Our special guest on this week’s episode of the Performance Delivered Podcast is Alex Caragiannides. Alex is the Founder of BSM Vault, the social media and digital marketing agency built to serve real estate agents. He helps real estate professionals build their brand awareness and introduces automation software to solve their problems with the ultimate goal of driving more leads.We chat about sales funnels focused on nurturing, as well as:
- How marketing professionals tend to use LinkedIn in the wrong way
- Marketing vs. selling
- What you need more than the technical skills
- Refining your real estate messaging to serve your ideal clients
- And more
Mentioned in this episode:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexcaragiannides/
- Website: https://www.digitalresultsmarketingagency.com
- Bsmvault.com
Transcript
Voiceover: This is Performance Delivered, Insider Secrets for Digital Marketing Success with Steffen Horst and Dave Antil.Steffen Horst: Welcome to the Performance Delivered Insider Secrets for Digital Marketing Success Podcast, where we talk with marketing and agency executives and learn how they build successful businesses and their personal brand. I'm your host, Steffen Horst. The topic for today's episode is LinkedIn for lead generation. He just speak with me as Alex Caragiannides, who is the founder of BSM Vault, the social media and digital marketing agency built to serve real estate agents. Alex helps real estate professionals build their brand awareness and introduces automation software and processes to solve their problems with the ultimate goal to drive more leads. Alex, welcome to the show.Alex Caragiannides: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. Thanks for having me. And you did a wonderful job with my last name by the way.Steffen: I had jitters before I said that. Listen, Alex, before we before we explore today's topics, I'd love to find out more about yourself. Tell our listeners a little bit about you. And how did you end up having your own agency? How did you end up in the marketing space?Alex: Yeah, absolutely. It's it's a, it's a, it's an interesting journey that we're all on. And I never, I never had a dream or a vision of ever owning a marketing agency. But I've always had a dream and a vision of being an entrepreneur. I come from a Greek family. I'm first generation Greek. I was born and raised in Chicago, my parents are immigrants. They're still alive. My parents are immigrants. When they came to Chicago, they didn't speak any English. So my first language was Greek. But then I grew up in a great North Side neighborhood in Chicago and a Greek community, a lot of different ethnicities all around us. And all I can remember growing up is just my parents working as hard as they could, they just had that really hard immigrant work ethic that you know, even today, it's just in my blood, you know, and I appreciate that so much being raised by them. But, you know, they, they didn't know what they didn't know, they came to the states for a better opportunity and a better life. My dad was a professional soccer player in Greece. Wasn't making any money back in those days. Came here thinking he was gonna do well here. But in United States, soccer is nowhere near as popular at is it around the world. Realize really fast he wasn't going to make a living making soccer, got into being an entrepreneur and never worked for anybody met my mom. And then the rest, as they say is history. But I remember growing up just just seeing how hard my dad worked hard. My mom worked. They were always entrepreneurs. They always own their own businesses. So I always knew that I would own my own business. But one day, I always knew I had to be an entrepreneur. I just didn't know doing what and I didn't know when. So, you know, growing up in Chicago, great life, everything's good. I ended up making a move. I relocate to San Diego in 2002. I get to San Diego in 2002. I don't have a college degree. I dropped out of college. I have work ethic. I know family businesses, I was around nightclubs. I was on restaurants, bars, fruit markets, I know businesses. But I didn't I didn't, I didn't have a job. So I had to get a job. And the only job that I got that was easy to get was being a telemarketer at a call center for at that time a mortgage company. So this is kind of how I got into the mortgage space as a telemarketer. And today I could tell you it's the best experience I've ever had best training ever had. Back then you asked me about I'd say it's the worst job ever. I was literally making 500 calls a day off of a predictive dialer, six days a week. Back then we didn't have any laws and regulations and compliance issues like yeah, like you have today. So we were literally calling everybody from the East Coast first all the way to the west coast towards the end of the day. And that's how I got in the business. That's how I got in the mortgage business. And around 2012 so I'm 10 years in the business at this time I started in 02 so 2012 there was a there was a big pivot in my life in my career. I became a producing Branch Manager for a company. First time I was a branch manager. 10 years of the business. But I became a producing Branch Manager for a company in San Diego, called the Veterans United Home Loans. Great company. And they only serve veterans and active military families and their niche alone was only VA loans. And I share the story because this was a big pivot for me because they bypassed the realtor their model, and they went straight to the consumer. And they use social media they use digital marketing and they use call centers. The trifecta we call it. Five years later, you know 15-20 mastermind groups later marketing mastermind groups, specifically, a lot of my own personal money to join coaching groups and marketing groups to learn and grow. I had enough confidence in myself, I had enough realtors that were trusting me to do their marketing that decided to get out of the mortgage business. And I did 2017 and open up my company, BSM Vault on October 2 2017, to be exact, we officially opened. And now fast forward, what another three and a half, four years later. The rest of they say is history.Steffen: Alex, interesting what you just said, um, you know, we're obviously want to talk about LinkedIn today. And when I talk to prospects, and even our clients, quite often they hear LinkedIn is too expensive for my company. Obviously, CPCs are relatively high. There's a general understanding or thought out there that LinkedIn works well, for companies that have lifetime value of plus $10,000. What are your thoughts on that?Alex: Well, I'm a big fan of LinkedIn. I'm actually a big fan of all the platforms, because, again, I'm going to go back to my two favorite words, when I deal with my clients, or just having consultations with people is leverage, and being omnipresent. You know, when you can leverage technology and automation, like we have today, which is unreal compared to how it was back in the days, we have access to so much today with technology and automation, when you can leverage, you know, videos, and you can leverage all these platforms, LinkedIn specifically, to allow you to become omnipresent. I think the KPI the key performance indicator, what you just mentioned, CPC, the cost per click, I don't think it's as relevant as people make it look like it is. Once they start understanding what really marketing is, because I'll pay a much higher cost per click. I'll pay a much higher cost per lead all day long. If I could build the value over time and get quality people coming into my world, right. At the end of the day, it's not really the cost per click and the cost per lead, we need to be that aware of in my opinion. It's the cost per acquisition. That's the most important KPI in my opinion. And I think you mentioned this before, when we were off air, I much rather pay $100 a lead and only get 50 leads, as opposed to maybe getting $1 a lead and getting 5000 leads, it's the same, it's the same number. You know, it's it's the same number. But the reason why I would rather pay way more for less, because I know I could convert those 50 quality leads at $100 a pop, I know I can convert 20%. Right, you cannot convert 20% at $1 lead to 5000 leads because the quality the lead is not going to be good. Now going to LinkedIn. People say it's expensive. You know, I don't know, I don't think it's expensive. I don't think that expensive. Well, I think first of all, LinkedIn shouldn't even be a platform where you're running ads for from in the beginning, I think it should be a platform that you use to create more awareness. It's a great platform to create awareness. As long as you're putting out content consistently. You know, we like to use video content. That's what we do. We love video content. We love video marketing, as long as your content is relevant to your audience, and you're not always selling the problem that people have on LinkedIn. This is just my opinion, is everyone's trying to sell people something. So everybody's sick and tired of being spammed everyone's sick and tired of being solicited. People have to remember even online, you got to build relationships, I think you have to build relationships even deeper. And I think it's even more important online. Because you lose the human touch. You know, we have Zooms, yes, you could see each other face to face. And, you know, we have other ways to communicate virtually. But the reality is, is not that the same as me and you being at a coffee shop off Pacific Coast Highway over there on the west coast, you know, getting to know each other and breaking bread. It's different now. So the more value you can build online, the better it's going to be. And there's no easier way to build value online. They're putting out really good content in the form of videos that's relevant to your audience answering their questions, solving their problems, not just soliciting and selling. So that's my take on it. I think live is a powerful, powerful platform is powerful and it's not just b2b. Okay, not just b2b In my opinion, it's it's definitely b2c as well, but it's really p2p. I call it p2p, right? People to people. Human beings to human beings. You know, yes, a lot of businesses use it for for the obvious reasons you could recruit, you can find people to hire. You could obviously prospect with Sales Navigator, there's a lot of great tools and great apps, the targeting is phenomenal. Probably one of the best targeting platforms they have. I think they're pretty behind on the ads platform when you compare it to Google AdWords or you compare it to Facebook Ads Manager, but I think they're very far ahead when it comes to the targeting platform that you have and the power you have with Sales Navigator. But you know, I just think a lot of people are doing it the wrong way. That What I think because I get solicited a lot, and I, and I want to help I do, but I don't have time to help everyone. So I just know how to do it differently. And we've had a lot of success here in our agency with using LinkedIn, as an organic method to get our message in front of potential prospects that in my world, it's mortgage and real estate professionals. And 30% of our business, as an agency comes from LinkedIn. And I don't run any ads on LinkedIn zero, you know.Steffen: Alex, sorry, let me let me jump in here. I want to go back to what you what you said before that people potentially using LinkedIn the wrong way, right. So do you think company or the advertising they do is too much in people's face? That companies that manage advertising are too impatient? You know, before before we started recording, you and I, we talked about the fact that literally so many people from a b2b perspective, awkward lead, lead, lead, lead lead, but I mean, it's an intermediate goal, lead it, you don't have money in your bank, when you have 100 leads. You have money in your bank, when the leads go through the sales funnel. And you close the deal at the end of the day. And as you said a second ago, you rather have less leads that are qualified and having more leads, because you know, qualified leads generate sales at the end of the day. So is that a general problem? Or challenge from your perspective?Alex: Yeah, I think you're spot on. I think a lot of companies and individuals, I think they're, they're in a rush to get the lead. They I hear this all the time, speed, the lead speed to lead speed to lead. But they forget that that lead is getting solicited in every single direction possible. Right now, I think we're being solicited on a daily basis, 3000 times a day. I know that sounds crazy. And it sounds a lot. But if you take radio advertisement, online advertising, billboards, postcards, TV, you name it, YouTube, we are being solicited. 24-7. Thank goodness, we have something in our brain called the reticular activator, that allows us to block off mostly everything, and only focus on what's really on top of our head. And that's really the only thing we pay attention to. But yeah, you're correct businesses and people in general, are marketing. I'm not gonna say too aggressively. I don't I'm not I'm not against being aggressive as a marketer, but marketing is not selling. Marketing is getting people's attention. Marketing is making people aware of your service and product. And if you can make people become aware of your service and product in the top of the funnel, which that's what you're supposed to do, if you have three levels of a funnel, top, middle, and bottom. That's pretty universal, not just my industry, just everybody. The top is the widest for a reason. But you just want to make people aware. Once you make them aware of who you are and your service, we don't know what their sales cycle is, we don't know what part of their cycle sales cycle they are in. What if they're in the beginning of the sales cycle. And we're going straight for the close. What if they're in the beginning of the sales cycle, in a sales cycle, like, like somebody's buying a house, it could be two years. Somebody opts in because they're interested or aware of your ad or your service, and they opt in, they could be in the beginning of a sales cycle that might take them two years to buy a house. So if all you're doing is trying to convert them to a deal, or a consultation, or get them in the car, if you're a buyer's agent, or try to have them list with you, if you're a listing agent, you might lose, you're not might you probably will lose that opportunity way before it gets to a point where they're even going to make a decision on who they're going to use. So I like I like the style of educate, inform, inspire, entertain, and I like to bring people into my funnel. And then I'd like to spend as much time in the middle of the funnel to nurture and marinate them, and let them decide based on their sales cycle. When if they want to get to the bottom and have all my systems in place to convert at the bottom, when they are ready. 99% of my sales is always the prospect asking me what is the next step? Very rarely do I even have to take the initiative of of taking that role of saying this is how we get started. Because they always ask me what is the next step. And I know when I do a good job in my world, when I get that statement asked to me, and it's typically almost 99% of the time, because I set things up on purpose. Slow and methodical. So I could nurture and be top of mind and be that choice. Like there's no other choice. You know, I want to be that choice when they are ready. That's just that's just my style. So, again, LinkedIn is a great platform, great platform, because you have a lot of people on the platform. I think it's over 500 million active users. It could be way higher than that right now. And you have groups and you have targeting and you have different businesses and you know what kind of companies they work for what kind of volume they do, how long they've been doing what they're doing. You know, for me, it's priceless because I work with mortgage and real estate professionals, I can target them. And I like to retarget people I like to work on he presents so much. And I use it so much in all my activities for myself personally, selfishly, to promote BSM Vault and me and my services and also selflessly to promote for my clients. I love love love retargeting. I love leading with education of top of the funnel, retargeting and nurturing in the middle of funnel, and converting at the bottom of the funnel, when the prospect is ready to move to the next step.Steffen: So two things you just mentioned, I want to own a pullout. The first thing is, which I would kind of combine is building relationships, right, so what you're talking about, funnel being white on top, and then obviously getting nearer, you know, an upper funnel awareness and consideration, middle part, it's about building a relationship. It's like, you know, my team, he gets gets tired of me using the same analogy, but I'm not a big analogy guy. So I use the same one because it works. It's like you go on the first day, you're not going after the first date down on your knee and say, marry me. You know, one out of 100 or nine out of 100 times, you're going to get I don't know, a slap in the face, or someone will just turn around and say you're crazy. I'm out of here, right? And it's the same thing. You don't want to push a sales message on to people that have never heard of you, you know, that they have. They don't understand who you are, what your what your advantages are over competitors, etc. What you're offering. So you need to warm that up. You need to be gentle with the messaging and then slowly but surely let information go in. Now, talk to me about or talk to us about how you would do that. You know, how specifically, would you do that? You talked about retargeting. But can you be a little bit more specific there on how you would engage with people in the upper funnel? What kind of content are you using? What's the messaging there? And then when you move further down?Alex: Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to. This is my happy space, by the way. So I could talk to you for a long time. I know we're limited here. But I'll try to give as much nuggets as I can. So number one, most people when they come to me to our agency, they think they have a leads problem. They think they have a Facebook ads problem. Most don't even run ads on Google, they don't they're not aware how powerful Google is or YouTube. But when I do an audit, almost 100% of the time, I realize very fast that they don't have a leads problem or Facebook ads problem, they have a lack of a strategy problem, right. So all these ads from all these platforms, those are those are technical skills, that that is probably 10% of the equation 90% of the equation that moves the needle, the most, in my opinion, is having a really strong methodology, and a really good strategy. And for us to start number one, before we even talk about the top of the funnel, it starts with who your target audience is, right? Who's your we call it an avatar in our world. But for people listening, it's just who's your target audience? Who is your ideal client you want to serve? So if if it's a realtor, do you want to serve buyers? Or do you want to serve sellers? And it's not as simple as just picking the lane? Because let's say I did pick a lane and I picked buyers. Okay, what is a subcategory of buyers? Is it a first time buyer? Is it a veteran? Is it a doctor? Is it somebody relocating from Seattle, Washington to Boulder, Colorado, is it a flipper is it an investor. And the reason why that's important is because your target audience, you have to be very specific. And you can have multiple audiences, you can have multiple niches, you only have to have one. I teach this to realtors, just because I tell a realtor, you have to pick a lane by side or sell side doesn't mean they can't work the other side, what it means is once you identify a target audience an avatar, then that's going to help you create the message, the message is going to get the attention of a first time buyer that's a veteran is a very different message, it's going to get the attention of a of a doctor in LA that is a luxury buyer that's on his fifth home. It's very different messages, I cannot get the attention of a doctor with the same message that I'm putting out in front of a first time buyer. So step number one, identify who your target audience is and go very, very deep. Pull back the layers of the onion. Same with a mortgage professional, right? If you're dealing with first time buyers, it's a different message than if somebody who already owns a home and is looking to refinance. So once you understand who your target audience is, and you got to go deeper research, what keeps them up at night, it's not about you or your services. It's not about me as an agency of my services. It's about my client's needs and problems and well holes that need to be filled. So you have to do some recon work. You have to do some brainstorming. You have to do some research. What are the problems loans that you can solve, what are the goals that they are trying to accomplish? Then you put your message together. Your message then dictates your positioning assets. This is the foundation of what we call here, the automation sales machine three phase is nine steps. The first phase is what I just told you the foundation, who's your target audience? What's the message, and then what are the positioning assets position, the asset could be a digital guide, it could be a webinar, it could be a video library, those are called positioning assets for us, all three of those in the foundation phase have to be aligned and congruent, Then, and only then do we go into the middle of our phase, which is the top of the funnel. So the middle for us is the top of the funnel, the middle of funnel, the bottom of the funnel, we don't even touch the top of the funnel for us, for our clients, until the bottom foundation is set. Because what are we going to do at the top of the funnel? If we don't have a message that's aligned with our target audience, what are we going to do if our message is not going to get their attention, that's when your cost per click is out of whack. That's when your cost per lead is out of whack. That's when the quality is not there. And it's all quantity, right? So we want to avoid all that. So we start with the foundation, identify the target market, identify the message going to get the target markets attention, put together, positioning assets, all in line. Now we are prepared to go to the top of the funnel. And the top of the funnel, we lead with education, we lead with a positioning asset, a digital guide, a lead magnet, a webinar series, like I said, Get him in we're not going to sell him anything. There's no sales pitches, no call to action, besides, opt in here will give you this in return you're going to give us your information. We have them now in our world or in our ecosystem. In the middle of the funnel. It's all nurture. It's all nurture, nurture, nurture retargeting, retargeting, retargeting, we're continuing the conversation, if somebody opted in for a first time home buyer guide, for example, the middle of the funnel is a series of videos that complement the first time homebuyer guide, right. So we're strengthening the not only the relationship, because the relationship is going to get strengthened by itself, assuming the prospect or the lead this case wants it to grow. But what we're doing is we're increasing our brand awareness, we're increasing our authority status or celebrity status, we are being identified as the educator, as the expert in that marketplace for the service or product that lead potentially is looking at. And that's all we want to do.Steffen: I was just about to say that. So what you're actually doing is you're you're providing value, you're not thinking about selling, you're providing value that is that that helps your target audience to move forward. Yes, and and, and then what you're doing and you use the word, then you're trying to become an expert, they need to or they should see you as an expert, and because they perceive you, and you are the expert, or your client is the expert, it's a much easier equid sell then then coming from nowhere and selling, saying we're the expert about mortgage or whatever. And just, you know, come to us when we have the solutions that you're looking for.Alex: Yeah, I agree. 100%. I don't even like the term salesperson. Personally, I don't even consider myself a good salesperson. A lot of people say I'm a great salesperson, I say I'm actually a great marketer. I rather be known as a great consultant and a great advisor. What we are is we're consultants and we're advising the potential prospect and their family, regarding their situation, the best options available. That's what we're really doing. In a nutshell, sales. Sales is like you gotta you got to use a tactic or you got to handle the objection. And you have these scripts. That's just my mind. They're like Glengarry Glen Ross, ABC always be closing. And that's actually a good movie. And I loved watching that movie. And I loved boiler room, because I was a telemarketer. And I run call centers now. And I and I'm not against all that I love those movies for entertainment purposes. But the reality is, I am a much better educator, I'm a much better advisor and a much better marketer. And I'd rather be a much better all three of those any day then then a salesperson. Yeah, because if I do my job correctly, it all starts from the beginning by identifying my target market and the message and my position gas if I do that correctly, and I educated properly. And I'm constantly top of mine ami President and I leverage all the technology automation, we have access to all the platforms that have access to LinkedIn included. If I do that properly, I will get a percentage of the market. I will get a piece of the market. It's just by default, just by me being consistently out there. Obviously I have to perform when I get a client. I have to serve them at the level. I tell them I'm going to serve them and more. Right, assuming that all is a given. I will get a piece of my market. I just have to be patient. Most people aren't patient. But people come to me and they tell me they have a Facebook ads problem. And I do an audit, the first thing I realize, I identify right away, they quit too soon, when somebody runs ads on Facebook, especially a real estate professional, and after two months, they quit. I say it's impossible for you to get exponential growth. If you stop running ads, I'm not saying you can't get lucky and get a deal in a month or two. I'm not saying that. But the real magic happens over time, because you get access to better data, you can retarget more, you get more quality, not quantity, especially on Facebook, because Facebook, in my opinion, they're all window shoppers. Facebook is a great platform, and Instagram is a great platform, because we have access to people that are socializing. And that's what they do there. But it's a horrible platform to try to generate leads from, in my opinion, when you want to generate leads the right way online. It's a long term play. First of all, number one, number two, you attack Google and YouTube. First, because Google and YouTube are search engines, the two biggest search engines in the world. And everybody on Google is searching for something everybody on YouTube is searching for something. And if you understand what your keywords are, and your demographics, especially in my world, with mortgage and real estate, you could actually put your billboard which is an ad or a video, whatever you want to call it, you can put that in front of people, and then retarget those people on Facebook and Instagram, and then stay top of mind and put out a lot of good content in the form of videos on LinkedIn. That's our trifecta. LinkedIn on top of Google and YouTube in the bottom right, Facebook and Instagram in the bottom left, then you've got the consumer in the middle, we just want to like, overlap them everywhere and become omnipresent. So hopefully that made sense. Steffen: Well that makes good sense. One thing you also mentioned earlier, and it kind of goes in line with what you just said, is a sales cycle. Yeah, I think a lot of companies forget to keep in mind how long the sales cycle is. And that differs from industry to industry. You know, look, I used to run the performance marketing for two big Korean car manufacturer here in the US. And it was long about six months from from person first starting the journey and looking at oh, I want to buy a new car to them going to lot and you know signing a lease document or signing a sales document there. And I think the same happens with with other companies like they need to identify how long will it take them on average, to convert someone, you know, when you first touch them with upper funnel information, then when they become a lead? And how long does the lead need to become a seal at the end of the day? And I see there's many companies that give up too early and say, Well, you know what, tried it for a month, didn't convert that lead. But on average, as an example, you know, they might have a three months lead, you know, cycle from lead to sale. So they're giving up too early, and therefore they are the decision, the data or there yeah, it's based on incomplete information at the end of the day.Alex: Yeah, I agree with you 100%. There's, there's also something else that we need to touch on that people aren't aware of, and don't appreciate either. It takes between eight and 12 attempts to follow up on a lead even have one conversation. And this is and that could be off by a little bit. It could be more than that. When I say I'm off, it could be more attempts to have a conversation. And the reason why I want to mention this, it's a big deal. I ran call centers, and I'm running a call center now. And the thing that people don't realize, especially the industry that I work in real estate and mortgages, most most sales professionals stop following up on a lead after the second no contact, they move on to the next lead. Okay? Most conversations don't even begin until after the eighth to 12th contact attempt. So just just maintaining consistency, and staying in it for the long haul. By default, almost 95% of your competition is gone. So let's start there first, right? The the person that follows up on the lead the longest, has the best chance of having a conversation with the lead. Let's start there, right. So everybody listening, make sure whatever lead campaigns you have in motion. It's a combination of calling texting, email and retargeting goes out for the long haul for us. We never stopped finding a lead until they opt out. If they don't opt out. They're going to be on a follow up campaign in the beginning way more aggressive for the first week and then it kind of backs off, but we're always following up we always have campaigns in motion. We use a combination of calling we use call centers so we have you know, telemarketers and we call them I essays that call. We do text we do email no, and we do retargeting on Facebook and Google, we do all four. So whoever's listening, make sure that is in place. And then to just touch on what you said, yes, absolutely. This sales cycle is very different for consumers in all kinds of industries, you know, real estate, you can have a long sales cycle. Perfect example, my wife and I were looking in an area in San Diego where we lived there to move to this area called Mission Hills, which is a nice, you know, urban area. We didn't move to Mission Hills. It took us five years. From the day we identified Mission Hills as an area we wanted to move to. And that day is when my wife started looking at Zillow and Redfin and Trulia looking at properties online, and that data is sold. I know it's sold. Cuz I'm in I'm in the marketing world. Guess how many realtors follow up with my wife in five years? Zero, none. Five years later, I mean, our sales cycles long, right? And if anybody did follow up with her, they would not have kept following up probably. But nobody followed up took her five years for us to move, save to happen when I moved to Colorado from St. Eva. Now the mortgage business 2017 opened up BSM Vault. I could do this anywhere my wife and I decided you know what, we're going to relocate. We're going to raise our kids somewhere where their seasons and mountains and nature and we ended up moving to Colorado. It took us two years before we moved from San Diego to Colorado in that two year period. No realtors followed up with my wife. Zero, right. So people don't have to understand you're right, the sales cycle is different for all industries. Understand the status sales cycle and the timeframes within the sale set. Because that can determine a lot of your follow up sequences when to be aggressive, when to be passive when to be right in the middle. But But remember the beginning when the lead comes in lots of contacts, lots of offload outflow equals inflow, outflow equals inflow, I teach that to all my reps, the more outflow we have like a boomerang, the more inflow comes back.Steffen: That makes sense that makes sense. Look, Alex, I mean, we wanted to talk about LinkedIn. Alex: This was a LinkedIn topic, and I didn't really didn't know too much about LinkedIn. But I think I think the fundamentals of marketing can be used on any platform, LinkedIn included. Again, for me, LinkedIn, I look at it more of it's an opportunity to put a platform to use a platform where you could create content more people need to create better content on LinkedIn that you can redistribute on all other channels. I love videos personally. So if you look at my LinkedIn, activity, thread, and my posts, the majority, if not all of them are videos. And we post every day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and we get good good engagement, we get good comments, we get good likes, but at the end of the day, all I care about branding, and awareness. And I can't tell you how many times I get about 20 demos, slash sales calls. I don't call them sales calls. But that's that's what they are. They're more discovery calls for me. I get about 20 on average, 25, sometimes a week, so about 80 to 100 a month. And 30% come from LinkedIn, organically, right? So they come in from LinkedIn, they listen to my videos, they watch myself, they click something they opt in, they get into my funnel, and they end up in my calendar at some point or another. So yeah, I wish I thought more about LinkedIn. I know this was the theme, but I think you and I just could talk about any subject it relates to marketing.Steffen: Yeah, I think I mean, you you hit the nail on the head, right? What we talked about can be just taken in the inflammation and induced in your LinkedIn advertising. I think to boil it all down, it's about don't just focus on the sales aspect. You know, don't hit people with the hammer over the head with a sales message the first time you engage with them, right? warm them up, build a relationship, and give value before you are trying to kind of, you know, generate a lead and make sure that you know exactly what you said cyclists you know, don't expect people to convert from one day to another day if your sales cycle is half a year or a year. Take that in consideration at the end of the day. Alex, thank you for joining the Performance Delivered Podcast, and sharing your thoughts on much more than just LinkedIn. If people want to find out more about you and your company, how can they get in touch?Alex: You know, my website is the best place. You know, I have all my social media profiles on there. I have a great video library. I do blog articles every week. So you know I urge anybody that wants to learn more not just about our services about our methodology and our systems and our strategy. Go to my website at bsmvault.com. That's B as in boy S as in Sam, M as in Mary. Vault like a bank vault. v a u l t. I urge you guys to check out the video library, the blog articles, good information that could help anybody grow and scale their business as it relates to digital marketing and putting systems together. And then you know from there, the conversation will happen when it's meant to happen. But I appreciate you bringing me on I really do. I'm going to end with one last thing you can never go wrong when you can lead with education and good content. That's for any business. Content is king. It's been around forever. I think relevant content today is more important than ever. So just make sure your content is relevant to your audience.Steffen: That's a great closing statement. Thanks, everyone for listening. If you liked the Performance Delivered podcast, please subscribe to us and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast application. If you want to find out more about Symphonic Digital, you can visit us at symphonicdigital.com or follow us on Twitter @symphonicHQ. Thanks again and see you next time.Voiceover: Performance Delivered is sponsored by Symphonic Digital. Discover audience focused and data driven digital marketing solutions for small and medium businesses at symphonicdigital.com
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