Charli Hunt: Jason, thank you so, so much for being on the podcast. We're so excited to have you. I came across Jason. I think most of us have probably, he's all over LinkedIn and his ads are so good. So I'm really, really excited that you're on the podcast today. Please, can you introduce
Jason Squires: yourself.
Oh, lovely stuff. What a, what a lovely warm welcome. Hello everyone. My name is Jason. I teach small to medium sized business owners how to get more enquiries via LinkedIn and via other platforms generally to create something called a self filling pipeline, which just kind of gets more enquiries coming into your business.
For you to serve. And yep, I've been pretty prolific by anyone's standards, with LinkedIn advertising at the moment. So I'm hoping some of those questions are going to come up. So I'm looking forward to sharing everything I've got.
Charli Hunt: So let's start with that. So firstly, I see you all over LinkedIn. How do you do
Jason Squires: it?
Well, yeah, it's been a bit of a bit of a journey to get to where it currently is. And I've always been a, a big, believer in if you, if you're going to do something well, do it hard, fast, regular, consistent, and make sure that you are dominating whatever, whatever you're putting your mind to.
And at the moment that's LinkedIn ads for me, and it's been a buildup as mentioned over, over a couple of years. And, um, they just work really well. Now, the one particular type of advert, which, I'm hanging my hat on at the moment, the type of advert is a thought leader ad, which is essentially content from your personal profile.
And you can use that as an advert and push it out to individuals who would also be your ideal target market. So you can place. Almost organic content in the newsfeed of strangers who don't yet know you in order to get attention that way, and that has absolutely taken off the cost of those adverts are incredibly low.
The click through is incredibly high. And, again, it just filters people into, into your pipeline.
Charli Hunt: And that's my question. So LinkedIn advertising always feels prohibitively expensive to me. Is it expensive? How did you get
Jason Squires: it's a, it's a strange one though, because every time I have a conversation on LinkedIn ads, the first word is it's like, Oh, the first term or the phrase someone says to me is, is it not expensive? It's probably really expensive. Isn't it? I've tried it before and I spent a fortune or I've just heard it's expensive.
It's no more expensive than Facebook ads or Google ads or even TikTok ads. It's exactly the same, but there's this strange misconception that it is really expensive. So because of that, people don't even try. And those who do it, That I've worked with who have tried it and it has got really expensive for them.
It's because they haven't set it up properly, or they've tried it too quickly, or they're promoting something that's not already converting. That's probably the number one reason why things don't work is that they're promoting something that they haven't got organic traction with already. And that's with any ads, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google, wherever, you're only going to get more of what you're already getting.
So if you're promoting something which isn't proven, you're going to get more of nothing. If you've got a messy business, you're going to get an even messier business. So it's all about kind of dialing in initially, uh, some form of, and I call it a client pathway, which is getting an inquiry, uh, qualifying them and then converting them.
Getting that working in an organic sense, then adding ads onto it. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, wherever, or X. And it's gonna give you more of what you are, what you're currently getting. So, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, they're all the same. LinkedIn isn't more expensive than the others. There's just a, a strange misconception that it's, uh, that it is more expensive.
Charli Hunt: Oh, brilliant. And do you have a set? So with this, uh, what, what did you call it? Sorry, the
Jason Squires: Uh, a client pathway. Yeah.
Charli Hunt: client, pathway. So do you have one that you use all the time or do you tailor it to each new client or is there a general
Jason Squires: blueprint?
There's a, there's a gen, there's a general blue blueprint. It depends on how our businesses close clients at the moment. So it's typically through a sales call. It could be, uh, a webinar or it could be through DMs. I do a lot through DMs at the moment. I've not taken a sales call for.
For the last two years, we've on boarded, we probably on board between 40 and 60 new clients every month. And I don't take a single sales call. So get something like really dialed in. And then that is your, that is your client pathway. To begin with it's going to be a sales call and that client path pathway typically would be, getting engagement, which was what traditionally would be called an enquiry.
So somebody asking for more information, asking for details, how does that work? Intent. Somebody coming to you asking about what it is that you do and how you can help them. You then put them through. So there's three stages in the most basic pathway, getting engagement, which is an enquiry. And then we move to qualification.
So we asked them if they are one, two, and three and one, two, and three are your qualifiers. Of who you work with. So is it a business with more than 100 employees or do they have a website with over a thousand website visitors per month, the things that you need them to have to deliver your service. So, for me, I need them to have, and these are the questions I ask them.
My qualifying questions would be, do you have at least a thousand LinkedIn connections? Do you have two or three hours per week to work on your business. And can you close inquiries when you get them? If they say yes, yes, yes, they then go to the third part of the client pathway, which is to close them, which would typically be a sales call.
But for me, it's a little DM chat and then send them the details via a PDF document and then it's a yes or a no. So it's enquiry or engagement, qualification and then sales call to close. But it will be different depending on how a business onboards clients. If they need to have a needs analysis or a discovery call or some form of site visit, for instance, every business is slightly different, but yeah, the core core structure is just the three steps.
Charli Hunt: And what did your journey look like to get here? Like, how did you, how did you get
Jason Squires: into this?
Yeah. Zigzagged. I think as, as most business owners do.
Initially I think maybe my second or third business in my little journey, after the other kind of two or three had failed miserably, uh, just because I was as green as grass and didn't really know how to run a business or what to do, you've got to kind of fail forward as they say.
My first one that really started paying the bills was an SEO agency and it grew that from kind of a standing start up to, uh, probably a multi six figures in about 18 to 24 months. And I was doing a lot of networking locally. Um, and I don't know if there's like a tide turning in the, uh, in the market at the time.
So we got to a point that they weren't really asking about SEO anymore. They were asking more about how to use social media. It was that kind of inflection point where social media just starts to really ramp up and everybody needed to be on it.
This is probably me showing my age now as well. We're talking maybe 10, 15 years ago when this happened. I just saw an opportunity in the market that people needed to learn this stuff. And I just seemed to be in that kind of period of time in my life where I grew up with it.
Um, and then those who were 40 and 50 above missed that bit and just needed to be handheld throughout. So that got me started on teaching how to use LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, even MySpace, and it's just got a little bit more refined and tweaked and as the years have gone on, it was firstly a very general social media training kind of thing I was doing.
Then it was just a LinkedIn, then it was just B2B and now it's more established B2B companies who have got a foothold in their market and they want to grow by using LinkedIn. So yeah, I suppose as with most people really start really broad when you're green as grass, then it's got a bit more refined and specialized and dialed in as the years have gone by and I've reiterated over and over, and this is where we are now.
Charli Hunt: And has it changed much since you first
Jason Squires: started?
Social media. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. As I mentioned, like right back at the beginning of it all, it was very difficult for people to grasp the idea of it. I remember one of my very early training sessions, there was like a half an hour segments on what a hashtag is. So that's how we're talking, how basic the market was.
There was no understanding generally of what social media was, but now it's come absolutely full circle. And it's everybody's heartbeat. They just know intuitively. What social is, how it works, and there's no explaining needed anymore. So then therefore how to use it, how to operate around it, and then how to get enquiries out.
So they generate revenue from it. That's also evolved alongside it. So I think in, again, in my little world, for my line of work, I need to be one step ahead of what everyone else is doing, what the market's doing, to stay relevant and that's always being the challenge, but also at the same time, it's always been quite exciting.
Kind of keeps me on my toes. You're only as good as your last quarter.
Charli Hunt: So you have about, what is it you said on your LinkedIn, you have a quarter of a million prospects who follow you on social.
Can you share any strategies for how you got
Jason Squires: there?
It's a funny one that, because I was thinking about this before we had this call. 250, 000 is purely a vanity number. It doesn't really add anything. It helps, but, um, I'll break down that 250. There's probably 40, 000 on Twitter for another 45, 000 on Facebook and maybe 80,000 on Instagram. I don't use any of those platforms regularly.
So there's probably 130, 000 there, which are kind of dormant. And I could place some emphasis there and kind of get them going again, but my focus and forte. And where I am generating traction is LinkedIn. On LinkedIn I have probably about 39,000, but then at the same time, it's just a vanity number. And I think the only real benefit I have in that is that it gives a little bit of social proof. So when people visit my profile, if they've never heard of me before, they'll see Jason Squires, 40, 000 followers, they'll think, Oh, he must know what he's talking about because he's got a following in this area. And that is literally just the biggest benefit that you have with a large following.
Having said that though, if you were really strong with your organic game. Which whereas, I'm not, that's not my corner of LinkedIn that I've specialized in. If you were big on your organic game and you get a lot of interaction and traction and comments and likes. Then that would only add and start to grow and build out your following on LinkedIn.
And it will then probably have a lot more of a tangible result to your daily, weekly and monthly business life. So yeah, it looks good, but behind the scenes, it probably doesn't add or generate a great, a great deal.
Charli Hunt: No, I'm really pleased you say that because I think it's so easy to look at people who are influencers on social media and think that they're making loads of money and a lot of them tell you they're making
Jason Squires: loads of money.
what I've, what I've also found is that the, the biggest, not in it, not, I'm not going to name any names. I'm not even got any names on the tip of my tongue, but those who have got the biggest following usually make the least amount of money. And the ones who have a smaller, more concentrated, audience who are following them or interacting with stuff.
They don't necessarily need to have the tens and hundreds of thousands of individuals following them because you don't need that many people in order to run a successful business. If you've got a thousand loyal, raving followers who pay you handsomely. You can make whatever number you want to stick down on a piece of paper.
You don't need LinkedIn fame to get there.
Charli Hunt: Yeah. So you said you focus mainly on LinkedIn, although you've got lots of people on your other social channels. Is that what you recommend to clients as well? Just focus on one platform and do it really well.
Jason Squires: So over my little business journey again, probably 12 years ago now over the last maybe three or four years is when it's really pierced through and taken it to the next level. We're talking bobbing along on six figures very nicely. And then pop all of a sudden up to seven figures.
And I'm on this new playing field. I've never really experienced before. And that one of the, one of the reasons which allowed me to achieve that was doubling down on what's working. So another common question I get very regularly is where should we place our focus to begin with?
Do we do Twitter or Instagram or LinkedIn? Or do we do some blogging or SEO or networking? We're doing all of that at the minute, but we're not really getting much. So what I would do is squash all of that and focus on one platform, double down, get amazing at that, improve, tweak, iterate, and only add a second platform when you've hit a revenue milestone that you're comfortable with, and you're happy with maybe 10, 000, 20, 50, 000 a month.
100, 000 a month. Don't do anything else until you've hit that revenue milestone that you're comfortable with and then add a second. But at the point of you adding a second channel, everything starts to become a bit more diluted because your attention is split. So yeah, pick one, double down and commit to that.
And if you're B2B, which I'm pretty sure most of listeners are on this podcast, uh, that is going to be LinkedIn. Focus on that, get what you want to get, and then consider adding a second. You may not even want to or need to.
Charli Hunt: And that's the social platform you choose for B2B is always
Jason Squires: LinkedIn?
Absolutely, hands down and yeah. Unless there's anything that kind of comes out of the woodwork. Very shortly, which I don't think there's going to be. Um, I think the closest was Clubhouse maybe a couple of years ago. And you know, that kind of, you know, came out of nowhere, then kind of dipped away in a ball of flames.
Um, yeah, it's going to be LinkedIn every single time. It's the world's little black book of professionals. And with a few clicks of a button, you've potentially got their attention. So however you can figure out how to leverage that is only going to be in your best interest.
Charli Hunt: I like that. The world's little black book of
Jason Squires: businesses.
Pretty much is. It pretty much is.
Charli Hunt: To go back to your, your point earlier, so you don't really do anything organically on LinkedIn. Although I see posts and
Jason Squires: I do. Yeah. Yeah.
It supplements, it supplements my paid ad strategy. We have leads coming in from the ads. So that I get people to connect with me because my sales process is via DMs. So I'll be connected with people in order to have a direct message conversation with them.
So for those people that I am chatting with, my regular organic content, which I do post five times a week. So I do post regularly, I commit time to it and I've got a strategy behind it. I just haven't cracked that code in order for the organic stuff to take the next level, but what it is doing and what I would recommend doing.
And this is the reason why you don't need to chase likes engagements and comments or whatever is that you are nurturing the people that you're in a sales conversation with. So you're having a chat with them either in person or over zoom or via direct messenger. You've got that kind of direct method of comms with them.
But they are also seeing passively as the days are ticking on your organic content that you post in five days a week or three days a week or whatever it is. So you can shape their opinion of you as well as that direct conversation via the organic stuff that you're posting so you can nurture them via a separate dialogue in their head in addition to the direct conversation.
So knowing that you can then choose your organic content wisely. In order to support them working with you. So it could be social proof. It could be demonstrating your knowledge. It could be giving away hints and tips, a number of different things that you can do, but yeah, I do certainly still place emphasis on organic.
It's just not as crazy as some of the influencers out there would typically expect.
Charli Hunt: That's what I always try to get people to do is like, don't just do organic educational content because it's, it's just not doing anything for you. You can't have a consistent pipeline of leads. You've got to start sending DMs. And you've got to at least do some sales posts as well.
Jason Squires: Yeah, absolutely. There's always a good mix. And I think with, uh, with organic stuff, there also needs to be, and I see this. A growing trend, but still not enough people are doing it. You need to talk more about your personal life than, business content, because with any sales and marketing in any.
LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, you know, in the UK, in Europe, in America, it's people buying people across cultures, across platforms. It's somebody getting to know somebody else to a point of wanting to spend money with them, being comfortable and having the trust in them. And the best way to do that is to get to know them as a person.
So volunteer your life up on a platter for lack of a better description. And let people get to know you and what you want to have happen is, uh, and you mentioned this at the start of this session, albeit via the ads, I get people DM me regularly saying, I feel like I already know you and when you're getting those messages, that's when you know that your marketing is working.
And, uh, you're on the right track.
Charli Hunt: Yeah, I love it. So to go back to this self filling pipeline, you've got the ads, you've got the organic, is there anything else we're missing?
Jason Squires: Yeah. There's a few steps before it. So a self fulfilling pipeline is essentially a marketing campaign that you have inputs and you know you're going to get a certain output, keep the inputs going. You're going to get the certain outputs keep rolling through. And we leverage as much as we can do by way of ads and automation to ensure that the machine works without your involvement, when it is all set up, it takes.
Literally between 20 and 30 minutes per day. If you want to work on it daily, or it takes about an hour and a half per week. If you want to chunk the tasks. Again, something still needs to happen manually.
And it starts with understanding who you want to be selling to and what they want. It's the carrot dangle essentially. So what we're not doing is we're not saying we offer, SEO services, or we are a copywriter or we do accountancy.
Genuinely. And I say this hand on heart as humble as possible. Nobody cares what you do as a service. Everybody's innately selfish. And all they're thinking about is what's it going to, what's it, how's it going to benefit me? Why would I care about that? How am I going to benefit? So knowing that understanding that innate selfishness that people have got, we kind of flip that carrot dangle around and we're not saying, would you like SEO?
Would you like accountancy services? We think about what our clients want and then we go to them and ask them if they want that thing. So you're asking them if they want what they already want. So the odds of them saying, that sounds interesting. Yeah. Can I, can I have a little bit more information? Is exponentially increased.
So it all starts with being as attractive as possible to the right types of people. So you first have to understand who you actually want the attention of. And secondly, what are you going to offer them? We're not offering them a service. We're not offering them a list of features. We're not even offering them a list of benefits by way of increasing.
If it's a marketing agency, for example, it may be. We can increase your exposure and get you more sales and increase your company and grow your revenue. It's not even any of that. If you have more than three benefits and any one marketing message , you're diluting what you're trying to say.
So pick one thing that you want to be increasing or decreasing or improving for them, and then stick a number on it. So then instead of saying we can increase your exposure, we can grow your sales. We can increase your, your company's profits. You instead say, we can add a thousand relevant connections to your LinkedIn profile per month, would that be of interest?
Straight away, it's a hell of a lot more attractive. So you're asking people about what they want, rather than what you offer. You then just commit to giving them what they want, which is via what you offer. And everyone's happy. You get a client, they get what they want. And you can just continue filling pipeline with more people who want the thing that you know, they already want.
So yeah, create the carrot angle, which is that. And then we optimize our LinkedIn profile. So we are talking to that person and offering that thing. So for me, for the last two years, it's been B2B service based businesses, 10 inquiries per week. It's the who, and it's the, what they want. Asking people if they want that.
People say yes, no, and maybe. Yeah. The yeses I can pursue, the nos and maybes we can kind of work on. And then when we've done that, we have organic content that goes out, which is the manual bit that you need to do. We can connect with 100 individuals who fit your ideal target client.
Per week, 30 to 40 percent of them should accept. We don't send a connection request text with your connection request in order to bump numbers, statistically, you'll get the highest acceptance rate.
And then when they do accept, we wait, this is magic, we wait two days before we then send a follow up message, which is asking a question around the outcome that you know they already want. Asking them if they may be interested in that thing. It's not a sales pitch, it's a question, and then you wait for those to come back to you.
And then you jump in and you have a normal human conversation with them and see where it goes.
And then to get more volume is ads.
Charli Hunt: Is it mainly for service businesses where your lifetime value of your customer is very high, or does it work for kind of, for businesses that are selling, well, let's say a SaaS business or businesses that are selling something that's slightly smaller, like a
Jason Squires: course.
Yeah, sure. It depends really. I think when you get to the ads level, that's when you'll need to make sure that the money that's going in, is much less than the money that you're getting out of it. So if you've got a smaller ticket item, it's going to be more difficult to scale.
The automated stuff can be done manually, but it's just time, money. What you want to invest. If you're time rich and money poor, invest the time. If you're money rich and time poor, invest the money. If you're money poor and time poor, then you need to get a job.
I think is that, yeah, some people are, and I question how business owners are time poor and money poor. There's something not working, something not working there. So maybe a bit of reflection is needed. But yeah, you can do this budget conscious, but ideally that more expensive thing that you sell, the easier that all of this is, which may be an indication to increase your prices.
If the outcome is worth more than you're charging for.
Charli Hunt: What average CPA are we looking at?
For ads.
Jason Squires: That's a great question, actually. Yeah. Overall, I wouldn't really know. I have a couple of tools that I pay for, which is probably about about three or 400 pounds a month total for all the little gadgets and gizmos that I do pay for.
But when I work out cost per acquisition, I do it via ads. I'm working on roughly around about a 10 to one. So every thousand pounds that I invest in ads, I probably generate around about 10, 000 pounds in revenue. It's a funny one though, because when you do start with ads and anyone who's run ads or manages ads, they'll know this, but, I wouldn't expect to have absolute firework with the first, 100 pounds that you spend.
People who are new to this, they join my program, they start doing the ads, and they say to me, We've had three clicks, Jason, but we've not sold anything yet. I'm thinking you might just have to wait a little bit longer. So, there's testing involved. And how I do the testing, um, Thought Leader ads are absolutely fantastic.
Thought Leader ads, essentially it's an article, a post that you've got on your LinkedIn profile. You're going to pick that and then you're going to promote it through ads. What I do is I go through all of my posts and I look for the ones that have got the highest number of impressions.
You'll get one which has got more than the others and that's because people are clicking on it and they're reading it. So I've looked through all of maybe the last three months worth of my content and I would look for the posts that have got the highest either likes, comments, or
generally the highest impressions because people are reading it. If they're not clicking it or liking it or whatever, they're still reading it. Take those ones, maybe five or seven of your best, highest impression posts in the last three months. Put all of them into a thought leader ad campaign.
Run it at, say, like 20 per day. LinkedIn will then push them all individually. Kind of the same time and it will see which one's got the highest click through rate. So the one that's getting the most clicks, that one will rise to the top. All your budget will get spent on the best performing one. The rest just won't get any impressions anymore.
That's the one that's working the best for you. So when you've got your winner, After spending maybe 20, 40, 60 pounds possibly, you go back into the ad account, you go back into that piece of content that's getting the best result for you or whatever, and you edit it to include a link.
So as it currently stands, LinkedIn won't allow you to advertise a Thought Leader post that has a link in it. But you can add the link in retrospect after the ad's already running. So then you put the link into wherever you want people to go. So for me, I've got a short 15 minute VSL on my program.
So I'm directing people all the way there. They watch the video and then at the end of that video there's a call to action for them to comment for more details. I then just DM the comments and that's how my little system runs.
And that's how I would calculate mine. Test four, five, six, seven, eight kind of Thought Leader ads, see which wins. And then you plug your sales process into it by adding the link, and then you have to let it run for a while.
I'll say a couple of weeks, maybe even a month before you have a look and see what's going on. Because a consideration is also the length of your sales process. So some sales processes take months. There's kind of stakeholders and there's conversations and proposals to three different people that you need to go through.
Or a sales process could be a day, you offer somebody something they can say yes or no there and then, so it is also dependent on how long somebody's sales process is. Which would then dictate how long you need to keep your ads running for Which will then give you your CPA.
Charli Hunt: Brilliant. I love that trick about adding the link after the ad is live as
Jason Squires: well.
Yeah, yeah, I think that for me that's what made it work without that. I don't think it would work quite as well. Because you're relying on people going to your profile of their own accord clicking something or getting in touch with you. So what you can essentially do is I go in retrospect add the link and I tell people like add an extra line You Um, if you'd like to learn one, two and three, or if you'd like more information on one, two and three, click the link and you'll see a short 10 minute video on X, Y, and Z.
And so it kind of gets people onto the next step. And without that, I don't know if they would work quite, quite as well.
Charli Hunt: And when you say thought leadership post or kind of pick your best post from the last three months, do they need to be about your business rather than your
Jason Squires: posts.
Not really, no, not really. I would test every, I would test everything, test all of it. This is one of the advantages that a big creator would get from this. And there's a few that I'm actually consulting with at the moment. So they're going to absolutely. Kill it in that they will have organic posts that they have seen their leads just come from.
So just put it out to LinkedIn. They'll get like tens of thousands of people see it. They know they generated five leads on the back of that one post. That's the one post they can then put the thought leader stuff behind and they'll get more of the same. Whereas with mine, none of my content directly results in, in leads.
So I'm guessing, and that's the reason why I test so many. Because it's not, they're not proven yet. So I have to see which one's going to work. And there's a little bit of a budget needed for that.
Charli Hunt: I love it. That's amazing. Thank you.
Jason Squires: It's all a bit of a zigzag. And I think the other thing which uh, I mentioned that I enjoy within my line of work is that there's always testing to be done. So some things don't go well, some things do go well. And the ones that do go well, you keep on doing.
And the ones that don't go well, you kind of never talk about them ever again. But, um, you just kind of keep, keep going with the winners and you keep going with the winners as long as they keep winning and you put more money into the winners or you kind of double down on the winners. Another thing I've realized as well, kind of working with so many businesses now over the last few years is.
People stop doing what works. So, blatantly obvious thing to do is to take a look back at what you've done over the last six months to a year. That's got you clients. Do that again. Can you do more of that? Do it twice, do it three times, do it 10 times. That will have a natural kind of ceiling of how much you can push that one thing.
Everyone's constantly looking for the next shiny objects and what's new and what's next and what haven't I tried and who's saying this and who's saying that. And there's always a different influence of spinning a different way of doing something. Whereas in reality, you are very likely already sitting on a strategy or two that's worked for you in the past.
Let's just keep doing that. And then if you want to add more stuff, you can add more stuff. But as it stands, you've probably got all you need where you sit.
Charli Hunt: That's really, that's really good advice. We definitely do that as business owners. We're always, we always overthinking things. We're always thinking there's
Jason Squires: something else.
Absolutely. Again, kind of piercing through my own little glass ceiling over the last couple of years, like my big thing now, and I think it will continue to be because it's served me so well, is simplify. Don't add. Remove. And I think there's always that tendency to think that you don't have the full picture.
There's always something to learn, something to add, something saying something different. You're not doing this enough or this well enough. Whereas if you just back yourself and just commit to the few things that you know work and don't add anything else, almost put the blockers on. No shiny objects over here, please.
And just double down on what you know has always worked as boring as it is. Because I think it was maybe even Uh, when I launched my latest program, I was six months into it, like a crazy start. I've never seen anything go quite as well as the first six months of my last program.
Um, I got to the point where I was getting bored and I was actively looking around. To self sabotage. And I remember having a, I went to see the killers in Middlesbrough with my brother in law and I had this conversation with him. And when I said it out loud, I almost caught myself.
I thought, what am I even talking about? Like something's going well, why would I want to change anything? Keep doing the same thing, do more of it. And I think we can, we often either lose that perspective or we just, we get bored of what we're doing and we're looking for the next shiny thing that someone's shouting about, and we think we need to do that.
And lo and behold, we don't really get anywhere. We're just kind of doing sidesteps, constantly doing sidesteps as opposed to just committing to the cause and growing from there where you're standing
Charli Hunt: Yeah, absolutely. And I was going to ask you what trends we're going to see emerging in B2B social media, but I don't think I'm going to ask you that now, because I think it's going to make us all have that shiny object syndrome.
Jason Squires: I get asked that quite often as well. And I never really know what to say. I think the obvious thing is AI is going to probably get worse. You're going to see more people popping up. People's content is going to be AI written. There's going to be AI videos, it gets to the point where you won't really
be able to instantly tell if that is them in that video or if it's AI. So I think content in the newsfeed AI is going to bump up. But also in the DMs as well, when you're speaking with people. Now I speak to so many people in the DMs kind of routine of the questions that I ask them. And even now, probably on a daily basis, people say to me, am I speaking with an AI? I'm like, no. Definitely me. Sometimes I have to take a photo of myself and add it into the conversation with the thumbs and say, no, it's not an AI.
It's definitely me. And I think that's only going to get worse. So I think the question of whether an interaction or whether a piece of content is authentic or not is probably going to increase. And that's probably a change for the worse rather than for the better. Second to that, I think video is going to go stronger, harder, faster on LinkedIn as well with a new mobile video feed.
It'll go crazy. The ones who cotton onto video and stay consistent with it. I think you're going to be medium to long term winners with that as well.
Charli Hunt: I think you're right. And I think putting some spend behind that video would be amazing
Jason Squires: Yeah, definitely. And that, and that's the exciting stuff. Cause you test things, you try things and very likely, I mean, a test for me is always based on. what's logical. So if video is going crazy at the minute and you put a little bit of ad budget behind it, logically, it sounds like it's a good test. So, uh, thank you, Charli.
I might try that actually. And, um, it might be one of my next tests.
Charli Hunt: Well, let me know how
Jason Squires: it goes.
Will do. You can be a part of it if you want. We can kind of come together and do something.
Charli Hunt: Oh, that would be
Jason Squires: Yeah, why not?
Charli Hunt: Um, so what advice would you give someone who's just starting out in B2B social sales?
Jason Squires: Probably two things actually. One would be to get some good training. It doesn't necessarily need to be through me. There's many different good LinkedIn training providers out there at the moment. What we want to be focused on though is picking who your target market is and creating an offer that you can sell to that target market.
And then the mechanism of how to use LinkedIn, the buttons to click and how to create content. That's all after creating your avatar and creating your offer. So whatever good training you can find and take that covers those two things, do that with me or anybody else. It doesn't really matter. Just tick that box.
And secondly, is equally as important as the first, and that is to stop stopping.
Which is probably the strongest two words any beginner could probably hear. Like the amount of flip flopping and stopping and starting and trying this and don't doing that and losing faith. The number one thing with anything in business, marketing, sales, growth is consistency. You've got to keep, you've got to put the reps in.
You've got to just keep going, even if you think it's not working out. I can't remember the podcast or a video that I watched recently. And the growth curve was like flat for like two years. And then all of a sudden it just spiked. And it's that kind of flat, flat bit of the growth curve, which people can't seem to get past .
Everyone has to go through that before they get that. So it kind of feels like a thankless task for quite some time. Then all of a sudden it clicks in. So firstly, get some decent LinkedIn training, create an offer, and then learn how to use LinkedIn. And secondly, stop stopping.
Charli Hunt: Amazing. And, uh, yeah, I think LinkedIn is actually the perfect place as well to not worry so much about that flattening of the curve because you have impressions and you have followers and you have engagement and they're all kind of not the metrics that you really want. But they show you that you're going in the right direction.
So it is
Jason Squires: Yeah, great way of looking at it.
Yeah. I think, uh, the other thing which is great about LinkedIn is that all the small businesses, everyone is so supportive. Everyone's there to generate business, but similarly at the same time, it's a great support network. So if you see one of your favorite creators, you've been following them for quite some time, drop them a DM and they will reply.
I can almost guarantee that every big creator will reply and say, thank you for whatever, how are you doing? And they will very likely give you a little bit of free advice or a pat on the back or a warm digital hug that you may need. It's a great platform to be a part of.
Charli Hunt: It really is. And Jason, thank you so, so much for this episode. Honestly, so many amazing tips and I'm going to take a few of them as well. Where can people find you and if they love this episode, how can they work with
Jason Squires: you?
Excellent. Thank you, Charli. Thank you for having me on. It's been a pleasure. I've really enjoyed it. Just my LinkedIn profile search for Jason Squires. There's not many Jason Squires around, so I'm sure you kind of find me pretty much straight away.
If you like the sound of what I'm talking about and want to learn a bit more, drop me a direct message, tell me a bit about your situation and, yeah, we can have a friendly chat and take it from there.
Charli Hunt: Brilliant. Thank you so much,
Jason Squires: welcome. And thank you once again for having me on.
