate, you are in effect paying someone else’s property taxes for them.

You see…

In several counties and municipalities in the United States, local governments have millions of dollars outstanding in overdue property taxes.

These overdue taxes are from property owners who will not or cannot pay their property taxes.

And to fund the daily services of police, fire, hospitals, schools, roads, etc., the local governments need this money.

When you pay these taxes, the government gives you the right to receive all of the outstanding tax money due. Along with the fees, high interest, and penalties.

In a sense, it’s like a mortgage.

These Tax Lien Certificates are secured by the real estate they’re attached to.

So you are not actually buying the real estate. You are just buying the government’s lien on the real estate.

Basically, to encourage taxpayers to pay their property taxes on time…

The government charges high-interest rates which are passed directly to you.

To pay you back, you receive government-guaranteed checks of 16%, 18%, up to 36% interest. And these are paid directly to you.

Think of it this way…

You are receiving a continual, high-rate income from the government.

You can buy Tax Lien Certificates secured by different properties. And in different locations in the same state, or in different states.

There are thousands of these available at different price points. It could be as low as $50 and as much as $1,000 or much more.

These certificates are so lucrative that I call them…

The Wealth Builders Of The 21st Century

As an investor, I don’t like leaving things to chance. I make an investment only when I know all the angles.

Among all the high return investments that offer low risk, I found Tax Lien Certificates to be one of the best.

Why?

Because Tax Lien Certificates offer benefits that I couldn’t find elsewhere.

What I especially love about Tax lien certificates:

They are very easy to buy.
They are recession-proof.
The law protects the money.
The high-interest returns you get are mandated by state law.
They don’t rise and fall like the stock market. You get returns regardless of market fluctuation.
They are hidden from the general public.

One thing I particularly love about these certificates…

It doesn’t matter if you have a lot of capital, to begin with.

It’s the most democratic of investments. Allowing any investor to become a high-return investor.

Once you know about these little known high return investments…

And learn to take advantage of them – you’ll wonder why no one else is doing the same.

You’ll wonder why anyone would even bother with the roller-coaster ride of forex trading or the stock market.

But, as I have advised you before…

Investigate Before You Invest

I have wanted to bring this information out to a new audience for quite some time. I decided it’s high time people got to know about these high return investments.

This way you would know about this little known investment which the institutions themselves use to make money.

Most importantly, I wanted to teach you how to use this investment to your maximum advantage.

Now, you may be wondering…

Why are these high return investments so little known?

You see…

The answer is quite simple: stockbrokers, financial planners, and bankers can’t make commissions on them.

And once you know the opportunities out there…

You’ll probably never want to invest your excess money in your bank again.

Most bankers take the money you give them and use these same strategies to reap the high yield returns.

And what do you get? A lousy 1% return.

So they’re basically using your money AND these strategies…

To make themselves a fortune. That’s why they pray these high return investments are not revealed to anyone.

But, these investments are nothing new. They are just not common knowledge.

They have been a proven investment strategy for years. These principles have existed for hundreds of years.

All wealthy people have been using these secrets for decades.

And we have decided to reveal it all in an event called the Secrets of the Rich, which occurred in February23-24, 2020. This was where we offered in-depth knowledge about these high return investments.

This way you can investigate this investment further. Have a “dry run” so to speak.

Uncovering The Secrets Of The Rich

Ask yourself…

What it would mean to you if you could make high return investments without the typical risks?

Certainly, it would give you a predictable and sustainable way to grow your net worth. And you will ultimately be able to build yourself the lifestyle you want.

There are high return investments with virtually no-risk (we’re going to teach you how) that will always help you be able to “look before you leap”.

With these investments, you’ll be able to strategically grow your net worth.

How To Use LinkedIn To Get More Clients

March 14, 2020 by Dan Lok

Perhaps you’ve been wondering what’s the hype around LinkedIn all about? LinkedIn is a business-oriented service and it’s mainly used for professional networking. As a business professional, you might want to know how to use LinkedIn to get more clients?

This business platform has about 660 million users in more than 200 countries worldwide. In this article, I’m going to share the interview I had with Melonie Dodara on how to use LinkedIn to get more clients.

The interview was great as she shared so much information and insights about the secrets of LinkedIn. Melonie Dodara is a Canadian number one LinkedIn expert and an international best-selling author of the book “The LinkedIn Code”. If you’ve not read it, I highly recommend you read this book.

The Question Most People Have Is How To Use LinkedIn To Get More Clients

As you already know, Facebook still holds the number one record of users as a top social media platform and a social networking channel. However, with all the different social networks that are available, some are better than others for a certain reason and purpose.

LinkedIn is the best platform for professional networking but how to use LinkedIn to get more clients? Share on X

The thing with social media is, there are two types: those for making friends and those for making money.

As Melanie said, Facebook is a wonderful social network to stay in touch with family and friends. But it’s not a platform for business professionals. This is where LinkedIn comes in. Now, you might wonder how you can use social networking platforms to bring in more clients?

Get Connected With Business Professionals And Make Money

LinkedIn needs a certain strategy to fully leverage its purpose. But before we get into the details of LinkedIn strategy, let’s first take a look at what makes this platform special. So, if you want to know how to use LinkedIn to get more clients… Stay with me until the end.

As I said earlier, the different social network has certain reasons and purposes. LinkedIn is the number one business social network, there isn’t anything that competes with it. Unlike Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook or Instagram, which can still be used in similar ways, LinkedIn is the only Business Social Network. As such, it requires a unique strategy if you want it to bring you more clients. It doesn’t mean you have you do direct selling, sales pitching, or even promoting your products directly to clients regularly. But you do need a strategy to approach people.

LinkedIn is a “Business Social Network” and as such it is unlike any other social networking platform out there. Share on X

Understand The Effectiveness Of LinkedIn

Every second, there are two new people joining LinkedIn. In 2015, the number of people on LinkedIn in Canada was 9 million. And in a recent statistic dated September 2019, the number of LinkedIn users in Canada was over 16 million. That makes up to slightly over 44% of its entire population. However, the largest traffic is still the United States with 161 million users and about 27 million for the United Kingdom.

Apart from the large traffic on LinkedIn, the average household income of LinkedIn users is $109,000. If you’re going for a more affluent demographic – LinkedIn is perfect for you. Additionally, people are two times more confident about the content and information found on LinkedIn, which means their levels of trust are higher. That’s because, as a business social network. People assume that all content shared is professional and accurate.

LinkedIn is 277% more effective when it comes to B2B lead generation. Share on X

A study of over 5,000 businesses conducted by HubSpot, showed that LinkedIn traffic is 277% more effective when it comes to B2B lead generation. Its conversion rate has outranked Facebook and Twitter.

Create A Business Profile

As an entrepreneur, you must create a good impression of your brand. You see, people want to know who they are doing business with – whether it’s you as an individual or a big company or even a person in a company. What they do first when learning about someone or something new in their professional realm is that they do research. You do that too, right?

Let’s take the “High Ticket Closer Certification Program” for an example. You may have come across some videos about High Ticket Closing or maybe you’ve seen some of my Facebook and LinkedIn Ads. I believe, the first action you took was to google “Dan Lok” and “High Ticket Closing.”

So if people search for you, what will they find? As an entrepreneur, you must have a professional profile and keep it professional across all your platforms. This is crucial. It portrays your personal brand.

Close Deals With Your Professional Profile

Imagine if you’re trying to close a big-ticket deal with a connection you recently made on LinkedIn. Now they search you on Google, only to find unpleasant photos and information about you. Unpleasant drunken pictures from a last wedding you’ve been to? Strange college memories still up there? What do you think a potential business contact would think about you after seeing some of the stuff you have on your social media profiles right now? Would they be gone right away or intrigued to get on the phone with you?

You see, as Melonie Dodaro said, you must always ask yourself this question: Are you making the kind of impression that you want to make? If not, you might want to give your profile a little more care. Your first impression is crucial when making any deals or even a connection on LinkedIn. It’s through this profile that you’re defining your personal brand and value.

If you manage to give a good impression, that’s when you think about what you can deliver. Thinking in terms of delivering value is the number one step in acquiring new clients.

Define Your Value – What Can You Deliver?

Most people think LinkedIn is mainly for posting jobs and job seekers posting their resume. That’s a big mistake! Don’t treat LinkedIn as a job-seeking website. With the number of growth in LinkedIn users in the past years, the way you can leverage this social network has completely changed.

As Melonie said, only 16% of people using LinkedIn for job search. The rest of them, 84% of people, are using it for business. So, if you post your resume on LinkedIn, it’s not going to resonate with that audience that you want to connect with. If you’re looking to use it as a business tool, you must approach it differently.

3-Step Formula For Success

So, what Melonie has done is that she created a 3-step formula for LinkedIn success.

Get Found
Attract Your Ideal Client
Stand Out

The key to success on LinkedIn is in this 3-step formula – Get Found, Attract and Stand Out! Share on X

LinkedIn is where people will get to know you on a surface level at first. They’ll look at your experience and what kind of value you have provided to the marketplace. And if you have a resume based profile on LinkedIn – that attracts employers but not your ideal clients. Clients will not know what you can deliver that will significantly help them increase or generate their revenue.

So, when you think about how to use LinkedIn to get more clients, you must think carefully about the details in your profile. I would say this is the most crucial foundation when you start using a LinkedIn account. Why? Because, if you want to be found on LinkedIn, you must be visible on the first page. If you’re not found on the first page – you’re invisible. You must pay attention to details, deliver value and content, and be consistent.

Connecting With Powerful And Influential People On LinkedIn

Now, you might still wonder, how to connect with powerful and influential people? As I mentioned just before, first off you must create a professional-looking profile. That way, you’ll be able to stand out among everyone else and it might be easier to get connected with your ideal clients or prospects.

If you don’t have an ideal first impression, how will you get connected with your ideal clients? Share on X

You must find a way to stand out, so pay attention to the details. If you are “in sales” – what’s your niche? What makes you special? Is there something that makes you different? What value do you bring? Keep all these questions in mind as you tweak all your profiles. If you don’t create a unique profile, you’re most likely to lose leveraging this business tool.

There are many people using this platform but, in reality, 99% of people are using it very poorly. Therefore, to stand out is exceptionally easy.

Be Professional And Get Found

As Melonie mentioned, the first step is to get found. Each day, people conduct searches on specific keywords. They might be looking for a certain type of client or prospect. For example: financial advisor, accountant, lawyer, etc… And usually, people look for someone based on referrals – people they can trust, like a financial advisor. So you can use this fact to position yourself well to be found. And as Melonie said – “Isn’t it beautiful just to get leads to find you?” With the correct use of LinkedIn, you can do just that.

So, you want to be showing up at the top of the search result. Think about what are the specific keywords that people are using and how to leverage them on your profile. The higher your rank on the search results – the better your profile will be. There are several ways to do that.

To show up on the top of the search results, you want to choose two or three specific keywords. If you’re doing business in a specific geography, you should throw in a keyword that’s based on your business.

Picking The Right Keywords

The key to picking the right keywords is thinking about the keywords that people would use. Most of the time you must think about how they are looking for what you offer. As Melonie mentioned in our interview – instead of just using “accountant” you might think about “Kelowna Account” as that might be something that people are searching for.

Think carefully – what can be your keyword? This is the most important step if you want to know about how to use LinkedIn to get more clients.

Creative Keywords Could Mislead Clients

Some people can be too creative with keywords, and it can mislead your clients. So, stick to the general basics of the right words when it comes to keywords. You have to know, not everyone on LinkedIn understands your creativity.

It’s also really important to choose your three primary keywords which best describe who you are and what you do. When you do that – you can optimize properly.

There Are 4 Places For Keywords

According to Melonie, there are 4 places for keywords. The first one is the headline. The headline holds a tremendous amount of weight in the LinkedIn algorithm – it may sound techy but it’s important if you want to find your ideal clients.

This part of your profile is meant to tell people who you are and who you’ve helped. For instance, a few keywords on your main profile, “Kelowna accountant” and or “business adviser”. If you watch the video above, you’ll be able to see some examples that Melanie elaborates on more.

Consistency Is Key

The second place to optimize your profile with your specific keywords is in the title of your current work experience. If you want to boost your profile on the search result you can also include those keywords in your description.

Consistency is key to success - with the right and consistent use of keywords on your LinkedIn profile you can attract more clients. Share on X

If you’re a business owner, chief executive or founder of a company, it’s advised not to use that as your keywords. Because of the broadness and generalization of those words – your clients won’t be able to find you. Think about it, nobody will search for; “founder”, “business owner” or “chief executive” unless you’re a salesperson. Therefore, choosing the right keywords is crucial to get more clients from LinkedIn.

The next place for your keyword is past work experience. This can be easy for those who have previously done what you’re doing now. I get that for some of you this might be something brand new. But there’s a little ninja trick Melonie has taught me to make all this easier.

You Can Create A Project-Based Past Experience

For example, you can craft your profile saying that you’ve worked for someone (maybe a certain company) for a short period and explain a little on your job description. It’s good to have at least one past experience that’s relative and related to what you do now as that’ll help with the search results.

Another place where you can reflect on past experiences and include keywords is your summary section. As you write it, make sure to include the same two or three keywords again. As you make these changes, you’ll be able to know how many times your profile’s been viewed and shown up in search results.

Observe Before And After

Keep an eye on how many times you show up in search results. You can use this feedback to keep looking for better words and adjusting. The best thing is that this is all on your LinkedIn profile’s home page, so you don’t even have to work hard to find this data.

When you make the changes that Melonie has suggested, the change and results in the search ranking are instant. This is how, with LinkedIn, you can be on page 50 and moved up to the first page at an instant with the right keywords.

Connect And Engage With Your Ideal Client

High Quality and original content will also boost your reputation and authority on LinkedIn. When you fix your search results, your content will be the key factor in attracting more clients.

Your profile must speak to your ideal client Share on X

If you’re writing an article, make your post visible by adding them to Pulse, LinkedIn’s built-in publishing platform. If you’re already producing other types of content, you can add them to your portfolio by simply typing the links into your profile.

Here are 4 strategies you can use to create compelling content:

Write in first-person
Identify who your ideal clients are
Share how you can help them
Call To Action

Speak to your clients individually and directly. It’s always helpful to learn some copywriting skills to implement these strategies too. Any copywriter will tell you that writing in the first person is the key because it will allow you to identify your ideal clients.

Let’s say, your ideal client comes about to do a search on LinkedIn. When they land on your profile, it speaks to them directly, it resonates with them. If they read relatable stuff in the first person, they will see themselves in your profile. It will encourage them to take action. The way to get them to take action is to share how you can help them.

This is where you engage with your clients. By talking to them and asking them where and what they’re struggling with, you can help them with problems they’re facing. You can also tell them (or show) exactly how you can do that.

Speak to your target audience about your audience – not about yourself! Share on X

Remember that clients and prospects will always have this question in mind – What’s in it for me? In reality, nobody cares about you, everyone cares about themselves. Everyone cares about how you can help them. So, if you make your profile all about yourself – it’s not going to resonate with anybody.

Never Forget To Have A Strong Call-To-Action

Now, if you capture the attention of your client, you have to guide them to action. This is where call-to-action comes into play.

And the final part is to have a strong call-to-action. You see, Melonie said the first place for your keyword is your headline.

Now, as soon as someone lands on your profile, what’s next? You don’t want to leave your ideal clients hanging by not having a call to action. The whole point and purpose of implementing these strategies are to get clients from LinkedIn. And if you don’t have a call-to-action, you won’t succeed.

I believe that if you don’t make the sale today, you won’t make the sale tomorrow Share on X

A call to action can be:

Book a call with you
Link to your landing page
Link to a specific webpage
Get a FREE consultation
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These are some examples of a specific call to action. It doesn’t mean they have to purchase something. It can be an excellent method for lead generation. The call-to-action will depend on your business model and your sales model. With that said, it depends all on what your goals are and what you want to achieve with each post. That’s why you need to know your target market.

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How To Know Your Target Market?

Your profile needs to be client-focused and the only way for you to be able to do that is to know your target market. If you don’t understand what their problems are and the language they use, it’s going to be challenging.

You then need to do a lot of research about ideal clients. One of the easiest ways to do that is to look at your last ten clients that have been your best clients. Who are some people you enjoyed working with? What clients did you go an extra length to help them transform their business?

You can look into common interests, industries, profits, and perhaps look at their location and dig deeper geographically. Where are most of your clients from, what are their positions in the company – in that way, you’ll get to know your ideal clients better? I’ve mentored thousands of entrepreneurs, business owners and sales professionals specifically on getting to know your ideal clients.

Communication Skill Is Important In Your Personal And Professional Life

Honestly, from the way I look at it if you have a certain communication skill, not only it’ll help you get more clients but also become a great salesperson. The best part about High Ticket Closer Certification Program is that you don’t need to be so knowledgeable about your product. Just like what Melonie said earlier – They only care about how you can help them.

So, knowing the right communication technique and skills will give you the opportunity to engage with your client with finesse. May it be to help them transform their business or generate more revenue because when you’ve mastered this skill. It will also transform your life – personal and professional.

Stand Out Significantly From Others

The more you use LinkedIn, the more you will see the value of it. You will also notice another people’s profile that’s being poorly done – they’re completely blank.

This is easy to fix – have a professional headshot. People want to see who they are dealing with – upload a professional picture of yourself. When people see a smiling face – that’s an inviting aura. To strengthen your LinkedIn profile is that you can upload a video to your profile.

It can be an introduction video or a professional video. In that way, you’re marketing yourself and showing your communication skills to your ideal clients. Talking about skills, on LinkedIn, you can add your skills and endorsement to your profile.

For example, if you have a copywriting skill that you’ve learned a few years ago, you can add that into your profile. It could be just a short certification program – add it. Any additional skills you’ve acquired in the past years will be an added advantage to your profile.

Many people fail to see the power of social proof. Share on X

Here’s another video I want to share with you. It’s about the 5 things you’re not utilizing in content marketing on LinkedIn.

Final Thoughts On How To Use LinkedIn To Get More Clients

It’s basic psychology – we trust our social network. People trust what they see online, and if people like you then more people will like you because of that. Does that make sense?

So, you’ve followed the 3-steps here and you’ve rank #1 on LinkedIn. What’s next?

If you want to know how to use LinkedIn to get more clients, I recommend you read “The LinkedIn Code” book by Melonie as she shares more in-depth tips and principles for LinkedIn in her book.

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