ERP051 - Using LinkedIn For Lead Generation with Nate Freedman

Welcome to Evolve Radio where we explore the evolution of business and technology. Today on the podcast, I'm joined by Nate Friedman from Tech Pro marketing. We talk about some of the common mistakes IT companies make when building their marketing engine. We also discuss some of the effective tactics in marketing to your clients. We focus heavily on the use of LinkedIn as a vehicle for generating leads. We also touch on using websites and paid click campaigns. There's a ton of useful ideas and strategies in this episode, so listen up and maybe take a few notes. If you enjoy the show, be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcast from. Also, be sure to check out the webpage evolvedmt.com/podcast for show notes, links to my guests and to check out previous episodes. Now, let's get started. On the podcast today, I'm speaking with Nate Friedman, CEO of Tech Pro marketing. Welcome, Nate. Hi, Todd. Thanks for having me. So, we're going to be speaking about an area that is not necessarily a strong skill set that we tend to find in the IT industry. So hopefully there'll be some high value for people. Um you have a a deep history in in marketing and uh the info that I've seen and the people that I've talked to, you can definitely get some results in what you're doing. So I think this will be a really valuable conversation and looking forward to it. Uh to get things started, I suppose, uh as I noted, I the IT industry tends not to be strong in sales and marketing unless they have a sales focused founder. Uh so I imagine you come across people that are not necessarily doing things correctly, um in in some cases. Uh you want to talk about maybe some of the common mistakes or issues that you see when you get introduced to companies and and evaluate what they're testing and trying from a sales and marketing perspective. Yeah, so, um, I mean, the number one thing that we hear, we ask in our strategy call application form, we ask uh the question, what is the biggest thing you're struggling with right now with your marketing? And the number one response that we get is, I'm not doing anything. Yeah, that's huge. Yeah. So the number one issue I would say that that MSPs are making is, you know, not doing it, um, not having a plan and really it's not being consistent. Um what we've seen is even when companies are doing it, a lot of the MSPs that we deal with, they, you know, can scale at a certain pace. You know, so they might land a couple new customers and then stop. Um, what you're not taking into account in that situation is that actually the MSP sales process is a long sales process, it can take a really long time. So if you think you're going to kind of stop your marketing, stop whatever lead generation activities you're doing and then kind of just pick it up at the right time, you may be setting yourself up for some type of, you know, feast and famine cycle, that's another thing I see a lot of. Yeah, definitely consistency and especially in marketing, like the the term that I hear is people say you need to give any type of strategy that you're testing three to six months to validate whether or not it's working for you. Is that is that similar to what you would suggest? Um, I mean, yeah, I would say definitely at least three to six months, even longer. Um what we've seen is sometimes we've, you know, struggled with a campaign, struggled with a certain client, um, you know, certain target audience, certain market, whatever's going on there. And um, it's usually not like breaking everything down and rebuilding it that gets us success, it's usually like a small change or a small tack and sometimes you have to tack a few times, shift a few times before you hit on something that's kind of going to get you in the right direction. That can definitely take six months, it can take longer. You want to shoot for shorter for sure, you know what I mean? But um, yeah, you you have to shift, you have to attack, you have to make changes. Yeah, I think that's a tough one for people, especially like the the smaller groups, they they feel, you know, I'm I'm putting this money into this this campaign and these strategies and I'm not seeing the results quote unquote. And that, you know, they say that after, you know, six weeks of testing something out. Um and I I I think that that's does a disservice for them. Um so I think that's a really important one is just recognizing, you have to do something, otherwise you're just not going to get any leads and if you're going to do something, you have to give it the time to bear fruit, right? Be patient. So that's that's a good one. What about the smaller MSPs, the groups that are maybe five to or less people or under 10, um do you find that the marketing strategies or the mistakes that they make are different from, you know, the the groups that are maybe 20 seats and above or 50 50 staff? Because those larger groups may have a better hand at marketing, do they make better mistakes once they start doing it? Or do you find that they're similar? Um, yeah, what we've seen is like, you know, I kind of separated it into above 5 million and under 5 million in revenue. Um, like we've seen like at about that $5 million threshold, sometimes below that, you will have someone who's kind of full-time on sales and pushing the pace. Um and that really, um, that really kind of leads to big growth, you know, is to having someone dedicated to push that pace. We've seen the smaller MSPs, they don't necessarily have that, um, in place. Um and that's one of the issues that we've been dealing with like as an agency is, right, how can we take some of these smaller MSPs where the the owner's a little bit stretched, maybe there's a couple people in leadership who can help out, but um, how can we push the pace as an outside agency? Um, and yeah, that's that's part of the battle of MSP marketing. Yeah, and I think that touches on sort of the the perpetual issue in most MSPs is I describe the the owner wears eight hats, one of them being kind of the sales and marketing, uh, piece of that. Um, you know, I think it is good for those organizations that if they recognize they can't dedicate the time to it because they're busy with a lot of other things and they can't sort of spend the time that should be spent on this, that they really should be outsourcing to a group like yours. Um, so maybe that's a good point to talk about the services that you provide and and how you can act as an extension to the MSP. Yeah, um, absolutely. So, um, for us, we have um been working with MSPs exclusively, um and doing lead generation for over two years. Um and in that time, we've been honing down and focusing our core product, it's called the MSP lead generation engine. Um, this is a a system that we've kind of put together where we take the strategies and tactics that are um that we've just found have the most success, get the best kind of return on investment. We follow like that 80/20 principle where it's like we want to just focus on the tactics that are going to get you 80% of the results with 20% of the um, you know, the effort that you need to put in, the input that's required. And it's like um, yeah, there's tons of tactics out there, there's so many different things you can do as an MSP. Um, but it's like, you know, let's get the ones that are going to give you the most bang for your buck. Um and a big part of our program is LinkedIn marketing, so kind of what what we were a little bit touching on earlier. Yeah, so that that's uh definitely one, I would say sort of my rank of recommendations that I suggest to people, I'm I'm not the sales and marketing pro, but I've sort of been around and seen enough of this done. The ones that I tend to recommend are AdWords, if you're not doing that, you you probably should, you just may as well, is sort of how I feel about that. Qualification is do AdWords well. I think a lot of people just throw up a basic AdWords campaign with a a smattering of of keywords, they don't do negative keywords, they don't do it well. Uh so again, like relying on some external party who knows marketing to to coach you in the right direction, I think is really key. And then the second one that I recommend is definitely LinkedIn marketing. I've I'm surprised by this, I've found that the success rate on this is higher than I would have predicted. Do you want to dive a little into that that strategy and and sort of the success that you've seen and maybe a bit of why you think that is? Why do you think LinkedIn has been such a successful lead generation strategy? Yeah, so I mean, I think like just to kind of transition and and finish off that AdWords comparison. It's like, um, I think especially for a lot of smaller MSPs, it's like AdWords budgets, they can get very high, it can be a lot to stomach. You have to, if you're thinking about quitting a LinkedIn strategy after three months, well, think about your AdWords strategy where you've got budget, you've got management fees. I mean, that can be hard, um, that can be hard to kind of, you know, stomach all of that, seeing all that money being spent. But with you, like I've seen in the long run, um, it can, there's a reason why the cost per clicks are so high because the people bidding on it, the people getting those leads are seeing return on investment, um, on those. But I think LinkedIn, the reason why it's popular, the reason why it's it's working is because, yeah, it doesn't take that that level of financial commitment. Um, so it's something that you can kind of get into. And it's something that you can if you leverage scale correctly, you know, you can scale it and you can grow it and you can consistently get something out of it. Um, like if people aren't familiar with LinkedIn, I think everybody definitely knows what it is and it's one of the hot kind of marketing strategies and tactics right now. Um, but it's a social network for business people, you know. And it's kind of become this secondary messaging system to email, right? Where um email is maybe now entering this new phase. Where um 10 years ago, you know, there wasn't so much fishing, there wasn't email security, there wasn't all of these spammers, maybe 10 years ago there still was, maybe 20 years ago there wasn't. And you could get through to anybody's inbox. Nowadays, you know, G Suite and Microsoft, they're making it harder to do things like cold email. Um although cold email it can definitely still be a very effective part of a lead generation strategy. Um, but people are moving their messaging to LinkedIn, um and it's becoming this kind of accessible place for people to receive messages. Um, I think one of the issues, one of the perceived things why it won't work is because there is a lot of spam on there, you know, and those messages do go through. But at the same time, I've found that um if you if you run a good campaign, yeah, if you just go in and you throw your spam up there, yeah, you're just spamming people, you're not going to have success with it. But if you actually have a strong campaign, you have a reason for reaching out, um people will respond there, they're on it, you know. Your audience is there. So that that's one of the points I wanted to touch on because, you know, on I'm on LinkedIn a fair bit, um I I'm not on Facebook anymore, I deleted my account a couple years ago. So I I tend to sort of surf around on LinkedIn probably more than I did in the past. And uh one thing I do see is people push back around, uh, you know, that the the inmail spam or people just, you know, connecting with them and then immediately pitching them, right? So, you know, you have a a a strong hand at doing this type of outreach campaign, how do you sort of get past people's sort of mental barrier or resistance to sort of that initial outreach, how do you how do you kind of do that soft outreach without sort of people putting their walls up and feeling like, oh, this is a sales pitch coming in, right? Um, I think it's really kind of, um, it, you know, for me it it starts with my mindset. Okay, so this is something where you really do have to go in with the mindset that it's like, okay, I want to approach other business people in my area and let them know about my service and ask them if they're interested. Is there anything wrong with that, you know, like why should anyone get a what's offensive about that? You know what I mean? I think there's there's really nothing wrong with it. Yeah, if I'm getting like a request from, you know, someone in another state or another country who's trying to sell me lead generation services and I've gotten 10 of them in a row, that is going to feel bad and that's not going to stand out. But, you know, if you're an MSP owner, if you have ties to your local community, um, if you're a real person and you're experienced, you know, I think a lot of the spammers, you can tell they're just inexperienced people. Um, if you have a lot to offer, people are going to see that, you know. So, there's an art to kind of making your profile stand out, but if you don't have substance behind it, you know, there's not much you can do. And if you do have a lot of substance, it doesn't really matter what your profile's like or what your outreach message is, people are going to see you and and they're going to know who you are, they're going to know it's a real person. Yeah. So what about um the some people I think try to focus a bit on marketing on Facebook as well. And uh so maybe a comparison between Facebook and LinkedIn as as a opportunity platform for this type of outreach. Uh I'll start with maybe kind of my initial impression of this and you can kind of tell me if I'm right or wrong and expand on this. But I feel like Facebook is a better place to start uh um either if you're still doing some kind of residential uh support or if you're like more consumer focused, whereas LinkedIn tends to be a better B2B platform. And the reason I bring this up is anyone who goes out there and tries to learn something on the internet about uh internet marketing, you're going to end up kind of down this this paper click on and Facebook is your platform type type strategy. And I think a lot of that is built for more of those consumer focused markets. What what's your feeling on that? How is LinkedIn different than Facebook and would you use both or do you are you pretty strong on LinkedIn as the best platform? Um, LinkedIn uh as a platform, as a a system process of kind of finding people in your area, you know, sending them a request, um, and then trying to spark up a conversation, which is basically like a a general LinkedIn outreach strategy. It's simple, you know, it takes work, it takes time, it takes some thought, um, but it's a it's a pretty basic strategy. Facebook, um, on the other hand is like this very in-depth science that you have to really know a lot about. Not only do you have to know like the technicalities of what exactly you're doing on Facebook, but you have to have an offer that's proven, that's attractive, that's sexy, that's going to work. So I think it's yes, you um, it like it matters that it's B2C or B2B, but I really think that if if you are doing Facebook, if you're using either Facebook ads or you're doing a group or something like that, you just need to have a very mature offer. Um, and I just think a lot of MSPs they they're just not thinking about it that way, it's not they haven't built their offer up that way. I mean, you'd have to find a business executives that you could somehow, um, you know, start connecting with. I mean, it's it's a it's a if I had like a whole another lifetime or something, maybe I would like, you know, dive into it and try to focus it. But that's that's like a major, I think MSP marketing is so challenging on its own, I just wouldn't personally want to um add that mountain into it, you know. Yeah, okay. Um and what about uh so similarly LinkedIn advertising? So, you know, you I think you guys uh focus largely on sort of the direct outreach uh and um sort of the one-to-one uh finding sort of good leads and and good conversations to have with people. What about the the the advertising platform similarly on on on LinkedIn so that you could have kind of those uh those promoted ads, is that something that you guys have looked at as well? Well, it's like again, um we've we've experimented it, we've done things like that. But a lot of times the promoted ads like on LinkedIn, that's more of that's similar to maybe like a more of a Facebook campaign, you know, of what you'd actually be doing. That would work if you have some type of um I would start that, I wouldn't go straight to a um like a network analysis, like, hey, you see my ad, fill out a network analysis. I would go to some sort of one to many conversion activity, like a lunch and learn. So I think if you have a very mature sales and marketing process in your business and you're doing things like lunch and learns, you could leverage LinkedIn ads and that could be a great way to drive attendance to your lunch and learns. If you have an immature marketing process, immature marketing engine, I, you know, it's very going to be very challenging. Yeah, that's a really good point, um, and it kind of gets me to also like the the one piece I feel is sort of missing in people's sales and marketing strategy. Is a really good landing page, like where do you direct people to if you're setting up these types of campaigns? Uh and I, you know, I'm often horrified by going to look at people's website and it looks like it was written, you know, in uh in some type of uh very low cost uh tool, Wizzywig tool and it, you know, it looks 18 years old and it's functional, like it tells you how to contact you and a bit about the partners that they have, but it's really not a great representation of the brand. So, you know, from from the the work that you do, how important it is, is it to start with those basics of the brand element, having a really good website that looks modern and professional, doesn't have to be super crazy sexy, but at least somewhat modern, doesn't look like it was built in word, right? How important are those basic elements to start with or are those things that you can kind of correct for after the fact? Um, I think it's um, you know, you want to match the um professionalism of your target audience. So, if you're looking for businesses that have under 20 users, you know, and that's your sweet spot, um, you know, go with what you got, if it's in Microsoft Word, whatever, your website's in, build it, build it in Microsoft Word, that's fine. But I think if you're trying to, you know, hit that kind of getting into a little bit of the higher level of tiers, you got to match them on a trust level. Um, so I think it's pretty important and I think kind of the the number one factor that I've seen into making a website effective or not. Is really the um personality of it, like actually showing photos of the team, of the office, showing that there's some reality to it. And that if you take this website for this MSP and you just pop another MSP on there, it won't work, you know. But if you kind of fail that test, then it's like, you know, people aren't going to um have this kind of, you know, they're not going to have the same connection to it because there's going to be no reality to to what you're offering. So it's like a lot of times I see these MSPs and it's like, are you really even even in business? Like, are are you, it seems like this website was just like put up overnight, it doesn't show anybody's face, it barely says anything, it's like, it's not very trustworthy. Right, so you think that that's a factor of trust, maybe it comes down to the fact that people ultimately uh people do business with other people, uh and so you need some personality and some personal connection in order for people to trust you if they they hit your landing page. Yeah, your your landing page should get them to know, like and trust you, right? That's who they like to do business with. So, for sure, they have to, they have to know who you are. Your landing page, and I think, you know, for an MSP, your website homepage, this should be your best landing page, you know. This is the one that most people are going to go to, it's going to get the most traffic by far, so put most your energy into there. But it's like, yeah, make sure people know you, they understand, we do IT support for businesses in this area. Right. That they like you, so showing photos of you of you guys, if you can have a professional videographer come in and, you know, do a a video of you guys, a brand video, I think those things are super powerful on a website. And then they need to trust you, right? So you need to show if you have, you know, been featured here, if you've won this on the MSP, if you've got 99% um smileback score, testimonials, customer testimonial videos. I mean, those are the things that can really kind of make it a lot easier. You know, there is a situation where it's like people are going to get to your website and they're going to go into it and thinking like, okay, yeah, I'm not going to not going to do anything right now. I'm just kind of get out, your website is so persuasive, they'll be like, I'm just going to fill out the form right now. I changed my mind, you know, you can do that with a good website. Right. So, so what are some of the the the messages that you you see are resonating, like your team is kind of doing this outreach on behalf of the client, um other certain technologies or solutions that you find are are people are a little more keen to hear more about, I imagine security has to be one of them. Are there any is is that I I assume that's true. Uh tell me otherwise if not, are there any others that that that even make their way into the conversation and what are those, I guess? What I've found is that there is kind of like maybe, you know, two or three parts of the market. There's like this um, you know, bottom part of the market, um where there they are looking for um an IT company, right? An IT services company. They understand that there are IT companies out there and they they understand they do everything and they don't really care, they just like know that they need somebody, maybe they know a little bit about what their current people are doing and they um, they just need somebody to take care of everything. Um, when we get kind of responses in our contact form fills, I could show you like what the contact form fills say, 95% of them say, we're looking for a new IT company, they never say we're, yeah, maybe 5% of the time they do ask about a specific technology. And then the middle of the market, it's more like, oh yeah, there's an IT director and of course we work with an MSP, our MSP handles all this stuff, we we understand exactly what our MSP does, they handle this function of our business, you know. And in those cases, it's more like, do you work with who what's when's your MC contract up, you know, what's going on with that, how do you make your MSP decision? Um, you know, it's something that's assumed. So, I think the I guess my sense is that um the market that um, you know, we want to get our clients in touch with, they're aware of what IT companies are and MSPs are. The services that they do and um, they just know that it they understand the managed model and they want to stay on that, you know. So I've found that almost everything is is really just based on the we do everything approach, you know, we manage it for you. Yeah, I think that's a really important point too is is understanding your client really helps allow you to form your messaging much better, right? If you're trying to be, you know, everything to everyone, then it doesn't resonate as someone goes to your site and reads what you do, they don't sort of read themselves in your solution. Uh and I see this a a lot with sort of the less mature websites where they they they tend to talk very technically, they talk a lot about the vendors that they work with. And maybe that is useful more at the the mid market if you're doing systems integration, a lot more project work because people may be looking for someone to help them with a particular solution. But I think in the more so in the MSP market, you know, there's the certain sort of uh uh stratus of of uh maturity around, we just need someone to fix our stuff, right? Like that's their understanding of what they need, we need a a computer guy, right? Is especially those under 20 uh uh staff uh businesses, they they don't have the sophistication to understand what you do, so you need to kind of meet them on their level in in that case. And then be able to uh bring them up in some educational phase of, you know, here's what more we can do rather than just sort of jump jump to uh the pump to fix the issues that pop up. So definitely that education phase, but I think a lot of people would benefit from starting lower on the verbage and the description of what they do and simplify things and talk more about value solutions and helping the clients run their business. I think that's that's going to appeal to more of the audience that in general are looking for this actively on the internet. Yeah, one thing that my my mentor, um, said to me that really stuck with me, you know, for a long time is that it's not the it's it's not the value of the service that you provide that's important, it's the value of the problem that you're solving. You know, so if it's you can have a super amazing cyber security solution that does so much, but if it's not something that your customer cares about, you know what I mean, it it's not really going to help you win a deal. Yeah, absolutely. Excellent. Um, anything else we haven't touched on that would be valuable for for the MSP community to understand around the marketing space? Um, no, I mean, I guess I'll just I can I can reiterate the the three main points. It's just be consistent, right? Um, make sure that you're always doing something. Right, be yourself, right? Be honest, be clear, be credible, be a real person. Right? And then um, you know, yeah, be be persuasive, right? Get something that's going to be able to close people, be able to have some type of conversion action. So I think if you follow those, the way our conversation went today, we gave a pretty good guide on uh how you can start generating leads. Yeah. Well, if people wanted a little more help or they wanted to reach out to you for some some more more advice, where would they follow you on social or websites as well? I can link to everything in the show notes. For sure, you can definitely um find me on LinkedIn, just search for Nate Friedman on LinkedIn, I'm probably connected with somebody in your network. So I'll be the first one up there, um send me a message, happy to take a look at your LinkedIn profile. Go to our website, techpromarketing.com and click on the start here button. Um that'll allow you to fill out our um email list registration, you'll get our course marketing your MSP the right way and you'll get um all of our emails going out after that. I usually publish one or two articles um each month, you'll get those directly in your inbox. Um and then if you feel like, hey, you don't want to wait around and um wait for articles to come and read them, um and this is a big problem that you're facing right now and you want to talk to someone about potential solutions for your business. You can go to our website techpromarketing.com, apply for a strategy call and you'll get in touch with me or one of our team members and we'll um we'll see what the next step is for you. Awesome. And I've uh I've looked at some of your lead magnets, the downloads that you you offer for for sign ups and and things like that and they're really good, like a sort of above class of what you tend to see in the industry. So, uh if uh definitely sign up for the list and and get the benefit of some of those materials for sure. All right. Cool. Awesome. Thanks, Nate. All right, thank you, Todd.