Scale Faster with Proven Go-To-Market and LinkedIn Strategies with Maja Voje

Scale Faster with Proven Go-To-Market and LinkedIn Strategies with Maja Voje
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[00:00:00]

Maja: How can you explain to a customer that is paying you $1,000 now that from that month on, they should be paying you $3,000 because you're better? I mean, it's not an easy conversation to have. You can have it. I mean, you can justify it that you hired more people, that the service got better so pricing is really interesting stuff.

Allan: Welcome to the Lean Marketing Podcast, where we unpack proven strategies to get more leads, more profit and less marketing. I'm your host, Allan Dib.

Today, I've got a very special guest with me. She's an author. She is a LinkedIn expert and she's a go to market expert. So we're going to unpack all of that today. Welcome, Maja Voje. Welcome.

Maja: Wow. Thank you so much, Allan. You know that I'm this huge fan and you made me fire one snow leopard and I read both of your books. So it's my sincere honor to be here. And I hope that we will have the chance to just like, talk a little bit about, start with [00:01:00] buy, because we like to make money, don't we?

Allan: I love it. I love it. I love it. We're going to get into it. I mean, you've heard my view about start with buy what's yours.

Maja: Oh my god. Look, I come from Europe, if somebody didn't hear that. And the thing is that there aren't much like VC funds around. And our business angels are more like business devils sometimes.

So capital is extremely scarce and the majority of us have to bootstrap, right? And how much money do you really want to invest in your product, in your innovation, in your service, before you see some coming back, is a question that I'm literally obsessed by.

Because what you don't want to do is to develop and like throw a lot of money into the development of something that market will not want. So I'm known to do like all sorts of pre sales. I can do it with a PowerPoint presentation, with a Notion page, with a Google document, but just to [00:02:00] get these stronger signals from the market that people will not just say, Yeah, I love it.

Don't give up. Please stay in your basement. But that we are actually building a business model because that in my reality is mission critical. What about in yours, Allan?

Allan: Yeah. So, I mean, I love what you said about it's really about voting with your wallet, not with you know, Hey, yes, I would like that or whatever. Right. So a lot of people will give you positive signals. but when it comes to buy, they're real positive signals when someone, when you're launching a new product.

But you're a go to market specialist. So what does go to market mean and how does it actually like differ from Like to me, it sounds like it's just a fancy word for product launch. And I guess it's more tech startups and things like that.

But maybe I'm off track. Can you enlighten us?

Maja: No, I love it that we started with misconceptions. Why? Because I usually get two misconceptions of what go to market is. So [00:03:00] either people mistake it for a launch per se and other more technical teams often mistake it for marketing per se. Whereas go to market is a much broader field. Not only marketing, but also product, pricing, positioning, a couple of other cool elements, such as marketing, and it's like a multidisciplinary field, right?

So it's not just like, which channel should we use in order to bring 1, 000 people to this website? And the second misconception is when. When should this be done? Type of work even start, so you said launch. How do we launch stuff? How do we get like first 100 buyers or something like that? Well, technically that might be the case from you.

And I'm not trying to advocate for something which is not practical for people. But imagine if you start it, this process of preparing for launch a little bit sooner when you could actually still change your product and [00:04:00] you could actually set up the price that market will accept. So for me, go to market starts way sooner than actually launching this with the discovery, with research, with.

how to differentiate ourselves from competitors and continues after. For me, it's like all about reaching this early majority and let's say that the holy grail of go to market is to find one repeatable go to market motion. And I think I made another mistake of using another password. So what is go to market motion?

Let's describe it as a predictable and scalable way to get clients. So if you sell soap, for example, this will probably be just like Facebook advertising, Instagram advertising, and a couple of influencers, right? This makes sense. If you are selling enterprise software, it will probably be a combination of [00:05:00] partnerships, just like a little bit of outbound, a little bit of outreach, and some sort of events and presentations.

So you need to get your engine going. So it's a much broader area than tech per se. I hope that I brought more clarity, not confusion. So if we just like narrow it down to a simple definition, it's our best shot to achieve product market fit. This is like the first point that we are tackling. It ends when we find a perfect, scalable, predictable way how do we acquire customers.

Well

Allan: I like that because traditionally marketing is often sprinkled over the top at the end. And I can see why they've come up with a new term for go to market because it's much more expansive. In my world marketing comes long before product launch. In fact, lean marketing principle number two, it's all about marketing is embedded all throughout the entire product lifecycle [00:06:00] from idea right through customer service and even disposal of the product. I guess that. in the area of go to market strategy, that's something that you've thought about for a very long time.

But in the marketing space, that's something that's kind of pretty radical, pretty different. So, I love that. Is it mostly tech companies that use the term go to market strategy or do you see that used outside of that?

Maja: for now, yes, but you know how it is, everything like also this let's say idea of agile and fast experimentation, rapid experimentation is somehow connected to the cool shit that we do in Silicon Valley and startups and whatnots, right? So let's call them early innovators of this concept. But it gets really interesting as this field achieves early majority.

So, for example, right now I'm tackling a case of literally how marketing is done in a [00:07:00] corporate environment, right? And you have like brand marketing and you have brand managers. and you have digital marketing and a bunch of other marketings. So who's responsible for these go to market becomes a really interesting question.

And it also can be very disruptive to current processes. To be specific, the majority of corporations in my ecosystem work with for example, in terms of how to research for pricing with focus groups. But that's still like people say they will do something, right? And those people are compensated with gift cards or even paid to participate in this type of research.

And since just like the landscape is becoming credibly different, we have digital first customers. We have just like this shifted customer journey, which includes so much more digital. So touch points, even for traditional industries, I think we have to rethink [00:08:00] what we do and just like have the best chance to win on our go to market journey.

Allan: So I was reading your book just earlier on. So this is your book, Go To Market Strategist.

Maja: you.

Allan: And I sort of, I'm sort of flicking through the index and I'm reading it, but yeah, I the bit that caught my eyes, pricing. Pricing is something that is a real lever that really attracts my interest because I've seen what a massive difference it can make for a business.

It affects positioning. It affects literally the profit. It affects literally everything. So, what's your Yeah. approach to pricing. So let's say I'm, I'm launching a SaaS product or whatever, something that doesn't have, you know, a lot of variable costs associated

Maja: You helped me a lot.

Allan: Yeah. So I could launch it to consumers for 5 a month. I could launch it to enterprise for 5, 000 a month. And maybe they both could use it in some way. So, how do you go about pricing and thinking about price there?

Maja: [00:09:00] Okay. Allan, I also have a very shifted definition of product market fit.

Allan: Perfect.

Maja: product Please hit me

Okay. Product market fit is often misunderstood of this intercept between a product and a market, right? So a product is supposed to create value for a customer and this was it. Well, not in my world.

We also need to capture some of this value created and create a sustainable business model, right? And then we have like a little intercept of how we do it again and again, which is channel. And as you are familiar with 4Ps, like marketing mix, pricing is the only one that makes money. So I said value.

I said value multiple times. Let's imagine pricing as just like this unit of value capturing of the value that our product delivers to a customer. And the next question is how much [00:10:00] value can we really create slash capture, right? This is a very interesting mental exercise. that starts with comparing certain alternatives.

For example, let's say that we invented an AI tool for LinkedIn posts, for writing LinkedIn posts, and we would start our thinking around pricing by saying, okay, this is an obvious problem that we can solve. How much do people currently pay per month? to have this problem solved, right? And you can do it yourself.

I mean, it wouldn't cost you nothing. And most people don't consider that time has huge opportunity cost, but it could be a zero or just like ignore it. So don't necessarily, will you even pay for this? Are we interested in creating such products? No. So the next thing that we could consider is. You can hire this as a ghostwriting service or just like have it done with an agency or something like that.

How much would that cost [00:11:00] us? Well, that would cost us approximately starting from 500 to 5, 000 or even higher if we are very ambitious about our vendor selection. And last but not least, there are also other tools. Our direct competitors that provide a similar type of value. Because our customer, an entrepreneur that is thinking, Okay, how to step up my LinkedIn game? Should I hire somebody? Should I just like tweak a tool together? Should I just like do something in ChatGPT myself and hope for the best? These are the serious options that they are considering, right?

And let's say that this would be the first level how we do pricing. To just like see from how much to how much, what is our wiggle room? What is our axis on which we operate? Okay, then we have to have a very realistic conversation with ourselves. Where do we sit in this arena, right? Can my newly developed LinkedIn tool really develop as much [00:12:00] value as a copywriter who has been doing this for 20 years? Of course not. So we need to just like realistically evaluate How much value are we delivering in comparison with other alternatives and for software? There is this very simple rule of thumb.

It's not scientifically done research, but it usually works. We can capture up to 20, sometimes even 30%, but the safe zone is 10 to 20% of, let's say, if this would be done as a service, right? This ideal. value that would be created for our persona if this is relevant. And that's a very good start to test, right?

To just like present this as a demo to an early adopter and say, is this worth that much to you? And we have like really cool methods, how we can test this. But this would be just like my initial thinking around pricing. What already [00:13:00] solves this problem? Where do we sit in this competition arena? And what is a fair value capture?

I mean, how much would our target customer tolerate?

Allan: So just so I'm understanding. So for example, if I'm paying a thousand dollars a month right now for LinkedIn posts and you've got an automated tool, you'd price it initially maybe at a hundred dollars a month. Is that, am

Maja: That would be the top one in terms of value capture, but then on the other dimension, I would also have to compare it with other tools. So, for example, if there is already an existing player that does job extremely well, then it would be unfair for a client to pay you 50 if they charge 30, right? So I need to run an additional analysis based on that.

Allan: What about using price as a positioning tool where somebody is 30 in the marketplace and I say, look, I'm coming in at 60 and I'm the Rolls Royce version of this tool or this product or whatever. do you think about that?

Maja: Great if it [00:14:00] works. I mean, as long as your customer just like acknowledges that you are 10x of something, that's great. okay, for example, you are Allan, right? And you have this enormous reputation. And if you launch something new, of course, it can be more expensive. But I'm Maya. I mean, I'm sitting in my basement here and nobody knows me,

so

maybe I should be a little bit less ambitious, especially if I cannot really defend that I have 100x added value here, right?

So, you need to be realistic, and Either, there is another very interesting dimension to this. Are you optimizing for adoption or profit? And this case could easily be explained with freelancing work, for example, right? How to make, let's say, 10K a month. You can have two customers that pay you 5K. Of course you have to deliver value.

Or you can have 10 customers that pay you 1, 000. [00:15:00] What would you choose, Allan?

Allan: I would choose the 10 customers that pay the thousand.

Maja: I knew it because I read your book, but please walk us through the logic. Why would you make this decision?

Allan: I don't want to have too much in one customer. I wanna spread my risk, but having said that, I would definitely go for. especially in the beginning, I like to go much higher ticket where you can always move down market. It's much harder to move up market in my experience. So if I'm launching a new service or product or whatever, I will go for the high end first and then go down kind of, I think Elon Musk did that, right?

They first launched the first Tesla was a roadster. It was like a very expensive sports car only for rich people, whatever. Then the S class, then the Model 3 was kind of last, right? So they started at the top end. So it's much easier for a high end product, I think, to go down market than a low end product to go up market.

Maja: I love [00:16:00] it. I mean, if you have some sort of leverage of being like in extremely low cost labor environment or any sort of like superior process efficiency that you could defend, well, that's great. That's something that would make you think differently, but in principle, you're right, because that also brings us to another very important point of legacy pricing, right?

How can you explain to a customer that is paying you $1,000 now that from that month on, they should be paying you $3,000 because you're better? I mean, it's not an easy conversation to have. You can have it. I mean, you can justify it that you hired more people, that the service got better, and pricing, by the way, should be revised every quarter, or at least like once in six months, because you know what else is true?

Inflation. And our ability to deliver more and more value at it. So pricing is really interesting stuff, right? [00:17:00] Not only do we make money with it, but also It changes through time with the environment is changing and we are changing.

Allan: I mean, I recently met someone at a conference who's an incredibly successful person. They, I mean, their net worth is probably half a billion dollars, but he's exited multiple businesses and his advice was, you should be running pricing tests at least once every three months. So really testing different packaging, different pricing, different ways of presenting price, testing different price levels, and he's a real expert in that area.

One thing I want to double click on that you said is about value capture. I know you sort of said it in passing, but I've thought about value capture a lot because in marketing, in business, we talk a lot about creating value and creating value is a wonderful thing. We want to do that in the marketplace, but we also want to capture a good portion of that value because there are [00:18:00] people who create incredible value in the world and they capture almost none of it or sometimes none of it.

And then there are people who create not that much value, but they capture a big portion of it as well. So, at one end of the extreme, it's someone who creates no value, but captures a lot, and that's kind of running into scam territory. And then there's someone who's Creating massive value and capturing almost none of it.

And that's almost like a nonprofit or philanthropy or whatever. Right. So, and so you want to find that sweet spot where you can create a lot of value, but capture a good portion of it as well. Like for example, you know, someone might create a vaccine for that helps a lot of people or some medication that helps a lot of people.

they didn't patent it. Or they didn't capture the market or whatever, they created massive value and got zero from it. Right? how are you thinking about value capture? Where should you be on that scale?

Maja: Perfect. [00:19:00] I love this discussion because that's something that literally was a cold shower to me after I published the book and I'm public about this data. I mean, I'm a very transparent person. You know, book business, how you know that book business

is very complicated, right?

We're not making money selling paper on Amazon.

So I will give you If I sell units through Amazon, I make approximately 1, 000. But if I sell them at my digital funnel that I created on my website, I make 8, 000. Why is this difference? How can I justify this difference? Well, book is a piece of paper and Amazon, if you're a self published author, it takes like up to 70 percent of your earnings.

It's great if you are optimizing for adoption and that I don't have a, let's say a pile of paper in my garage, but it is very [00:20:00] difficult to construct a sustainable business model if you're a niche author. Thank you.

So I immediately invested in what is called a value ladder, right? We do a lot of stuff for free.

Substack, LinkedIn, content creation, community events, no problem. This is something that I love to do, but you know, it's that type of a spectrum where I could call myself charity. I still have like 10 people on my payroll, so we need to make some money as well. And the way how we structure this is. Okay, book as a piece of paper.

This is the entry to the ecosystem, right? This is where you meet the initial science. And the price point for this is 30 bucks. Then on the other lever, we went with 47. Why? Because number seven is a lucky one. And just like in terms of pricing psychology, it converts very nice, or you can call me superstitious.

[00:21:00] It's fine. Um, So the next price point was 37. And then I was thinking like, okay, if I sell this to, let's say a physical person, an individual, maybe a product manager, that's a lot. That's a really like big investment that they make with their personal money, right? I can be selling up to maybe 100 to physical people.

But if this methodology is implemented by a big company, by a corporate, for example, then I'm not really capturing enough value that is being created by them successfully implementing this methodology, right? So I need higher value. Let's say levels of my value ladder as well. For this reason, I just like introduced more expensive products.

So one is my go to market bootcamp that is just like somewhere in the middle. It's around like. 300 bucks if you do it yourself and 1000 if you want a personal consultation. And then we have [00:22:00] consulting. And I'm not saying that just like this value ladder is the ultimate value grab and everybody should do it, but it is my best solution to the day to serving different personas, different audiences that can benefit from what I created, right?

So from somebody like In Indonesia, 10 for a Kindle version is a lot. For a corporate, it's funny. I mean, it's just like different persona, different packages here. And given the type of business that I'm in, I really had to think about this. Then the other thing was lifestyle. I don't want to delve much into the lifestyle, but you know, there are other ways how to make money book publishing as well.

Like speaking at the conferences, doing, let's say, localizations of your book with partners or something like that. We. are very open to this as well, but we have to focus, right? Because I run a very small operation, [00:23:00] if I just scatter myself on a gazillion different places, I will not get as far as I could if I just reallocated all my efforts, all my focus into a single area where I actually have a fighting chance.

Allan: Nice. All right.

Well, look let's switch gears a little bit. You've really grown an audience on LinkedIn very successfully. You've done so, so well. I've been. following your trajectory and your success. first of all what made you choose LinkedIn? I mean, maybe it sounds like an obvious question.

You're working with a lot of businesses, and how did you start off? Where did you go next? Because like you said, you, you've got a team and a lot of your team helps you build the content and the system and all of that sort of thing. Because a lot of people the mistake a lot of people make that on social media, whether it's LinkedIn or anything else, it feels like it's just one person effortlessly you know, inventing something on the fly.

And it looks like a lot of luck, but you've got a very [00:24:00] systemized approach to LinkedIn and generating business to business leads. So, um, how did you start off? What does your system look like at the moment?

Maja: Okay, it was definitely not my cousin Igor, and it was definitely not a bunch of engagement pods. What we did was organic. Why?

Because my sales is directly correlated with the reach that I have on LinkedIn and how my audience grows. In the beginning it was excruciating. I was just like there, like we say in my region, almost pissing against the wind. We were producing shitload of content, nobody cared. Until I did a critical mess of reps.

started to learn from best in class content creators, do more stuff that works. And when we were in an intense book launching cycle, we were posting twice a day. It was just like almost a half a part time job for me. It was so time intense. Right [00:25:00] now I approximately am at six to seven posts per week, and it takes me one hour and a half to post.

Day to be active on LinkedIn, so you always go and do five or 10 comments before you actually post because LinkedIn algorithm doesn't like us post and ghost. It has to look natural. We are building relationships there. Otherwise we would have to pay for additional reach. This is how social media works.

If you are

Allan: so you're doing comments before you post,

Maja: Yeah, definitely.

Allan: so comments on other people's posts or on your own?

Maja: The posting routine actually starts with me being laser focused. focused on who has the audience that overlaps nicely with my target persona, right?

So right now I have 20 creators in the product marketing and product management space, sometimes VCs, that I think have similar audience that I do.

Why LinkedIn? [00:26:00] Because obviously my target audience is on LinkedIn. They are not on TikTok. So I have to do LinkedIn in order to meet more of them and hopefully get them excited about our go to market science. But then, just like you have these, let's say, epicenters of audiences, right? Just, you can ask your community members even who are they following and get your first people out of doing this type of research.

And then I put like bell icon onto this so I get notified when they publish, but luckily they publish usually at the same time every day. So I can just like be ready in my ninja mode to write those. I mean, it doesn't work every day. I'm talking like it would be a machine now, but just for you to understand the logic.

Then the additional great chunk of work comes in content creation. So this is me sitting down on Sunday thinking, [00:27:00] what should we be talking about? Luckily, I have the book so I can repurpose a little bit, but I also save This super successful posts from other creators, right? And I make my content plan.

I'm not doing my own designs. I have a team who does this for me I know a lot of very successful content creators that are either doing this themselves in Canva or just like pushing text on LinkedIn. So it's not an excuse that you cannot succeed because you cannot pay a designer. Not in my world.

So yeah, that's it. And then I just like distributed every day approximately the same time when I first I do these comments, right to strategically selected profiles. Then I wait around for at least half an hour to have conversations with my community members on LinkedIn. So again, don't post and ghost.

And then I return in the afternoon because as we are just like [00:28:00] going, working for different time zones in a morning, I capture like Europe and Asia. And then like in the evening I have to be there for my U. S. audience. So net, it is one hour and a half a day.

One hour is to do the value commenting where I have tremendous growth of my audiences by just like delivering value in comments.

And even if you don't want to post right now, just start with value commenting. It will produce your results. I promise. So yeah, this is how much. work do I put in? What's the result? In average, we grow per 100 people per day.

Allan: So, I'd like to learn, know more about value commenting. So for example you know, someone posts and even I've found myself in that situation. So someone responds to one of my posts and the responses are great posts really got me thinking or whatever, or something like that.

But what does a value, I'm assuming that's not a value comment. What does a value comment look like?

Maja: [00:29:00] Okay, cool.

So, first of all, let's say protocol of LinkedIn is that each comment should be at least five words long, right? So not like great post or a random like, or something like that. Do better. The second thing is that algorithm is It's actually very affected by the number of comments that you have and more so by the number of nested comments.

So that's literally comments of comments when you are discussing this with your folks. And the best thing that you can do for an author is to ask a question. So Allan. This Start With Bye is really interesting. Can you provide an example? This is how you help other creators to get more organic reach. But if you are there, just like surgically focused on adding value in comments and growing your audience, you try to either add a new perspective.[00:30:00]

I operate a lot with visuals. Sometimes even memes, because I capture way more attention if I have a visual element, plus I take more space. Um, So it is very important to just like not do it like a hundred times great post or this AI generated bullshit, because everybody recognizes this. I mean, it's so bad.

So you are either adding to the discussions, you are asking questions, or you gently, politely express that you have uh, different experiences. And I mean, not you're an idiot, this is wrong, but in my line of practice, after doing this for 15 years, you know what I mean?

Allan: Well, you obviously haven't been on Reddit or Twitter because, so,

Maja: to be, Allan.

Allan: you responding to every comment on one of your posts? So let's say you post and you get a [00:31:00] hundred comments. Are you doing a hundred replies to the, each of those comments?

Maja: I am inclined to do this, so I, let's say morally, do not talk with A. I. s because these people do not deserve more attention, and you can immediately recognize the A. I. comments. I mean, they are so bad. Yes, I agree that testing willingness is important. to pay is very important. Remember, you should also write or add value, you know, this super generic shit that doesn't make sense.

This is usually AI, not people. So yeah, it's, I don't talk with AI.

And the second one, if I really don't have time, because The thing is that this social media is so toxic for my deep work and as somebody who's creating products and is doing like very complicated client work, I need my time when I'm completely offline.

I don't even use social media in my private life. Seriously, I deleted Instagram from my phone, but The reason why I am so [00:32:00] surgical and diligent with those comments and comments of comments and just like whatever else is because it's my sales driver for the book, right? And I know exactly what is my reach versus what will be my sales.

And I also like to think in public, discuss ideas with other intelligent folks, not AIs. but I have to put myself very artificial limits to it so that I don't get distracted because it can get very toxic for your brain.

Allan: you have team members that reply to comments as well on your behalf or no?

Uh, why not? Like, why wouldn't you train team members on your voice, on your content, on all of that to be able to reply on your

Maja: First of all is VPN. So if somebody else is logged into your LinkedIn from a different country or something like that, this is something that could risk like your profile, right? So you could get banned.

And if you have like those automations, every like plugin that you use on LinkedIn is actually violating terms of [00:33:00] service of LinkedIn.

So you should know that if you're doing this seriously, that all these engagement thingies and cool hacks, they put your profile in jeopardy to be deleted. to lose access from it. So I'm not messing with my most important sales channel. And the second thing is knowledge. I mean, I'm not underestimating folks, but people know my style and I benefit a lot from my style.

And I mean, I have a developer who would like to train an AI to comment such as I do, but it's a hobby for him. Like I would never could seriously consider somebody else interacting with my potential clients in a way that I feel that it's super important to do as a small business right now. And I don't want to be this, you know, person who's just like, thank you.

Allan: No, I'm with you. I'm with you. totally agree with you. At what stage do you think it becomes unsustainable where you [00:34:00] would have to spend all day just replying to comments and things like that? Is there, kind of a threshold where, you know, You know, you're getting a thousand comments to every post or a thousand likes or whatever, and you would have to spend hours and hours every single day or like, what would you do in

Maja: I did this once when we had like a viral asset and I had to just like send a DM to 1000 people. So I didn't want to just like do it myself, but I was also transparent. Like, look, this is VA sending you stuff. If you need like conversation, here is it or something like that. But the thing is that, look, I'm right now size 42.

That sounds terrible in international criticism, but this is like, 42k followers on LinkedIn. I can manage in an hour and a half a day. Yes, if it is a super viral post with thousand likes and just like gazillion comments, then it would take you a little bit longer to reply. But usually, The frequency of [00:35:00] that happening is like once a quarter or like once a month if you are lucky.

For the majority of us, like below 50k followers, we can manage. with an exception, if your time has huge opportunity costs, because I told you my method, but I can do a lot of things that don't scale as a small company, right? If I would be just like having opportunity cost of my hour for 10, 000 euros or something like that I would probably not do that because it would no longer make sense.

So it's ROI, it's rethinking what is the best ROI of your time?

Allan: And what would you do in that situation where the opportunity cost was too high? Would you just leave it or like, what would you do then?

Maja: Okay. The majority of such experts have very expensive LinkedIn consultants. So they still work and participate towards their own content. Usually the cost of this sort of media machinery is anywhere from 10k to [00:36:00] up to 30k a month. So these are serious things. We are not there yet, but yeah, there is a service for these type of people as well, because.

You know, what you need to secure as a leader is that you don't just like diminish the value added that you have and that you don't look ridiculous. So if you will be outsourcing this, please don't be cheap.

Allan: Yeah, I think that's really good advice. What else on LinkedIn do people commonly get wrong or don't really know? Because I mean, you've got a lot of hard won knowledge and you've, you know, really cracked the code to generating leads on LinkedIn because a lot of people. maybe even generate a lot of comments, a lot of likes, a lot of all of those sorts of things.

But that's a very different thing to generating actual leads where people put their hand up and say, Hey I'd like to get on a call with you, or I'd like to know more about what you do. That bridge seems to be very difficult for a lot of people.

Maja: Got it.

So first of all, if you're serious about [00:37:00] monetizing on LinkedIn, you should have a premium package for LinkedIn. I think it costs like 60 bucks a month or something like that. And you have like this visible visit my website.

whenever you are appearing in the feed. So this is a minimal investment that you should do also for the analytical purposes because then you see who actually view your profile and you can slide in their inbox. That's really cool techniques, highly converting one, but for the normal folks out there, just like start thinking about your LinkedIn the same way as you are thinking about your landing page, right?

You should optimize it for conversions. So in the features section, you should have your offers. What makes a good offer? Allan, I don't know if you're into the hormosis science, but I'm very, very, very attached to just like creating this promise to your audience, right? What are you here to help them with and why they should [00:38:00] trust you?

I mean, what is the evidence that you have that you can really deliver this promise? Promise, your unique selling proposition, your differentiator. Why are you go to solution for whatever you're saying you are? So this element should definitely be considered. Plus, if possible, include social proof and visual assets are absolutely wonderful.

So just like set up your profile in a similar way that you would be optimizing your landing pages for conversions. I mean, there are a couple of great ones. If somebody's interested, I can send you, Oh, you can link this to the episode. I

have like this perfect LinkedIn. Profile, Smoothboard, that because uh, your listeners can totally take inspiration from so I did a little bit of copy pasting that they don't, will not have to, but yeah, the elements are really simple to understand.

Then the other technique that we use a lot is just like warm outreach. Whenever somebody [00:39:00] engages with your content, you either like if they are commenting, it can be more natural. So you can say, thank you. I very much appreciate it. Your point of view about lean marketing. Can you share me an example how you implemented lean marketing in the real business world or something like that, or the better one, would you speak in my podcast?

This is like the easiest thing ever, because like people, even with me, 60K, 100K followers, they still come to podcasts. How do I know? Because this is how Allan and I met. Otherwise we wouldn't be recording

today. Right? So if you have like an event, a community, but something legit, not scam people into being on your podcasts.

But this is like a super, super easy way how to really, Builds relationships even with opinion makers higher out if that's not obtainable Just like start the conversation. I have a brilliant example [00:40:00] once I Brought on LinkedIn corporate cannot really move fast and break things.

Right. Which is so true because if you have processes and compliance and whatnots, then the way how you are testing is really different than if I am like Maya with my developers and designers that we can just like made random shit up. So the thing is that there was this guy from a huge tracking company Something which looked like a lead. So he was like, yes, I agree, we do this and this and that. And I was like, wow, cool. How very exciting. Is there any way that we could spare like 30 minutes and you tell me more about this so that we can maybe co create this content or do a webinar together?

This sounds really cool. So that was like a beginning of our relationship.

Allan: did you do that in the comment or did you DM him?

Maja: DM. Yeah. Yeah.

so it doesn't look like too clingy, but yeah just say it how it is. Look, if you're. [00:41:00] excited about meeting somebody. If you feel that you can help them, if there is something that you are just genuinely interested in, just start this freaking conversation.

I mean, what's the worst thing it can happen? They can ignore you, block you, or I don't know, hate you forever. Can you live with this? Well, most adults can. So again, just like, please do it. Please do it. And I would even set up myself when I started this, It was literally me forcing myself to do it five times a day, to just like develop a habit, to go through this cringiness of talking to strangers that my mom told me it's not the best idea to do, but when LinkedIn, it can be really profitable.

So, just like start a conversation with people, set yourself a fake benchmark to develop a habit if you have to. That's a really good one. I mean, we can talk about advanced techniques as well. So there is like. Cold Outreach that works well when we are promoting technologies. [00:42:00] There is working with B2B Influencer on LinkedIn.

Thought Leadership Ads right now are very profitable. I run them with a couple of my clients. But I don't know, like, how interested are you in all this stuff? Because, again, when you get me to talk something about some interesting I can go on and on forever.

Allan: I love it. Well we could do a three hour podcast, but I think we've got

Maja: Nobody would leave.

Allan: maybe we've got about 10 minutes to go. So couple of things I I'd love to kind of expand on here. So, DMs that work. So let's go with a scenario where you said you saw someone viewed your profile and you reach out.

with a DM. How do you reach out with a DM? That's not kind of like just the generic crap that everybody copies and pastes. And you know, you just click delete and ignore it. Like how do you be that pattern interrupt and how do you get someone to respond or be open to what you've got to offer?

Maja: I will sound like a trash can [00:43:00] today, but the other day I wrote just like, okay, the only reason why I added you is because I love your talk on your profile picture. So it's not that difficult to stand out. Like you can literally use humor. Literally be honest, because the majority of stuff which is being sent out there are just like, hi, upvote for my product can't launch or hi, are you interested in this outbound services or something like that?

just like if you're starting as a human, you are already radically different. It's fine. But if you want to do it more sophistically, think about what is the type of value that you can deliver? Just like yesterday, I had a conversation with a guy. who said that they would be doing like B2B influencer outreach for my webinars for free.

And I was like, really? There is no thing such as free theater. No, I'm Slavic. I'm very cynical and skeptical. So the thing is that, okay, he convinced me. He showed me like a couple of examples and I was like, okay, sure. Let's [00:44:00] take it for a spin. Why not? How do I know that it works? Because it works on me as well.

I mean, if somebody is there just like promoting their softwares and. pitching what is a good thing that they can do for my company for a fractional cost or even for free, how they can create value for my content or something like that. I mean, I'm pragmatic. I'm open to having this conversation. Just think about this first, the value added.

Oh my God, the word of this podcast is value added.

Allan: I agree. It also needs to be I think believable. I mean, I get tons of this spam where it's like, Hey, we are appointment setters. We'll get you 90 qualified leads a month, blah, blah, blah. You know, they haven't got a clue about what the business is, what you sell, whatever. And they're making up just bullshit numbers about what they're going to do.

Right. So, it's obviously got to be believable, something

Maja: Yeah. And the case study, this is so important proof evidence. How can you prove this? I mean, I go as far as like providing phone numbers of [00:45:00] people that they can call for references. Because there is so much scam out there, seriously. Like it's so bad with the advent of AI that I want to talk to a person on both ends, like with a service provider, as well as the customer, and I want to see.

a proof, a case study, which is so similar to my own and you, I have like a new tactic. How do I just like, put away the scammers on LinkedIn? Hi, I want to make 100k a month. Please deliver me a plan. How can I do this in the next three months? My budget is 2000 euros. If you're willing to pitch, here is my email.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Allan: That's funny

Maja: And zero offers. Zero. Still waiting for one.

Allan: What do you think about like audio or loom video DM in DMS, a good, bad what do you think?

Maja: Okay, I'm just like a little bit [00:46:00] weird because I'm a very private person. I don't know if that's like very evident from my performance here on the podcast, but I don't like to talk about myself, my personal life. I don't want to display my family members. And I just think it's very weird to get a hype message from a stranger that they love their business and call me old fashioned, if you want.

So I do a lot of video selling, but in the middle of the funnel, right? If I'm just like, Okay, if I find a mistake on somebody's website or something like that, sure, I could consider it, it could be very potential. But imagine this, Hi, I'm Maja, do you need help with GTM strategy? Slash, Allan. It Some people have amazing success with this, but I don't see it working for my type of business.

First of all, I mean, I am using it down the funnel. So just before we started to talk, I did like two onboardings for the workshops that I have next [00:47:00] week. And it's very good when you are just like case specific and you make people think and prepare better for interactions with you. But I don't know, what would I say in a cold video message?

I mean, hi Allan, I see that you have a dog, do you need a collar? I don't know.

Allan: That's cool. I love it. And I'm assuming you feel the same way about just an audio message cause that's a feature in LinkedIn DMs as well. So

Maja: I mean, you can do a live audio on LinkedIn if you love hearing to your own voice and see who will join. No, but seriously, come on, like, it's us dealing with strangers, practically. I mean, just try to add value and please, like, don't overthink this. Please don't overthink this, you can have scripts, you can like, Google best outreach sequence, whatever, but try it manually first, and just like, feel, feel it, would you say this?

Can you continue the conversation based on this script or something like [00:48:00] that? Do what is natural for you or automate everything and eliminate yourself as a person from LinkedIn. These are two radical ways, but I don't see a middle ground working that well. Love

Allan: I'm glad to hear it say I like extreme edges of things rather than the middle ground. So, I like that. So really the message is be yourself, be human, add a lot of value. And I mean, think of it as a, human to human interaction rather than a social network where you're just trying to extract the most value and deliver nothing, right?

Maja: Love it.

Just mini disclaimer here, because I think it's so important for psychological safety and I'm not a snowflake, but oftentimes I see very hardworking and successful people starting to validate themselves like their professional and personal work on the number of likes. So you as a professional are much better than the number of likes.

LinkedIn likes that you [00:49:00] receive, right? So don't be sad if weird algorithm decides one day that your ritual suck or whatever happens. You do more important stuff than being a full time LinkedIn influencers. Then the second is just like this. Stamina. You need to put in the reps. As you're starting out, you will suck.

Why? Because you don't know the platform and you don't know how to write the hooks and maybe your visuals are off. But eventually, when you will be analyzing your results, you will get better at this. If you just reverse engineer what works again and again. Give it fair time to value. Give it at least two months.

Free months, if you can, to see if you can get a result. The majority of people that I start working with, and I'm not a LinkedIn coach, please don't content me for that. It's just something that I do for my business. But when we do this with teams, with technical teams to create organic sales channels for them um, they see results.

Positive results in first week or so. So you [00:50:00] will immediately get a boost in impression because as a noob who activated on LinkedIn, algorithm wants to award you a little bit for doing that. And later on it gets difficult, right?

Allan: Well, I think that's an excellent place to really end because that I 100 percent believe in that, you know, find something that works, get better continually, continuous improvement and just put in the reps. I think that is a great way to do marketing and to really, you know, do anything of value. So thank you very much, Maya.

That's been incredibly valuable. We're going to link a lot of all the resources that you mentioned. Your book is go to marketing strategist.

Maja: You cannot miss the cover. Yeah, it has this weird on.

Allan: perfect. Perfect. I love it. And so buy it directly from Maya. So she makes more profit rather than on Amazon.

Maja: Now you told them my secret. Nah, if you want physical version, it's on Amazon because this is the easiest way to print them. But thank you so much for [00:51:00] listening. I'm really grateful for having the opportunity to talk here, Allan, with your audience and with you personally, because you taught me so much.

I'm really grateful for your, teachings because they are pragmatic. They are zero bullshit and I could apply everything, which is often not the case with the majority of marketing stuff that I read there. So thanks for

Allan: Oh, thank you so much. That's very nice feedback. And thank you so much for adding so much value to us as well today.

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