Jeffrey: Welcome to the light in your launch podcast today, we're talking about how LinkedIn is quickly becoming a dream client goldmine. So stay tuned.

Announcer: Hey, we're the Launch Squad and this is the Lighten Your Launch podcast. We teach coaches and course creators how to lighten their launches. We're bringing you all of the tips and strategies to take your launch from intimidating to money-making. In this podcast, we talk about everything; the sales, strategy, mindset, technical and spiritual aspects of running your best launch ever. So if you're feeling overwhelmed and unsure of the next right step, we're here to bring clarity, confidence, and excitement into your next launch. This is the Lighten Your Launch podcast.

Jeffrey: Welcome back to the show. I'm Jeffrey [inaudible] and I'm back again with Katie Collins. And today we're speaking with a very special guest Aliyah Khatib and how to use LinkedIn to find your dream clients. Katie, please introduce our special guest.

Katie: I would love to. So Aaliyah helps online coaches and service providers navigate the turbulent sea of marketing with tailored systems strategies, and one-to-one support to consistently attract dreamboat clients, reach new tiers, competently run a high impact business that doesn't run them. She spent over 12 years in the business and marketing world, and now applies that expertise to help her clients create the tailored action plans and systems so they can make giant strides forward from the simplest steps. She's with you every step of the way, because nothing excites her more than seeing your business flow with the clients that light you up. So Aaliyah, welcome to the show.

Alia: Thank you. I appreciate it. I'm so excited to be here. Yeah.

Katie: Yeah. We love our Instagram connections. That's how we got connected with you and we're thrilled to, to bring you in. Um, so I know, you know, LinkedIn is one of those platforms where some people don't feel like it's worth it, or it's not where their ideal clients are. And so I want you to kind of bust that myth. So why does LinkedIn matter, you know, who should join it and is it worth it for people to add yet another social media platform like LinkedIn to the marketing channels and to their outreach?

Alia: Perfect. Um, yes, my job here today is to just light and bring some awareness about LinkedIn. A lot of people find that not sexy at all. Like the last time I bet you used LinkedIn was, is when you posted, um, your resume to get your first internship or first job, honestly, but things are turning around. Uh, LinkedIn is heavily investing in their own platform. They recently launched LinkedIn stories. They recently launched, um, the live, which is like, like Zoomba live. It's like, um, IETV lives on Instagram. So they are heavily investing in it and bringing back some, uh, sexiness back into this ugly platform that it used to be an ugly platform. But, uh, LinkedIn today really matters because, uh, the main difference between LinkedIn and all the other social media platforms, in my opinion, and, and as a fact is that it's a business networking platform while the other platforms are social media networking platforms where we're hanging out there and talking and connecting with our friends and family while LinkedIn sole purpose is connecting businesses and business professionals together. So people do expect you to have a business connection and send them a request and talk about business or sales. They expected on LinkedIn, but nobody expects to be harassed on Instagram. Yeah. My drift is like Instagram. Everyone is like cold selling pitching, Hey, do you want a course? Do you want one-on-one? But people that are building their businesses or connecting with their friends while on LinkedIn, you can have that conversation. It's less sleazy than on other platforms. In my opinion.

Jeffrey: Do you, do you feel that, uh, LinkedIn is more about finding a business to business relationships and clients rather than a business to customer client

Alia: Is this is, uh, the misconception. So a lot of people say like, yeah, LinkedIn is B2B, right? Like it companies get the texts, but actually it all depends on who your ideal clients are and what's your niche. So if you are a service provider, you're providing a service to a business, whether it's, uh, an it company or an entrepreneur or a coach, or, um, uh, let's say a photographer needs to, he does commercial photography or they do photography, food, photography. They could find, uh, businesses on there or they can find chefs. So that's B to C I'm selling to a chef. Who's selling himself as a food influencer or a web designer looking to work with you. For example, let's say you're a marketing agency, right? So here it's like B to B to B and B to C. Um, and a lot of people like in the online world, we're all solo entrepreneurs. So we are businesses, but people believe it's like B to C, you know, like it's like not, not a conglomerate. So it all depends on the niche. And this is, I can share some examples today just to tell you who should be on LinkedIn and what type of clients you can find on Newton as we go

Katie: Before we kind of dive into that. I, um, I want to go back to something that you said earlier, because one of the reasons, and I'm going to, I'm going to just say this on the podcast, because I know I'm not the only one who thinks it, like one of the reasons why I avoid LinkedIn is because I feel like it's an immediate pitch and I'm just like, I'm not going to hire a business coach from a cold email on LinkedIn. Right. So how do you teach your clients to approach LinkedIn in a way that doesn't feel like that sleazy approach? Cause you had said like, it doesn't have to be sleazy. Like what do you mean? What do you suggest that kind of eliminates or reduces that? Anyway,

Alia: I love that question because everyone actually avoid LinkedIn because they always get cold pitched and send these whole horrible long InMail messages. So I try to tell them that, uh, selling is an art for sure. Right? Like we can find our ideal clients so much faster. And so narrowed down on LinkedIn versus Instagram, it's like incredible with the amazing features of LinkedIn. But then once you find these leads, you have to follow the same way you would connect a nurture. These leads if you found them on Instagram, which is first establishing that relationship, then nurturing, it's warming them up through content, marketing, email, marketing, your funnels, engagement, you know, like keep that rolling. So that's what I teach my clients. Like I can, we can find, we can do, we can find a hundred leads per day with all the automation tools out there. We can, we can easily find them on LinkedIn in a much faster week.

Alia: We can download their emails on their profiles and all this data. But then it's not about just generating leads. It's about turning that lead into a potential clients. And that requires the same funnel of taking a lead to a client, which is through like, um, marketing funnel, awareness, educating, um, then they're showing interest and then they're converting and then they become a customer. So that's what a lot of people think like why I, to me, it's like, why couldn't you just take that same approach and do it only thing. But it just LinkedIn to me is just an amazing, faster, powerful lead generation platform. And then I apply all the other marketing tactics to that same lead.

Katie: All right. All right. I'm excited to get into this conversation because, um, it's like I logged into LinkedIn because for some reason, um, I usually don't get notifications on my phone, but for some reason my phone will kind of put the number 12. They're like you've got 12, you know, pending invites or whatever. So I'll often like pop on and then yeah, I'll just see an invite from, you know, lead generating sales strategist. And I'm like, no, and it's just not my platform, but I'm excited for this conversation because I want you to change my mind. You know, like I know that there's, um, you know, opportunity here and, um, you know, we've got a current client as well. That is a career coach and her people are on LinkedIn looking for jobs and their approach to looking for jobs is her in because she's like, you're doing it wrong and that's why you keep getting the same results over and over. So, um, I know she's excited to listen to this lesson into this podcast as well, because it's just, you know, how to really maximize the time. And um, so let's get into that. Like how much time does one generally need to spend on that platform like per day or per week so that it actually works for them.

Alia: Right. That's an excellent question. I would just, um, but this formula together, which isn't, it's not a fault, it's not my formula, but the 80 20 rule, like 80% of your results will come from 20% of your efforts. Right? So for me, I, for me, in my business and with my clients, I try to simplify using LinkedIn. I always say use LinkedIn to generate leads and establish that connection, but you can use Instagram and Facebook for concept marketing, making sure that you repurpose that content into, um, into LinkedIn on LinkedIn. It's like I told you, it's super easy to find clients. It's very easy. Like you can literally find like a career coach, let's go with that example. This episode will be tailored for her with a career coach. Let's say she's looking for engineers, for example, like she's worked in the engineering, um, industry and she is now helps career.

Alia: She does career coaching for engineers to get to that six figure in a salary, let's say, or to just like, uh, achieve a higher, um, career, career ladder. So she can easily look for senior engineers in Denver or right with more than 10 years experience in certain companies or rights, um, in specific functions, like whether it's in specific industries and functions like maybe it's engineers in oil and gas and utilities, for example. So it could be that specific. So if you do this once a week and you could find these sleeves, now your role is just to be engaging with them for as long as you can, but you can start that. And if you turn your LinkedIn profile into that sales funnel, that's done just two hours. One time you just turn your LinkedIn profile into a sales folder or your one page website so that when you're going out to find them, which is super easy, you just go on sales navigator and you find it.

Alia: This is what I mean by 20% of effort, two hours update your profile one hour, find the leads. And then what you keep doing is nurturing them the same way on Instagram. What, while on Instagram, you have to do engagement 30 minutes before a post, then 30 minutes after it posts, and then you have to create content and then you have to go and find them through hashtags. And it's like, it's not easy to find engineers in Denver on Instagram. You can do, let me know how you did it. It's really hard while the LinkedIn just take like a search. It's like a Google database. Like every engineer that's ever has, it has a job has updated his LinkedIn profile and that career coach can easily find them. And now her role is just to be doing engagements while she is, you know, having proper place marketing funnels. So it's not just about lead generation. That takes more, but with LinkedIn, it just because it's just easier because of the tools that are within LinkedIn.

Katie: Right? And so I want to hear a little bit about those, cause I've heard the reference to sales navigator and, uh, I'm not you, I think you did a great job describing like what it can do, but like, what are some other tools, you know, like on Instagram, you know, they prefer if you do reels and um, on, um, Facebook, they prefer if you do lives. And so it's like learning to play with the algorithm, um, of, of said platform. So what does LinkedIn favor over other things?

Alia: Okay. So Gary V he's the guy that rekindled LinkedIn in 2019, I was actually reading his article and he said that LinkedIn now is becoming more of a content platform. And the organic reach of LinkedIn is like Facebook 10 years ago. There's only 1% of people that are posting content on LinkedIn and on LinkedIn, they prefer there. They do prefer more content, which is about industry news, but they still do want to push for video because they recently launched a new feature, which is basically you sign up to get this license that you get to do LinkedIn live and you get to experts on board. So they also tried to push that through the algorithm. But, um, LinkedIn, literally, like, let's say you started your business and you don't know how to code or set up your business on a website. It gives you literally everything that you need to fill out.

Alia: It tells you, listen on your profile, give me your brand and give me your cover page. Give me what you do. Give me your profile picture. All right. Here's everything about you add all your achievements in one section at all your experience and what you do and how can people work with you in one section at all your amazing skills as a business owner and let people start doing referrals like testimonials, it gives you all those sections. All you need to do is plug it in. So already that plant, that section is underused by many business owners. I was just now doing like a LinkedIn VIP day with one of my clients. And she has a very established business, fully booked out to six figure earnings, but her LinkedIn profile has nothing on it. It had nothing on it. She didn't even have a cover page.

Alia: So I went and I updated it and now she's going to be, you know, working with corporates and agencies. So she needs to up-level her profile, but literally a lot of people really don't you utilize that space, which is your, uh, like it's my, it's my billboards, my brick, it's my visual merchandising of my store. Like it's the most important thing because it's the third, it's a Google search engine. If I always get searched at like people look for marketing coaching, I always get notified by LinkedIn, that people are looking for you. All you need to do is just update your profile. So already that those features are amazing. Um, the other features are LinkedIn articles. So if you want to establish yourself as an authority and an expert, um, when a thought leader, LinkedIn gives you a section called LinkedIn articles where you can dive deep into a topic and show your expertise. So if you're in marketing agencies and you want to talk about SEO, for example, you have that space it's different consumed differently than stories or IETV is right. It's for people that want to read in depth about the CEO and they can find it all within LinkedIn. So they have, they really have so many awesome features and then nobody uses it.

Katie: Does like if you do an article on LinkedIn, does it kind of show up in a Google search? If somebody says, tell me about SEO. And we wrote an article on SEO, which we wouldn't do. Um, but you know, is it, is it find-able on Google or only really find-able on LinkedIn?

Alia: I think if it has a lot of engagement within LinkedIn, it should, it should be searchable. It shouldn't be getting viral. It's getting picked up and you have the right keywords and the hashtag it should be picked up because you know, the same thing with medium, like it's the same thing about LinkedIn has much more traction than medium, right? LinkedIn wants to be such a, it's one of the biggest platforms. So if you have the right keywords and you have engagement is going viral, it's probably might get picked up.

Jeffrey: Now, how is that different? Does, does Lincoln also have kind of an advertising platform? Is that what it is? Like if you're, if you're a member of Facebook and you create a business Facebook page and then a business dot Facebook account, then you've got the ads manager and you can run ads. Does, does LinkedIn also have that, um, platform? And if so, does that, when you do marketing there, does it also reach out to, you know, other platforms, for example, if you're on Facebook and you mark it on Facebook, your ad is also on, uh, Instagram and in various other platforms. Does, does LinkedIn have something like that?

Alia: So LinkedIn does have an advertising platform, but it is within LinkedIn platform and a lot of, um, advertising experts. And I've had my own experience with it. They do prefer that B2B businesses use it because like the tech companies or like software companies, they could, uh, uh, they could throw that money because, you know, like if somebody's buying Oracle or Microsoft and you know, it's, it's a big accounts. It's like high tickets clients. So definitely not for like solo entrepreneurs or small, medium businesses, it's definitely for more B2B clients and big high ticket sales. And it's usually the tech and software companies. I've tried running ads myself, and it's very easy to target them. Like I told you, like, it's very easy to find people very specific. Like I can look for a coaches within two years and run an ad to them, but the cost per click is ridiculous. I spent a hundred dollars on, on Facebook for two weeks. I spent a hundred dollars on LinkedIn with zero clicks in four days, it's like devour the money. So I wouldn't, um, I wouldn't advise on LinkedIn ads for solo entrepreneurs or SMEs either. Right.

Jeffrey: Okay. So, so now you're what that opens up is like, there must be, um, another strategy is, is it a free strategy or there's a pay to play kind of situation? Like how accessible is really this goldmine to the budding entrepreneur? Like

Alia: It's very accessible. So there's, there's two search engines in LinkedIn. There's the free version where you can look for, let's say, uh, let's go back to the same example. Let's say I'm a career coach. I'm looking for engineers. I can go and look for engineers in Denver. Um, but without that, without the advanced filters, like I can find them in certain cities. I can look at certain industries they're in. So it would give me a wide net while the sales navigator, which is the paid version, which is around 70, $80 a month, that has advanced filters where I can find them based on how many years have been at their current role. How many taught them years of experience? How big of a company they're in? Is it a SME or is it a self owned or one to 10? Is it a private company? Is that an NGO? So the sales navigator, which is the advanced search, is to, uh, narrow down that, uh, that gap so that when you're connecting with ideal clients, that acceptance the would be higher. And you're a very specific on who you're targeting, which is that's way more strategic than just throwing a wide net and seeing who bites. Right? Yeah.

Katie: It's like, there's, it seems like their sales navigator system is in lieu of paying for advertising. You're paying for a database. That's going to allow you to target your own organic marketing. Um,

Alia: That's what, that's what I'm getting from ads. Yeah. As, because like you said, you're not going to just go hire a business coach and, you know, they connected with you today and tomorrow they sent you a free guide and sign up and get to my, you, that's not going to work with the business coach anyways. But the people that work on lead generation, it's a numbers game. They're like, we're going to send a hundred connections a day. Let's say 30, except one will bite. And they're selling a $60 course. That's a numbers game while with high ticket, you know, it takes time to nurture a lead to become a client because they're investing or then three figure investment. So, uh, but the lead generation just faster and smoother on LinkedIn, but the nurture sequence thing,

Jeffrey: How much, how much of that of a funnel or the funnel process is in LinkedIn and when do you know, or how do you know when to take it off LinkedIn? Right? Because I mean, a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of stuff we talk about is like to get them into your email list. Uh that's when you can really start having that conversation. But you're saying the conversation happens in LinkedIn, on LinkedIn, through LinkedIn. At what point do they get into your quote unquote funnel, which is usually, you know, your landing pages, your opt-ins, your email address, or email CRMs and all that kind of stuff. W how, how does that transition happen?

Alia: Okay. That's a great question. But to add to that, LinkedIn is a marketing funnel. So this is how I explain to my clients when we're connecting, when we're finding our clients, and we're sending them a connection requests, that connection that leads gets to either accept or totally ignore you. So when they accept to connect to you on LinkedIn going that step and checking out your profile, and he knows exactly what you do, like an engineer saw that you're a career coach and you're trying to connect with them. And she said in her headline, I'm a career coach for engineers to take you from getting stuck to unstuck that career, that engineer has the choice to either accept or ignore you because he's adding you to your network. It's very different than follow and follow that little train. So when that engineer accepts and he adds it to your business, that's what he opened the conversation to have a conversation.

Alia: He opened the door to have a conversation. So he gave you leeway. Yeah, we can talk, but please don't sell to me. That's usually their attack on sell to me. And then you, as a business owner, you need to study a, learn the art of selling and nurture. So that is a funnel. Sometimes you'd be amazed at how we used to get people saying, oh, that's so crazy. You're connecting with me. I was thinking about hiring someone, or I was thinking about what you do. Can you tell me more? It's because we studied where ideal clients are. We know what they want. We found them. It's very easy to, we narrowed it down. So LinkedIn acts as a funnel, and then your job is to get them off LinkedIn, whether it's, here's my free guide that can give you a quick win or just stay here, engage with my content, engage with my poles, you know, uh, or do you want to hop on a free consultation call? And then we took it from LinkedIn into a zoom call, but that is a funnel is a powerful photo. Yeah. Now is there like a,

Jeffrey: Maybe that's what you provide is like a kind of a formulaic approach to that, or a strategy behind getting them from, you know, they don't know about you just getting them to look at your, you know, constructed landing page and dialing up that conversation. And of course not attacking them with buy my thing, buy my thing, sign up today. Right. So is that, is that your sweet spot is that your gift is to, is to help people with that understanding of that part of the funnel.

Alia: Yeah. So I do have a free guide about that, but first let's talk about the steps. So like, let's say today, you want to start getting on LinkedIn, what do you do? Right? You want to, you want to cover, like, what should you do first step? The first and most important thing is to update and optimize your LinkedIn profile. That's key. This is like a lot of people make that mistake or not updating or touching it to the first thing is to update your LinkedIn profile. It will literally act as your sales page, your funnel, your website, and it, if anybody searching for you or lands on your page, they will know exactly who you, who you work with. Like calling them out. How do you help them? And what do you help them on? And how can they work with you with testimonials? We don't want to take anybody outside my LinkedIn profile to my website.

Alia: I want to keep them there. And I'm going to provide them all the content. They need to make a decision whether they want to work with me or not. So once you update your profile and I have a free guide about that, I will share that with you at the end, then you do find your ideal clients using the free version or the sales navigator. I would go for the free version at the beginning just to test the waters because a lot of people are hesitant and like, I don't know this person, like, why would I, why would they talk to me? Why should I talk to them? It's okay. You were sending out 20 connection requests a day. They have the choice, either accepted or not, and everybody needs your business being resistant. There's also limiting beliefs about LinkedIn. And that's what I tried to encourage people, not to everyone is afraid and resistant to LinkedIn.

Alia: And they think it's the scary, ugly platform, but it's not even better than Instagram, which is a fun platform with jerks. But LinkedIn is the sales cycle to me is shorter on LinkedIn. And that's what I teach my clients. So once you start finding your ideal clients and you start connecting with people and lead generation is a numbers game, do make sure to send enough connections per day for the next 90 days, once people start connecting with you, don't just leave it. The third step is to start nurturing them and building that relationship, whether I'm commenting on their content, asking them a question, filling some market research, or just connecting with them. And then, um, every couple of weeks, like engaging with them again, you know, like taking that nurture step, like that's a whole session. That's the whole how to nurture a lead into a client.

Alia: I bet that's a whole session. And, and just keep growing your network. The more you grow your content, your network, and you're creating content to, to handle objections and convert those eventually a lead will come to you, or you will pitch to them by giving them free resources or asking them a question or getting on a call like this many different ways to, um, to, to speak to a lead and to convert them. But those are the main, like four steps I would say. And, uh, in my free guide, I literally tell you like spoonfeed, you have to update your LinkedIn profile. And at the end of the guide, I give you a 10 conversation starters on the types of messages that you can send so that you don't feel stuck. Like, okay, I connected with them. What do I do next? I literally give you 10 examples and inspirations to use, to tailor and customize them for every lead that you connecting with. I think that that would be great.

Katie: Yeah. That's awesome. What a great example of a great lead magnet. We were always like teaching that, like, where are your ideal clients now? Like, what do they need help with now? And for you, it's like, they need to get started. So they need to get their profile up and they need to, you know, get the, the guts to send a message that I'm going to help them with that too. Right. And then they elevate themselves and then maybe they're ready to hire a support. So it's a perfect example. Good job.

Jeffrey: So hold on. I, I, my, my little radar popped up because I want to address this because I think there's probably people out here thinking who just heard you say that you're sending out, what was it? 90 connections

Alia: And 90 days over 90 days.

Jeffrey: So is that, uh, I mean, is somebody going into this expecting that most of their day is responding to people's engagement and having conversation like, to me, that's a lot of conversations is that what's happening here? Are we having tons and tons of conversations all day long every day,

Alia: If you do, if you do, that's amazing that people, that means people want what you're selling, but why do I tell you 90 days? The thing is like a lot of my clients, they start off doing it for like 10 days. They're like Aaliyah nobody's accepted me. Like it doesn't work. Good thing is all about. And if you need to see any results, you need to do 90 days that's to me, the benchmark, and this is why we have quarters do this for the next 90 days, five days, a week, 20 connections a day, measure it. And then in 90 days, come back to me and tell me, what's your acceptance rates? How many people did you connect with? How many people accepted, how many people applied? What was the feedback? What worked, what did not work? But a lot of people, they just think, okay, I updated my profile and I sent it to five people.

Alia: Then, then work. Okay, let's go to Tech-Talk. Right. That's the issue with mark and like business entrepreneur, they don't understand that marketing. It's a consistency game. It takes patience. You have to be persistent, consistent, uh, as long as you have the strategy in place. So this is why I say, once it connections a day for the next 90 days, and then you can measure, what's working, what's not working. And then you can change it accordingly. But if you do have a lot of conversations, that means people want what you're selling, who says no to that. Yeah.

Katie: Yeah. So is there a limit to how many connection requests you can send per day?

Alia: Yeah. LinkedIn has been going hard at this because, uh, there are so many automation tools out there. This is why it's spiked in the last two years where we used to send a hundred connections a day and you could send 3000 connections a month. And then, uh, people were getting spam. It was getting annoying. So LinkedIn, LinkedIn has been eliminating all of that. So now it has a weekly limit of around a hundred, a day, a hundred a week. It's around 28. Yep. But sometimes it gets triggered, sometimes it doesn't. So that's why I always tell my community and clients just stick to 20 connections a day during the week. Don't go over that you don't want to get flagged and that's it, you know, like do it overnight today. That should be fine. Yeah.

Katie: So this is great. So what, you know, if I kind of repeat back what we're really hearing is like first update your profile. So that it's really a funnel in and of itself. It's like a one page website and, you know, it's silly not to do that first. Um, and I love that you have a free guide for that. And then it's the sending the connection requests and then it's tracking as well. So that's so important. And we talk about that all the time. You got to look at your numbers and just come up with truths instead of beliefs.

Katie: Um, and, and then, you know, as people connect with you and you're chatting with them in the inbox or whatever, you know, eventually our goal is to get them off of LinkedIn, but, um, that you can do a lot of lead generation and nurturing within LinkedIn itself before kind of inviting them off, which I think is important. I think when you first connect with somebody and say, you know, download my free gift, like right away, it's off-putting. And so it's so much better to get to know them and then say, actually, I have a free gift that addresses just that. Is that something that you would like? So, um, yeah, so it's it, you know, it's um, like who would you say, I know we talked earlier about, um, you know, business to business. I didn't say this earlier, but what popped in my head was a lot of times as a business coach, I hear, um, like life coaches, for example, or even health coaches that want to get into corporate as their business.

Katie: Like they want to do lunch and learns and professional development days and have the corporations hire them to support their clients and coach their clients into, into health and, and wellness. Um, and their question is always, how do I get in? And what I heard from you today was LinkedIn is a really great place that they could spend some time and get to know corporate corporations and whatnot. If that was someone's strategy or desire, what would be the first thing? Cause it's still LinkedIn is about people. So what would be the first thing you would recommend for them to start making connections with, you know, big, big corporate entities?

Alia: Oh, sure. No, that's a great question. So, um, I'm going to give you a list of the top of clients that you can find on LinkedIn. Um, and this answers your question. So I, I was, I always liked it in this way. So you can find corporate clients, business professionals, business owners, entrepreneurs, and senior decision makers of companies who have the buying power or where their opinion matters. So if we're going to a health coach, for example, and she wants to have lunches or start training their team and start creating these wellness, health, nutrition, um, uh, events, for example, she first has to be working on market research to figure out who exactly is the decision maker within that corporation. Is it the marketing managers or is it the HR managers? If it is the HR, is it the assistants or the managers or the directors, because you can easily find them on LinkedIn.

Alia: Um, and so once you know exactly who they are, you can find them on LinkedIn. And, um, as long as your LinkedIn profile speaks to them, speaks to those HR professionals, like literally calls them out in her profile. I have a lot of clients that this is what I teach them, that you need to call them out in your headline. So on LinkedIn, there's that first section. And I hope nobody writes health coach health coach for business or busy professionals who want to feel whatever so, right. Like emotion. So when you call them out in the headline, that HR is like, oh, that resonates with me. I feel like that too. So once you connect with them, then she can pick it up and, you know, have an open ended question. You're like, Hey, how's it going? That was for connecting and many different ways of engaging, whether it's her content or testimonials asking them a question, getting what a call, do the market research. Um, as long as you do your market research, that is key. You cannot work on your LinkedIn profile without mark

Katie: [inaudible]. That is like the foundation of us helping people craft their irresistible offer that actually sells is to find out more about your buyer and you know, what strikes their fancy. So, but in this essence, it's really knowing your market and figuring out, cause that is the frustration for everyone is, you know, they'll say, well, how do I get in front of the CEO? And I'm always like, wait, is the CEO the one that's going to bring you in? I don't think so. Um, you know, I don't come from a corporate background. I come from an education background, but for us, when we brought in professional development speakers and we did bring in health coaches and yoga teachers, and we had a wellness initiative for one year, we had a grant that let us pay for that kind of stuff. And we were scrambling trying to find someone.

Katie: So it's just funny that there are some places out there that have money desire and the money is going to run out. Like it's use it or lose it. And, and then you've got the coaches out there going, where are those people? Um, but in essence, I was on the professional development council and we were the ones that picked the speakers. And so I was just an average teacher in the school. I wasn't in any sort of administrative role, except that I served on this committee and that committee was who was doing it. So it's, it is really important, you know, in an education that's usually true that it's a committee of teachers that selecting the speaker, so to speak. So, um, so yeah, so, uh, I love, I love your point about market research and, you know, here's the thing, this is something that I say all the time.

Katie: And, uh, I was listening to one of our, uh, former episodes and I set it on that episode and I'm like I say it all the time. My biggest racket, if you will, is I don't have time. I don't have time. We were talking about active campaign and they had offered onboarding. And I was like, I don't have time. And this is back in the day, but I was so busy trying to learn things on my own. I didn't have time to do the things that were going to make me exponentially grow. Right. Like I was so frazzled in my own overwhelm. And so to your point, you know, earlier you had said, take an hour and do your LinkedIn profile. Like that is number one, stop trying to fish for leads when you're unwilling to spend an hour of non lead generation time to make this work for you, because there's no point in trying to go out there and fish for leads when they land on your profile. And they're like, I don't get it. What do you do

Alia: Exactly? You know?

Katie: Yeah. So there's like, and it's the same thing. Oh, I don't have time to do the research. It's like, you do have time. And not only that, maybe you don't have time. So hire someone. So, you know, we were compiling a list of things that our clients want. If they, when they hire a VA. And one of them brought up research several times. I want the VA to research hashtags, research, SEO, research, equipment, research, speaking gigs. And so this is another kind of research job you can hire from Upwork and pay someone 20 twenty-five dollars an hour to research this for you. Um, so it's, it's just inexcusable to skip it.

Alia: Yeah. Yeah. Super unexcusable you could be climbing the wrong Everest if

Katie: You're doing like

Alia: What a waste of time. Yeah, no. Like I would spend them all. I have two assistants, like my social media manager and a marketing assistant. And all they do is market research on a weekly basis. LinkedIn polls, Instagram holds my Facebook groups. We collected, we study it, we build upon it. You cannot build your business if people don't want it. So swipe usage is so key.

Jeffrey: So many people, myself included who resisted that for a long time until I met Katie that's right. But I will say like, that is the point when everything changed. That is the point when my marketing message got dialed in. Like there's I see a lot of people saying, oh, I can run to Facebook ads and just test a bunch of messages. Like, yeah, you could do that. But what messages are you starting with to test all of that just gets solidified. And it derives from that market research, like talking, talking to people who are your ideal clients. Like there's no, yeah.

Katie: There's no better way. Yeah. And it really like artificial intelligence. It can't, it can't beat the effort it takes to have conversations. And my favorite part, um, is that a lot of times the people you're interviewing, especially like for, for our clients, we're helping them craft an offer. Um, and the people that you're, uh, interviewing want to know what you're offering and when it's coming out and they're like, you know, let me know when, when you're opening up that program, I want to take it. And so like, it could be upwards of 50% of the people you talked to are like hot leads for what you're about to offer. So there's just, you know, it's inexcusable to not make time for that. And it's just, you know, I just call myself on it. I'm I often say I don't have time. And that was kind of my, you know, air quotes, racket. And I learned that from going to the landmark forum. But like, that was the thing that I kept saying over and over and over again, that was preventing me from moving forward. Was this idea that, um, yeah, that, that I was using my time very wisely and I wasn't. So, uh, yeah, so that, that is,

Jeffrey: To me, it's leverage it's, it's what creates leverage in your business and leverage is something that allows you to you. So traditionally, like fulcrums and stuff, use a minimal amount of force for a maximum amount of results. Like the same kind of thing. Like it's leveraging your business. So where you can do the minimal amount of work, I guess, with a maximum amount of result. Yeah.

Alia: Yeah. Like that's why I was saying the 80 20. So like LinkedIn is just as just use it for lead generation connect with 20 a day, one hour for profile. That's it? Well, Instagram, I have two people running my Instagram page and that takes a lot of time, you know, but thank God I repurpose everything or else that would be a waste, but a sales cycle is just much shorter on LinkedIn. And that's why it shows you efforts because they are opening the door to have that conversation. I never accept business coaches, for example, not offense, but like I'm a marketing coach. I have my own business coaches. So when a business coach is trying to connect with me, I closed the door. Thank you uncovered. But if I open the door, she has every right to pursue me. Right. Yeah. So

Katie: Yeah. I always equate it to online dating. Yeah. Marketing is online dating, right. It's just like, are you available? If, so, I'm going to kind of bark up your tree and keep reaching out and see if we can engage. And if you're not available, then you say, no, thank you. Right. Or you take your profile down or whatever, but, um, you can't fault people for doing their job. Um, and it's just interesting, you know, to your point, like, yeah, we're not going to make our next tire based on a cold email, probably ever. Um, and, and often I think that the rookie mistake is that they don't actually look at your profile, uh, before they reach out. So I just got a random voice message from one guy, 50 seconds, you know, Hey Katie. Yeah. It looks like you're doing really great work out there as an input impact driven entrepreneur.

Katie: And then just goes right into the pitch. We help people do this. Um, you know, here's the, here's the results my clients got. And would you like my free gift? And then it's like, I just want to share with you high value content. I'm not even going to ask for your phone number. Let's just start this relationship off. Right. And I'm like you, and then two days later I get the same voice, the exact same recording from a new Facebook request from a new guy, also named like this first name, Michael. And I was like, what is this scam? You know? But it's like, if you looked at what we did, you would know that I don't need your lead generation strategy where the launch squad, we know how we do things a different way. And we pride ourselves in doing things a different way. And I don't need your help with that. And you didn't even look at my profile. Right. So that's, I think the rookie mistake, it's like, if you're going to take the time to do the outreach, actually read their profile comment on it. I saw that you wrote an article about XYZ. I really appreciated that you put that in the article. Like that's part of the time consuming but worthy

Alia: Or are they because they're high tickets? Yes.

Katie: Yeah. It's like, that's what, you know, you either close the door, like the upon reading the message, you read it and go, oh, this is a templated message that makes me want to vomit shut the door or, oh wow. This person actually did her research. And verifiably wants to connect with me without trying to pitch me. Okay. I'll open that up. So, so

Jeffrey: That does bring up the question, like, what is the right way to engage someone you don't know on LinkedIn? Like what is the

Alia: Right way to do that? The thing is, um, to me, once, once we've accepted the connection, I take it slow, right? Like I like to get to know a guy before we like, Hey, like before the guy asks me out. So it's just like, it's like texting back and forth. And now with the addition of the voice notes in LinkedIn, which is new actually in the last year, um, a lot of people do like that personal touch because LinkedIn is such as business network. Nobody gets used to that, uh, voice, um, feature. And a lot of people have been liking it. So you personalize yourself, so becomes easier. Like you can send a message. Hey, thanks for connecting. I appreciate it. And like Katie was saying, just nurturing them step by step and gradually and slowly. Um, and I love using polls on LinkedIn. Same thing as Instagram, when, when I have contents and I need to ask them like market research every week I post a poll on, on LinkedIn.

Alia: And um, after one week or two or three days, it gives me the results. And then I take those results and it gives me a such a quick way within LinkedIn to literally send them the poll that he, they just voted on and tell them, Hey, thanks for partaking in my poll. I loved what you said. Can you please elaborate more? So I opened another door for engagement, and then I do it again next week. And then I primed them to engage with my poll. I primed them to see my content. And then, you know, eventually I will engage on their content and then eventually pitch to, or say, Hey, I'm doing a masterclass. Come join us for free. And taking it from there, you can't force like career coaching for example is like the hardest businesses to me is the longest time to find the clients because nobody feels that they're stuck and they need a career coach.

Alia: It's not something urgent. This is like a, it's not a necessity. So for career coaches, for example, it does take time to nurture a lead because we need to raise the problem that there is a problem. We need to bring awareness that there is a problem and you can solve it. And I might have the solution for you. So that does take time. You have to, but you have to first find them and start the relationships that like building a relationship takes time, whether it's an Instagram on LinkedIn, but you need to start it. And with LinkedIn is just faster to find these leads, build them and keep them in your funnel because now they are in your funnel and everything that you're going to be posting, they're going to see it and you can find them easily. And you know, it's so much, it's, it's easier to find, um, the people that you connected with and send them one curated message while on Instagram with the two inboxes.

Alia: I I'm. So I don't know where to find them. Like, where is this leadership coach that I connected with in Melbourne, but how am I going to iron her? Right. And how many flags I flag. But on LinkedIn after six months, I can like leadership coaches, USA. I found them all. Here's my masterclass at the USA timing standard, copy paste, leadership coaches, Melbourne. Here's my masterclass at this time, send, copy paste. After all these guys spoke to them, it's so easy. It's so easy. Wow. So, yeah, so it just takes time. It's like any other platform, but they just make things much easier and more strategic. Right.

Katie: It takes time up front, but then you leverage

Alia: It the platform. Yeah. But like, they give you the quick for the features, like, like when business coaches connect, follow you, they don't have the right to message me. So we get, we, everyone like rejects it. Right. But when, when you sent a connection to someone and they accepted, they have the right to message. You it's different than follow for follow, you know, like LinkedIn stops you from messaging, someone you didn't connect with. That's the beauty of LinkedIn. I'm not allowed. I can't send you a message. Now, Katie or Jeffrey says, it's right. And you won't get it. That's cool. Just those InMail where I get 50 a month. And you know that you're getting a spam message from someone you don't know it's will tell you this is an InMail message. Yeah. Right. Right. Exactly. Well, on linked on Instagram, they can follow you. And then there's a request and it's obviously going to open the request right before it would land in your inbox. They were intrusive on Instagram. Yeah. Sorry. It's getting dark here. It's like eight 10 now. Oh, wow. Wow.

Jeffrey: Well, we have definitely taken up plenty of your time. Is there anything, uh, that you want to share to call this episode complete or anything we missed or anything?

Alia: I think we've covered multiple topics on this

Katie: Slide. Yeah. And probably

Jeffrey: Just barely scratched the surface, right?

Alia: Yeah. No, for sure. I could talk hours on it, but I would definitely urge anyone that is afraid of saying I don't have time. A lot of people have been telling me I'll do it later after the summer. And I would definitely get, get you to start now because it does take time to build a relationship. If you start on LinkedIn today does not mean you're going to close a sale tomorrow. Right. It still takes time to build those relationships, but you need to start. And LinkedIn provides you all the tools to find your ideal clients like laser focused and more strategic than on other platforms, because it's a business that's working platform and they have the tools to help you with that. And I have the free guide to help you literally get started without feeling sleazy and making sure you're, um, creating a profile that resonates and speaks to your ideal clients.

Jeffrey: So how can people get that free gift?

Alia: The, so it's on my website, Alia khatib.com and I believe you will share it. You can also follow me on Instagram, the digital marketing with Aliyah, and I have it in the Lincoln bio. And, um, and yeah, and you get started on LinkedIn just takes one hour. I promise with markets research five hours without market research. Yeah.

Katie: Awesome. Well, thank you so much. I think, you know, we asked, um, I hope we asked a lot of questions that are on people's minds and just things that I've heard or that I've personally said and helping people kind of overcome, you know, at the end of the day, is it worth it? Yes. If your ideal clients are there, it's worth it. And to your point, you know, you're saying it's a SA it's a faster sales cycle. Um, that's pretty awesome. That's what a lot of our clients want. I know that. Yeah. So especially in between launches and things, I think people are like, what do I do now that I'm not launching? And it's like, go back to the organic marketing and build up your list again. That's what you do. And this is where, where you go for that. So. Okay. Awesome. All right. Well, thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a five star review and hit that subscribe button. And you can check out the show notes with links to get your free gift and all that fun stuff at the launch squad, lab.com forward slash episode 33.

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