Linkedin Marketing Tutorial Commercial Cleaning Services

How To Use Linkedin Selling Commercial Cleaning Accounts

In this video we cover how a commercial cleaning service, can use linkedin sales navigator to follow the principle of account based marketing.

This concept is influencing multiple decision makers for selling commercial cleaning services. This can apply to janitorial, carpet cleaning, tile or any specialty cleaning service focused on the commercial market.

Often when speaking with cleaners they can feel like some of these “ideas” are too abstract, what does all this stuff really mean? In this presentation we want to introduce a strategy and then show you physically how to use it.

In most businesses multiple decision makers are involved directly or indirectly with which commercial cleaning service to hire. Especially when dealing with larger businesses, they have maintenance, leasing agents, property manager and office managers. We want to get in front of all of them if possible.

Linkedin Marketing- Introduction

In this section we are going to cover one of the most overlooked and underused marketing strategies for commercial cleaning services.

Marketing to specific groups with specific messages on specific platforms

Why is it an underused platform

Mainly because cleaners take what works in other platforms like facebook and try to apply those same strategies to linkedin. This is a completely different platform and needs to be used differently, although some main ideas still apply.

One big difference is people spend hours upon hours every week on facebook, while linkedin the average user is only on for about 30 minutes a week. That’s enough time to check updates, messages and maybe a quick scroll through your timeline.

The biggest benefit of this platform is the targeting, you have the ability to keep your messages to a very specific group of people.

Searching for Cleaning Accounts With Linkedin

Within linkedin there is a tool called the sales navigator, in here we can search for specific accounts. In this example we completed a quick search for property management in a city.

150 potential accounts came up, in the video you can see under the company name linkedin lists all the employees for that business who have a profile with their job titles.

Now we can see all these leads have different titles and we want to approach them all uniquely. Serving specific messages to specific leads. Just scrolling through you can see owner, leasing agent, admin. We would want to use a different message for each of them.

For example the leasing agent can be a great referral source also. Either they might want to prep the space for leasing or the new company moving in might want to freshen up the carpet, tile, furniture prior to moving in.

How To Use Landing Pages

This is what our Account Based Marketing concept is all about. Now we can create different landing pages, messages for different leads, people in the company.

We start by showing a landing page for a commercial cleaning service, janitorial that focuses on employee related issues. This is a great hot button and what most clients complain about.

In the 2^nd web page we focus on how a commercial carpet cleaner could use an article to explain why commercial carpeting attracts so much oil and becomes matted down.

I hope you enjoyed this presentation and research to see if this strategy is a good fit for you.

Deciding On A Marketing Strategy

Sales Objective

With any marketing strategy we always want to start with our objective, how many hours month we want to devote to this and what our budget is. Use our SWOT worksheet and marketing plan spreadsheet to come up with a monthly plan you are committed to for at least 6 months to a year.

Here is a list of potential Sales Objectives:

Branding
Direct Sales
SEO
Account based marketing
Advertising

Its important to think of this first in order to decide later on if this was successful or not. An example if my objectives were branding, sales, seo and after six months sales were only at an ROI of 1:1 BUT the SEO was helping a lot with our website then I might consider the overall program worth it even though direct sales are small.

Or maybe starting a relationship with an executive at a business you want more locations to service. This might not show up on a sales report but would be very valuable long term.

Branding

The best way to think about branding and measure results of a campaign is not only look at the branding activity but how it affected other campaigns.

An example would be you are targeting Property Managers, you are already cold calling them 6x per year. Now to power up or boost that campaign you would complete a search on linkedin for property managers and make connections.

Then add content weekly through updates, articles. Reach out and introduce yourself through the inmail tool.

To measure the effect of the campaign you wouldn’t want to only look at results of the linkedin activity but also the cold calling campaign. A successful branding campaign in most cases will provide a boost of 10-20% to other campaigns.

A simple way to test is put together a list of 200 property managers. 100 of them cold call only, 100 of them cold call plus linkedin. Check the results after 3-6 and 12 months.

*** One note about measuring commercial campaigns always look at leads/estimates/closed sales and not only revenue. The reason is sometimes with commercial jobs we just get lucky one time with a big revenue job but the campaign is not repeatable.

Direct Sales

This is something that can be easy to track if you use our landing pages in the crm. If you decide to become a heavy user you might want to add a tracking phone number also.

Landing pages are a great way to generate direct sales. You simply create a landing page in the crm and then share it as an update or send inmail.

SEO

Linkedin is extremely powerful for SEO, google considers it a highly reputable source. You can create updates with links to your website or blog. Also articles rank pretty well in google search. If your website is not powerful enough yet writing articles on linkedin is a great way to get ranked.

Advertising

Linkedin has 4 main advertising products

Sponsored content
Text ads
Inmail ads
Sales Navigator (premium)

Account Based Marketing

This is connected to branding, ABM is where more than one decision maker is involved but we do not have direct access to them. This way we can influence other DM without going over our contacts head or coming off too aggressive.

Simply complete a search on linkedin and connect with any other related professionals in the company. This way they will see your articles/updates and be influenced that your company is truly professional.

Over time you can reach out to that contact through inmail and simply introduce yourself.

Think of an Apartment Management Company, they have the local property managers and then a vice president or regional manager working out of a corporate office.

Personal Page & Business Page

You have two main options, building up your personal page and building up a business page. Ultimately we need to fill both profiles out and provide some basic information.

What’s the difference?

A personal page you can add connections for free and send inmails to connections. A business page you need to share the page or use paid advertising to get followers. You can’t make connections as a business.

Personal page seems like the easy answer seeing it is free, the downside only a percentage of your connections will see your updates and articles. Business page most of your followers should see your updates. In the end building a business page will be far more expensive but over the long term more people will see your updates.

You can also do both if you are really committed of course.

Linkedin Marketing Tactics

Profile

Remember earlier we stated that linkedin has very strong SEO abilities. When filling out your profiles keep that in mind, you will want to include some keywords in your heading for google search without being spammy.

Think of the about section similar to the homepage of your website.

To get the most out of your reach fill out the profile 100% including adding skills. Over time connections will start to add to your skills which will greatly improve your brand.

Building Connections

This is extremely important for later on down the road if you decide to advertise. There is two main strategies for building connections

Networking
Direct Sales

You want to decide early on how you will use this platform for the long term, it will completely change who connect with.

Networking

approach you would target any industries or people you want to do business with. Also if you want to be a networker you would want to connect with other businesses that might service those targets. Examples- landscapers, office supply, etc. This way you send referrals to them and them to you, just like networking in person.

Direct sales

strategy you would only connect with your targets and no one else or very few others. The reason is later on you might want to run ads to your connections and would be wasting lots of money on people who are not targets.

Also when you share updates the percentage of people who see them will all be targets. Where if you have 100 connections of everybody and only 20% see it, unlikely your target will see it.

*** overall the rule with linkedin is quality over quantity. Definitely do not connect with the 8 million marketers that will send you invitations.

Current Clients

The ways you can stay in touch with connections

View their profile
Share update
Write Article
Like or say congrats to a notification
Advertise
Send inmail

Updates

There is a couple benefits to sharing updates

SEO value
Staying in front of your connections

Here is a list of best practices when it comes to updates

CHECKLIST – Linkedin Profile Checklist

150+ characters linkedin likes a lot text
No hashtags or smiley faces
Try to use positive emotion
Picture that shows something tangible about subject
Links work best then text and videos
Best times are following corporate work schedules tues/wed/thurs early morning, lunch, 5pm.

Articles

Articles can serve two purposes SEO and staying in front of your prospects. You want to follow same principles you would in writing a blog. More words the better.

300 + words original
Lots of big pictures in between to break up the text.
Short paragraphs
Add video

The seo is so good sometimes I have a blog and linkedin article rank right under each other on the same subject. You want to rewrite blogs just enough so it is not duplicate content.

Similar to blogs if you have a hard time writing, record yourself talking for 5 minutes and then transcribe it to text.

Groups

Use the search feature for any networking or small business groups in your area.

Some tips on working in groups

Don’t schill
Answer any questions of things you know
Share helpful information related to the group
Don’t schill

4 Linkedin Advertising Options

There is 4 main advertising opportunities available

Sales navigator- premium
Text ads
Sponsored content
Inmail

The starting point with any campaign is first deciding:

How much $$ do I want to spend every month
How many hours
What is my objective

Generally speaking we recommend at least 2 total strategies, this can be 2 advertising or 1 advertising and 1 organic (you making connections, posting). Which 2 will depend on your objective and your SWOT.

Example:

You want to target property managers with $50 month and organic.

A good strategy would be making connections, posting updates, sending inmails and then using text based ads for branding. This way you are staying in front of them with posting/text ads and using inmail to close.

Sales Navigator

For sales there is 2 options for a premium upgrade

Business- $48 month
Sales- $64 month

The basic difference is you get to send more inmails to people who are not a connection with the upgrade, 15 versus 20. Also with sales you can save your leads and segment them which makes it easier to keep track.

Who should use premium?

Anyone who wants to do a lot of prospecting, which means searching one by one for targets, making connections, sending inmails. Repeatedly, 100 of them every month.

This would be best for going after big fish, big account marketing and requires more time than money.

Text Ads

Text ads are the small ads on the right sidebar, usually 3 of them. Text ads are great for branding, if you spend $50 month it can be a great value provided you are doing other things. The cost for an impression is usually less than .01

Text ads do not bring in a lot of clicks or direct sales.

The sales objective with text ads is to stay in front of your prospects all the time. Or as Gary V would say jab … jab… punch, this is a jab. Plus its dirt cheap.

Then you would use a landing page for the close.