... for your coaching, consulting, agency or freelance business.
If you are a coach, consultant, creative agency or freelancer who is trying to attract a very specific type of B2B client such as Transformation Directors, CEO’s of medium-sized companies or CTO’s of fintech startups, for example, then you probably already know the power of Linkedin to reach out to these specific types of people. But if you have ever run ads on Linkedin you will soon see that Linkedin is roughly 3-8 times more expensive than other platforms such as Facebook and you will burn through your budget incredibly quickly, and possibly even before you see results.
There is a solution to this problem though. The solution utilises both Linkedin and Facebook to make the most of every penny you invest in your marketing. Before we jump into the nitty-gritty details of how to utilise these two platforms to create a lead generating engine for your business, we need to understand the pro’s and con’s of each platform to see how we can harness each to our benefit.
Linkedin is an absolute goldmine for B2B (and B2C in certain circumstances) but only if you know how to harness its power properly. The latest stats on the platform (2020) show that Linkedin’s users are predominantly affluent decision-makers, opinion leaders and c-level executives and where 80% of social marketing leads come from for B2B businesses. To top it off, we can access these people directly without having to speak to a gatekeeper. Linkedin is fast becoming one of the most useful tools to generate a tornado of leads for b2b focused coaches, consultants, agencies and freelancers.
Linkedin stats:
630 million professionals on LinkedIn
303 million active monthly users
121 million daily users
17 minutes on the site on average a month
63 million decision-makers
17 million opinion leaders
10 million c-level executives
80% of B2B social marketing leads come from Linkedin
92% of B2B marketers utilise LinkedIn over other platforms.
90 million senior Level decision-makers are on Linkedin
44% of LinkedIn users earn more than $75,000 a year
33% of millionaires are on Linkedin
But wait, before we get ahead of ourselves, it’s also important to mention the downsides. The biggest drawback is the cost per click (CPC) which is 3-8 times more expensive than Facebook. Linkedin is really expensive to run ads on and it doesn’t make sense for a lot of businesses if the lifetime value of their clients is not over 5k. To top it off, the average time people spend on Linkedin is 17 minutes a month, which compared to Facebook's average of 30 hours a month or 1 hour a day, roughly speaking. So although Linkedin is a treasure trove in targeting very specific decision-makers, people don’t spend a huge amount of time on the platform and the costs associated only make sense if you have a high lifetime value client.
Facebook is the behemoth of the social media landscape with people spending by far the most time on its platform. If we factor in Instagram and Whatsapp, which Facebook owns, and which we can market on through the ads platform, Facebook cannot be ignored.
Facebook stats:
2.2 Billion Active Users
1.4 Billion Daily Users
8 Billion daily video views
300 Million daily photos uploaded
58 minutes spent on the platform on average a day
Facebook is by far the cheapest platform with an average CPC of 1-3 dollars, compared to Linkedin’s 6-9 Dollars, and it’s active user base of 1.4 Billion daily users and a high amount of time spent on the platform each day, makes it an absolute necessity in most social marketing strategies.
What about those Transformation Directors, CEO’s and Tech startup folk that we want to target? Yes, they are also on Facebook. Everyone is on Facebook. In fact, if you dig deep into the available stats online you will find that 90% of Linkedin members are also on Facebook, and 57% are on Instagram. What this means is that the vast majority of Linkedin users can also be targeted on Facebook for much cheaper. Where Facebook falls short is in its hyper-focused targeting. It is very hard to get the exact traffic that you need from Facebook to your landing page. If you try to target c-level execs of medium to large companies on the platform, as we have tried, you will get a lot of bad leads, and only some good ones. In fact, this is the no.1 thing people complain about with Facebook. They say the leads were bad. So the solution?
A LINKEDIN/FACEBOOK STRATEGY
Ok, everything is called a strategy these days, but call it what you will, this strategy, tactic or framework, works. The idea is to utilise Linkedin's laser-sharp targeting with both an organic non-paid outreach as well as a paid one with the objective to send traffic off of Linkedin and onto a landing page where you have a Facebook Pixel installed. The idea is based around sending really specific and highly relevant traffic from Linkedin to a landing page where they trigger your pixel and then we can retarget them on Facebook.
This makes sense because whereas Linkedin can get us the right traffic, Facebook offers us more eyeball time at a more sensible cost. Also, by marketing on multiple platforms, and not just one (Facebook, Instagram, What’s App and Linkedin), you are following through with a tactic for a thought leadership strategy, which is multichannel at heart.
The only argument against this strategy is the mind-frame argument. This argument suggests that people on Linkedin are in the right mind-frame to conduct business-related things such as deciding on what SAAS software to trial, or which coach, consultant or creative agency to hire. Although there is a good foundation for this argument, it is not strong enough to pay the money Linkedin wants if we can do the same thing with the cheaper platform - Facebook. Yes, people are on Facebook to connect with friends and family rather than to think about business, but ultimately if the right proposition is in front of the right person, be it on any platform, there is still a high chance they will click and do the actions we desire (read an article, download a guide, schedule phone call, buy a course).
We have tried and tested this strategy, and we have found it to work for a B2B coaches, consultants, or high-value service business if their lifetime value of their clients is less than 12-15k and more than 2k. If your lifetime value is over 15k, it is possible remarketing only on LinkedIn can make sense.
If you found this useful, and you would like to speak to us about how we can implement a Linkedin/Facebook strategy for your coaching, consulting, agency or freelance business, then schedule a call by hitting the link below.
Commentaires