I’m a marketing person, and I did one of those LinkedIn SPAM lead-generation campaigns. It cost $7500 for a three-month campaign, and it took a lot of time and effort on my part. I did it for two reasons. First, I wanted more leads at the top of my pipeline. Second, I wanted to experience the process and results first-hand to see if it had enough value to recommend to the clients I serve.
I learned a lot. Like most sales, it’s a numbers game. When you use LinkedIn SPAM, there are a LOT of connection requests and messages flying back and forth. If you do enough, you will find a win. You have to be comfortable with rejection and mean people. But, if you stick with it, you’ll find the diamond in the rough. Overall, if you know your goals and do the work, you can get good results, but it’s not for everyone.
Know and Remember Your Goals
My goal for doing LinkedIn SPAM was to generate more leads at the top of my pipeline. As we are coming out of COVID, my target market is ripe for new partnerships and engagement. I simply didn’t have access to them that I wanted. I needed them to be aware of my business, and I wanted access to them to show the value that my small, highly personal agency could bring to their business.
With this goal in mind, I was clear with the company that I chose that I wasn’t looking to make a direct sale upon the first contact. My price point is too high for this to be possible. To consider this campaign successful, I wanted an increased network of people within my target audience, connections that were meaningful and had business potential, and early sales that would indicate that these connections had significantly more potential lifetime value than the cost of the campaign.
Did it work? You decide.
• At the beginning of the LinkedIn SPAM campaign, I had 652 LinkedIn connections. At the end, I had 2090 connections.
• My target audience for this campaign was coaches and consultants. The increase in connections was almost exclusively amongst this audience.
• I received 101 responses to my LinkedIn SPAM that indicated some interest.
• 38 individuals booked and completed consult calls.
• I signed four new clients and have 12 additional prospects at a proposal stage.
• The value of the new contracts signed and completed during the campaign was $9500.
• Three of the new clients are moving forward with additional contracts.
LinkedIn SPAM Haters Gonna Hate
Social media seems to bring out the haters. I was blown away by how many people read my messages and took the time to respond with disdainful messages. Initially, I felt compelled to respond – perhaps out of guilt for spamming them or because of an internal desire not to be hated. Eventually, I got thicker skin and learned to ignore these messages. Perhaps I’m justifying, but I got good at turning their judgment back on them, “if they have time for that kind of angry response, they must be generally unhappy people and are not a good fit for my business anyway.”
There was also a fair amount of tire kickers who weren’t a good fit for my company, nor I for theirs. It was usually pretty easy to filter through those and learn to move on quickly….for my sake and theirs.
I quickly learned to identify the diamonds in the rough. These were the potential clients that I love to work with – insanely curious, interesting, authentic, funny, and are always adding value to conversations. These are my people! When I asked them what made them want to respond to the spam message I sent, the response was always one specific thing in my message or profile. That thing was never the same, but it was something that spoke to them and made them curious.
Wayne Herring, CEO of Business Builder Camp, runs a coaching and mastermind business focused on business owners seeking to find breakthrough growth AND maintain balance with their non-business life. He said, “Your background working with camps caught my eye initially. There is a value system amongst people who connect with the outdoors that was intriguing to me. During our first call, we connected, and I knew I wanted to work with you.”
Of course, that did NOT happen with all calls. I experienced frustration at a couple of points with the time wasted on calls that had no value. Again, it’s a numbers game. Sales always is.
