Ruth Kusemiju walks through calculating whether LinkedIn is worth your time. Search your target audience by role, industry, and location, then apply benchmarks: roughly 30% accept connection requests, 1% are ready to buy this week, and 30% of those convert. Multiply by your average deal size to estimate revenue.
Chapters
Hi, so I'm going to take you through a process to see whether LinkedIn is worthwhile for you. Okay, so you need to calculate basically, um, the opportunity size of, um, the platform. Yeah, exactly. And, um, not just only the opportunity side of the platform, but basically you want to calculate the size of your market on LinkedIn because everybody says LinkedIn is this, it's not worth my while, the I don't see how, um, I would excel with this platform. How will I use it for my business? Okay, so I'm going to take you through what we used to do, and then I would also tell you what you need to do in order to know whether it's worthwhile for you. So usually the old way of doing things is that, um, our, uh, business networking options that we have— we had in the past Um, one is that we tend to use, um, networking events. Yes. Um, by databases. And then there's also the LinkedIn platform. Okay. So, um, so let's say for instance, um, we went through, let's say, doing the networking events. Now, these are events that we go to. We, um, pay for this event. We attend, whether it's home or abroad, we attend this event. And then you find out this event, and sometimes you hit and you miss, and, um, you get to connect with people, exchange business cards, and talk about how you can collabo or how you can do some JVs and all that. And yeah, so it's sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work. Um, sometimes you— it could be like a 3-day event and then you'd have, um, a lot of discussions with different business owners, different CEOs, directors, managers, partners, and all that. And it's— yeah, it can be time-consuming. So sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work. And then there's the other option of having to buy a database and Now buying databases of numbers, contacts of people from different industries, sometimes it can be expensive. You would find, depending on your denomination, whether it's in naira or dollars, you would find out that, um, these things can be as expensive as $1,000, which, um, already is in the hundreds of thousands already. If I'm talking from Nigeria, and it can be hundreds of thousands of naira and all that. And sometimes the information is not accurate, and you find out that, um, the people in that database, either they are no longer in that company or their roles have changed, and then you just, um, so to speak, wasted money, um, investing into buying a database that doesn't work. And then there's LinkedIn, which is free. I mean, yes, there are the other premium accounts that you can subscribe to, but it's free. And then supposedly everyone is on LinkedIn. Yes. Well, almost everyone, but majority of everybody in the world is on LinkedIn and is utilizing the platform, especially as a business professional. Okay. So, um, so I'm going to run you through, um, generally what you would do, um, to see if the LinkedIn platform is really worth your while. Whether it's good for your business to be on LinkedIn. So, um, run a search, um, on LinkedIn, um, either by title or by role in terms of position of your ideal client, whether it's CEOs, managing directors, MDs— yes, managing directors, MDs, directors. Um, sometimes you can target GMs, HRs, um, and all that, HR directors and all that, depending on the target, um, you're trying to reach. So when you run this search on LinkedIn, definitely, um, it would— your— the results would come out. And then the next thing you do is that you can filter these results that you get according to people or according to industry. So maybe you're looking for people in your first connection and people in your second connection and people in your third connection and all that. So you can filter it according to the people, or you can also filter it according to industry if you want. And then the next thing you do, you can also filter it according to geographical location. So you need people in Lagos, Nigeria, or any people in Ghana, or you need people in Kenya, or in people in South Africa, or you need people in Gambia, or whatever it is you want to, um, filter the geographical location to, you can do that. Okay, so when you have all this done journal. I mean, even, um, this can be done on the free platform. Even if you want to even go deeper, you can subscribe to the Sales Navigator platform and then do it more. So when you do that, you can then now calculate the market size. Now all this is trying to see whether the platform is worth our while, okay? So the total number of contacts that you have gotten, those are potential prospects, okay? Potential prospects. And then if you want, you can write, um, if you want, you can write to the personal connection request You can write to all these people, but that would take you a long time. You still need to drill down on this list. So we know that usually the acceptance rate, um, on any personal connection request usually is about 30%. So whatever, um, number it is that you arrive at, you take 30%, and well, you do a 30% percent rate of that number, and it will now let you know, um, this is at the exact amount of leads that you can work with, maybe your first-degree connection and all that. And when you do that and you have calculated that, you have that figure written down, okay, and the next thing that you need to do would be, um, or you also know that, um, 1% of the, of the, um, um, the markets that you're trying to reach on LinkedIn definitely would be making a purchasing decision as of this week as you and I speaking and all that. And you want to be able to reach that 1%. So you take the 1% and calculate it on the number of people you arrive at in terms of the acceptance rate. Okay. So you arrive at a certain number for the acceptance rate, so you do 1% of that number, okay? And, um, you know that whatever you get as that 1% definitely are the amount of people that will be making purchasing decisions this week, okay? So you can decide to, um, hop on a— do a call with them, have a consultation session with them, have a sales conversation with them, look, um, get um, the seat at the table and all that. And, um, so when you've done all that, the next thing would be for you to calculate the sales conversion rate. Okay, so this leads— we've calculated that 1% of this amount of leads would be ready to make a decision this week. And so the, the, the, the, the onus right now is on you to be able to reach out to those people. Okay, all right. So, um, you calculate the sales conversion rate. Now, the sales conversion rate, how you calculate that, that usually would be 30% of, um, the 1%. Of the market who is making a purchasing decision this week, okay? And then that way you'll be able to know, okay, these are the amount of clients I should be able to get from an estimate of the number of people that are making a purchasing decision this week, okay? And, um, when you can calculate or estimate really the average number of clients to expect from this platform. The next thing is that you have, um, different offers and products in your arsenal. You, um, have an average costing— should I use the word costing? Yes— that your products or services are ranged at. And so if you know the average deal size, you are able to calculate that. So let's say if my average deal size is about, um, let me use, uh, let's say 1,000— 1.5 million. Let's just say 1.5 million on a monthly basis. And so you're looking for, um, yeah, that's the average deal size. So the number you get from the sales conversion rate, you multiply it by the average deal size figure, and that lets you know, okay, So this is what I'm expecting from this platform. And, uh, yeah, basically that's how the whole process works. It's— that's how you know if the LinkedIn platform is viable for you and your business. And if you find out and you work out the estimate, and because everything basically is, it's like rinse and repeat, or, um, test test and retest, retake and all that. And if you find out in your calculations that the numbers really don't work to your favor, then you know that, okay, the LinkedIn platform is not for me, it's not for my business, it's not ideal. And then you move on to another platform that you know is suitable and viable for you. So basically, that's it on the mini lesson today on a small calculation and test to see whether the LinkedIn platform is viable for you. This is Social Media Boss Steady signing out. Thanks, guys.
