Word of mouth has never been more critical than it is now, especially since we can’t meet face to face. People are home and more engaged than ever. They’re craving connection. That means your marketing strategy needs to be more personal and focused on connecting with people and growing word of mouth.
But one of the biggest questions I’m getting a lot lately is, “how do you continue to market during this unprecedented time? What’s your strategy for marketing during a recession?”
During a recession, it is more important than ever to continue building relationships with your clients and your prospects. Taking the time and putting in the work to build relationships through LinkedIn, your website, and email marketing is key to setting up your business for success on the other side of the recession. Right now, every business is discovering what we’ve already known for a while – that they need to be building word of mouth. But it can be confusing to know what to do and when.
LinkedIn or Email?
I get a lot of people who ask me whether I think they should primarily focus on LinkedIn or email. And my answer is always BOTH. LinkedIn and email are just different stages of the same marketing strategy.
LinkedIn is how we get more people into the top of the funnel. It’s where we make connections and find the exact right prospects for us to connect with.
With 90 million users on LinkedIn who are senior-level influencers and 63 million of those in decision-making positions, it’s the perfect place to find the right prospects and make the right connections.
LinkedIn is great for making the connections, but getting them onto your email list is the next natural step. The most undervalued asset in every business is the audience you own and can talk to anytime without paying. The ones on your email list. You absolutely need to take those connections you’re making on LinkedIn and drive them to your website so you can capture their emails and keep talking to them.
What I love about LinkedIn and B2B is that it makes it completely realistic to build a network of every ideal prospect for your business, connect directly to them, and talk to them forever afterward. Plus LinkedIn is going to continue to improve its algorithm in order to keep people engaged. The bar is going to keep getting reset higher and higher. We are in a unique time on LinkedIn, where we can still easily identify and connect with exactly the people we want. Now is the time to take advantage of that and convert as much of your audience as possible over to your email list because:
- It means you have pulled them in further and have a deeper relationship with them.
- It adds to the value of this great asset – the audience that you own.
The Best Strategy Starts with Great Content
From connection campaigns on LinkedIn, to your website, to email marketing, everything starts with great content. Providing unique insight-driven content is key to creating and building engagement and content strategy is an essential part of your overall marketing strategy. In today’s landscape, content is even more important to help establish and maintain relationships with both clients and prospects.
The Best Strategy is an Integrated One
It’s time to stop thinking of LinkedIn, your website, and email as separate streams. We need to approach them as one integrated whole – your marketing strategy. Content is the bedrock of that marketing strategy. You create content once and then use it everywhere – post it to your website, share it on LinkedIn, send it out to your email list. It helps create connections, drive prospects to your website, capture leads, and keep you top of mind.
The Best Strategy Takes Time
The monetary cost for LinkedIn and email marketing is low. The real cost is in the process. It takes time to research and create personas, identify who you want to connect with, run searches and connection campaigns, interact on LinkedIn, and produce great content. And it needs to be done consistently over and over again. Being really good at knowing how to put that content out there and then following up and acting on the data is the real cost. That time investment to make those connections and create great content is the core of what we have seen works, and consistency is vital.
- Building your audience by making the right connections on LinkedIn
- Driving that audience to your mobile-optimized website so you can capture their emails
- Staying top of mind by continuing to provide great content and unique insights
By creating great content and consistently working on connecting with people and sharing those insights, you’re setting your business up for success, both during the recession and on the other side of it.
Learn more by listening to our B2B Word of Mouth Marketing podcast episode, LinkedIn vs. Email Marketing.
All the best,
JP Clement
CEO
P.S. At boomtime we help our clients make the most of LinkedIn and email every day. Click here to see our pricing.
