How to Find More Customers on LinkedIn

One of the toughest things about starting your own business is finding the right customers for your offering.

When I started my first business, I offered consulting services for healthcare startups. And I thought a lot about this problem. How could I attract ideal clients without coming on too strong or seeming desperate?

After some testing and tinkering, I came up with an outreach process that worked surprisingly well. It’s simple and easy to do, and I figure it might help you too

So today I’m going to show you how to land customers for your business by using Google Alerts in conjunction with LinkedIn direct messaging.

This tactic works best when you regularly publish social media content. Because content drives discovery of your brand, and then a simple outbound DM can spark a conversation.

Unfortunately, most people aren’t good at sending DMs. They make their messages all about themselves, instead of focusing on the potential customer. And that’s a missed opportunity.

Remember, strangers don’t want to hear all about you, you, you. They want to hear about how you can help them. Big difference.

Here’s how to get this right, without being sales-y:

Step 1: Set up a Google Alert for Something Relevant

Most industries or people have some kind of milestone or trigger that tells the world, “we’re growing”.

For companies - it can be fundraising, mentions in the news, PR, founders speaking at events, etc. For people - it can be speaking events, features in magazines like Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc., webinars, etc.

Your goal is to figure out the 1-2 triggers that are most likely to indicate your ideal customer is growing or expanding. This is usually the time when they’ll be making investments in themselves or their business.

For example, back in 2020 when I was consulting for early-stage healthcare companies, I wanted to identify young companies that were raising money. That period of fundraising is referred to as a ‘Series A’ round.

Having worked in startups who raised money, I knew that fundraising meant growth and expansion, and these companies would have money to invest in someone like me, a consultant who had relevant experience in their industry.

So I started by setting up a Google Alert to email me any time there was a news story that contained the words “healthcare” or “doctor” and “series A”.

Step 2: Craft a Passive DM Template

Once I had my Google Alert set up, I scheduled it to be emailed to me every Friday morning.

Then on Fridays, I used a passive DM template that I created to get the attention of the CEO or Founder.

My template was the opposite of most DMs you get. Instead of “I can help you grow! Hire me! please! Me! Me! Me!” (obvious exaggeration, but not too much), I made my message about THEM. And I tossed in a short line that might make them pay attention.

Here’s the template I used:

“Congrats on the recent round, {{FirstName}}. I’m a healthcare technology veteran (ZocDoc/PatientPop) and love what you’re doing. Following you all from way over here in Los Angeles.”

Simple as that.

I showed them I was paying attention to the industry, excited for their new round, and had a background that might be interesting.

Step 3: Schedule Once Weekly ‘Send Sessions’

Once I had my Google Alert and DM template set up, I ripped through 10-12 messages every Friday with very little effort.

Just think about the math here:

Even if I got a 10% response rate, I was putting 50+ new prospects at an average deal size of $25,000 into my pipeline each year. That’s $1.25M in annual pipeline for spending 15 minutes on Friday mornings.

And I usually got more than a 10% response rate:

This outreach approach worked because I made myself known to ideal customers in a subtle, friendly, and non-aggressive way.

And by touching on my experience, it drew these ideal clients to visit my LinkedIn profile, and then my website, to learn more about me and book discovery calls if they wanted to chat.

It was a simple, natural approach that yielded a lot of success with minimal effort.

I hope you can take this idea and mold it into something that can work for your business!

Conclusion and Action Steps

I get cold DM’s from strangers every day, and they’re almost always aggressive and not focused on what’s in it for me. It’s rare to get something simple and relevant.

The bar is low.

So if you’re ready to find ideal clients for your business, do these 3 simple things:

1. Set up relevant Google Alerts (or use something else if this isn’t right for you).
2. Craft a simple, non-aggressive, intriguing cold DM that you can use. Make is short.
3. Schedule a weekly time in your calendar to do your outreach.

Simple as that.

This is one of 100+ lessons I teach in The LinkedIn Operating System.

I’ll show you how to design your social profile, create content, do outreach, create inbound leads, and more. Stop grasping at straws and learn how to do it effectively.

If you want to learn how to use LinkedIn the right way, check out The LinkedIn OS (it’s 50% off right now). Give it a try, and you’ll be surprised at what you learn about growing your account and landing more customers, without wasting a bunch of time.

That’s all for this week. See you next time!