Imperfect Marketing
Imperfect Marketing
285: Leveraging LinkedIn for Leads and Sales with Guest Colin Hirdman
In this episode of Imperfect Marketing, I sit down with Colin Hirdman, the founder of Rainmaker, to uncover how professionals can use LinkedIn as a powerful revenue-generating tool. Colin shares his journey from entrepreneurship to building a business that automates LinkedIn best practices in an authentic and transparent way.
We discuss:
Rethinking LinkedIn for Business Growth
- Why LinkedIn is more than just a networking platform—it’s a revenue driver
- The importance of authenticity and relationship-building
- Why traditional sales tactics don’t work on LinkedIn
Building a Targeted LinkedIn Audience
- How to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator effectively
- A unique “event hack” to find engaged prospects
- Using key influencers as proxies to reach the right people
Activating Your LinkedIn Connections
- The step-by-step method to connecting with 25 people per day
- Why first-degree LinkedIn connections are more valuable than email lists
- The right way to send messages without coming off as salesy
Turning Engagement into Revenue
- How to nurture connections with a non-salesy approach
- Using LinkedIn live streams as a powerful marketing tool
- The secret to getting people to opt into your expertise
Key Takeaways for Marketers
- Shift from a sales mindset to an education-first approach
- Stop chasing leads—build relationships and let them come to you
- Why providing value is the most effective way to drive business
Whether you're a solopreneur, a sales leader, or a business owner looking to maximize LinkedIn’s potential, this episode is packed with actionable insights you can implement right away.
Are you ready to transform LinkedIn into your most valuable marketing tool? Tune in now to learn how to navigate this powerful platform the right way.
📌 Links & Resources:
🔗 Connect with Colin and learn more about Rainmaker: https://rainmakergrows.com
Website: https://www.rainmakergrows.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinhirdman/
🔗 Follow Kendra Corman for more marketing insights: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kendracorman/
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Hi, I'm Kendra Korman. If you're a coach, consultant or marketer, you know marketing is far from a perfect science, and that's why this show is called Imperfect Marketing. Join me and my guests as we explore how to grow your business with marketing tips and, of course, lessons learned along the way. Hello and welcome to another episode of Imperfect Marketing. I'm your host, Kendra Korman, and today I'm joined by Colin who is the founder of Rainmaker, I believe and we're going to be talking about LinkedIn, marketing and sales, and I'm a big fan of LinkedIn, so I can't wait to get started. Welcome. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Kendra, for having me. I'm really excited to share what I know.
Speaker 1:All right. So how did you get into this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I've been an entrepreneur my whole life. I started my first company a week after I graduated from college with a criminal justice degree, which I never used. I never took a business, accounting or marketing class in college and really learned entrepreneurship and business from the school of hard knocks. So that first company I had for about a decade. I sold that and then in 2007, I started Monkey Island Ventures with two of my best friends.
Speaker 2:We've all known each other since we were about five years old and Monkey Island is named after a park we used to play at when we were kids, located in St Paul here, and I'm in Minneapolis, so right here in the Twin Cities. So since 2007, we've launched probably 12 SaaS products. We have a digital marketing company, a software development company, have about 40 employees and had been doing a lot of kind of growth hacking, growth marketing through cold email and LinkedIn the last six, seven years and kind of February, march-ish of 2024, I went to my business partners and said you know, I think I could build a real business off of the LinkedIn kind of software and process that I've built out and so launched Rainmaker early last year and have been growing it ever since through really a lot of the strategies and tactics that we'll talk about today.
Speaker 1:Awesome. So tell me a little bit about what is Rainmaker.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Rainmaker is, think about, almost like a white glove SaaS, so my clients work directly with me. My software process kind of sit in the back end and I'm just really simply automating some of the best practices within LinkedIn, but doing it in a way that's very authentic and we'll use this kind of general philosophy that we'll get into. But I've tried to make it very transparent. You know, everything I'm doing is happening within LinkedIn. Pricing model is very transparent. It's up on the website. There's two pricing plans. There's no contract. So I've just tried to make it great for anyone that's a solopreneur, fractional, all the way up to my biggest client has seven other salespeople on it and really we're all approaching LinkedIn the same way and I'm really excited to share some of that with you today.
Speaker 1:Great. Well, thank you very much for sharing that, and we'll have links to that website in the show notes or description on YouTube, depending on where you're listening or watching, so be sure to check that out. Now let's talk about leveraging LinkedIn for leads and sales. Right, what should people be doing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's a great question. I want to preface everything with just saying everything I'm talking about today. You and your audience can go and do all this manually if you want. You can go and implement everything we're talking about on the podcast literally as soon as they get done listening to it, and I can also guarantee that this strategies and tactics work. I am not helping my clients with their LinkedIn profile. I am also not helping them with organic posts. So that whole side of LinkedIn we won't be talking about any of that today.
Speaker 2:I want LinkedIn to be a revenue driver for my company. I like LinkedIn. I'm not a huge social media guy, but I like LinkedIn. I like that. It's not toxic, it's about business and I want to build relationships, but I also want to drive revenue. I want to land customers and build my business through it. So we're going to talk about kind of these three layers. The first layer is the philosophy that I adopt and that I want my clients to adopt. Then the second layer is around audience and audience building, and then that last layer around activating that audience. What are the campaigns and strategies that we can actually start to implement?
Speaker 2:So I'll start with the philosophy and there's kind of three parts to that. The first is being authentic and genuine on LinkedIn. I think most people do a good job of that. You need to do that. You need to be authentic and genuine to who you are and to the brands that you represent. That's table stakes, right? I think everybody does generally a pretty good job of that.
Speaker 2:The second thing is mindset. You need to come to LinkedIn with an educational mindset, because nobody wants to be sold on LinkedIn. Okay, those of you out there that are trying to book a meeting right after you connect with someone, trying to sell people right away, it doesn't work. It turns people off, it ruins the LinkedIn ecosystem. So stop doing that. It doesn't work.
Speaker 2:The second thing is an experimentation mindset. Right, you want to try different tactics, different features that LinkedIn allows you to use and see what works. Stack those things, the things that aren't working, you know, table those and maybe try them again at a later date. But you want to have that experimentation mindset as well. Then the last thing is really understanding the pains and barriers your prospects are trying to overcome, like, what are their real pain points? Then you know what is it that they want to be educated on, right. And then, finally, what is it that you can teach? What can they learn from you? And so that's the basic philosophy being authentic and genuine, have an education and experimentation mindset and then figuring out what is it that your audience can learn from you? What can you teach? So I'll stop there and see if you have any questions, but that's the philosophy that I use and that I want my clients to adopt.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that that's so important. So, number one, we'll go back to. You talked about authenticity, right? I think that that is so, so, so important. As you said, the majority of people are doing that correctly, I think, since the advent of AI, which should be making us more efficient and effective at being authentic. Unfortunately, I think some people are misusing that tool a little bit and not being as authentic as they can be. So just a caution make sure, like, if you're leveraging AI, like you're using it right and you're giving it the information that you should be giving it. I personally, I mean, this show is called Imperfect Marketing because marketing is part art, part science, so experimentation is important and an education mindset, I think, is so key around almost any type of content that you're creating. So fantastic, I love that. So what's next?
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 2:So the layer underneath that is then around audience. Right, we need to start targeting an audience. I'm typically using Sales Navigator to do that. Sales Navigator is the sales tool that LinkedIn has. It's around $100 a month. I'd say. About half my clients have it. The other half don't those that don't have it. I just use mine and build the audiences from there.
Speaker 2:The second thing is kind of a couple of growth hacks. So one would be identifying an audience through LinkedIn events that maybe your direct competitors are doing, or maybe there's an industry organization doing a LinkedIn event around a topic that your business solves for. If you go and attend those events, you can see everyone else that's also attending the event and you could actually start to build out an audience of people that are already publicly raising their hand and saying this is who I am and I'm interested in this topic. Right, so attending events put on by your direct competitors or by an industry organization that's putting again the topic is something that your business solves for.
Speaker 2:The second would be using a person as a proxy. So there's a woman on LinkedIn. She's got like 70,000 followers and she talks a lot about your LinkedIn profile and organic posts and how to utilize that side of LinkedIn and I reached out to connect with her. She connected back with me and, because her connections are open, I can look at everyone. That's a first connection to her, but as a second connection to me, and I can actually start reaching out to specific people or audiences that follow her, because I know they're most likely following her because they want to better understand how they can take advantage of LinkedIn. Well, they'd probably be a good candidate for Rainmaker as well, right, and so using a person as a proxy so, but that's generally how I'm building audiences is through Sales Navigator, but then also through LinkedIn events or other people as a proxy. So I'll stop there and see if you have any questions around like audience building.
Speaker 1:So I've never heard that events tip before. You're the first person to share that with me and I do. I follow a lot of people with LinkedIn tips, so that's, that's fantastic. I love it when there's stuff that I haven't heard before and I think you know again, yeah, and I, I will again.
Speaker 1:You're going in with an education mindset, not a let's message all her contacts and see if we can, you know, sell something to them, right? So, um, it's about finding people with like interests, and way back in the beginning of my business, I I took a Sandler sales training. I don't know if you, if you're familiar with it, but one of the things that they said is what you want to do is identify somebody who has your dream audience, right, that's one of the things that they said. So they're they're probably not a competitor, right there. I think he was talking to like an accountant at the time. Well, maybe there's an estate planning attorney that has your dream audience, right, and that's how you were going to target and do partnerships and things like that. And this sounds a lot like that and I think it's really effective because, again, you're targeting. These people are already interested in the type of content that she's creating, and using that person as a proxy is just a really great way to find your niche right out of the millions of people on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right. Yeah, and the beautiful thing is, yeah, you can use the filters within regular LinkedIn search or within Sales Navigator and really start to hone in on your audience around geography, industry, title, et cetera.
Speaker 1:Very cool. All right, so the next one.
Speaker 2:Yep, the bottom layer is in activating the audience right. So we've adopted the philosophy of how we're gonna approach people. We've now identified some specific audiences that we want to start connecting with and building relationship with. So the very first thing you want to do is start connecting with the audience. You want to start building out more first connections. So we will not be talking about in-mail at all today. We will not be talking about sponsors or paid anything. We want to build more first connections with our ICPs, our ideal client profiles.
Speaker 2:The cadence, then, that I use is reaching out to 25 people a day, monday through Friday during normal working hours. That's 125 people a week, 500 people a month. That stays under the weekly LinkedIn limit. So if you're going to in-person events or going to a trade show whatever you can still connect with people organically as you're meeting them. We're not using a connection message almost never. We're almost always just reaching out to connect. We're getting around a 20 to 25 percent connection rate. So if you're in the low teens to high single digits it's, it's you probably need to refresh your, your, your, your audience and go after a new list. If you're above 25 percent, then audience and go after a new list. If you're, you know, above 25%, then you're doing really, really well. So the connection rates around around 20%.
Speaker 2:If someone doesn't connect within 30 days, then we withdraw or we rescind the invite and that's just good hygiene. So, again, everything we're talking about you and everybody listening you can go into your LinkedIn profile and account right now and start withdrawing the invites that are over 30 days. There'll be a three-week period of time in which you can't re-invite them, but after that three-week period of time is up, you could re-invite them to connect, and so the beauty of that is kind of creating these pools of people you could reach back out to at a later date, because most people it's not that they don't want to connect with you. A lot of times it's your alert gets pushed down, they don't see it and then it just stays down there and they will never respond. So it's just good hygiene to and LinkedIn wants to see you doing that as well. So that's kind of that base layer is increasing the first connections that you have, and I think people underestimate and undervalue the value of a LinkedIn first degree connection.
Speaker 2:Because of some of the strategies we'll talk about today, you can interact with your first connections in so many different ways that can bring value to them that you really can't do it any other way. Like I would much rather have a first degree connection to someone on LinkedIn than their email address, right, if you have their email address, you get to email them, that's it, right. You can't do some of the features, the nurturing that you can do on LinkedIn when you all you know, if you're just connected with them or you just have their email, okay.
Speaker 2:So there are times when we will use a connection message. That's, you know, will be instances like maybe you're going to a trade show or a conference and you have a list of attendees and you want to, you know, put in some kind of a message like hey, kendra, you know, I see we're both going to so-and-so conference, would love to connect you, connect with you here beforehand and, you know, maybe connect at the conference, right. However, you might want to say that. Or, if it's post-conference, you might want to say hey, kendra, sorry we weren't able to connect at the conference, to connect at the conference, but I'd love to connect with you here on LinkedIn, right. But you know, unless you have a message that doesn't feel kind of canned, connection rates will actually be lower than if you just didn't even have a connection message at all. Well, that's connecting right, building out your first degree connections. I'll pause there really quick before I get into some strategies then of how you activate these first degree connections. But see if you had any thoughts.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm excited to hear how you activate these connections because, like in my world, email lists are gold, so I'm dying to hear how you activate them in a way that makes it more valuable than email.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll tell you. So one is like a message campaign, right? So a lot of times we'll bolt on a message campaign to these new first connections and that's like a DM, right? Virtually 100% of the people that you message will see this message, just as if you had sent them an email. That first message I'm imploring people do not sell anything, don't even try and help. Just thank them authentically for the connection. Okay, and based off of the audience that you're building, you can customize the things for connecting to a specific audience.
Speaker 2:So, like you know, one of my clients is connecting with people that run on EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system, and he'll put a little connection message in there saying oh, it's great to connect with other people that use EOS. Right, there you go, I've got traction behind me. I love it. That's an example. But that first message goes out. Again, this is all happening on LinkedIn. If they respond, it just shows up in your LinkedIn inbox and now you can take that conversation wherever you want it to go. If they don't respond, then seven to 14 days later, you want to send your next message. That's where the value has be. Some of my clients are asking a really great question and they're getting a really nice response from their prospects. Another might be there is an asset that they've built out and they want to share it, or maybe there's a third party asset that they want to share because they think would be of high value to these prospects.
Speaker 2:Maybe, you want to invite them to participate in a LinkedIn poll. Maybe you want to invite them to an event. Maybe it's an in-person event, maybe it's a LinkedIn live stream, right? Maybe you want to invite them to an event. Maybe it's an in-person event, maybe it's a LinkedIn live stream, right? There's all of these different ways where you might create an asset for a specific audience that is in a certain industry or title that you've been connecting to over the last X amount of years, and you can just send out a discreet, you know, one-off message where you're sharing this asset right? And you're wanting to get some kind of a reply. Maybe it's, you know, on your lives, on your website, maybe it's a LinkedIn article, maybe it's some kind of a post you've done to your personal profile or on the company page on LinkedIn, et cetera. But again, it's like to talk about that philosophy. What are the pains and barriers that prospects are trying to overcome? How can you help them with that? Through the content, through the assets that you're building out? Ok, so we've talked about building out your first degree network. Again, I'm not opposed to email as well, like that's. One of the benefits of getting these first degree connections is you can also get email addresses from a lot of these people. Once you're connected to them, then it's around sending you know direct messages through like a drip campaign or one-off.
Speaker 2:My favorite, possibly B2B marketing tactic that I've ever come across are LinkedIn live streams, and LinkedIn live streams are wonderful because the first thing you want to do is identify an audience and a topic that you think they care about. Then you want to build out the LinkedIn event on LinkedIn as a LinkedIn live stream and then what you want to do is you want to start inviting those your first connections to the event and you use the LinkedIn event invite function. Okay, it's a discrete function in LinkedIn that shows up as an alert, so it's not coming in as a direct message. It's a wonderful soft touch and you don't. It's almost impossible to burn out your audience, even if you're sending this doing the same topic to the same audience like once a month. There's no reason why you couldn't keep inviting that same audience once a month to the same topic, because people are some people aren't going to see it. Some people aren't going to be able to make it when you do it. I've had people register for like three or four of the exact same event in a row because they weren't able to make previous sessions, right. So it's a great also indicator. If you're not getting anyone to attend the event, then you know your topic or your audience, or both are off. So it's a great way of really starting to hone in on what your audience really cares about.
Speaker 2:Then you can also promote these LinkedIn live streams anywhere. Everyone's logged into their LinkedIn account almost all the time. So regardless of whether that link is somewhere within LinkedIn through a LinkedIn group or your posts or your company page, or as an organic post, or maybe that you're sending it through an email campaign right, and you're inviting people to the event through an email campaign, maybe it's up on your website. When people click that link, they're already logged into LinkedIn. They just get to the event page and then they just get to decide do I click attend or not? Then you actually put on the live stream. You have to use a third party product in which to do it, because you can't do it within LinkedIn. I use StreamYard and there's other products you know like Riverside and you know Restream StreamYard and you host the event.
Speaker 2:But for me, the magic is really after the event is over, and I'll explain it like this. Number one when people click the attend button, they're opting into you. Now, okay, they are taking an action that's opting into you, which is, in their mind, saying I trust this person enough or this company enough that I'm going to press the attend button. They're putting on a topic that I'm interested in, that I care about, and I see them enough as a thought leader that I'm going to take this action. Now that they've opted into you, I think it's changed not only the relationship, but it's even kind of changed things mentally, where you're not just selling them. They've opted into you to learn from you, and that's where that teaching matters so much. And of course, you want to be teaching things that on the back end, of course, you can sell them right, so it doesn't need to be a sales pitch. But what I'm saying is I'm not teaching people how to bake. I'm teaching people how to use LinkedIn right, because I know that they could potentially buy Rainmaker down the line.
Speaker 2:So but the magic is that when the event is over, I follow up with all the attendees with a message okay, and the message will say hey, kendra, thanks again for registering for the LinkedIn live stream that I hosted. Here's a link to the recording. Okay, the recording lives on the event page, the live stream page, forever, and then underneath it I'll say If you ever want to chat LinkedIn strategy, feel free to grab some time convenient for you here. And then I give my Calendly link. Okay, for any B2B, getting those meetings is absolutely critical to the lifeline of your business, right? You have to have those meetings, and so what these LinkedIn live streams are allowing you to do is to get people to opt into you. You're able to follow up with a message. Like I said, you're able to give a calendly meeting invite link in a way that doesn't feel salesy, it doesn't feel spammy, it's just a natural next step that people would take after they started to learn from you.
Speaker 2:And these LinkedIn live streams have this long tail effect where a lot of times people will click the alert of you inviting them to the event, but the events already happened and you they'll end up done just watching the recording that that's on the event page.
Speaker 2:So I did one a week ago, tuesday of last week, and it was a 30 minute live stream and within 36 hours I had over a thousand minutes watched on the live stream, and it's because I'm educating this audience on how to use LinkedIn Right. I'm sharing what I know, just like I'm doing on the podcast with you, and so that's the beauty, I think, of not only LinkedIn live streams but just LinkedIn in general and the ways that we've been talking about it is it allows you to really build relationship with your prospects. Share what you know, because we're all experts in our areas of industry and business. So share what you know. Don't sell and then figure out these different ways that you can insert your calendars to kind of take things to the next level where you can actually book meetings. And if you think about everything we've talked about, none of this has anything to do with organic posts. It's all about honing in on your ICPs. It's all about providing value and it's all about getting them to move them through the funnel into actually having conversation.
Speaker 1:Okay, so first off, I just I love your philosophy on this whole thing. So educating, building relationships and then getting them to a discovery call where they can make a decision right, we're adding value, so nobody loses. This isn't like it's selling but not selling, and I think a lot of business owners, especially in the B2B space, a lot of times they struggle with selling and they think sales is a four letter word and not when you do it right, you know, because marketing is all about relationships and when you're building these relationships here like this, that's just, it's so, it's so powerful. So I love this, I love your tips, I love your insights and all the information you shared.
Speaker 1:If you want to learn more, definitely check out his information and Rainmaker in the show notes and video description down below, because I think that there's just so much more to get to. Before I let you go, though, I do need to ask you the question that I ask all of my guests, and that is this show's called Imperfect Marketing. Marketing is anything but a perfect science. What has been your biggest marketing lesson learned?
Speaker 2:I think it is getting out of the sales mindset and getting into the teaching mindset. So you know, I've been. I've sat in the sales seat since I was 22 years old. I know what it feels like to as a founder or a sales or marketer like you want to close business, you want to grow business, you want to generate revenue. It's like emotional attachment to just trying to get the person on the other end to buy from you. We got to emotionally distance ourselves from that and just remember these marketing principles of like. I think it's what seven or 11 touches before somebody starts to feel real comfortable with you and all that. Linkedin is the perfect opportunity for you to do that in all the ways that we've talked about and more. And so I think for me, nothing is more concrete in my mind than using that educational mindset and get out of feeling that pressure of selling and get into the mindset of educating.
Speaker 1:And I think that there's again so much value there in providing value. I can't reiterate it enough as to how important that is for people as they continue, as they continue their journey in their business. And all right, let me ask you one, one last question here, because it just came to mind, because I think one of the biggest pushbacks I get from people is, if I share everything, then they're just going to go off and do it themselves, and and my thought is is well, those people aren't going to buy from you anyway, whether you share it or not. But what are your?
Speaker 2:thoughts. Do not let the fear of sharing ever stop you. Don't let it stop you because you're worried people are going to take it. Go do it themselves. Don't let it stop you if you think one of your competitors are going to try and copy you like you have to share the uniqueness and the value that you provide and I guarantee the vast majority of people. If it's a real pain point, they don't have the time to go do it. They don't have the time or the ability to do it in the way that you do it, and if the pain's big enough, they will hire you. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you again so much for joining me. This episode has been packed with actionable tips and information which I love and I love to share with you all, watching and listening. If you learn something today, it would really help me out if you would rate and subscribe wherever you're listening or watching. Until next time, have a great rest of your day.
