0:00 Dan

So how do you format a LinkedIn outreach video that generates 50,000 pounds of revenue? Well, I’m going to answer that this week, because sadly Lloyd’s, not here this week. So I’m going to try and do a bit of a solo episode.

And to be honest, this topic, which we’re going to go through, would have pretty much been me talking through most of it, because it’s what I do in our business, which is handle our marketing and sales. It’s a strategy to do with that. So hopefully, you enjoy this one. Sorry, you’re not here, Lloyd. I’m sure you will be listening to this.

But yeah, just to give you a quick backstory, the last couple of weeks have been pretty mental for us here at Knowlton. In terms of winning new business, we’ve won some amazing new projects.

Just to give you context, in the last two weeks, we’ve won the same amount of business, the value that we turned over, that was like a third of our revenue last year, or quarter third than a quarter of our revenue.

So it’s been a pretty big couple of weeks for us. And one of the projects that we won came from a certain strategy that we’ve used, a LinkedIn outreach strategy. If you’re an avid business anchors listener, you’ll remember episode 74, how to generate leads and sales with creative outreach strategies. We went in through a lot of detail on that strategy. But one of the elements that we didn’t talk about much was actually how to format a video that you send to people.

1:30 Dan

So just to give you context, that strategy, if you haven’t listened to it, go listen to the episode, that strategy is where on LinkedIn, you find people who are showing interest in what you do who are in your target market, you send them a direct video, which I’m going to talk through in a second to generate new business, right.

And in this video, I want to dissect the format of that video is. And also, I’m going to play to you the exact video that I sent to someone that generated 50,000 pounds of revenue this week. And then I’m going to dissect how that was formatted so that you the listeners can copy this strategy because it’s incredibly, incredibly effective. Once I’ve done that, I’ve got a few more tips for you at the end of this video.

2:18 Dan

So what I’ll do now, I’ll play, well I won’t, the lovely Knowlton editors, will play that video, it’s like a minute long. Just listen to this because I’m going to dissect this video. This is originally a video that I shot on my mobile phone in our office, and I sent to someone, but you’re going to hear the audio for it. So ready? Okay, here it is.

Hey, Paul, I hope you’re well, this is random, but we’ve been connected on LinkedIn for a while now and had a few discussions over the last year or so. I’ve been kind of following what you guys are doing.

And I just wanted to see if there was an opportunity for us to have a chat to see what you’re trying to achieve in the next six to 12 months to see if there’s any way we can support you in doing that. Your company looks fun.

And I think there could be an opportunity for us to help you produce some cool content or run some kind of paid ad campaign. We’ve recently shot a really exciting TV ad and tracked 1.2 million pounds of E-commerce sales for another client and also helped another client go viral. So we’re doing good stuff. I can see you are.

So just want to get in touch and see if there’s an opportunity for us to have a chat to find out what you’re up to and maybe present how we could potentially work together. Also, if that’s not relevant, then that’s fine. Just let me know, either way, and we’ll go from there. Thanks.

3:40 Dan

So now I want to break down for you the video format that you should use for your LinkedIn outreach videos to generate leads and revenue. And I’m going to break this down into different segments of that video and explain why it’s worked for us and how you can emulate this.

So just to give you context, as well, normally, these videos we send these outreach videos are probably around a minute, you don’t you want them to be clear, concise, and to the point, you don’t want them to drag on for ages because you know, people’s time is valuable. So yeah, they’d normally about a minute.

And it’s broken up into a few different sections, which I’m gonna get into now. So the first thing within your video that you’re sending directly to someone on LinkedIn, you want to start firstly, by getting to the point, you know, you don’t want to fluff at the start because it just instantly puts people off, they won’t watch the rest of the video. So you want to get to the point.

4:35 Dan

The first part I call context. What is the context of you sending this video to this person? Why are you reaching out to them? Now if you listen to business anchors, Episode 74. I talked through the strategy in detail. But this first part is all about why you’re reaching out to them.

So for example, the way we use this in our LinkedIn outreach strategy is If someone is showing signs that they’re interested in what we’re doing.

So for example, this could be commenting on our videos and our content on LinkedIn positively, liking our content on LinkedIn, visiting my profile on LinkedIn, but not communicating with me. These are all like context as to why I’d be sending someone a video.

So for example, in a video, I would be saying, hey, so and so I just wanted to send you a quick video because I noticed you viewed my profile, and just wanted to see if there’s anything we can help with, as that kind of thing, giving context right at the start to give a good idea of why you’re reaching out to them.

5:43 Dan

The second part, now this seems strange because it’s slightly early compared to other types of content. But having a call to action after that is important. So for example, you need to think about what do you want the next steps to be once they watch this video, and you want to get this in as early as possible because it’s likely that some people won’t watch all of the videos.

So once you’ve given your context, hey, so and so just wanted to reach out to you because of x, y,z wanted to see if there’s an opportunity for us to have a chat, or a zoom call, or a phone call, or a meeting, or whatever that call to action is to get it right at the start.

So that person knows, one, why you’re reaching out to them, why you’re sending them a video, and two what you want them to do after that video. So the first two parts are context and a clear call to action.

6:32 Dan

Number three, the third element in that video is what you can offer them. So what is it that you? What can you offer them? You know, is it accounting? Is it marketing? Is it cleaning, whatever it is, you need to somehow communicate what you can offer that person.

Another really good tip for this is to make sure you do your research, for example, us as a marketing agency that produces creative ads. Before I will reach out to anyone, I’ll look at what ads they’re currently running, if any, to understand what they’re currently doing.

So that when I say we can produce some creative ads for you, you can add more context to show it’s more personalised so you can say, I’ll check out your Facebook ads and saw that you’re not running any or I saw that you don’t currently use short-form video content.

This is a great opportunity to get to achieve x y z, you know and give that context and communicate what you can do for them. So when I talk about this, we talk about producing creative video content and running paid ads all to drive a trackable return on investment.

What is it that you can offer that person, clearly communicate that? So we’ve got the context, the call to action, what you can offer them.

7:48 Dan

Then number four is social proof. So social proof is credibility. So they know why you’re getting in touch with them what you want them to do, what you can offer them. Now it’s a case of demonstrating that you deliver on your promises, what can you share with them, that demonstrates that you deliver on your promises.

So for example, it could be sharing some quick case studies to say we’d love to do your cleaning in your office for you. We’ve worked with x y z brands, who in your area who are very credible, who have hired us, or it could be talking about the results you’ve achieved for clients.

You know, for example, some of the things we mentioned is, some of the work we’ve done to deliver 1.2 million pounds of trackable E-commerce sales for some of the E-commerce brands we’ve worked with, about us producing a TV ad, about us helping clients go viral.

There are these things that we’ve done that demonstrate we deliver on our promises for clients, which you can be mentioned in this video. And again, this video is like a minute long, so you don’t want to end up waffling for half an hour, it needs to be bullet points.

And that could be another tip actually to help you format this, write it down in bullet points. I don’t tend to do that. I tend to just do it because I’m used to sending these videos, but you might want to do some prep before. So then you got your social proof.

9:09 Dan

Number five, call to action. Again. I know we’ve already done a call to action right at the start. But again, you want to remind the person watching. So just to summarise, it’d be great if we could set up a call or a zoom call or have a meeting or have a chat or whatever that is, just to remind them at the end of that video. They know exactly what you want them to do.

9:30 Dan

Then the final part, which I’ve called begging for forgiveness, I think at the end of these outreach videos I always like to say like, this may not be relevant, and I apologise if it’s not so if it’s not relevant, you’ve got this all covered then no hard feelings.

Thanks for taking the time to watch this anyway. You know, just to show that you understand and value their time and if it’s not relevant then fair enough. What you don’t want to be is like trying to be pushy sales with people because you know, just be a nice person.

10:05 Dan

So there’s the structure just to summarise again, you’ve got context, call to action, what you can offer, social proof, call to action and beg for forgiveness. There the six kinds of different parts to this.

10:17 Dan

What I want to share now is just some additional tips around sending these outreach videos that we found from doing this for the last six to 12 months. So firstly, tip number one with your LinkedIn outreach videos. Talk like a normal person, don’t put your business video voice on, again, people buy from people and you want to be relatable in your content.

So something that I found when I first started making any kind of videos as I went directly to this robotic weird, like, oh, I don’t know what I’m talking like, don’t sound like myself. So some tip I saw on Tik Tok recently was, imagine you’re talking to one person down the barrel of that lens, imagine it’s one person you’re speaking to.

And that kind of mindset, you’ll come across a lot better, you’ll come across like you are talking to one person who is the one person behind the screen. Rather than thinking, I am in a room full of 100 people Hello, everyone, you know, which one of those two comes across better to you.

The first one, I’m pretty sure. So really try and practice just coming across like you’re having a conversation with one person, and it will land more with the person watching that video. That’s the first tip.

The second tip is to practice enough that you feel comfortable kind of leads on from that first point, make sure you practice what you’re saying enough. So it appears natural and you appear calm. Don’t just do one video and send it instantly if you’ve never done this before, do a video, watch it back and just practice coming across naturally and that kind of thing.

What you don’t want to end up doing is that it’s so prepared that it looks over-prepared. And it’s like oh god, this person just sends out hundreds of videos to random people. And it’s not that at all. So yeah, make sure you practice and get comfortable with it. The third point and I think a lot of traditional sales, people will probably say this is a rubbish tip.

But my third tip is don’t follow up too many times. Personally, when I’m sending these outreach videos, I don’t think I have ever followed up once after sending them because someone gets a video view. And they’re gonna watch it because it’s a video message in their inbox that people rarely send them if they don’t respond, you know, don’t keep following up.

That’s one of the most annoying things ever. Hey, did you see my video? They have seen it. I get what you would follow up with others, like communication formats, like email and stuff because they can get lost. But yeah, a video inbox message people aren’t gonna miss.

And also, just to give you an example, we’ve, with this strategy, I’ve sent a video like ages ago to someone and it took like, I didn’t get a response. I didn’t follow up. And then six months later, that person had moved to another company. And they messaged me and said, You sent me a video six months ago, it wasn’t the right time. Now in this new company, this could work well.

So yeah, you don’t want to end up being annoying with these because, again, then you’re going to turn people off. And yeah, so sorry, traditional salespeople, you’re probably gonna say I’m rubbish because I’m going against what you’d normally say. But that’s just my opinion.

And then I guess a final tip. I would recommend don’t send these videos, and this is all in Episode 74 that I mentioned that the business anchors podcast, but don’t send videos to people who have shown no level of interest in working with you. I think, again, you want to spend your time sending videos to people who are interested rather than just annoying everyone.

So really focusing on the strategy I mentioned that podcast episode, where you identify people who are showing signs that they’re interested in viewing your profile, commenting on your content and that kind of thing. Because otherwise, you’ll just end up spending loads of time sending videos to people who don’t give a shit about you, who don’t want your services and who aren’t interested.

Again, other salespeople might say it’s a numbers game, send as many as possible. But for me, and again, I can only speak from my experience, what’s worked for us is identifying the right people to send the videos to who we genuinely believe we can add value to and who have shown interest in us.

14:30 Dan

So yeah, hopefully, you find these tips useful. And this has been a bit weird without Lloyd being here. It’s been a bit of a solo episode. So hopefully it’s been alright, I know Lloyds is not here to say stupid stuff like normal. It’s been quite nice not having him here. But maybe you prefer him here.

So next week, he’ll probably be back. But uh, yeah, if you’ve enjoyed listening to this or any of our podcasts, please do subscribe. And also leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It’d be really helpful to us to help get the podcast to more people. I know lots of you haven’t left a review.

So please do leave a review. And I look forward to being back here with Lloyd, my partner in crime next week to record another episode of business anchors. See you in your ears then. Oh, that was a terrible outro. See you in your ears.

Hopefully this has taught you everything you need to know about how to format a LinkedIn outreach video that works, if you have any more questions or want to know how Knowlton we can support you anything Start A Conversation.