Overcoming Challenges and Generating More Business Through LinkedIn

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Tales From the Pros. This is Michael Georgio, your host and cofounder at Imagineovation. My wonderful guest with me here today is the founder of SpeedWorks Social, a top LinkedIn advertising agency. As a previous tech founder and ex IBMer, he has seen a lot of companies have explosive growth with good tech technology and good marketing.

While others, even though they had a great product or service, fail without effective marketing. In 2016, this successful entrepreneur started SpeedWork to help those companies unlock their b to b marketing potential by blending his experience in marketing and software. He is able to help businesses reach high level decision makers at scale using LinkedIn ads and technology. He is known as one of the top LinkedIn ad experts in the industry, having managed 1,000,000 in ad spend and generating over a 100,000 new sales opportunities. Please welcome Anthony Blattner.

Anthony, thanks for being here, man. I really appreciate it.

Being in Austin, I got involved in the start up scene here and just really fell in love with that. So after a few years, I spun off to start a mobile app development agency. And this is way back in the day, the very early days of the iPhone. I'm sure you were getting started around then too where, apps were brand new. No one really knew how to do them yet.

At the time, I was very early in my career just playing around with some apps on the side and seeing a lot of people looking for help in that area, so decided to start a mobile app development agency.

We saw we did see a couple get that viral, you know, catch on and go viral and be very successful. But for the most part, if a company did not have a marketing plan behind it, we saw a lot of start ups struggle where they'd spend so much time and effort and money on development, and then you put an app in the app store, and it's like, who's gonna download it? So seeing that need, I know I was me and my team were always getting pulled into helping them with marketing right after development because that was the next step, and seeing the the need that they had there for it. So I got marketing experience, marketing by agency, and then marketing for our clients. Worked on that agency for a bunch of years, ended up selling that, and then knowing I wanted to get more into the marketing world, I I knew that afterwards.

So started up a new agency focused just on marketing. So that's what speed work is today is a marketing agency. And with my background in software and tech, that that was kind of where I naturally worked. So I had a lot of clients in that area. And as I got into the market world, I did try a lot of different things to help people, and then saw that LinkedIn repeatedly was getting the best results for those types of clients because it was the the tech and enterprise space.

So since then, we've focused on LinkedIn, and it's been, you know, interesting niche because in the broad scheme of things, like, most people have tried Google or tried Facebook marketing, but a lot of peep not many people have tried LinkedIn, but know that their audience is probably on LinkedIn. You know, for any kind of, like, enterprise or b to b type of company, they know their audience is on LinkedIn, but they don't know how to use it well. So we focused on that area, and it's been it's been an interesting space to be in. The whole marketing space has been interesting over the last year given iOS 14 and all that stuff. But, LinkedIn's been a good space.

So since then, we focused in just on LinkedIn.

And we would tell them, like, listen. It's all about marketing. You can have the best product in the world in the world, but if you can't market it, you can't brand it, if people can't they don't know what it is, so they don't know where it is, it's kind of I mean, you're as good as dead. You know? You know what I mean? You can have the best product, but Right. It is. It is. Market it effectively, man. That's what it's about. You know?

So why LinkedIn? Is it just because the platform is is really booming? Is it something that you love? Is it just your passion? What what is it? Where did it kind of come from?

I saw LinkedIn was doing the best for those types of companies, so I decided to continue to to focus just on the LinkedIn area. Then, also, you know, just as starting my own company and working on on this, there's lots of agencies that specialize in Facebook, lots of agencies specialize in Google. You know, you could you could throw a rock and hit about 5 agencies that do that. So LinkedIn was a unique space where no one is really doing it well. No one was really doing it well.

So, I was seeing good results for clients in that area. And then whenever I would go I I remember this specifically. Whenever I'd go to events, it'd be like, oh, yeah. I'm getting into the marketing world. I'm doing, you know, maybe maybe I'm doing some Google and some LinkedIn.

And everyone's always like, oh, talk about the LinkedIn stuff. That's interesting. So hearing a lot of feedback for that, the people were interested on LinkedIn, and then not many people were doing it. I was like, well, then I see a need there and an opportunity, so I decided to focus on that area.

Right? Because it doesn't always have to be about business. Yeah. It's a b to b platform. I get it, and and that's great. It's good that it has that kind of that focus, that niche. But, really, life and business, I mean, they are connected. You know what I mean? You can't it's so difficult to separate them. So it's good to see that authenticity on the platform.

And I'm seeing over time that when, like, when people message me, I'm either getting messages that are incredibly spammy, and, you know, you meet you and I talked about that. Right? And I know you guys fixed that. You guys are great at it in terms of, you know, providing good good, honest, authentic messages, and helping generate leads for businesses. But a lot of people don't have that.

You know what I mean? And the way they go about it, they just freaking sell you. They give you 4 paragraphs in a in your in in your InMail or your, you know, your your DMs, and they're just very spammy. They're unauthentic. They look templatish.

They, they're they're they're untargeted. They're unpersonalized, and I respect the automation. I think automation is very important, but you need that human touch too. That's also a vital component. And I like that, just from working with you guys just a little bit and and getting to know you, it seems that that's what you and your agency provide.

You know? So give us a little bit about that, man. Just kind of, like, what does it really take to, to generate effective leads, quality targeted leads on LinkedIn? Like, what's the right approach? And I know there's so many workflows and things, but just at a high level, how does it kind of work in your mind?

So there's also a lot of questionable content posted on Facebook and all that's happened there. So LinkedIn has a lot more trust built into the platform, and just like the type of people who use LinkedIn being more business, business type of is number 1, organically, it's still a social algorithm. So, you know, what are people gonna resonate with the most? So that's where the vulnerability comes in, because if I'm just posting blog post after blog post or case study after case study, then that's that's not as interesting as mixing it up and then having some personal stuff in there. So usually when I I'm talking to people and they're like, what should I be posting?

It should it should be a mixture because you wanna share your personality because that's what's gonna separate you from a bot is having some personality there, somebody getting to know you. And then you do wanna work in, you know, the business, content every once in a while, the case study, the call to action, but having a mixture there. And then what works best is, number 1, matching up who you're targeting with what you're offering. There's a lot of times where we'll see, you know, a lot of companies do, you know, serve multiple industries or multiple types of decision makers, or they're just like, you know, I want everyone in in the software stage. Like, I want everyone in some area.

And what we find a lot of our discussions are around, like, how do we get very specific on who is that right decision maker and what is that person's maybe title or what is that person posting about that makes them a good fit for you? And then how do we match up your offer very specifically to them? And then a lot of the offer is, you know, a lot of companies do offer lots of different services and maybe have worked with a lot of different clients. You don't wanna just share all of that, but maybe pick the 1 or 2 most applicable case studies or examples that are gonna resonate with this audience and then offering that to them. Because people, yeah, people are not gonna read pages of messages.

They're not gonna read pages of ads or your landing pages. But what is that one hook that's gonna grab their attention? Now something that makes us even easier is when we, again, that's the we don't wanna just send people pages of text in either a message or a landing page. But how do we cut that down to what's, like, the one thing that we can offer them that's gonna get their interest? We call this a lead magnet.

So maybe you're gonna offer them something like a case study or offer them a freebie of some kind. A lead magnet's, like, usually a a quick and easy downloadable that somebody can either read quickly and learn something about, or it's something like, kind of like a free meeting that you're gonna offer them. Like, a free consultation, but for whatever it is for your business that that's valuable to them. You know, for me, it could be, we'll, you know, we'll design a couple ads for free if you're interested. Or, like, I see you know, I see you're for us, it could be like, hey.

I see you're in the software space. I I'd be happy to design a couple ads for you, because we work with lots of software companies based on what's worked well for them. So a lead magnet helps start the conversation, and something overall that I've seen a lot of in the b to b space is, comparatively, when you when you think of b to c, you often think of, like or I think of, like, ecommerce stores, and that's usually

Whereas in the b two b realm, usually offers in the b two b space are more complicated, more involved, where somebody needs to learn a lot more before they're really ready to buy. So something that I find myself talking to people a lot about is you do wanna kinda stretch out and plan to stretch out your sales process so that the goal is, you know the step one goal is you wanna find people who are interested in selling. And then once you find somebody who either has that pain point or is interested in your service, then then they're a candidate to, like, learn more about you. And you need and people need to, you know, acknowledge that people aren't probably gonna buy off of, like, one call, especially when, you know, b two b high ticket items are gonna be 1,000 or tens of 1,000 or 100,000 of dollars. No one's gonna pull out their credit card after one call and just purchase.

I mean, you might have you might have a couple people, but, it's more often than not that you're gonna need to stretch out your sales process to be able to walk somebody through we call we call it the a consultative sales process where it's probably started with an analysis. It probably starts with an intro call, and then you have an analysis call, and then you have what we what we call, like, the feedback call or sharing results from your analysis call. And then that also doubles as, like, a closing call. So a lot of people you know, I I can tell, like, the people who are early sometimes I talk to people who are early in business. They're just like, oh, yeah.

I'm gonna one call close people. And it's like, well, in the b to b world, you're probably not. And you need to you know, if that happens, awesome. It might happen sometimes, but more often than not, you're gonna be successful if you stretch that out into, like, a 3 step close.

Right? They're usually more premium services, and and it requires education, inspiration, insights, and I think just time and patience and just building that building that relationship over time, and building that trust. And that's what's gonna allow you to, potentially work with them. You know, you're exactly right, man. And it seems like you're the the way the way your agency works and the way your approach works is very personalized.

It's very targeted. It's very researched, and I think that's I think that's vital, especially when it comes to LinkedIn B2B, lead generation and even just overall marketing and branding on the platform. It just takes time, you know. Yeah. Consistency.

Maybe they need to involve an IT person or, you know, if they're the owner, maybe they can make the decision, but a lot of times we find multiple decision makers are gonna be involved just because people need to go just check things before they pull the trigger in a company.

Like, what do you kind of see? Because I know you're, you know, I know you're probably analyzing the data, from all of your your, you know, all your customers and even the data for SpeedWorks Social, like, on a LinkedIn perspective and even just through, you know, any other channels that you use, even even email as well. But what are you seeing in terms of, like, any type of trend or anything that in terms of, like, just people that are they keep making the same mistakes over and over again, like, on a sales and marketing perspective. What are you seeing out there?

The biggest problem are people that just show up that one call, the first call, and then they expect to close it there. And if they don't close there, they kinda just leave that lead, and they don't come come back to it. That person's indicated interest, but, you know, most people don't buy in the first call. So you gotta be ready to follow-up with your leads. So most people the biggest issue that we see most people have is going straight for the sale on that first call before that person really knows anything about you.

And then to switch gears, the people that we see have the most the best success, honestly, it's it's somebody who often has a dedicated salesperson who, like, this is their focus. This is their job to just follow-up with leads. As, you know, as people are interested, as they become leads, then that person then starts to develop a relationship with them. And, you know, maybe it's the owner of the company or maybe it is a dedicated sales person, but, once someone's a lead, putting them on an email sequence, send them follow-up messages so that there's multiple touch points out there. And it's kinda like the mindset that people have is I know someone's gonna be successful when or the the successful teams we work with, they say, like, once once that lead comes in, our team is just right on top of them.

They're, you know, they're emailing them, they're texting them, they're calling them until they get in touch with them. And just being on top of that process there. Also, if you're somebody you know, if you're that prospect, to switch the the frame is you know, if someone just sends you one email, okay. You know, they've this person emailing me is, like, you know, slightly interested. But if they're sending me multiple emails, multiple calls, multiple text messages, even there's something they saw about me and my business that they know I'm a good fit.

So that kind of creates that law of attraction with the more someone's reaching out to me, the more I'm learning about them. The more that I'm gonna be interested in what they're reaching out to me about. Now sure, there's gonna be some people who are, like, unsubscribe me. You know, I'm not interested. They might realize they're not a good fit, but more often than not, you're gonna have a lot more success by having those follow ups in place.

So, yeah, I'd say it's like the mindset to make a really successful team we work with. They're just like, as soon as that lead comes in, we're all over it. You know, we're calling them, texting them, emailing them. We're getting on that follow-up call even if it is just a quick intro call. You know, when we look at funnel metrics, a lot of times if you look at 1 month or even, like, quarterly in the b two b world, it's it's hard to see an ROI over that time frame.

But, for example, I'm thinking about one where we we put up funnel metrics for a year and, like, the ROI you know, funnel ROI over 1 month or 3 months is, like, low, but over, like, a year, as those leads start converting, you have you see very high ROIs because, again, in the if you're selling, like, $100,000 packages or something, you close one of those and, boom, your ROI is there. So that's that's what we see as, like, the biggest problem and then, like, the mindset from the most successful teams.

And then you also have your company that pays the bills. Right? You have your company that you're running on a day to day basis. What do you see in terms of connecting both of them on LinkedIn specifically? Do you think it does help, or you think it doesn't really matter?

Because I'm sure you've seen both sides of the bet of the spectrum, right, where companies do very well, but they don't really have any personal branding, do they? And then you see ones that have personal branding and they do very, very well and maybe their company doesn't do well, but then they're getting consultations, like, for peep for them to be hired as a coach. And even even if they're not a coach, people think, oh, can you help me? Because I see you on LinkedIn. You look like you know your crap.

You know what you're talking about. You know? So it's like, what are you what are you seeing with that? Because there's a lot of shifts and changes, man, with personal branding, and it's, it's it's it's pretty crazy.

Whereas, like, if you're sharing some personal stuff, some business stuff, and then, you know, like you, you have your main business and you have your podcast, and because they are related, people are you know, people who who are listen to your podcast, but probably be also be interested in, like, software development, or or they wanna hear what's new in the software world. They're gonna find that interesting. And then, usually, you know, we recommend sharing a mixture of content that shows off your personality because, you know, you would wanna share some software development information. You'd wanna share your podcast. Maybe you wanna share some stuff about your personal life so that people can get to know you.

And that's, you know, that kind of saves you from having to have all one on one conversations with all these people, but if they're just following your content on LinkedIn, you're developing that relationship kind of, passively. So later on, you know, if they did come in as a lead from one of your campaigns and then you connected with them, you know, maybe they maybe they submitted a form on your website, and then you connected with them. They're gonna learn a lot more about you by following your post over time. And, you know, again, maybe they don't buy in that first call, but 3 months later, they're thinking about it again, and they've been seeing your post, and they're like, oh, yeah. I had a good conversation with this guy.

I think I'm ready to move forward now. I'm gonna go back to him versus all these other people. All these other, like, no name, no face vendors that I might have talked to briefly, but I don't really know that well.

It's, yeah. Sometimes it's hard because, you know, with your personal brand, you you're portraying your own experiences, your own stories, you know, you're trying to find different ways to resonate with the audience and sometimes that can, that can be misconstrued with what your company does and your company's values, even though, of course, if you're the leader of that company, I think your value should align with the company's values. If it's your company, I mean, it makes sense, obviously. But it's just, sometimes it's tough because, you know, it's just, I I just see I know I've had a lot of questions on this on this kind of topic, just how to connect your personal with your company, and sometimes I think people find it very difficult.

But, like, Facebook events. Yeah. We're look. We're in the pandemic. A lot of people are hosting events using using LinkedIn or promoting them using LinkedIn, LinkedIn stories, LinkedIn live, and all these other features.

So I think we'll just kinda see on the social side, we'll see LinkedIn continue to follow Facebook in a lot of ways. But then, also, we see LinkedIn kind of following down, like, the CRM route where, like, the way that people use, like, Salesforce, a lot of people are using LinkedIn and, like, Sales Navigator kind of goes like a CRM system. So I think we're gonna continue see seeing more steps forward in that way of, like, how can I use my network as a CRM, or, like, how can I make a CRM out of my network? And then, you know, I think they're coming out with a lot of interesting new features in that in that way. And if you've ever used Sales Navigator, there's some very interesting search capabilities for both companies and then people.

And then when you match those up and you do searching by company and then searching by people at those company, you can get very specific on specific people. So, I think we'll see LinkedIn continue to follow down those those ways, and maybe there's some interesting things they roll out from there. So on the social side, they probably could be the follow Facebook. On, like, the business side, kinda like Salesforce. Like, I'd say, you know, I I see them kinda going down, like, the Salesforce route in a way with Sales Navigator.

Actually, it has been more expensive. I think the cost per click is higher. Do you think that's changing, or do you think the just the the algorithm and and the and the LinkedIn ads are also changing in terms of, do you think it'll be easier to reach more people through the ads than it will be through organic? Because, you know, the I mean, the platform is growing every single day. It's heavily, you know, increasing in users, right?

So it's, it's just becoming more saturated, right, and more saturation. It's just I think it's probably gonna be it's getting more difficult to, get a lot a lot a larger reach, organically through your content.

I think iOS 14 is really you know, it's gonna impact Facebook the most because of so much of Facebook's algorithm is based on the AI building a profile about somebody based on what they do off-site. So a lot of Facebook's algorithm depends on, you know, what sites this person go to, what sites they make purchases on, where are they, like, adding the cart, where are they purchasing, what are they reading. Facebook learns a lot about somebody based off those actions. So with that being very reduced due to iOS 14's tracking, I think LinkedIn is gonna be the least impacted by that. Sure.

Everyone will be impacted a little bit in terms of conversion tracking, but LinkedIn, all that data we use for targeting is all first party data that people are plugging into the platform themselves. Like, you know, people set their own job title. They associate with the company. That company is pages set up by the company. So it's all put in there by the company and by the person, and we're not losing any of that tracking with, iOS 14.

So for anything in the business realm, I think we're gonna see more and more people move from Facebook to LinkedIn because Facebook tried to build business insights about people based on what they did off-site because most people don't put job titles or companies into Facebook. They do put it into LinkedIn. So I think we'll see LinkedIn's ads platform continue to grow. I hope we see a lot of new features roll out. They were purchased by Microsoft a couple years ago, and we started in the beginning, it was like, you know, are they gonna do anything or, like, build anything new?

I think it would just took them time in the back end to get things infra short. And now we're starting to see a lot of new features released faster.

I don't even say post COVID. I know there's some there's a lot of, companies still struggling, but, a lot of, yeah, a lot of countries still struggling. But, yeah, it's, even just in the post COVID world, I guess, here in the States, there's just so much innovation and and so many things are are happening, man. It's, sometimes hard to keep up with it. There's there's but the good thing is is that there's a lot of innovation.

I think I think, it seems companies have reset and, and they're thinking differently, and they're they've reshifted and and they pivoted, some in negative ways, some in positive ways. But I I think a a reset once in a while is is good, obviously, without hopefully, next time without any tragedies and things like that. You know? No. But it's just sometimes it's the reality of it.

Right? So but yeah, man. So I I wanna get a little just a few minutes, Anthony, into you and your business, and just your overall story, and some of the things that you've gone through as a company, as a as an agency, you know, kind of getting a little deeper here. So

Was it as hard as other people say it is in in terms of starting growing scaling a start up? Did you go through a lot of what start ups go through, or it was it did it come easier to you? Sometimes it does. You know, was it just like the demand was there, the market was there, you planned everything, you you were efficient in your processes, you you grew an operation. Like, how did it kind of work for how did you work it? How did you how did you grow it?

Right. Not have expected that at the time. And, you know, I think for a lot of companies, the beginning is often like an exploration process. And and even you mentioned it at the beginning of this call of, you know, wherever a product starts, they might not know their target audience, and it probably is gonna be something different that we find once you get some data in, once you see how people are using it. Yeah.

And I think, you know, that is true for many, many companies, especially new companies. You know? I think it's about getting out there and trying a lot of different things and seeing what works and maybe what kind of resonates the best for you and your leadership team, and seeing what areas you wanna play in. Because in the beginning, I knew I wanted to do marketing and help, you know, help tech and software companies with marketing, but I never would have expected LinkedIn. So in the beginning, I was like, oh, you know, SEO or Google Ads or Facebook Ads because that's what I was talking about.

But, then it was, you know, some pivoting and trying out LinkedIn. Oops. My screen just turned off. Sorry.

So, you know, especially as I was getting into the podcast getting on podcast a lot and, like, getting interviewed on things. I'm like, if someone goes to Google for me, they're probably gonna end up on somebody else's website. Think it's us. Could even sign up for them because it's a marketing agency. So, that was that kinda started the need of the rebranding process and then getting into it.

I spent most of my focus on, like, thinking about the name and, like, everything else kinda came around that. But a name is a handle a name is a handle that takes up space in someone's mind. So good names are simple, short, and catchy. So what we what I eventually found you know, ended up liking was SpeedWork. There was no other agencies named speed work.

We have the speed work social.com domain name. It kinda has, like, a, you know, a fun connotation to it, speeding up your work, and then, you know, it's kinda you know, marketing speeds up speeds up your funnels of your business. So there's a lot of, like, fun connotations to that, and it just kinda seemed like it stuck the best. So some people get pretty complicated with names or getting into acronyms and stuff, but a name is a handle in someone's mind that needs to be memorable. It needs to be able to associate have association with it.

So that's where I spent a lot of my time and ended up ended ended up landing on speed work.

Yeah, I think Steve Jobs said it. You know, we're all kind of crazy, you know, in our own way. You have to be crazy to to build a business. But for you, have you had to really have those crazy moments, and really just push through and and and just keep moving forward. I'm sure you have. Right?

I know exactly where to go, and I'm able to then support a lot more clients because I can be a lot more efficient in that area. And then supporting a lot more clients makes me learn a lot more from those clients and that, you know, you learn a little bit about you learn something new from every client because they're always a little bit different. Whereas if I needed to switch gears and go do Facebook stuff or do go do Google stuff, that distracts me and keeps me from getting good in the LinkedIn space. So I think that's one thing that I thought about a lot is, like, you know, making that decision to focus on one area and then actively turning away opportunities in these other areas because I knew they never just gonna track me. And then nowadays, seeing the perform you know, I know that we can push a lot better performance out of LinkedIn than most other people because we have focused on this area, and we've built out additional tools in, tracking where I can calculate met I'm tracking, calculating metrics because I've gone through this so many times that I know what to look for down the funnel and down the line of a campaign.

I know how that's gonna play back into my tracking in the beginning. So we have a lot more infrastructure built built out to help prepare for that. So I'd say that's, like, one thing that I think that I I remember thinking a lot about was, like, I need to act you know, I need to focus on this area if I wanna get really good at it.

Right? So and just makes it very difficult to market. It makes it difficult to brand because it's it's hard to know who's your ideal, client. Right? Who's your who's your ICP, your ideal client prospect?

So when you can hone in and focus on something that you love, something that you have strong capabilities in, skills in, and you know that there's a market, you can just, you know, have that tunnel vision and just just hit it, go after it, and it's it's a lot easier. And I know a lot of us make that mistake. You know, we we wanna serve everyone, man. Right? We wanna serve everyone, but it just doesn't work that way.

It's it's better to serve, like, one audience and do it better than try to serve everyone and kind of do it okay.

If you do focus, you're gonna turn down business because you're gonna get found on different social or marketing channels, that people think that you do something else. It just it happens. Right? And when you stick to what you're good at, stick to your focus, and where you're where you're headed, where you're going, you try to achieve these goals and objectives, you're very strategic, and you're very aligned on where you want to go with your team, that's gonna that's gonna attract better quality clients. And I've learned that through my entrepreneurial process as well, is if you're pickier with who you're trying to work with, it actually it's weird, man, but it it almost, like, it it does value it it shows you're more valuable and more, it just it just shows that you have a a more of a dent in the market.

It shows at least that's what that's the feedback I've gotten from people is that when you're kind of focused, it just shows that you know what you're doing, you know what you're talking about, and you're willing to turn down business. You know what I mean? And it just shows, like, you're an expert. You're you're a thought leader, authority in your field, and I think that's that's huge.

Please subscribe to our YouTube page and also follow our social media. There are links somewhere around here. But, we really appreciate it guys. Thanks for all the support. And I'm gonna be giving you awesome content continuously. And we look forward to seeing you soon.