In the digital sales landscape, your LinkedIn profile is valuable real estate. A good profile means a good first impression, and if you optimize your profile with sales in mind, prospective clients will come away from the page knowing exactly what you have to offer them.
For best results, you should treat your LinkedIn profile like a landing page—it should describe your services in a way that is easy to understand and that encourages the right clients to reach out, begin a conversation, and ultimately, to close.
The “landing page” approach, part of the SalesLabs T-shaped sales development accelerator, is offered to you here in detail. By the end of this article, you should have all the information you need to optimize your LinkedIn page for sales and start seeing results.
In order to get the most out of your LinkedIn profile, you need to focus on three key elements:
Take the time to think about how you can use these elements to your advantage and achieve better results in your sales.
A LinkedIn headline should be explicit, telling prospects exactly what you do. In writing your headline, you want to keep things short, snappy, and to the point: tell your visitor what you do, and tell them in simple terms.
You might be tempted to list awards, or previous job titles in your headline—don’t do it. Your profile is not a trophy shelf, and your headline is more valuable to you when it describes your skills. Be direct, be honest, and give your prospective client the information they need to make a decision.
The banner is a very prominent component of your LinkedIn profile. In order to draw a visitor’s eye, you need to use high-contrast colors. Then, you need to rephrase your headline and include it within the banner.
This serves two purposes. It will make your profile more aesthetically pleasing, and it will begin to reinforce the singular message you are trying to convey: what you have to offer.
The featured section on LinkedIn is often overlooked, but it is an excellent place to promote third-party content. That’s because the featured section is the only place that LinkedIn allows you to include external links without consequences.
Put simply, LinkedIn tries to make sure that users stay on Linkedin, so any links in posts or comments are penalized by the platform’s algorithm.
This is not the case in the featured section, however, and you can use this space to post a link to your website, a landing page, a calendar page, a promotional video, or any other piece of content that provides value to your prospect.
Ultimately, the goal in treating LinkedIn as a landing page comes down to attracting attention with a bright, bold banner; telling them how you can help through the text of your banner; and leading them towards the featured section, where they are encouraged to click on content that you have produced.
Time to put theory into practice. Take a look at these two examples to see how the elements described above can make—or break—a LinkedIn sales profile.
There are a few things wrong with this profile. First, the LinkedIn banner is generic. Without a banner, engagement will be low right from the beginning. Always keep the experience of a prospective client in mind when optimizing your profile.
Second, the picture is not cropped properly, with white space visible on either side of the photo. Luckily, this is an easy fix, and there are plenty of resources available for those looking to perfect their headshot.
Third, the headline is repetitive. Don’t just repeat your job title and the name of your employer. This information is already available in the work experience section.
Remember that the banner, headline, and featured section should work to communicate your potential to a prospective client. Think carefully about what you will say here, and make the most of the space available!
Finally, there is no featured section. Taken as a whole, this profile needs a new approach.
This is a great example of the LinkedIn profile “landing page strategy” in action. First, take note of the banner: it uses a bold, vibrant color to capture our attention. The text within the banner tells us immediately what Ben is all about. And because there is an email address, we know immediately how to reach him! This is a nice touch.
The headline is also spot-on. It tells us who Ben is helping, how he does it, and what outcomes he can produce.
Finally, the featured section is well organized, with a link to a quiz (for cold leads), a link to a webinar (for warm leads), and additional resources. Keep in mind that most people who visit a LinkedIn profile are not ready to buy—they need to be educated first. That’s exactly what Ben is doing here.
In reviewing these profiles, you should see the clear and immediate benefit of treating your LinkedIn profile as a landing page. So don’t waste any time: use these tips and profile examples get to work on optimizing your LinkedIn page today, and reach out to me if you are interested in personalized feedback!
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