Robert Craven interviews Dean Seddon, Maverrik
VIDEO: 52:44 mins
AUTHOR: Robert Craven and Dean Seddon
In this GYDA Talks, Robert talks to Dean Seddon of Maverrik. Dean founded Maverrik in 2013 as a consultancy and business development company. Having delivered growth in several small and large businesses, he embarked on building an organisation which would help business cut through the fog and grow people, sales and profit.
Dean is a practical, hands-on business speaker and trainer. Supported by the Maverrik team, Dean speaks at over 100 events per year, consults with large and small businesses across the world and is passionate about getting results for people.
Robert and Dean discuss:
What Dean and Maverrik do
How did you get to 2020? The journey.
Utilising LinkedIn as a sales tool
How can agencies use it on behalf of their clients… any examples…?
What are the clever things we can do with LI? How can it be embedded or linked into a bigger campaign… any examples…?
And what of LI advertising… examples…? Can it be compared pound for pound with Google or Facebook advertising?
DIY or can a Done For You service actually work?
What next for Dean
Top tips … for other agency owners
Transcription:
Robert Craven 00:31
Hello, and welcome to the GYDA initiative talks. Absolutely delighted to have with us today Dean Seddon. Dean runs Maverikks, which is spelt not the way you'd expect it to be spelt, I'm sure there's a story behind that. But Maverikks was a digital agency. And now it's more tolerant than me to tell you about Maverikks. Welcome, Dean, absolutely delighted to have you here.
Dean Seddon 01:03
Thank you. Now, it's good to be here. So describe Maverikk. So I promised I'll keep it short and sweet. So I'll try. We were the classic, all rounder marketing agency will build your website, will do your branding, you know, the generic marketing agency, almost like we got a template. And I got just fed up of all the issues that goes with, you know, having that kind of agency, the back and forth, the moving goalposts, the magpie clients, and decided we'd make something. So we focused on LinkedIn, we'd always been pretty good at it. So we decided to really focus in and like all things, when you niche down or whatever, it becomes very, very clear what we do. And we still actually sell agency services off the back of being a LinkedIn business. So we're pretty much 90%, LinkedIn, but have a kind of services business behind us as well.
Robert Craven 02:08
So I've seen a photo of your office or it may not be your office, it may be something pretending to be your office, which because we're in lockdown at the moment, is full of empty chairs and tables. And I didn't actually count how many of them there were, but I counted those chairs and tables. How many people have you got in the UK?
Dean Seddon 02:26
20.
Robert Craven 02:27
And you've got a business in the States as well?
Dean Seddon 02:30
Yeah, pretty much the online version of what we do in the UK. So all of our online training, online services is all based in the US. And there's kind of one person in the US most of it, you know, the usual thing, you have an online training business, you base it in the US.
Robert Craven 02:46
So it's like one of the jokes when there's a joke about dentists and my father always used to tell me about you know, the plumber charging 500 pounds and the dentist saying to the plumber, 500 pounds, that's ridiculous. I'm a dentist and the plumber says, Yeah, I used to be a dentist as well. And it's almost like you're gonna say that about agency world? Yeah, we've got 1000 or so agency people. On online watching, so you are an agency, you've flipped over into LinkedIn, but you do still sell agency work out of the back of it?
Dean Seddon 03:28
Yeah, well, you know, what it's like a client comes on, you do one job really well for them. And then they say, oh, we need help with this. We need help with this. We need help with this. So we don't naturally you won't find an agency website for us. What happens is people come to us for LinkedIn, and then they ask for more stuff, more stuff, more stuff. So that's the kind of model we've had, it also gives us a good way of figuring out what the clients are like to work with. So all of our initial services for LinkedIn, we run on a three month process, it's three months. And then at the end of it, we know what they're like then or what they know what we like, and then anything we proceed on with them is really clear. We know what we're doing and who we're doing it with.
Robert Craven 04:14
Right. So it's time for me to play devil's advocate because people are going, I mean, we were talking about it just before the call. I mean, LinkedIn is actually nearly as bad as GDPR in terms of the sheer volume of experts. Okay. So I guess, run an agency probably got lots of performance stuff going on now Google, Facebook, Instagram inside out, and understanding how to acquire business for clients. But time to talk. We all know that it's harder than it's ever. So why would someone who runs a digital marketing agency, why would they go to LinkedIn?
Dean Seddon 05:15
I would say this, wouldn't I. But if you want, we'll talk about ads maybe later. But if you want an organic platform where you can get yourself seen by the right people, LinkedIn, is it. Yeah, you can go into Facebook groups and dig into Facebook groups. They're great. But LinkedIn is a great way to build an audience quickly in an organic way. Think of it like Facebook in 2010. Yeah, that's what LinkedIn is. It's where you can actually say something and get heard.
Robert Craven 06:00
You may not want to talk to me at the end of this conversation, because there's so many questions. But I may get hurt. Yeah. But I mean, I did a rather contentious piece the other day. And it just reminded me with the Euro fool, you need you. I mean, it's like Facebook in the old days. Or what it reminded me of was, when I put a post out into my Facebook group of friends and others, and people who like what I do, I get a really sensible response. Or if people don't agree with me, you get a oh, that's an interesting point of view, where's your evidence for that, or whatever it is. But agency folk are really nice. They recognise that if I'm saying something, I've got a reason to say it. And they don't just sort of get the gun out and fire. And what I found with this post, which had 20,000 views was all the people all the hate mail was from people, I never want to engage with the tool.
Dean Seddon 07:09
So let me be just as difficult back. When was the last time you got 20,000 views on Facebook?
Robert Craven 07:16
All right. Absolutely. Yeah, I'd rather have 20,000 views. And not I mean, I'd rather have maybe I'm feeding you a line here. You know, if there's a choice between 5000 views and 50 targeted views of people who I really want to talk to, personally, I'd rather have 50 of the people I really want to talk to. I'm not sure whether I really want the other 49/50.
Dean Seddon 07:44
But I'd rather have both.
Robert Craven 07:48
5000 of my target.
Dean Seddon 07:50
Yeah. Now with anything in the world, whether your direct mail, PPC, all of that, any marketing channel, despite the best efforts of targeting, you're gonna get people who slip in. And the nature of LinkedIn is obviously that ripple effect. And so you end up with a window cleaner that amplifies your post, or ...
Robert Craven 08:16
It did, yeah, there was some guy who said, This man is talking such rubbish. And all he wants is to promote himself. I don't know why I'm sharing his post. And it's like, you idiots. I mean, like, so you're absolutely right. If like Facebook 10 years ago, I mean, it's not I'm still but so Okay, so maybe educate me, maybe educators? How do we weave so that you do get 5000 target customers?
Dean Seddon 08:52
So first of all, it comes about how are you building your own connections? So what we tend to do is we approach LinkedIn, a little bit like Facebook, and we'll add people we used to work with and all that kind of stuff. And what happens is they contaminate our network. So if you're going to add people who are not relevant into your LinkedIn account, just be aware when your ex partner from 15 years ago, who's now a secretary in a legal firm. I don't know whether this is true or not, I'm just making this up. But when she suddenly likes your post, she inadvertently amplifies it to her network, which will be comprised of legal people. So generally speaking, you need to be engaging with and growing your network with the exact right target audience. If you don't, you end up with it spread everywhere. That said, I got one of my biggest clients through a personal trainer who was training The head of a major accounting firm, and he shared my post and I got a response and a client and business from that. So it's a bit going back to them, you know, pre digital and you go, it's not the what's the same. It's not what you know, it's who you know. And LinkedIn can work a little bit like that sometimes there are people out there that suddenly help you. And you go, I really just got a job with the top accountancy firm, because of a personal trainer.
Robert Craven 10:36
And of course, you don't know who they're married to, and who their in-laws are and so on, and so on and so forth.
Dean Seddon 10:52
Well, let me give you an example. I've just signed a client who came through a free thing we put on LinkedIn. This month, they will have spent 6000 or 7000 quid with me. And it all came off the back of they're in a completely different sector, all came from a LinkedIn post from a free offer I put on LinkedIn. And by the time we finished billing, it'd be seven grand. Yeah. But that came, that was not a connection. It was from somebody else sharing the post.
Robert Craven 11:36
So this is just a traditional organic. Growth. So thinking back to when you ran an agency, and I think everyone felt the body blows of difficult clients and clients who didn't know what they wanted and change their minds and turn stuff on and turn stuff off. I mean, now, in lockdown, the majority of agencies I know, have seen between 25 and 50% of business turn off. Once I've dealt with my existing clients who have calmed down, how do I get this business going? How do I find new people to talk to, how do I engage with potential target paying prospects? And they look at everything from Tik Tok through LinkedIn, to Google ads to traditional ads to I'm very strong on hunting concept of hunting rather than farming. I'd like to give back in a minute and explore how you make LinkedIn work. But do you see LinkedIn as part of an overall piece? Do you see it at the front end? Do you see it as we were? Where do you see it in that marketing Melange, that marketing learns different things?
Dean Seddon 13:08
So I've kind of made a mash of it in the sense of, I do the content piece, which pulls me a lot of traffic and pulls me a lot of inbound inquiries. So the content stuff really does that for me. And then I've got the kind of I use LinkedIn as a kind of cold email site as well. I think of LinkedIn as a massive database. So it's like a research tool that I pay 60 quid a month for. So I will use that site as a kind of stalking research tool to figure out who I want to go to? Where are they? Are they on LinkedIn? How active are they? And I will usually go in with some kind of LinkedIn service. And then it develops the relationship and then we'll get bits and pieces on the back end of you know, can you just make this explainer video? Can you just fix this landing page and we'll build stuff like that off the back of it? So I use a LinkedIn first model and we pick up what you'd class more agency work off the back.
Robert Craven 14:21
And were you to be running a more traditional digital marketing agency's Standard Model. Are you saying you know if we'd been out for a drink? I remember those days. We come out of the pub and you would be saying, but there's one thing you were doing running on a digital agency mate, it would be get back that spearhead of LinkedIn. The front ends make the business feed into the top of the hopper.
Dean Seddon 14:59
I would definitely say there are two components to LinkedIn. There's the content marketing, slow burn, warm people up and bring people in. And there's the Hunter Killer side. And that's the beauty of it is that we can, you know, if you think about a business, a medium sized business, they might have a marketing department. But LinkedIn has the appeal to the business owner. It has the appeal to the marketing department, and it has appealed to the sales department. All three of those need different or have different goals. So from our point of view, use it as a hunting tool, but as a marketing channel. And obviously, there's a whole personal brand thing that's not going around. So from our point of view, or from my point of view, an agency should be using it as the Hunter Killer tool.
Robert Craven 15:49
Okay, when you say Hunter Killer tool, let's be really clear about what you mean by that.
Dean Seddon 15:54
Okay, so I don't mean, the classic, send a connection request, and then the seven paragraph War and Peace sales pitch. What I mean from that is, whether you're using cold email outreach, or whether you're using LinkedIn, and in mails, or whatever, and, you know, plug, I've got a template for this that we've written. I don't know if you've seen it, but I've got a template. It's relatively straightforward to warm a cold prospect up on LinkedIn, and get a conversation going. It's relatively easy. Whereas I've always found some of the other angles. They probably cost the same amount, but you don't know whether it's working until you see a result, you can do it and tweak it every single prospect. Like if I put ads out, and some of our clients use ads, so I'm not dissing it, because, you know, all marketing has its ups shops, and it's down shots. I think LinkedIn, it's upshot is that all you need is time. And its downside is you need time. LinkedIn is a time intensive platform. But if you put the time in, it will really pay off.
Robert Craven 17:12
So one of the people who's a great advocate of LinkedIn, who I respect greatly is a guy called John Redman, who runs motor 25. It's a new agency based in Leeds. He's been going for about six months, he's got about 10 or 15 people already. And he as well as doing a four day week. His thing is, I think it's 40 minutes a day, every single day, five days a week without fail. Squirrel squirrel squirrel searcher, so make contact squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, make contact squirrel, squirrel, connect to connect squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, offers squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, and it's this view of let's meet, let's find there's something I got from you, rather than one of your programmes. This thing of, you know, day one, find 10 Interesting people comment on their stuff, day two go back to those people request some kind of connection, but also find 10 new people, day three, doo doo doo doo. So just drip drip, drip, drip, and hey, presto, at the end of three months, you have reached out to I can't do the math live. But you reached out to 5, 10, 15, 20, you've reached out to a couple of hundreds, about 600 people, if 1% of those people six good eggs, that's probably enough. Do you look after your agency for a couple of months? So I kind of I get the math, I get the logic in that sense.
Dean Seddon 19:02
Well, where it pays off is when you start to switch the content into it. So there's this whole thing about LinkedIn about visibility, you know, we all know full well, whether it be paid ads, whether it be direct mail, whatever it is, you need multiple encounters, shall we say, with a prospect or client to actually get them to remember who you are. So the content, you know, like all social platforms, the algorithm only shows you to the people who are interested in you. How does it decide who's interested in you, it's based on their previous engagement. So you create content which engages people and they end up in this kind of what you could class as a feedback loop.
Robert Craven 19:49
It's beautiful because it's two books combined in one. I'm just seeing if they're here or not. And the first one is this is market Seth Godin people like us buy from people like us. So therefore, there's a feedback loop. And the other book is Perry Marshall's 80/20 Principle, which is to worry about 80% of the world who don't read your stuff, because they don't read your stuff, you know, only worried about the 20% who are interested in what is mine? Yeah, my people who know me know that I talk about strangers haven't got a clue who you are, what you do, what you sell what your reputation is, friends know what you do, they've not bought it. And lovers, you know, and my whole thing is, rather than spending 80% of your time trying to sell to strangers and 15% to friends and 5% lovers, you actually flip that whole thing on its head, and you actually spend 80% of your time talking to your lovers. And, in a way, what you're saying is, you know, there's this Hunter strategy, but it's kind of hunting with that 80/20 principle and the lovers thing kind of income.
Dean Seddon 21:04
So think about your hunting and develop it and doing all the stuff that I showed you in that kind of challenge we ran. But then at the same time, the content is keeping people in your world. And so then you think about it, that the content is fostering and building that relationship. So whilst I'm doing this stuff, it's a bit like, you know, brand, I don't know whether you saw the less benefit, analysis, can't remember the name of it, where they analysed the kind of sales activation work against brand work. And if you think about the hunting side of it as the sales activation, they're deliberately trying to build relationships to get conversations, meetings, whatever you want out of it. And then the content piece is the brand that's catching everybody who's not interested and developing them for a future date. So that's how I've played it. And I've played it really for three years this way, two years, I did it just as the activation. So we'd literally go and play the whole message campaign game. And that pretty much worked. But there was a lot of waste. And when you go in for the kill, and you spoil it, people say no, you've kind of killed it. So we've kind of merged the two together to go well. We need business now, which is the hunter bit or this month, but what about next month and the month after, and that's where the content comes into play.
Robert Craven 22:46
So in this time that we are in right now, where digital agencies have seen clients repeatedly come to them and say, if it's alright by you, we're going to pause it, and we'd like to come back to you in a couple of months time when the FDA has taken his foot off the cheque book. But in the meantime, everything's on pause and hold and you should be grateful that we're going to pay last month's invoice. We're basically I'm saying two agencies. One, have you got enough? Are your pockets deep enough to survive for months? Because if not, do not pass go do not collect 200 pounds? Secondly, if your pockets are deep enough to survive for months, have you got a proposition that is relevant for September 2020. Lord knows what people will want in those days. But what I do know is it's not gonna be the same as they wanted. In September 2019. Everyone is saying, I'm making some assumptions, this comment, but everyone's saying, you know, while the majority of advertising has gone on pause, everyone should be talking about brands, everyone should be developing relationships. And yet I see only probably 10% of the agencies that I'm talking to. So Right. We are going to position ourselves as being in the nicest possible way, being there for when this thing changes, helping you now while we're waiting, helping you to develop relationships, helping you to engage with your clients, and likewise, in their own minds. They're doing that the majority of agencies are just saying hellfire. I don't know what to do. I look over to my existing customers. I know marketing. And business development is different from how it's been before, but I don't know what the answer is. And they're not. Despite my regular recommendations, they're not always going to LinkedIn. They're just saying well, I mean what would your recommendation be to digital agencies right now?
Dean Seddon 24:58
So I find I tell you what we did. So obviously, a lot of our offering was kind of training courses. So obviously, we pivoted all that online. Then we started, we basically remapped our business model and went, Well, what happens if this rolls for six months? So we started to look at well, a lot of businesses are still operational. And we actually listed out all the industries that we think are still operational. And then we go, Why the hell would they want to use LinkedIn? So a lot of it was one of our biggest clients footsee listed, nobody's answering the office line. So they're all working remotely, they're all using mobile phones. And there are a lot of their clients are using mobile phones and not answering office lines in the same way, or they are being answered and not diverted. So everybody's like, all over everywhere. So we went, well, actually, now we have a situation whereby there are businesses that are fully operational, and you know, aren't seeing this. I know, that sounds really hard to believe, but we've got some clients who are completely operational. And we went, Well, what do they now want to do, they want to talk to the other businesses that are completely operational. So we mapped all of that out to go, this is who we're targeting Now, our business model is completely different now. And we went to those people. And obviously, we went for the that, you know, the bell curve of adoption. Yeah, the beauty of this is that there's a tonne of people who've resisted this. They've resisted any form of social media, and there's tons of them. They don't do it. And they are now active. So we've picked up all the people that were impossible to pick up maybe six months ago. So from an agency point of view, what should they be doing on LinkedIn, I think they should do all of that kind of remapping of their business model. And then they should start to look at instead of broadcasting, which is the classic thing that agencies do, look how cool we are, look at our latest promo and look at how on brand we are. One of the things that LinkedIn is tough for is marketers go on there and want to present the perfect image, the perfect presentation, or it doesn't work. Yeah, because people don't want to talk to robots. So you start talking about the problems you solve, show some personality there, be yourself and sandwich in some of that brandy stuff, and you will carry a crowd. Now then you're faced with the choice of Do you just do that for the next few months and build momentum with all these people around you grow the connections, almost do my free challenge that you did, but can take consistently do it, you've then got this world around you that you can harvest that would be a brilliant way to go. If you can map it to businesses that are totally unaffected or less affected, I would do all of that. But then start deliberately building the relationships going after the 10 people each day liking and engaging with their posts. If you're doing that connect and pitch, you need to stop. By connected send the connection request and then the seventh paragraph.
Robert Craven 28:24
I suppose we should connect. Look at my special offer here. buy from me buy from me buy from me. And it's normally Fred from India. My experience is not that I've got any issues, but I just find that when it comes from India in the way my algorithm is created, I get you know, your website is broken, and you need new links. Thank you very much. Off you go.
Dean Seddon 28:48
So yeah, it's all the basic principles of marketing the ball, no, but sometimes we just lose our head. And we lose all common sense on LinkedIn and just go nuts.
Robert Craven 29:03
And do you think what happens is that it's almost like, I'm incredibly intelligent. I'm a Google premier partner, I employ 50 people. We are so sophisticated and look at the events we put on and look at the seminars we put on and look at the content we produce, that they think that any solutions have to be sophisticated and complex and complicated. And that this is something that's just under their nose, but I can't believe that it's that simple.
Dean Seddon 29:41
Well, let's just unpick how you would pitch for a classic for any other business. Let's unpick it and you'd go. You have to convince that person to give you a fair hearing. Yeah, if you're cold calling or whatever you're doing, you've got to get that person who's By sending out a pitch doc to get a presentation or whatever, you've got to get them to consider you. Yeah, there's a human element to that. Yeah, it's not just a straight assessment of your calibre and your showreel. And all that's human stuff. It's exactly the same. It's exactly the same. But if you go all Brandon kind of corporate on them, there's no human element. And it's like walking in. It's like an analyst walking in, and just giving a report. Yeah. Just facts and figures. Nobody, nobody does. If everybody was analytical and logical, there would be no need for marketing.
Robert Craven 30:40
But it isn't part of the problem that agencies are really good at selling transactionally. So if you say to an agency, you know, here you go, we sell Sharpies, and we sell them in boxes of 10. Go and sell them. They're fantastic at that, they totally get that they know how to place Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, Google ads, dadadada, they know how to do they know how to make transactions sing, in the old world, on the internet. But what they don't understand if they don't understand how to sell relationships, and we are not in the business of selling transactions we are, especially if you're an agency, it's a relationship thing. It is a professional service firm, where we're selling hot air. We're saying, Look into my eyes, if you believe what I say, it'll be good for you. We're not selling pure ROI, despite what we've been told. And at the end of the day, you know, I'd rather buy from someone where I can pick up a brick and put it through your house window because I know where you live, then work with some remote coal bunker in Bangalore or in Czech Republic, wherever it is
Dean Seddon 31:58
Well, if you go. The great thing about social media is it's leveled the playing field, in whether you're a one person or 100 person business, you can do exactly the same things. Now, obviously, ad budgets aside, but LinkedIn is a level playing field. So if you go at this, just with claims and promises, and all that kind of stuff, we can lift your revenue by 25%. Everybody's promising that. Yeah, from the guy in India, to the VA in the Philippines to the agency down the road, they're all doing that. So the only advantage you have is that you can build a relationship. And most of those people making those claims aren't doing that. They're just hitting people up and hoping that shouting big numbers and amazing things will make a difference.
Robert Craven 32:53
Okay, so what I'd like to just dig into a little bit is what are some of the clever things we can do with that? I mean, I totally get I'm sold on LinkedIn 10 a day, every day out. We connect, we make relationships, it's growing. And LinkedIn is kind of figuring out on the whole apart from my outrageous, Mr. Angry post on the whole is putting us in front of the right people. And we're having the conversations and we're pulling people into the member site. And so we're happy that there was clever stuff. I'm interested to know what some of the clever stuff we could or should be doing with LinkedIn. I mean, if embedding is about putting LinkedIn as part of a bigger campaign, what is this? What's the sort of stuff, the clever stuff?
Dean Seddon 33:46
I did an article for I can't remember who it was for some CRM software a few weeks ago. And two really clever things that maybe some people haven't thought of, is LinkedIn ads are very expensive. So content, you can get, as you said, you can get 20,000 views of a piece of content, so you can do a lot for free. So I put an ad out, I put an article out about how to use LinkedIn to generate leads and stuff and how it works with paid ads. And I actually said, and I think I got in trouble with LinkedIn, because I had a few profile reviews after it was published. I don't know where this is going. But I have had, because of the prolific nature of what we do, I mean, nine and a half 1000 People went on our course in the last year and a bit. So it's huge. I do have the direct email and phone number for the head of legal at LinkedIn.
Robert Craven 34:48
They have yours or you have theirs.
Dean Seddon 34:51
And I've had conversations with LinkedIn in California as well just so that we stay on the right side of what they're saying because if we crossed the line, we end up in trouble. or I disappear. But linking Facebook ads to the back of LinkedIn is pretty clever. So using kind of custom links to basically whether you push people to your website or whether they push them to a landing page or what have you, but basically pushing particular content out that pulls people into a Facebook pixel, effectively a tracking pixel and then re serving ads to people on Facebook, from LinkedIn traffic.
Robert Craven 35:33
In a link that's underneath in the comments, or can you do that from a link within.
Dean Seddon 35:38
No, So one of the ways I've done it is, you can use a third party service. So what you can do is get engaging content from the platform. So on your company page, LinkedIn will tell you what's engaging particular audiences. So let's say for example, you found a viral post on LinkedIn, or a piece of content that you think could fly, what you can do is use a third party link changer. I don't know what they're officially called. But basically, what it does is it embeds the Facebook tracking pixel into a third party link. So when loads of people click it, you can reserve the ads based on that. So that works pretty well, we get a 6% conversion on third party links to a download. So what we'll do is use something called snip LY, snip dot L Y, and will basically run a lead magnet on BBC news websites and stuff like that. So that works pretty well. It does, it works great. So and then you obviously can reserve ads on the back on Facebook. The other one that a lot of people kind of don't understand is the article piece. So I don't think we covered this in our conversations and things before. What I do with articles is I write the pain point articles. So I don't go the latest insights in LinkedIn marketing, I don't do all of that. I write pain point articles of my target customers. So it would be why lead generation is failing for accountants?
Robert Craven 37:19
And it's evergreen, isn't it?
Dean Seddon 37:21
Yeah, it's evergreen. And then as I connect with people and build relationships, I drop them a message and say, here's an article I'd love your feedback. And if I'm following my 10 a day you know, connecting and building relationships 10 a day over the space of a month I've got 200 people.
Robert Craven 37:47
So let me just talk to me through that one again, just to make sure I've got it. the pain point article which says that if this is your if mister missus whatever it is, this is your problem. Here is what and why and how important articles evergreen sent stays there all the time, you then do your collecting 10 or reach out to 10 people per day. And in your conversations with those people, you say, I can see that you are an architect accountants, as a surveyor, whatever it is, I've written an article about just that thing. Love to have your comment. Fine.
Dean Seddon 38:27
So I mean, you've done the kind of free challenge and stuff but I take that up to the 2550 and how to do it at scale. And then literally, yes, you are playing a numbers game, but you're playing the very targeted numbers game.
Robert Craven 38:40
So it keeps coming back to content. Coming back to engagement I have written in front of me here in front of me a quote from Dixon Jones X majestic who sent me an email the other day, which told me something I know, but I'd kind of forgotten which is and I'll read it to you content that makes my life faster and more efficient and or cheaper and more profitable and or better. It's like giving people the stuff that they want, not the stuff that I want to pour down their throats like pattied of wild grass, and then expect them to buy from me. And you're quite critical of advertising. Is that fair to say? Or do you feel that it's expensive?
Dean Seddon 39:33
I think for a lot of things, it's too expensive. So, you know, if you're really smart on Facebook, and I know Facebook ads specialists, but I in my own experience have had, you know your 5 p and your 10 P a click, you will never get near that on LinkedIn. Never. So when you play the numbers game with that and the conversion rates and everything. You could be looking for an example at 150 quid a lead?
Robert Craven 40:06
That's the number everyone quotes.
Dean Seddon 40:08
Yeah. And then you go well, that, you know, the InMail campaigns LinkedIn boast about how wonderful their open rates are on LinkedIn in mail campaigns. And they are pretty solid, they are around 45%.
Robert Craven 40:31
Another question then. So DIY, do it yourself or do it for you. I mean, is it done for your work? Could you send it out to a VA in the Philippines? Or can you get an agency to do it for you?
Dean Seddon 40:45
Well, I would say this wouldn't I don't for you because we've got about 50 clients that we have done for you, kind of I hate the word lead generation, because LinkedIn is saturated with anybody who just suddenly decides I'm going to be a lead generation company. But we practice what we preach for the clients, where their time is poor, or they're a bit too analytical and fumble a little and go a bit to kind of square boxes, rather than relationships. So we'll take that on for them, the content and everything. So it does work. But what I would say is that it's no substitute for somebody who commits to learn to do it themselves. Because there is a limit on what somebody else can achieve for you, particularly in very technical sectors. But we can lead a horse to water, but then it comes to the client to actually close the sale. And that's, you know, a phone call or a meeting or you know, a video call or whatever it is. So it does work. But if I was honest, the best option is you learn to do this for yourself. Because I think LinkedIn would sharpen your selling skills as well. Because I'm not a natural salesperson. So people say I am, or I come across that way. But I'm actually not everything I've learned from doing it behind my computer.
Robert Craven 42:20
And your computer, or the computer is quite honest, in some ways that it goes, that worked. Or that didn't work. You've just wasted half an hour of your time, you know, or that half an hour, you just look at the response, you just press the right button.
Dean Seddon 42:36
But here's the thing, if you meet, I know, we can't meet with people in person at the moment. But if you met with somebody, and they gave you the time of day, they would then give you some feedback. And they probably lie to you, even if you were rubbish. And they have no intention that they tell you oh, well, we're pushing it back or, you know, waiting for somebody to decide on LinkedIn, they just ignore you. So , you know immediately whether you've worked on it.
Robert Craven 43:11
Okay, so. And the minute I asked you what your top tips are, but just first. So you've taken this agency to 20 old people business in the states business in the UK, you're focusing on LinkedIn at the moment, LinkedIn isn't going to go forever there. I suggest. I mean, what's the short term long term? What's next, Dean Seddon?
Dean Seddon 43:39
So the universal principles of marketing just unfold in different places. It just, you know, something new happens, the same old things just get converted into a new format. So everything that we're saying with LinkedIn transfers to other places. So LinkedIn is our gateway. But actually, we've got cold email prospecting services, we run for people. So that's where you know, they don't know them and will do all that kind of work for them in the back end, even down to because of what we've done on LinkedIn. How do I write a blog that convinces people to buy, we've got that nailed. We can't write, we probably can't write you a big insight piece. But we can show you how to write a sales article that will get you a sale. So all of these are kind of transferable skills we've learned from LinkedIn. And we're going to start to kind of push these out as either bolt on training or bolt on services. And that's why our websites become very news related. Recently, there's no kind of this is our service and everything. It's very much we pull people into a training session, or some kind of free tutorial, and then the services happen off the back. So we've kind of adopted an internet marketing model, but actually a real business rather than that guy in Bali on the whiteboard.
Robert Craven 45:05
But what's interesting is that you're listening. And you're responding to what people want, as opposed to having a hammer and making everything into a nail, because that's always the risk, isn't it that people just and I think what's happened for a lot of digital agencies, is they've forgotten why people buy from them. People don't buy from you, they buy from you for what you do for them. And the fact that what you're doing right now gives them what they want, in a year's time that may well have switched. Now, I think the platform world still pretty strongly and Google ads are pretty strong. SEO is still pretty strong. But the way in which engagement takes place, I mean, for instance, the growth of effectiveness of video, and the unparalleled growth of zoom in the last month, the way that people wish to engage and communicate just keeps changing. So it's almost like a party PC in a way I expect top tips. What are your final takeaways, your agency owners, founders, directors, leaders, if you were to implore them to do a couple of things, what would those things be?
Dean Seddon 46:38
So I would highly encourage them to. And I'll repeat some of the training that I put out publicly engaging with everybody that they want to connect with. So like comment before they ever connect, that will improve your connection rate, it will also stop you getting banned. Number two, post regularly, and post personal posts about problems that clients your target clients would face. Think about the pain points that have why people buy you your answer. What is your answer to their pain? And talk about that and talk about them regularly. Hashtags, this really bugs me, because I see lots of people doing it. Three, three hashtags, do not. Before I get to it, I'll come to another one that bugs me in a minute, three hashtags. And think about the hashtags that your customers follow. Don't be ridiculous and put a hashtag with your agency name. Don't put hashtag marketing unless you want to reach marketing people. Think about the hashtags that your customers are probably following and use them even if they're not related to what you're talking about. Next one, it works. But it looks really bad. Do not tag a gazillion people in the comments or in the post. It's horrific. So what some people do to gain the algorithm is they tag a tonne of people in the comments. What happens is they all come and look so you get the views up. So the algorithm then promotes the post. The problem is that the people who you do that start to get really peeved when you're basically abusing their notifications, but it's a common thing that people do. Don't pitch in emails, in mails, but do message people and interact with people use the articles. Use the articles as out loud lines. And also a really quick one, it's worthwhile. If you have Sales Navigator, you can figure out who's following your company page by just going to Sales Navigator and searching any criteria and scroll across to the right hand side and it shows you who's following your company page. Yeah, so you can spot who's there you can spot the competition that's having a nosy at you as well. And don't do your LinkedIn in private mode. Is that enough?
Robert Craven 49:32
That's more than enough. That's absolutely great, Dean. So I'm a fan of your work as they say.I think it's kind of blindingly obvious. I think the big message for me, that's coming through this is a Got a long game, this is drip feed, you may get immediate responses. The likelihood is you're gonna see the benefits in 2, 3, 4 months time, so it's just about setting off early, isn't it?
Dean Seddon 50:15
Yeah, it is. It's about playing a long game. Yes, I mean, I've got a free out just a little plug, and then I'll explain why I'm sharing it. I've got a free 30 minute video on YouTube. So I use it as a lead magnet, but I just put it out on YouTube. So anybody can watch it. I don't need their email or anything. But I've one business month down the road that I never saw coming. And the great thing about when that happens is you're already the preferred person. Yeah, all that kind of getting in the mix. And where do they sit? When somebody asks you from LinkedIn, you're kind of in the driving seat a little bit. So I, in November, went to Oslo. And I was asked to go to Oslo to the equivalent of EDF in Norway. And I was with their CEO, and their board, and all of the VC all of their subsidiary managing directors, teaching them about sales. And they paid for me to go there. And the reason is, they saw me on LinkedIn, and thought I was an excellent voice that they should have talking to their salespeople, and their managing directors about how they develop their business. I could have never pitched for that work. Yeah, but they chose me. And they vetted me on LinkedIn, and decided it was me, the other trainer was the head of sales for IBM in Scandinavia. Now, what I'm not trying to pick up, what I'm trying to say is, you don't know where your LinkedIn posts get. And they build authority, as long as you're not pushing brands all the time.
Robert Craven 52:07
Brilliant. What a great place to stop. And what a great story. Dean, thank you very, very much for sharing so generously at the end of the piece. Dean's contact details and someone is going to be there and available for people to take up. Go and check out Dean. And finally, Dean. Once again. Thank you very much for your time. It's been great.
Dean Seddon 52:30
Thanks for having me.
Robert Craven 52:31
Thank you.