I’m sure you all agree that digital marketing tactics aren’t quite what they used to be. LinkedIn company post reach is falling. Post likes were always from the same cohort. Ads still serve thousands of impressions, but the cost is skyrocketing, meaning less bang for your buck.
Search traffic is now being hidden away by AI’s zero-click answers, or users reaching for ChatGPT and Claude for their research rather than a traditional search engine.
As a result of all this and more, web traffic continues to fall and visibility is becoming clouded by the likes of Cookiebot.
So what’s next? We can no longer rely on the same old techniques. It’s time to try something else.
Our decision? To experiment with automated outreach on LinkedIn, but in a way that stayed true to what we stand for.
Just from our own experience, the sheer number of invites we receive with blatantly bad mail-merged messages, from people barely related to our fields, followed rapidly by a “buy my stuff?” message, is making us switch off.
We are not willing to add to the problem and hasten the decline. Like everyone else, our LinkedIn feed is constantly full of people claiming to have automated their entire outreach.
But it’s all about keeping a human in the loop.
So, what did we learn?
1. Start with your ICP, and do not cut corners
At the heart of our effort is a tight company and persona-led list in LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
The contacts are hand selected. These are companies we want to do business with, because we know we have the right skills and experience to be both effective and credible.
2. Relevance and reason are vital
Our sequence needed to start with a connection request, and converted at over 30% of invites.
We are running three types of programme:
- Second-level connections to people we know who are on our ICP lists, leveraging the credibility of our existing contacts.
- Follow-up to people from our sectors who have viewed our profiles, liked or commented on our posts. This turns an initial interaction into a natural next step.
- People who follow similar groups or influential people in our network.
3. Lead with help, not sales
Our initial messaging was simply a request to connect so we could share our opinions, and highlight some useful insights we had found recently. Any message about the agency and our services seemed to fall flat. Instead, we built a sequence that signposted individual places where we share relevant expertise.
After all, we are reaching out to people who fit our ICP but have shown no clear signal of intent that they need our services. This is about being in their memory when they have a category entry point problem.
We originally asked for suggestions on important areas for our newsletter. Not a single response. Why?
We think it was simply too early to be asking for an interaction. It takes time to build comfort and credibility.
4. The programmes take time to build
The automation programme we are using throttles the number of invites per day, so it takes time to work through the list.
This is not a quick fix.
But here is the kicker. The programme has increased our reach, but we are noticing a few things:
A. The new audience is not liking or commenting on our content
This suggests there is a “voyeur” habit of watching first. I recognise it, as I do it myself.
B. The reach of our company and individual posts is not growing rapidly
We believe this is because the overall audience is growing at a small rate due to throttling.
C. To date, after four weeks, we have received no requests for a proposal
We are putting this down to the fact our audience is based on ICP, not urgency.
D. The calls to action in the sequence have needed work
Originally, they encouraged interaction. We then changed them to suggest subscribing to our ICYMI newsletter, our company updates and our Velo Insights newsletter.
Subscriber numbers have lifted slightly, but only marginally. With a 30% acceptance rate and a 10% subscribe rate, this means one in every 50 people we invite will see our content ongoing, until they opt out. So only a small percentage of our ICP list is going to engage with us.
E. Not everyone is on LinkedIn all of the time
Remembering that your services are not a priority to many people at this point, and that not everyone is actually on LinkedIn all of the time, means sending messages is no guarantee they will be read.
F. Using LinkedIn to follow up actual personal interactions is still the best use of the platform
It is certainly much faster than doing it manually, but alone it is not the silver bullet we hoped it would be.
It has a place alongside other activity, but it needs more advanced thinking.
So, what are we doing next? Upping the stakes.
We have a pilot programme layering AI automation onto structured automation to enhance profiling, using an advanced signalling model to establish conversation starters and craft individual invitations based on those signals.
Our hope is that a more tailored starting point will lift acceptance rates, and that using AI in this way will allow a higher number of relevant, engaged contacts per day.
Watch this space.