Let’s get stuck into this week’s advice with a question…Is your “message” consistent across all of your marketing channels? By this I mean if someone, eg a potential ideal client, was looking for exactly the “thing” you offer would they see the same marketing message no matter how many ways they look you up? Would your website be saying a very similar thing to your LinkedIn profile, to the leaflets you had made last year, to what you say when you are networking, and so on? Consistency of your marketing message is very important because:
1) You don’t want to confuse your ideal clients
2) You don’t want to make your ideal clients have to work just to figure out whether they need what you offer. To be honest they won’t work to figure it out as they’ll simply move on to the next supplier.
A classic place I see disconnects in the marketing businesses use is between their LinkedIn profiles and the rest of their marketing. LinkedIn now has so many users that it is one of the most (if not the most!) powerful marketing database in the world so you want your LinkedIn profile to contain the perfect marketing message for what you do. Too many people still have a very CV based approach to their profile rather than viewing it as a marketing piece. This presents two challenges 1) it can be pretty boring to read 2) the majority of it is historic. The combined result is that it’s not compelling and doesn’t help you pull ideal clients towards you. Used well LinkedIn can generate business for you so you want to make sure that your profile is doing all it can to help you grow your business.
I’m not a LinkedIn specialist but I do help my clients to make sure their profile is a key part of their overall marketing strategy so here’s my top tips to getting it right…
- Use the “summary” section to position the transformation you help your clients achieve via your products or services. As far as you can, mirror the marketing messages that are in your website. You need to be a bit careful as your LinkedIn profile is about you so you may need to tweak the text a little.
- Your LinkedIn profile acts in a very similar way to your website copy so you need to make sure you use the key phrases that your ideal clients would search for.
- People get bored easily so don’t make them work. Order your LinkedIn profile so the elements that generate your revenue are the first things they see, and not the hobby you do on the side.
- Put some personality into it to keep it engaging.
- Ask as many clients as you can to give you testimonials on LinkedIn as this will greatly add to your credibility.
- Update it regularly as this will keep you popping up on the activity list that goes to all of your contacts.
Now go and take a look at your current LinkedIn profile and make a plan to transform it into a key piece of your marketing strategy.