Ash Roy: Welcome back to the productive insights podcast. This is ash Roy, the founder of productive insights.com, and I’m super excited to have Marcus Murphy back to talk about LinkedIn sales navigator. Now, if you haven’t listened to part one of this two part conversation, definitely head over to www.ProductiveInsights.com/173 where we talk about how to set up your LinkedIn profile in five steps and how to use LinkedIn to have meaningful sales conversations and change the conversation around selling. Marcus has shared some awesome tips in that episode around it, how to actually not be the sleazy, disliked salesperson, but rather be the more empathetic, ethical, diagnostically focused salesperson who understands his or her prospects problem and then looks to solve it in a meaningful way and LinkedIn is an awesome tool to do that. To definitely check out productive insights.com forward slash one 73. Now, in this second part of this two part conversation, which is www.ProductiveInsights.com/174 where you can access all the show notes. Marcus is going to share some absolute awesome ideas around how to use sales navigator, the paid version of LinkedIn to take things up a notch, so welcome back, Marcus.
Marcus Murphy: Thank you so much for having me back. I think of that foundational piece. If you haven’t listened to the first episode where we go through building kind of that all star profile and really making sure that your professional brand is intact. That’s the first one I would do before hopping into this paid version because there’s so many things you can do for free before paying for some of the tools, but if you’re going to pay for anything, the sales navigator tool is by far the way to go.
Ash Roy: Absolutely. Let’s jump into the content. So how is sales navigator different from the free version of LinkedIn and why would we want to use sales navigator What benefits would it give us
Marcus Murphy: Sales navigator is basically a way to aggregates opportunity. What it’s doing is it’s literally combing through, allowing you to put in targets and allowing you to essentially put in who you would like to connect with so you’re being more intentional about who you’re targeting very specifically and what it does is it’s giving you recommendations and it’s also a search feature is probably it has an advanced feature for it search. It’s allowing you to really narrow down profiles and be able to connect in new ways with the platform so it’s using its software to be able to pull in, allow you to identify exactly the Avatar and the client profile that you’re looking for us. This is very much a hunter tool. This is for people who want to go out and find new business and it’s allowing you to essentially sift through it and it will give you the recommendations and allow you to connect in new ways.
Marcus Murphy: Because on LinkedIn, the free version, you have to be connected with someone to send them a message. So it’s very important that you understand that. On LinkedIn navigator, you get an allocation per month of messages that you can send to anyone without being connected to them, so that shows up in their inbox and if you listen to the first part of this video in part one, we talk about how that you’re getting thousands of emails and phone calls and text message an SMS, but you’re getting very small amount of messages on LinkedIn. So if you want to cut through the noise and you want to send a LinkedIn navigator message, that’s another great way to get in front of your prospects. So that’s some really cool pieces and I can kind of give you another five step breakdown of what that platform is. But that’s the really reason why those two things are really different.
Ash Roy: Let’s jump into that in a second, but I’ll tell you. I’ll have a sales navigator account and one of the things that I absolutely love about it is I can actually follow a lead so I can mock somebody as a lead in sales navigator. Even if I’m not connected to them and follow what they share on LinkedIn and follow when they’re mentioned in the news, so those become fantastic talking points where it’s focused on the other person rather than, hey, buy my stuff. Buy My stuff. You’re actually connecting with them on what they are sharing and meeting them where they are on their journey, which were some magical was that Joe Pulizzi shared when I spoke to him in episode 75 of this podcast. Meet your audience where they are on their journey, not where you are in your journey and says, I’ve got to actually allows you to do that. So maybe that’s a good jumping off point. Do you want to share with us those five key steps to sales navigator
Marcus Murphy: First of all, the number one people need to know is that it’s not a standalone product, so it’s not something you can buy without having the free version of LinkedIn and it’s literally an enhancement. So it’s an add on to that. And the reason why I say that is because if you’re a business owner out here, the reason why part one of this episode was to go enhance and perfect your profile was because with that you’re going out and trying to connect with people. So if you have, it doesn’t matter. It’s like if you’re a marketer around here, it’s like sending an aggregate add to a terrible website. Okay It doesn’t matter how great the ad is. So in this case, sales navigator gives you the opportunity to, like you mentioned ash, to go out there and mark Leeds and build a pipeline in side of sales navigator.
Marcus Murphy: That’s very important. If you want to be a successful salesperson and you always want to do well, then there’s number one rule to that is having a full pipeline at all times. Okay If you want to be a successful business and you don’t want to fail, like 95 percent of them do in five years, you didn’t have a full pipeline of prospects and customers and people that you want to connect with at all times. So what this navigator allows you to do is take a network with 560 million people in it and go hunting and build a pipeline that allows you to eat for a very long time, and that will basically by saving those leads, as you mentioned, it shows you when they post articles that shows you, when they share, it shows you when they write on other people’s shows, you, when they get promoted, shows you if they’re in the news and any articles that are associated with them and you get updates in your email, you get updates inside the platform.
Marcus Murphy: They’re trying to find opportunities for you to insert yourself into that conversation. I love what you said there, Ash, about making sure that you’re a part of their journey, but also make sure you’re a part of their conversation. Okay Giving yourselves opportunities to go in and write on their product or right on their posts before you ever reach out with a message is a really great way for you to start letting them see your face and hear who you are and show that you’re interested. So when you do send that message to them, it goes much further because they’re like, oh, this is the person who wrote to me, this is the person who’s sharing my articles, this is the person who’s engaging with me where I am, and then from that that message goes much further and it has a much higher open rate and response rate by doing so.
Marcus Murphy: So it’s not a standalone product. That’s number one. Make sure that your LinkedIn free profiles fully enhanced before you buy this. The individual accounts $79 a month, but they have a 30 day free trial which you should absolutely take advantage of. And then if you have bigger teams that want to use it, like everyone, all, all salespeople inside of digital marketer have a sales navigator account and it obviously it gets a much better price when you have multiple seats and then you would need a representative from LinkedIn to help you with that. But if you’re just sitting here like, I want to check it out. Thirty day trial, if it rolls over, it’s about $80 per month. USD, do you have a question about that
Ash Roy: Yes, I do have a question and that question, is this connected with a lead and you shared some of that content. You might’ve commented on something they’ve posted, you’ve made some kind of a connection. At what point is it okay to make them some kind of an offer when you say, Hey, I would like you to either visit my website or I’d like to connect with you to be a guest on my podcast, or whatever it is.
Marcus Murphy: People do this wrong. Okay, and it’s called permission based selling. It’s something that I teach our team all the time. You have permission to ask for something when you’ve provided value, you have permission to ask for something when you provide value. So the first conversation piece can’t be an ass candidate. Has to be, yeah. It has to be a give and it can’t be generic
Ash Roy: provided value. Let’s say you’ve done three gifts. How do you know what’s the formula
Marcus Murphy: So for me, the way that this has worked really well with the messaging and some of these leads that our people were connecting with is the first interaction is typically an introduction. It’s typically saying to someone, and not a generic way, because I’ll tell you right now that most of the messages I get on LinkedIn, if they’re prospecting focused or that’s kind of the end game, is to get me to buy something or get time in my calendar because typically the two most valuable things is my wallet in my time. Right And I’ll tell you right now that most of it is pretty generic. They are just in there doing the classic sales mistake. They’re talking about themselves. Okay. And the number one thing you do when you introduce yourself, as you introduce yourself and then you ask a question about them, you tell them that I’m connected with you because I saw this thing or that you did.
Marcus Murphy: I saw the article that you post. I saw this on your profile. I just wanted a little bit of time to let you know that I appreciate this or let you know that I’m around and I’m just really happy to be connected with you and that’s the first step. How did the. The hack there for salespeople is that you don’t necessarily need to use an inmail, which is you get in mail credits, you get mail credits on LinkedIn navigator. You don’t have to use those until you’ve exhausted the connection part because in the connection you actually have an opportunity to send a personalized message with that up to 300 characters. So if you send a connection from someone’s profile on LinkedIn where it says connect and you click on that, it allows you to send a personalized message, which is almost equivalent to a message because it shows up in their inbox. It’s just 300 characters, so it’s not as. You don’t have as much detail, but I’ll tell you some of the best messages.
Ash Roy: Sorry to interrupt you, but just so if you’re listening, you have to click on something called add note. Please don’t send the standard unscripted or the standard script of connection message because other person just gets this thing that says so and so would like to connect with you and they’ll probably say no. Yeah, make it personal. So add note. Sorry. Go ahead Marcus.
Marcus Murphy: That’s really wonderful. Thank you for that context because yes, it is the add note section and 300 characters usually gives you enough, but some of the most powerful emails that I’ve ever sent or that our company at digital marketer has ever sent have simply been a question. How can I make your company move faster How can I make x company move faster and then as your name with your in letting people reply and people were responding, there are absolutely answering those questions because it’s conversational. The best conversational messages on LinkedIn are typically short, so even when you get, let’s say you’re providing the value like you just asked ash, the kind of framework or formula, there is introduction, value added. I looked at your profile. I’ve identified these things about your business. Then the appropriate ask is when they engage in the conversation. I always laugh.
Marcus Murphy: I always have to teach our reps, these young people coming into sales, how to have a conversation. Again, like how they have a normal human conversation with somebody that leads into opportunity. It doesn’t necessarily ever do that, but I’ll tell you that the more that you add value, the more than you ask really thoughtful questions. The more that someone engages you in a conversation only is it appropriate then to ask them to take a more intimate step. One of the things that I think is really interesting is Ryan Deiss. I know I keep bringing them up and if you haven’t listened to his podcast, if you haven’t figured out who this guy is, the CEO and founder of digital marketer, Co, founder of digital marketer, you really need to. Because one of the things he taught me in and introduced me to his kind of these 12 stages of intimacy, and I’ll just wrote that in the episode in episode.
Marcus Murphy: I will paraphrase and butcher this, but the main point you need to understand is that like in human behavior, right That there is a beginning. There’s this eye to eye contact and it leads all the way to like the full form of intimacy with someone you know, with another person or a partner and we all know what that is, right I don’t need to get into that science, but if you skip too many of these steps, so I hand to hand a hug and embrace a high five a. those are six steps before we ever get to a hug. Yeah, so most people that are huggers are tolerated, but if you go from hug to kiss, from a handshake to a kiss, it’s assault. Right And that’s literally what the study said, but a lot of times we always laugh at this because as salespeople we totally relate with that were like, oh yeah, that makes total sense, but we assault people every day because what we do is we literally send these messages where you’re going to step 10, right
Marcus Murphy: So understand that if the sales process and sending these messages out to people that the first thing you need to do is introduce yourselves. They need to see. You need to see them. They need to understand you are not a threat and that you are absolutely a person that they should be connected to in some way that be charming and value driven or just the fact that you’re interested in them. You’ve asked them questions and at some point when it’s appropriate to ask means you built up enough intimacy and gone through those steps so that they feel like this isn’t just somebody going, hi, my name is Marcus. Can you buy my stuff It needs to be, hi, my name is Marcus. I really love what you’re doing. I’d love to talk to you some time. Then when you have a conversation with them about their business, you’re asking really intentional questions.
Marcus Murphy: The next step after that, it’s absolutely appropriate to take that further, but I do think that yeah, I think we skipped steps all the time and I think in terms of when you think of human intimacy and how we connect with each other human to human, I need to teach that to every young person, but I need to teach you to everybody in the world because the first time I heard it, it was a major breakthrough as a salesperson because I just sat there and said, oh my gosh, I’ve been assaulting people for years. I mean, it’s all is not funny, but I have been in the context of human relationship. I have skipped so many steps on the process because I’ve only been thinking about myself.
Ash Roy: I have to say something really funny, man. Please do. In episode one 70, and I actually made this the intro snippets on most of my podcast episodes, I grab a little audio graph, which I learned from my friend James Schramko. I grab an audio grab and put it at the start of the episode and the audit rabbit grab for episode one. Seventy was Ryan saying something to the effect of, hi, my name is Ryan Deiss, how about we go back to my place and get freaky. Essentially gets away with that. I couldn’t get away with that. And then he says, you know, and you’d get slapped if that happened and I hope you would get slapped. So he actually positioned that very well and I just thought that was hilarious. But that is exactly what you’re saying as well that we do. The other thing I wanted to mention is, I’m sure it was someone from digital marketer that shared this video.
Ash Roy: It might have been Jenna snappily, but I’m not sure if it was her. It was a phenomenal video where it shed these basically these actors in a room in a sort of a party setting and they’ve got, you know, the people pleaser and the these things over their heads and the salesmen or whatever. And after watching that video, I just made one small change and that has made a massive difference for me. And that is this. When I go to send somebody a message on LinkedIn, I imagined myself in a room with a drink in my hand and then with a drink in their hand, would I go and say this to them and approaching them in person where I go to them in person and say, hey, I’m ash. Do you want to check out my website Probably not, right I’d say, Hey, I’m ash. Are you from around here Or Hey, I’m ash. What brings you to this party You know That’s how the conversation starts. Right
Marcus Murphy: Exactly. That is such a really fantastic exercise for everybody who’s listening to this. If you imagine yourself doing it in a live context, what does it feel like What do you. What do you say For some reason when we introduced this electronic form of communication, things break down the intimacy, isn’t it there So you need to be over exaggerate that in your messaging when you’re an online persona because people generally don’t trust anyone. Okay And so if you’re building up the rapport, it’s probably going to take you a little bit more effort because if I’m in person I can get there quickly, like I can get there pretty fast, but when I’m trying to communicate with you over a message or you know, over sms or over a phone call, you really have to kind of go above and beyond to get those, to build that trust. I think that’s a really great point to kind of visualize that. That will help so much.
Ash Roy: Great Point. And find that video, a link to that video in the show notes. I hope I’ll be able to dig it up, but it was just the most awesome video and the big take away from it was if you wouldn’t go and say to somebody in a room at an actual party than why would you say it on LinkedIn
Marcus Murphy: Oh, it’s so good. It’s such a great rule in life.
Ash Roy: That’s perfect. So it’s not a standalone product. Sales navigator. And then we talked a bit about how enables us to meet a prospect where they are on their journey. What’s the next takeaway from sales navigator
Marcus Murphy: Next one is that it actually creates recommendations as a part of the package and that’s a really important one for people to understand, so it’s paying attention to your basically until like the history and how you’ve essentially based your contacts in the past. So when it does that every day there’s a section that says recommendations and it will give you recommended leads based on what you’ve been searching for and the second part of that is that you know, which is going to be my third point and the second is how to actually search, which is an amazing feature, but before you even search, as you start to search and as you start to connect and as you start to write and engage with people’s content, it’s keeping an inventory of those and it will start to recommend people based on your criteria and that’s an intuitive piece of technology built into the platform that a lot of people don’t actually use. Even people that have been using sales navigator for a very long time, do you not understand that It’s essentially a gen tool that they built into the platform that gives you a different targets every single day that you can start to connect with save as leads and I think that’s a big one, but I love that it does that and it’s a very smart piece of software
Ash Roy: where going to make this happen. How do I take advantage of this feature
Marcus Murphy: Yeah, so literally when you log into sales navigator account, there is a recommendation section. When you click on the recommendation section, it will always populate in there based on what you’ve been doing. So you do need to start engaging. You do need to start connecting with people. You do need to start doing searches, which is my point three. Um, but the recommendation feature is there, and please don’t overlook it. It’s a very valuable tool that they use.
Ash Roy: This is different from the SAS preferences feature. Correct
Marcus Murphy: Very different than the sales preferences. This is their algorithm that actually puts together recommendations based on your activities on sales navigator.
Ash Roy: Very cool. Yes, I have seen that. Okay. That’s great to know. Okay. So it creates recommendation. So be aware of that and what I’m hearing is the more you use sales navigator, the smarter it gets.
Marcus Murphy: Correct Yes. Very intuitive in that way. The reason why I like the recommendation section so much is because the number one complaint for any salesperson or businesses I need more leads, right It’s the reason why marketers hate salespeople because it’s always the fault of the leads. Right Well this is saying like, let me help bridge that gap by working for you when you’re sleeping, imagine waking up and just having an inbox full of recommended leads based on criteria and you haven’t had to go out there and aggregate or find those are, you know, lean on marketing. That is something that the platform is doing. And as you start to say yes, this is a lead and you start saving those recommendations that dials that in even further. So it just gets better and better as you go on. Yeah. Okay. What’s next So it creates recommendations.
Marcus Murphy: Yeah. So number three is that you essentially can filter your updates, but also there’s an advanced search feature on LinkedIn navigator. That’s if you’re a marketer on here or you’ve ever done any kind of like a traffic or advertising on platforms like Facebook or Google. It basically has a very similar search function that allows you to go in and say, okay, I want all decision makers, all owners and people with VP titles and director titles. Like for me, I’ll give you an example. So our teams, they do look for digital agencies. We’re building that community and we have a whole product line for that. So what they do is they go in and they say agency, that’s their first search term, and then in each section that can start to dial it in and say, well, I want agencies in Austin, Texas. I want agencies in Sydney, Australia only.
Marcus Murphy: Right And then it was in a people that have the title of owner, General Manager, director, VP, president, et cetera. And then what happens is you see the number. When you say agency, Sydney, Australia, it’s a million, right Or it’s like a 250,000. It’s a big number and you can watch it in real time. As you start to use the filter system and wash that narrow all the way down to 350 100 people, 60 people now inside of that feature, that is because right there you could stop and be like, that’s a great tool, right But what it. What it does is it’ll also pop that out. It actually puts that into sub categories for you. So you can say Sydney, Australia, owner, president, et Cetera, agency, and you can kind of narrow it down that way. Now you’ve got maybe a 150 people, right You’ve got a hundred and 50 different people who fit that criteria.
Marcus Murphy: Now what it does is shows you these people have been in, logged into LinkedIn in the last 30 days. These people, which is very important because you know they’re an active user, so if you send a message to them, they’re most likely going to get it. It also looks at and says, these people follow your business. So now when you’re sitting around and thinking, well, how do these 100 people where I focus my time, what are my hot leads Well, it’s the people that know you, like you, the people that have been on LinkedIn that are using it actively, you start there, so it’s literally giving you a starting place to understand how you can kind of narrow down and get the best quality leads and the people that you should be speaking to based on all the information they’re putting on LinkedIn and how it’s giving you the sub categories based on your searches and those are amazing tools that expedite. No nothing on the free side can give you that. That’s really what one of the main features that you’re paying for. It also tells you when someone’s viewed your profile. So when someone goes by
Ash Roy: and views my profile, I usually respond to that by saying, LinkedIn informed me that you’ve stopped by my profile. Thank you for your interest. What prompted you to reach out and how can I help you
Marcus Murphy: Yeah. You know, a lot of people miss opportunities I currently have on a monthly basis. It’s somewhere around two, 3000 people that view my profile and a lot of that’s because I’m connected to a bunch of different. I mean there’s articles out there on LinkedIn. A lot of people just come view it doesn’t mean they’re connecting with me. It just means that they’re viewing the profile and so. But a lot of people miss that opportunity. There are so many tools now coming out. A friend of mine created a company called which is k u w a r e and Coo where is similar to accompany, also called duck soup with these names are so funny, but they basically are a tool that they use LinkedIn’s Api and what it does is it goes out and takes your profile and you dial in those same search criteria because they use sales navigator, both those systems and they will go out and look at other people’s profiles every single day who fit that criteria and typically what people do when they look and see that you looked at their profile, they do what you do.
Marcus Murphy: They’ll write back or they’ll essentially want to connect with you or something like that. And so what this does is it just kind of goes through and does that for you. Your profile is out there looking at other people’s profiles in all of a sudden what happens is, and now you have thousands of people looking back at you who are your perfect fit, and so if they look back at you and you start a conversation with them, they’re much more likely to connect with you. So there’s tools out there and their strategies, but I’ll tell you, you know it’s a big major missed opportunity. If you do not say something or connect with people who view your profile, they’re there for a reason. Okay They are 100 percent on your profile because they were looking for something or that you happened to come up in a search criteria for them and so reaching out to them and saying, Hey, I saw you looked at my profile. Anything I can do for you, let me know. And that right there is a start of a conversation that could lead so many different places.
Ash Roy: And Neil Patel, who actually interviewed in my very first episode talks about duck soup. And my concern about duck soup though is that if you use these automated tools, can’t LinkedIn shut down your account
Marcus Murphy: So LinkedIn only has a few tools that are kind of official and something that they don’t, they’re not endorsing those tools, but they’re also not shutting the tool down because they easily could. The API is fairly open for LinkedIn, you know, if it was something disingenuous, if it was something like gaming the system, every marker on the planet’s going to try and break it first of all and what they’re going to try and do is, uh, you know, I’ve had people come up to me after different talks and be like, you know what, I’ve got this secret thing I can send a thousand email messages at once. That’s not the point. The point of the platform isn’t that it’s not the point of the platform to Max out your connections to 30,000, which is the Max number of connections you can have. You can have millions of followers, but you can truly only have 30,000 people in your network that you’re connected to.
Marcus Murphy: So it makes you think like if you’re just looking for a number of play because it makes you look like you’re more important than you are, your network isn’t worth anything. If your network truly is your net worth in this way, you’re going to be very specific on LinkedIn about who you’re connected to on your profile. And I think that’s really, really an important piece of kind of like the quality over quantity in that way. So yeah, I would be careful with those tools, but understand that LinkedIn’s aware of them, do they know all about these tools And many of them require LinkedIn navigator to use them. So I think that part is really, really important to understand is that it’s kind of like a double edge sword. It’s like does LinkedIn shut down something that’s getting them more LinkedIn navigator seats and accounts or do they kind of try and figure out a way to embrace it
Marcus Murphy: So I know they’re keeping a very close eye on these companies, but right now they’re not really violating anything in the terms of service and they’re using the API until they’re shut down. So duck soup coup where they’re out there, they’re options. I’m not endorsing either, but I do think that you need to know that there is a strategy behind looking at other people’s profiles and making sure that you connect with the people and comment on the people that have looked at yours. Okay, cool. What’s next So we have you talked about filtering updates and the advanced search feature. Yeah, so the filtering updates of the advanced search feature and the fourth one is basically kind of a premium profile. Okay. The fourth one is that when you buy, you get a premium profile. People have always asked me, they’re like, what’s the difference between a premium profile and LinkedIn navigator
Marcus Murphy: And it’s really important to understand basically social selling or that kind of term came from the idea of a professional persona online. That is really what it is. It’s like how do I start positioning myself professionally online That’s how that whole thing came and it ends up being twitter and Facebook and all these different social platforms in ways that you can start conversations with people in terms of business. And I think the struggle, it was basically creating, I’d say a decent professional persona or a decent profile and I think that really what we looked at on LinkedIn initially I was kind of that first impressions really matter. And so navigator kind of provided these premium profiles to let other people know that there are like larger headshots and better background images. I mean they go a long way and kind of judging someone’s profile essentially is kind of like how do I stand out from the crowd
Marcus Murphy: And so the enhanced profile piece of it that comes with the LinkedIn is a premium profile which allows you to have essentially the sum of those enhanced features. Some of the photos, some of the ability to connect with more people in one day because they have restrictions on all of that. They have restrictions on the number of people that you can be connected to in one day. And typically that. I mean it’s, it’s between 500,000. There’s no true number on there because people can game the system and do terrible things. But I do know that they are monitoring this heavily. The algorithm is looking at those pieces, so if you were in a sea of 560 million people plus then there needs to be ways that you can stand out and there are premium features that you get on the sales navigator side that allow you to do that and also that give you the premium distinction on the right hand side of your LinkedIn profile that allows people to know that you have a premium profile. I don’t know if that’s actually helpful or hurtful. I’ve never turned it off, but you do have an option to turn it off, so every time there’s an option to keep something on a turn it off. You know that there’s probably a split decision. So yeah, I would definitely say that there isn’t an opportunity to that premium profile option, which is helpful for a lot of people that are trying to stand out in the crowd.
Ash Roy: So I’ve just launched a membership site and I’m accepting founding members into that membership site. It’s called get me to dumb.com. How do I use my premium profile to promote
Marcus Murphy: that membership site This kind of goes into a whole different talk, but I’m still wanting to mention it anyway. Sales navigator is really great for going out and connecting with people. You can use a lot of that content, like a repository of really good content to start being some of those initial messages that you send people so they get to know who you are and what you’re about, so we’ll use it that way because there’s no real fast way to do it. However, however they just connected the sales navigator account with the campaign builder, which is their marketing tool on LinkedIn and the only reason I’m going to bring it up, I don’t want to bifurcate our time here and think about, you know, go down some rabbit hole with it, but the reason why it’s important to have the marketing and the sales tool connected is because on the marketing side, you can boost your content.
Marcus Murphy: If you have a business page out there, you’re writing really good organic content. The content is getting engagement. You can then pay to boost that content, which is the best way that you can actually use your money. On LinkedIn, but there’s another feature too, so there is an email messaging feature on campaign builder which allows you to send out mass email messages. So here’s the caveat though, is that it actually isn’t one blast. It’s not like an email that you can automate and send out to thousands of people at one time and it hits all their inboxes. It’s a slow roll so that it feels like the site, because the site isn’t a fast fix, it’s organic and it feels more natural. So if you do the sponsored LinkedIn email message, which is what it’s called, um, that’s how you can really get that out there in the world.
Marcus Murphy: So in order to have a campaign builder account and a sales navigator account the same time, you have to obviously have a profile on LinkedIn, but you also need to have a business page on LinkedIn. You have to have a business page on LinkedIn, which is free to do it. It’s very easy to create. I have features that I can send you to ash to make sure that people have to do that. But if you go on there and you create that page and you’re connected to sales navigator, connected to the campaign builder, the marketing solution, you have an opportunity when you’re doing big launches and things like that to send an email message to a targeted group of people and that a roll out over a week or so, which is really, really great.
Ash Roy: And his campaign build a separate product and cost differently to sales navigator.
Marcus Murphy: Yeah. So the campaign builders free. Imagine if you’re kind of creating a, like an advertising campaign on Facebook or you know, it doesn’t cost anything to be on there, but if you actually initiate a campaign that does cost, it’s just the same thing. Targeting rules apply, you know, it’s cost per click advertising. So you would have to find the bid and be able to look at where the market is for that specific advertisement. Just like any kind of sponsored email, but sponsored email has a kind of fixed cost as to what you’re sending and how many you’re sending. And it gives you those options. But yeah, that’s a separate thing. And the only. It’s a pay to play model, so it’s only when you actually use it that you’re paying for it. And so I would recommend everybody get, get more on that. I did a whole workshop on it out of creative live in San Francisco, um, and it was a kind of a new piece for people to look at, which I thought was really great. Got New ideas for people in terms of the, how the sales navigator in the campaign builder work kind of together, which is
Ash Roy: good. Well, I have this creative live courses, which is where it first came across here, so I’m going to go back and watch the one on campaign builder. I haven’t seen that one yet.
Marcus Murphy: There’s two. There’s one creating an all star profile on there which is about I think 90 minutes or so. And then the other one is all things paid on LinkedIn, so it goes through navigator and it goes through campaign builder. It’s quick. I speak pretty fast. I only had 90 minutes to talk on that one, but I do. I am working on a, an encore workshop. I did a workshop here at digital marketer which was five, almost six hours on just the profile and it’s kind of workshop style where we stop and you implement and we review it. I mean that’s when you watch and then I’m doing a follow-up on the campaign builder in sales navigator to do a full day on that as well. So yeah, these are really fun topics to talk about and there’s a lot of information out there. If you just start googling stuff that I’ve done that’s just free out there for you and some stuff’s paid, but there’s a lot of free information out there on our blog.
Marcus Murphy: Things I’ve written about this specifically, like we literally just put out a. it’s basically a 10 page blog posts, ash, which is entitled the six steps to launch your first LinkedIn ads campaign and that’s something that I wrote last week and that one is literally a step by step tactical blog post about launching your first campaign on LinkedIn digital marketer. If you go to a digital marketer.com forward slash blog and you type in Marcus Murphy, you’ll see all of my LinkedIn articles on there and uh, yeah, so you’ll get all the information. One is on building and creating a LinkedIn profile, which is a huge, very long blog post and the second one is to, because they’re all tactical. One thing at digital marketer that we really believe in is not just the hype and getting people excited about something, but giving them tactical step by step procedural. Yeah. So that. So that when you’re done, you actually have an asset. And so both of those blog posts on our blog right now.
Ash Roy: Well I’ll be sure to link to those in the show notes, which you can access that productive insights have come forward slash one 74. Okay, so we’re up to point four, point five.
Marcus Murphy: Yeah. So point five is just a reminder. Point five is that this is a paid feature. I want people to understand that LinkedIn’s not a nonprofit, right Like they are just like every other business trying to make a profit and so you’re going to see some of these paid features that are on there, you know, some of them are contract based but on an individual basis it’s month to month, but I would say that understanding that you’re paying $80 for something on here is a very much needs to be said over and over and over again because I think a lot of people need to make sure that they’re roi buying are there. They’re seeing a return on their investment. For me, I know that our people out here, because of my price point on the products that we sell, we roi effect very quickly, but if you’re a solo entrepreneur and $80 can feel like a lot and I’ve totally been there.
Marcus Murphy: I’ve been there, had to pick between software and food many times in my entrepreneurial life. But I’ll tell you that in the case of what I can give one last kind of recommendation, do the 30 day trial, check out the features. They have a pretty incredible walk through checkout. I’m pretty sure another blog post is going to come out where I have to really break down sales navigator a little bit further, but there’s just plenty of free information. LinkedIn learning is another really incredible tool that was basically. Yeah, LinkedIn basically bought Lynda and LinkedIn learning now has a ton of different faculty members who are all experts in different areas speaking about it and I know for a fact that they have a full suite on LinkedIn navigator and some of these tools. So understand that I’m asking you to take some time to make an additional investment.
Marcus Murphy: And so if you don’t do yourself a favor and really get in there and look around and start to do your research, um, it’ll be just another $80 that you waste and probably didn’t have to use. But LinkedIn navigator truly is for that person who wants to hunt down business and they will make it easier for you to connect and start conversations. And then my last little maybe like final thought there is, understand that there is still a structure of how we create intimacy with people and how we sell. And I think that you have to go through those steps and build that value before we ever asked for something or else we have a great opportunity to ruin that business, just like every other kind of bad salesperson out that maybe perpetuates that stigma. So yeah, very good.
Ash Roy: Comes back to what we talked about earlier. If you wouldn’t say it to somebody at a party in a face to face situation, then what would you say it on LinkedIn
Marcus Murphy: Correct.
Ash Roy: So that was an excellent session. My biggest takeaways were understand that it’s not a standalone product. You first need to optimize your LinkedIn profile and get the free version of LinkedIn working can find out more productive inside.com forward slash one slash seven slash three. It’s a great way to meet your prospect where they are on their journey because you are able to follow leads and follow up with the sharing on LinkedIn and follow when they mentioned in the news, etc. So it’s all about being customer or prospect centric rather than me centric. You also talked about how it creates recommendations and it’s got a lot of very useful. automation’s not around the conversation that just cannot be replicated. You still need to be human and have a meaningful human conversation, but it does help you with the search and the algorithms help you to find your ideal prospects using the advanced feature and so on.
Ash Roy: Use things like cover and duck soup sparingly. Be aware of the fact that LinkedIn doesn’t say no to using them, but proceed with caution the sand that you’re premium profile is an asset and use it intelligently. Have a business page which is part of my homework. Set up a business page if you haven’t already. Got one and use campaign builder which works with sales navigator, and then it gives you the options to boost content. We also talked about the sponsored LinkedIn email message process or system and some awesome tools to which we will link including six steps to launch your first LinkedIn ads campaign, which I believe you talking about in your live episode. Also, LinkedIn sales navigator has a 30 day free trial, so use that, but use it wisely so that you can hopefully get roi in that first 30 days so that it pays for your future use at least for a year or something like that. So be strategic about it. Think about what You’re going to offer and how you’re going to approach that process. I would say even mine, map the whole sales process and have a sale scripted conversation ready before you join up with sales navigator for the free account so you can take good advantage. Now, most importantly, how do people find out more about you, Marcus, and is there anything else you would like to share
Marcus Murphy: Yeah. The only thing I would say is, you know, get connected. She me, when you do actually connect with me and you add a note as ash as mentioned in a previous episode, but I’ll tell you that here as well. If you do connect with me, please add in a personal note. You have that option. If you go to my profile on your pc, on the mobile, it doesn’t actually allow you to have that option to send a personalized message. Um, but if you actually go to your computer and you on my profile and hit connect, you’ll see an opportunity there and a button that says, add a note, add a note and let me know that you heard the podcast that you’re, you’re an active listener of Ash’s program. Um, that’ll help me to kind of prioritize, you know, that conversation. But I’m always there.
Marcus Murphy: I like being a resource for people. I love looking at people’s profiles because I’m constantly learning. I have long flights coming up all over the world this year and I love to be able to start continuing my journey and my research into how people connect and how we are thoughtful in our sales process. So yeah, I’m just mark, I’m literally linkedin.com, forward slash forward slash Marcus a Murphy, which is going to be again, linkedin.com forward slash I n as in Nancy Ford slash Marcus a Murphy. That’s my profile. And actually here’s some of the people don’t know and I’m going to, I might even show this in the video, but hopefully you can link to it. What I found on LinkedIn, that is going to be everyone’s new business card and if you’re a speaker or any kind of presenter on here, LinkedIn has new feature on their mobile app. In the search bar there’s four little dots, almost like a square. And if you click on it, that’s going to be your code for LinkedIn. Oh, okay. I’ve taken this code which is a qr code by everybody else. It’s a qr code. And, and basically I know qr codes are very like 1994. Qr codes are great when they’re built in natively to the platform. When I was in Australia at dmu, I put that qr code on my screen. I got 572 people who connect with me that moment. Wow.
Ash Roy: That’s a lot of connections man.
Marcus Murphy: And so when they connected, I actually had a message that went out to them and talk to them and make sure I get connected with them. But people can get creative with the tools that, that LinkedIn keeps creating for you to start conversations. That’s kind of my mission too, is like inform people in all these ways to bring sales back to where I think it should be, which is thoughtful and value centric. So I’m super excited to connect with everybody on here and please feel free to connect me and shoot me a message that you know, ash, I can make sure I know where you’re coming from.
Ash Roy: Well, Marcus said was absolutely awesome having you on the show. I just want to say thank you so much for being on and sharing so much value. I’m sure our audience will absolutely love it. If you’re listening to this, please reach out to Marcus and please share this episode with somebody else you think might benefit. So thanks Marcus. That was great. Thank you so much for having me, Ash. It’s always an honor and a privilege, so thank you.