Tag Guides

Reading Time: 6 minutes

If becoming a LinkedIn Influencer is one of your goals for 2023 then you have come to the right place. Before we get started, it’s important to note that this is not a quick-fix guide to turn you into an influencer overnight. It can happen: a ultra-viral video, a huge investment in your company or a popular article about in the press can all catapult you to ‘influencer’ status rapidly; but that’s not something we can optimise or plan for!

This guide is all about putting in the work to build a community and become a leader in your space. This brings me to another important point – consider your motivations for becoming a LinkedIn influencer. If this is a vanity project, the hunt for likes and comments, it’s likely that you won’t stick at it. In a game where consistency is key, that simply won’t get you where you want to go. With that said, you can still take plenty of advice from this article that will make your LinkedIn more popular and with it, those all-important engagements.

How to become a LinkedIn Influencer in 4 steps

• Step 1: Be the expert
• Step 2: Build your community
• Step 3: Create value-driven content
• Step 4: Dedication & consistency

Step 1: Be the Expert

There are two kinds of LinkedIn influencers – the “I can post about anything and everybody listens” kind, and the “I’m an expert in my field, so listen to me!” kind. For 99% of influencers, you have to start as the latter before you’re trusted enough to become the former. Even the megastar influencers (Branson, Huffington etc.) got to those lofty positions by conquering their respective fields first.

Now, being an expert is easier said than done. It takes years of work and experience. Perhaps you already are an expert in your field – if so, you can skip this next part and head straight to building your community!

Not an expert just yet? Read on.

Some influencer guides, courses and coaches will tell you that you can shortcut this by reading and regurgitating a few key books in your chosen subject. However, this is not a school project. The aim isn’t to ingest just enough information to pass a test – your goal is to build a community who trust you and what you have to stay. Starting that process by being disingenuous is, I would argue, not the right way to do that.

Instead, read those books and ingest that knowledge – and yes, post about your learnings! – but include your community in that process. The chances are that when you get started, you don’t have a huge following anyway; so who exactly are you putting a on performance for? You’ll connect with your audience better by including them in the journey. Read the books, listen to the podcasts, post about what you’re learning and ask questions of the people reading your posts. Engage with them and learn together. That way, you’re learning how to become the expert your community needs, whilst also building the foundations of your follower base.

Step 2: Build your community

With any luck, you’ve been doing this already – whether you meant to or not! Connecting with people, engaging with their content and posting are all ways to build your community and if you’ve used LinkedIn at all then you should already have some experience with this.

Groups

When it’s time to get serious with community-building there are a number of ways to go about this. One of the more popular routes is to find an already established community and become a fixture within that group: sharing, engaging, forging relationships.

This method works well because the audience has been gathered for you! If you want to be an influencer in web3 and you find a great and active web3 group on LinkedIn then you’ve got a ready-formed group of people interested in your particular subject, ready to speak to.

The drawback to doing things this way is that you can become limited by the size of the group and the willingness of the group owners to let you take centre-stage.

If you’re in a niche that has a number of groups, my advice is to become active in a few – don’t spread yourself too thin and definitely don’t just copy and paste the same posts in each group. People will notice this and earmark you as a spammer! Tailor posts to groups, reply to people’s questions and provide value where you can.

Networking

Never underestimate the power of networking – both in-person and via LinkedIn itself. Send connection requests to people that would benefit from your content, and get to know them. Especially in the early days while you’re building a base, forging these relationships is crucial.

These people may go on to be your advocates, sharing your posts, commenting, engaging – all important stuff for improving your reach and overall growth. Having a team of individuals that have spoken to you and connected with you that are likely to support your content is a real boon in the early days.

Other Platforms

LinkedIn users, for the most part, are not confined to LinkedIn alone. They will often use Twitter, or Facebook / Instagram / TikTok (depending on the demographics of your target audience). My advice is not to chase all of these platforms at once, you’ll burn out and waste a lot of time. Pick one, or perhaps two others that have the audience you want and post, network and engage on those too. Make sure you link to one platform from the other (put your LinkedIn profile link on your Insta bio, for example) and allow one to help you build the other.

Step 3: Create value-driven content

So you’re an expert in your field, or you’re learning to become one, and you’re building your community – what do you share with them? My advice here is to begin with a value-driven mindset. Think about information that you can share that will provide real value to those consuming it. Here are three high-level bullet points to consider when creating content:

• Relevant: The first question you need to ask yourself is “what does my audience want?”. You should be on the right path here already, as you’ve already chosen your niche, but dig a little deeper. What problems are your audience facing? Is anything changing in your industry? How can you provide them with content that improves their day? If you provide genuine, relevant value they will return.

• Unique: There are a ton of other people out there vying for your audience’s attention, so be unique. That doesn’t mean you can’t cover the same topics and stories as others (but if you can find totally unique content, great) but give your unique perspective on it, or find the angle nobody else is covering. Find a way to stand out from the crowd.

• Engaging: Hopefully if you’ve got points 1 and 2 covered you’re already halfway to engaging your audience, but the work doesn’t stop there. Great content engages, enthralls and keeps the reader or viewer on the page. This includes using effective storytelling techniques such as using anecdotes, metaphors, similes and personification when describing concepts or ideas rather than just stating facts without context or meaning behind them. In other words – entertain while you inform!

Step 4: Dedication & Consistency

As I said at the start, there is no magic formula or quick fix. Even a viral sensation can be lost to the background if they never hit those heights again. Becoming a LinkedIn Influencer is going to take hard work and dedication. It’ll be hard not to give up at times but if you stick with it, I promise that you will see results.

Don’t be disheartened if your early content doesn’t get much engagement, or your group posts fall flat. You need to persevere, keep posting and always analyse your content to see where you can improve. It will take time, so keep at it!

These steps above tell you how to become a LinkedIn influencer – it’s now up to you to head out there and put in there work. You’ll need to be passionate about your topic, willing to work hard at it, and have some promotional skills. You’ll also have to be willing to build a community of connections and followers who will share and promote your content for you. And lastly, you’ll have to create a lot of value in content that people want to read.

Catering yourself toward the needs of others will only further establish your credibility as an Influencer on LinkedIn.

I hope this article has encouraged you to take the plunge into becoming a LinkedIn influencer. It’s not an easy process, but it can be done with dedication and hard work. If you follow these four steps, we guarantee that your content will get noticed by other users on the platform, which will help boost your brand and authority as well!

Reading Time: 3 minutes

If you need to know how to find the current or former employees of any company on LinkedIn, look no further. You can either follow the instructions below, or watch our video guide!

LinkedIn makes it easy to find current or former employees of a company, due to their powerful search filters. If you want to learn more about how to make the most of the LinkedIn search – we have a blog for that too! Let’s get into it…

Contents

• How to Find Current Employees of a Company on LinkedIn
• How to Find Past Employees of a Company on LinkedIn

How to Find Current Employees on LinkedIn

This is a really easy method for finding the current employees of any company. It involves finding the company page on LinkedIn and opening up the employee list.

Step 1. Find the Company’s LinkedIn page.

• You can search for the company’s LinkedIn page by going to LinkedIn and typing the company’s name in the search bar

Click on the “X employees” link in the company bio

• This will show you all the current employees at this company.

Filter your Results

LinkedIn will show a maximum of 1,000 connections in this view. That’s because it has a page limit of 100 pages, with 10 results per page. This can be an issue if the company in question has more than 1,000 employees! If that’s the case, you will need to break down the results into smaller batches using the powerful LinkedIn search filters at the top of the page

Exporting the Results

Sometimes, simply viewing someone’s connections within LinkedIn isn’t quite enough. You may want that data in a spreadsheet in order to further filter or examine. Perhaps you’re searching these connections in order to generate some leads… In either case, you need a tool (like Lix!) to export that data and find those emails.

Exporting connections with Lix is super simple. Once you have an account (sign up for free & get 1,000 rows of data and 50 valid emails every month!) and have added our extension to your browser, you simply follow the steps above and when you’re on the results page your Lix extension will begin to glow.C Choose your export options, hit the LIX IT button and voila!

How to Find Past Employees of a Company on LinkedIn

This method is slightly different, but just as easy! Simply perform a People search on LinkedIn, hit the ‘all filters’ tab and then scroll down to ‘past company’. Input the company of choice and there you have it, the previous employees of any company on LinkedIn.

Watch our video guide:

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Ever wondered how to see someone’s connections on LinkedIn? Wonder no more!

Note: In order to see someone’s connections on LinkedIn, you must be connected to them. This is and has always been the rule with LinkedIn. It’s designed this way to encourage you to connect and network. There is a risky workaround for this, but we don’t advise it!

• Finding someone’s connections
• Exporting connections
• Workaround

How to see someone’s connections on LinkedIn

Route one is to go to the profile of the person you want to view and click the ‘connections’ link in their bio:

This will present you with a list of the individual’s connections in the standard LinkedIn search view. You can also reach this point by performing a LinkedIn search and filtering for ‘connections of’. It’s just a slightly longer way journey to get to the same point!

The page will look something like this:

LinkedIn will show a maximum of 1,000 connections in this view. That’s because it has a page limit of 100 pages, with 10 results per page. This can be an issue if the person in question has more than 1,000 connections! If that’s the case, you will need to break down the results into smaller batches using the powerful LinkedIn search filters at the top of the page.

How to Export Someone’s Connections (and even find their email address!)

Sometimes, simply viewing someone’s connections within LinkedIn isn’t quite enough. You may want that data in a spreadsheet in order to further filter or examine. Perhaps you’re searching these connections in order to generate some leads… In either case, you need a tool (like Lix!) to export that data and find those emails.

Exporting connections with Lix is super simple. Once you have an account (sign up for free & get 1,000 rows of data and 50 valid emails every month!) and have added our extension to your browser, you simply follow the steps above and when you’re on the results page your Lix extension will begin to glow:

Click it and you will see the Lix toolbar drop down, from here you simply select your export options – Excel or CSV, number of profiles, email or no emails – and hit the LIX IT! button. Easy peasy!

If there are more than 1,000 connections in the search and you need to filter, select the ‘create new project‘ option on the toolbar. This will allow you to store all the filtered exports into one, de-duplicated project file.

Workaround for non-connections (not advised – risky!)

Of course the easiest way to get around not being connected, is to connect with that person! If this isn’t possible for some reason (perhaps they won’t accept, or they’re a competitor) you have two options. The first is tough, but less risky. The second is very risky and we do not advise you take this option.

Option 1: Tough, but less risky

You can see if you have a connection in common, ask them if they’d be willing to find / export the data for you and send them this blog explaining how to do it. This isn’t breaking any rules, the data is still public data, you’re just working around the lack of connection. The hard part is finding someone willing to do this for you.

Option 2: High risk, not advised

If option 1 isn’t possible, then it could theoretically be possible for you to create a fictitious LinkedIn account and connect with this particular user from said account. This is risky and it could result in a ban from LinkedIn – certainly for the fake profile. LinkedIn can spot suspicious activity but there is some leeway with new accounts so if you were to do this (again, we don’t advise it) then it would be wise to get the data ASAP before the account is closed. Perhaps using a VPN would be a good idea too.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

There are a number of reasons you might need to convert Sales Navigator URLs to LinkedIn URLs. Thankfully, there are a number of ways to do it!

The first method involves manually copying and pasting the bit of the URL you need. It works better when you have a small number of URLs to convert. The second method uses an Excel / Google Sheets equation. This is a great option for when you already have a large list of URLs to convert. The third method converts Sales Navigator URLs to LinkedIn URLs automatically, as you export from sales nav – using Lix! Skip to the method that suits your needs.

1. Manual URL Conversion
2. Excel / Google Sheets Equation
3. Automatic conversion during export

Manual URL Conversion

This is a super-simple and quick way to get the standard LinkedIn URL from the Sales Nav version. Essentially, it’s just removing a small section of the Sales Navigator URL and copy & pasting it into the standard format.

1. Select and copy everything that comes after lead/ and before the first comma:

2. Paste this on the end of the standard LinkedIn profile URL format www.linkedin/com/in/

You can also replace sales/lead with in and delete everything after the comma – both methods give the same result!

If you’re converting a handful of profiles, this process is great… What happens when you have hundreds (or thousands!) of Sales Navigator URLs to convert?

Excel / Google Sheets Equation

If you have a list of Sales Navigator URLs you need to convert LinkedIn URLs en masse, this is the solution for you.

Here is the formula:

=LEFT(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"<https://www.linkedin.com/sales/lead/","https://www.linkedin.com/in/"),SEARCH(",",SUBSTITUTE(A1,"https://www.linkedin.com/sales/lead/","https://www.linkedin.com/in/")>)-1)

1. Open up your file with the Sales Nav URLs and paste the formula in the next column. Be sure to change the value ‘A1’ in the formula to correspond with the cell of the first URL to convert.

2. Click the square in the bottom-right corner of the cell and drag all the way to the bottom of the list – this will apply the formula to the correct cells on the left!

3. Voila! A list of converted Sales Navigator URLs to LinkedIn URLs

Automatic Conversion During Export

If you’re regularly converting Sales Navigator URLs to the standard LinkedIn format, it’s probably easier to use a tool that does it for you! When you export data from Sales Nav using Lix, we automatically apply a formula like the one above, so that your spreadsheet comes with both Sales Nav and standard format LinkedIn URLs.

It looks like this:

You can watch a short video on how to export Sales Navigator data using Lix:

You can export 1,000 rows of Sales Navigator data every single month for free, on Lix’s starter plan. It also includes 50 valid emails and 50 profile enrichments.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

What is Data Decay?

Data decay refers to the gradual deterioration of data quality within a database. This can be especially damaging in sales and marketing databases. Sales and marketing efforts require accurate contact information for leads, along with up-to-date information on their organisations, employees, branch locations, and so on. When data decays from inaccuracies, outdated information, or aging out, B2B companies can see a decline in their overall performance, as well as in sales and marketing.

A simple example of perfectly good data decaying over time might be a website that includes information about movies that are currently playing in local cinemas and their showtimes. When those showtimes change without any updates being made to the database, the website will feature incorrect or outdated information.

Apply this to your own CRM and it’s not hard to see how data decay could be negatively impacting your efforts to close new deals. Every time an individual changes jobs, gains promotion, switches industries and updates contact details, the data in your CRM decays. This can present a big problem, especially for those of us with large databases. According to the ONS, every year 9% of people change jobs – that adds up to a 27% workforce shift every 3 years. Even for a modest-sized CRM with 5,000 entries will have 1,350 erroneous entries every 3 years.

No wonder then, that a recent study shows that data quality remains among companies’ top priorities. Among the companies that decreased their investment in data: 35% saw their overall performance decline; 75% saw a decline in sales and marketing performance; and 94% of those companies said that their sales and marketing performance improved after increasing their investment in data.

How can I avoid data decay in my CRM?

The simple answer is – stay on top of updating your database! This can be done manually, although that is not advised. Updating 5,000 records, even at a constant pace of 5 minutes per entry, would take 17 days without a break! Also, manual data entry is more susceptible to mistakes. Luckily, database enrichment can now be automated. Here at Lix, we offer a product called ReTrace, that plugs into your CRM and updates and enriches the entries with fresh B2B data. If you’re interested in learning more, get in touch.

There are some added bonuses to keeping your data fresh, too. An individual switching roles or being promoted can be a great opportunity to close a new deal. A prospect that knows you and your product, now in a buying-role at a new firm is a hot lead! Retrace CRM enrichment is not just about refreshing what you have, it also uncovers the potential deals hidden in your data.

It’s important to keep track of your data so that it doesn’t become stale, or corrupted over time. This will ensure that your information remains accurate and up-to-date and leads are never lost. If you’re looking for some help with this task or another project, please reach out! We’d be happy to assist you with any questions or concerns related to data decay.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

With 830 million members, 53 million companies and more than 100 million active job listings, LinkedIn is the largest store of public business data in history. The problem is, how do you extract that LinkedIn data to make use of it? Whether you’re a salesperson looking to prospect, a market intelligence professional finding intel or an academic performing research – LinkedIn scraping can help you get the data you need, in the format you need it.

What is scraping?

Data scraping is a method of data collection in which a computer program extracts data from websites and web pages. The purpose of this technique is to obtain otherwise inaccessible or unstructured data. This can be useful for businesses looking to use the information they collect in sales and marketing campaigns, competitive and market intelligence, or even just for their own purposes (such as tracking sales).

How can I use scraped data?

Understanding customers

Data scraping can provide insight into an individual’s current role, organisation, education, interests, skills and a whole host of information that might be useful for a business. It can help you to form an ideal customer profile, or identify individual targets for prospecting. It can also help you to better understand groups, industries and verticals. For example, LinkedIn scraping might allow a company selling training courses to discover how many individuals with a specific job title already have a qualification.

Understanding competitors

Extracting competitor data can help you to learn about their business structure, products and services, pricing strategies, marketing campaigns, hiring patterns and more – all of which could be useful in improving your own company’s performance. Scraping a competitor’s job postings, for example, could help you to determine which departments they are investing in and how fast they are growing. This is also useful information for investors.

LinkedIn Scraping

You can scrape data from LinkedIn search results and also directly from profiles – as long as those profiles aren’t private. The easiest way to do this is with a LinkedIn scraper tool, like Lix. LinkedIn scraping with Lix is as easy as performing a search, setting your filters and choosing your export options. You can export People, Profile, Companies and Jobs data in minutes, saving you time and money.

Let’s take a look at some of the data you can export from LinkedIn using Lix:

Search Results: People, Companies and Jobs

The most common form of LinkedIn scraping happens on search result pages. This is the page you land on when you type a keyword into the search bar on LinkedIn.

These are great for scraping, because they’re packed with lots of data per page. This is is important because LinkedIn have some rules about how many pages you can view in a day. In order to comply with their fair usage policies, it’s advised to not view more than 1,000 pages in a day. If you’re exporting profile data, this means you can export a maximum of 1,000 profiles in a day. However, standard LinkedIn search results show 10 results per page – allowing you up to 10,000 rows of data per day. Sales Navigator gives you 25 results per page, giving you a potential 25,000 scraped rows per day.

Currently, Lix can export People, Companies and Jobs results, but we will be adding other options in the future. Scraping these pages is super simple, here’s a 40 second video showing you how it works:

Export LinkedIn connections

Exporting LinkedIn connections is another popular form of LinkedIn scraping. You may want to export your own connections, to keep a record of your network or perhaps add them to a CRM.

There are many instances where you may want to export someone else’s connections, too. This is possible as long as you are connected to the individual whose connections you’d like to scrape. This is due to data privacy laws and there is no way around this – other than connecting with that person.

Want to know more about exporting LinkedIn connections? Here’s a popular article we published.

Export LinkedIn profile data

A complete LinkedIn profile is packed with data. Data this is extremely important in the recruiting process, or for market intelligence research. It can also be a great source of icebreakers and deep dive info on sales prospects.

Exporting LinkedIn profiles is a little more complicated than exporting search results, because you view far more individual pages in a short space of time. There is also a lot more data to collect for each result!

Lix’s Profile Enrichment tool works in conjunction with Sales Navigator, because Sales Navigator users can view more profiles per day without hitting LinkedIn’s limits.

The process itself is simple – export a list of individuals from a Leads search and then enrich that search in the Profile Enrichment area of your Lix dashboard. You get 50 free enrichments a month, so do give it a try and see what data you can get!

LinkedIn scraping allows you to export, works with and glean insights from the huge store of public data on LinkedIn. According to our users, Lix is the fastest and easiest way to do that! If you’d like to try it for yourself we give you 1,000 rows of data, 50 profile enrichments and 50 valid emails every single month.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Business intelligence for sales is a rapidly-growing field. It’s something the big players have been using for some time but with tools becoming more accessible to smaller teams, startups and even solopreneurs and getting in on the action.

What is business intelligence?

Business intelligence (BI) is a broad term that refers to the processes, tools and technologies used by organizations to extract, analyse and present business information. BI tools are used to help make sense of large volumes of data in order to identify trends or patterns. These insights are then communicated through dashboards and reports so that business stakeholders can act on them quickly.

BI technologies include data warehouses, data marts, ETL (extract-transform-load) tools for moving data from various sources into one central location for analysis, OLAP (online analytical processing) cubes for performing sophisticated calculations on large datasets, reporting tools such as Crystal Reports or Microsoft Excel macros — basically anything you need in order to work with large amounts of information efficiently and effectively.

Business intelligence can be used across departments and teams, giving companies a competitive advantage over their competition by helping them make better decisions faster.

Business intelligence is data-driven decision making

Business intelligence for sales, then, is about using that data to make better decisions.

If your business relies on sales to drive revenue, as a sales leader the decisions you make have a far-reaching effect. In a large company, your decisions can decide whether entire departments hit target or not. At a startup, it can be the difference between staying afloat or sinking. Business intelligence provides the data to inform and support those decisions. Helping you to make better decisions, faster.

Data-driven decision making is about making better decisions based on facts, not feelings or gut instinct.

Let’s look at some examples of how this might work:

• You want to increase revenue, so you decide to target more affluent customers with a bigger budget than the average consumer. Using your BI dashboard, you can identify the top five percent of consumers who have spent the most per month by dividing their total spending by their total number of purchases—and then segment these high spenders into a separate list. Using this list, you can find common traits among your top spenders to identify the type of customer that is most valuable to your business – allowing you to build a lookalike audience for your team to reach out to. These are now your “high value targets” (HVT).
  
• You’re looking for ways to improve customer retention and reduce churn rate (or attrition). Your BI dashboard tells you that 20% of customers that churn do so in the week before their renewal date; therefore, it might makes sense to come up with a strategy to contact customers in the period and remind them of the value you provide.
  

Business Intelligence for Sales: Tools

Now we know what business intelligence is and how it works – let’s dive into some of the tools you can use to achieve these results. I’ve included tools to suit different teams sizes, from those with the biggest budgets down to the startups and SMEs.

• Salesforce Einstein
• Sisense
• Tableau
• Lix
• Mixpanel

Salesforce Einstein Analytics

Salesforce Einstein Analytics is a cloud-based business intelligence tool that allows users to analyse their CRM data in real time.

As you might guess from the name, Salesforce Einstein is an add-on to the ubiquitous Salesforce CRM, which means it can be accessed through the same interface as your existing Salesforce account. Because it connects directly with your Salesforce CRM, there’s no need to prepare your data or transfer anything. Einstein’s AI will automatically look for patterns and apply the correct models to the data you have, providing predictions and suggestions without the need for input. It’s like having a small BI team integrated into your firm.

If you’re already using Salesforce, this is a great option for you. Like Salesforce, though, it won’t be cheap!

Sisense

Sisense is a business intelligence software that allows you to gather and analyse your sales data from various sources.

So for businesses with multiple products and channels, Sisense collects, analyses and visualises you BI data across multiple departments so that everyone has access to meaningful information at their fingertips. Where Salesforce Einstein works with the data you enter into Salesforce, Sisense will gather that data from almost anywhere your users interact with you – website, socials, email, CRM etc.

Tableau

Tableau are the gold standard in data visualisation.

You can use Tableau to create beautiful dashboards and data visualisations, to share with your team, board of director, investors etc. If you’ve watched presentations at board meetings, trade shows or meetups – chances are you’ve seen a Tableau visualisation!

Lix

This is the Lix blog, so it would be remiss of me to leave us out! The Lix tool is used for two primary reasons – lead generation and data gathering. When we’re talking business intelligence for sales, the latter should precede the former! If we think back to the example of growing revenue by finding top spenders, once you have a list of traits for your high value targets, you could use Lix to find those individuals and export their data.

Lix, as its core, is a LinkedIn data extractor. It works by exporting information from the world’s single largest store of business data – LinkedIn! LinkedIn is perfect for mining BI data because firms and individuals alike stay on top of updating their profiles. Often more regularly than they would their own websites.

Lix is great for smaller teams who perhaps don’t have access to some of the other tools listed here. You can even start for free with 1,000 rows of data every month.

Mixpanel

Mixpanel is another great tool for smaller teams. In fact, we use Mixpanel here at Lix.

It allows you to build dashboards and visualise data from your website and other sources in real time. I can use Mixpanel to see if my users are having errors with the Lix tool, how many of them are exporting, which cities have the most usage and so on.

It’s a really easy way to start getting actionable insights on the data you’re amassing – often without realising!

With the right tools and processes, sales teams can use business intelligence to improve decision making and increase their bottom line. Sales data can be used to pinpoint problem areas that need attention, identify opportunities for improvement, and make smarter choices about how to allocate time and resources. If you’re not already business business intelligence for sales, I hope this blog has inspired you to start!

Reading Time: 3 minutes

The term “sales engagement” is used to describe a sales team’s ability to engage buyers with personalised interactions, across multiple channels, during their buyer’s journey. Engagement has become an increasingly important topic for many businesses, particularly those in high-growth markets where competition is fierce. If your business wants to grow, it needs a strong strategy in place to nurture its customers through the buyer’s journey and lead them to conversion.

Sales engagement is a combination of marketing and sales. It’s a process of nurturing prospective buyers with personalized interactions across multiple channels to lead them to conversion. The goal is to increase sales, revenue, and customer lifetime value.

The first thing you need to know about sales engagement is that it isn’t just one thing—it can be used by many different departments in your company, such as marketing or customer success teams. Engagement can also be done across multiple channels like email, phone calls, live chat or video calls (including virtual meetings), social media posts and landing pages.

What is sales engagement management?

Sales engagement management usually refers to a tool, or online platform used by sales teams to develop a strategy and deliver coordinated, targeted messages at key points in the buyer’s journey.

Sales engagement tools can help you:

• Increase your pipeline velocity by targeting buyers when they’re most receptive to new information or products.
• Improve your conversion rate by making it easy for prospects to get started with a demo or trial of your product.

Sales engagement strategy

The first step in developing a sales engagement strategy is to conduct strategic planning. Strategic planning involves setting goals and objectives, understanding the market and your competitors, and understanding the buyer’s journey.

Strategic planning allows you to plan out what needs to happen before any execution takes place. Without this step, there may be no way to measure your results once they come in!

Personalised engagements

The most successful engagement strategies create personalized engagements across multiple channels. It’s important to leverage technology, data and strategy to personalize the customer journey in a way that will resonate with them. The most successful sales engagement strategies are flexible enough to respond to the needs of your customers at every stage of the buying process, while remaining strategic and aligned across channels.

Sales engagement planning

A sales engagement plan can incorporate content marketing, social selling, email marketing and even traditional face-to-face meetings.

Content marketing is just what it sounds like—using content you create (such as blog posts or videos) to attract prospects who are interested in what you have to say. Social selling refers to networking with potential clients through social media channels like LinkedIn and Facebook. Email marketing involves sending personalized messages through email to build rapport with contacts who’ve opted in by providing their contact information. Face-to-face meetings occur when you reach out directly through phone calls or in person at events such as trade shows or conferences.

Sales engagement for leaders

As a sales leader, you need to help your team understand the importance of engagement. It has become an essential part of business operations for companies that want to grow in today’s competitive markets.

As a leader, you also need to develop a strategy and process for engaging with your customers. This should include:

• Having a clear understanding of what your company does, who its audience is, and how it can serve them better than competitors.
• Putting together an effective team that includes representatives from all departments throughout the organization (including marketing).
• Building relationships with potential clients by offering relevant content on social media platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter.

Engagement is a critical component of any sales strategy. It can help you develop new leads, close deals faster and create long-term relationships with your customers. However, it’s not just about having a great strategy in place; you also need tools to manage your outreach efforts and track the results of each interaction. That’s why we developed our platform with sales engagement at its core—to help you develop personalized interactions with your prospects and customers across multiple channels, while giving you real-time insight into performance metrics like open rates, click-through rates and conversion rates. These insights are invaluable when it comes time for planning future outreach activities based on what worked (and didn’t work) before!

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Cold emailing can be tough. With so many other reps and firms in your prospect’s inbox demanding their attention, cutting through the noise isn’t easy. So when I see a cold email that does just that, I take note! A few months ago, I received a cold email that really grabbed my attention – and it has changed the way I do my outreach.

The email was from a market-leading CRM provider (no, not that one – the other one). It went like this:

Hi Alfie,
I made you a quick video (60 seconds), click here to watch:

Below the to-the-point opening sentence was a gif. A gif taken from a video of the CRM rep looking at my website.

I was hooked in. I needed to know what was being said in the video! I immediately clicked through and watched it. The video was less than 60 seconds long and in it, the rep talked about how his company could help us achieve our goals. They did so using specific examples, related to the content of my site. I responded almost immediately and booked in for a call.

Personalised videos can be a powerful tool in your outreach arsenal, but it can be hard to know where to start. Never fear! That is exactly why I wrote this blog. Let’s get started.

Why Use Personalised Videos in Cold Emails?

It could be tempting to save time and just send a demo or explainer video to your prospect. After all, it’s going to take a long time to make all those individual videos, right? Well – yes it would be faster, but it won’t work!

A video that isn’t personalised is just another friction point. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. You’ve already interrupted their flow with an email they didn’t ask for, now you want them to go and watch a video about your product. Their first thought is probably going to be “why can’t they just tell me what they’re selling?”.

Personalisation is important for two reasons. Firstly, it builds a connection with the recipient. Being able to see your face and hear your voice will allow them to connect with your words and your energy in a way that text can’t. Secondly, it allows you to tailor your message so that it addresses specific details about their situation or company.

To go back to my example in the intro – it was seeing that rep on my website that captured my interest. It was them relating their pitch to my site and my business specifically that prompted me to respond. If they had just sent me a video of their product, I probably wouldn’t have watched it.

With that out of the way, let’s get down to business.

How to Add Personalised Video to Your Cold Emails

Now we know why personalisation is important, it’s time to get into how we make it happen.

In a nutshell, you are going to:

• Record a short introduction video that explains who you are and why you’re a great fit for them. Make sure it’s not too long – 30 to 60 seconds is ideal. Anything more than a minute and you’ll lose their interest.
• Craft some email copy that provides everything they need to proceed after they’ve seen the video.
• Start sending those emails!
  
  

Step 1. Do your research

In order to make personalised videos for cold emails, you’re going to need a list of prospects and some research around them and their business. Lix can help you to find the email address of anyone on LinkedIn, plus enrich your prospect lists with their profile data – if you need a headstart for this step!

Once you have your list read and you understand your prospect’s, it’s time to move to Step 2.

Step 2. Make a short script for each person.

I know what some of you are thinking right now. “Script? I don’t need a script! Communication is what I do!”. I get it. I was the same when I first started sending videos to prospects. I soon realised that having a script, even just some bullet points, helps you to stay on track.

Remember, these video are supposed to be short and to the point. There isn’t room for you to ramble while you remember your points! You need to communicate who you are, what you’re selling and why they specifically are a great fit using examples from their website or social media – all in less than a minute.

If you can do that off the cuff with no notes, hats off to you!

Step 3. Choose your tool

The best personalised videos show the recipient from the outset that it is, in fact, personalised. For this, I advise recording using something like Loom. Loom allows you to record a video on top of a web page – with your face taking up a small circle in the corner. This allows you to showcase their page as the main attraction.


Here’s a example of me using Loom on the Lix homepage:

Step 4. Record

Unless you’re an avid videographer or an actor in your spare time, this part will take some getting used to. Most people don’t like recording themselves, and I get it. It’s just about practice. The more you make, the better you’ll get and the less nervous you’ll be.

When recording your video, make sure that:

• You have a good camera and lighting.
• You are in a quiet place where no one else will disturb you while filming, so that you can focus on what is being said in the recording.
  

Step 5. Craft Copy & Send

When your video is ready, it’s time to prep the email. Remember, the personalised video is the star of the show. Your email content exists to drive recipients to the video and support your message.

If you’re comfortable with technology, it’s great idea to turn a section of your video into a gif (you can do that here). If not, provide a screenshot from the video. That way, your recipient knows what to expect when they click the link – they also know it’s not a virus!

For copy, I would advise keeping it short and sweet, just like the example at the top of this blog:

Hi {First Name},

I made you a quick video (60 seconds) click to watch

Then below the video, if you want add some links to testimonials or make a (short) supporting statement then do so. Most importantly however is the call to action.

Give your reader a clear, guided next step. Whether that’s a link to your Calendly, or asking them for a reply – make sure it’s in there!

Personalised videos can make a big difference to your cold emails

Personalised videos are a great way to connect with your audience. They can also increase your conversion rate, help you stand out from the crowd and build trust with your audience. And if that’s not enough, personalised videos can also help you build relationships with people!

Remember that when we talk about building relationships, it’s not just about one-way communication—it’s about two-way communication. You don’t want to be seen as just another company or brand; you want to be seen as an individual who is willing to go out of their way for their customers.

We hope that this post has helped you understand the importance and value of personalised videos. Video outreach is no longer a passing fad, but rather an integral part of your brand’s overall marketing and sales strategy. By using video to connect with your audience on a personal level, you can build trust in your message and reach out to new customers.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Posting content on LinkedIn can be powerful tool that can help you grow your business, reach customer and close deals – but if you’re not posting at the right time, it might not be working as well as it could be.

If you’re not posting content on LinkedIn yet and this is part of your initial research, here’s a video I made that might help you with getting started:

The act of posting is fairly straightforward. There are two ways to share content on LinkedIn: you can either link to external content, like your own blog or YouTube video; or you can post natively to LinkedIn by writing a blog directly in LinkedIn Pulse, or uploading video directly to your feed. As with most social platforms, it seems that native content is preferred in the algorithm. Don’t worry too much about this, though. If your blog is on your website, it’s best to share it direct from there. Remember to never copy and paste your content into LinkedIn – this will hurt your SEO!

Ok, enough fluff, let’s get into it…

Best days and times to post on LinkedIn

A good starting point here is to get into the mind of your ideal customer, the end reader or viewer for your content. Think about when they are using LinkedIn and have the time to engage with what you post.



According to a study performed by Sprout Social, the best days to post are Tuesdays to Thursday, with the highest engagement coming between 10am and noon:

This makes sense in context. On a Monday, people are usually getting back into the week, catching up with the weekend’s correspondence and kicking off their projects for the following days. On a Friday, people are wrapping up their work (or they have one eye on the weekend!).



Where this becomes a little more complicated, is when you factor in time zones. The beauty of social media is that you can reach customers all around the world. It may even be the case that a large portion of your users are based in another country. For example, most Lix users live in the USA, whereas we’re in the UK. If I post content at 10am UK time, it might be 4am – 6am for my US audience. It’s better for to me to post at the tail-end of the high engagement, at say 2-3pm, so that I can maximise my engagement in the both the UK and the US at the same time.



If you’re not always available to post content at these times, check out this short piece I wrote on LinkedIn automation tools and content scheduling – this can help you to prep your work and have it post at at time that suits you.



In short – the key to finding the best time to post on LinkedIn, is to think like your customers! Put yourself in their shoes and adjust for time zones. I hope that I’ve been able to give you some insight into when it’s best to post on LinkedIn. I know that everyone has their own schedule, but if you can stick to these guidelines, your posts will likely reach a wider audience and generate more engagement than they would otherwise.