This will be quite a long post about how I cold outreach on LinkedIn, and what worked for me. Over the past few days I sent around 40-50 connection requests, and more than 25 people accepted, and around 15 of those people responded to my message.
For the post below, I will use an example if your app was in the marketing industry, but you can apply the same principle to most industries. Here’s how I did it, and all of my little “tips and tricks”
1. Find your ideal client, aka a person who you think would benefit greatly from the app you’re making. For us that would be a marketer, so what we will do is go to LinkedIn search and type in “marketing”, press enter, and click on Events in the nav bar.
Once you do this, you will see tons of events, like: “Brand positioning: Digital marketing and beyond”, some of which have over 10k+ attendees. You will click attend, and once you do this, you will be able to see all the other attendees.
This is a list of all the people you want to reach out to. Some other filtering tips I recommend would be going to “Talk’s About” part and selecting #marketing, as well as setting “Profile Language” to English unless your app only works in your native language, then select that.
The last thing, which might seem weird but worked for me, is to look for “younger” people, or people who have not been in the industry for a very long time. The reason why is that younger people are usually more open to answering questions, as well as actually trying out new apps, vs people who have been in the industry for a long time and most likely already have a system in place.
2. Send them a connection request, on your PC. The reason why is on mobile you cannot add notes with your connection requests
Don’t overcomplicate the notes, a simple: “Hey [name], saw we were both in the marketing industry, would love to connect. Best regards, [your name]”.
3. Once they accept your request, don’t message them instantly. Sometimes people will reply to your connection request note a bit later, saying thank you for connecting or something along those lines, if they do this even better you can reply back and start the conversation there
4. The day after they accept your connection request, check their profile to see if they posted anything. If they did, make sure to like it and comment something interesting. And no, “Great post” doesn’t count.
5. What to say in the message, so what worked best for me and got me most of the replies, is asking them a question about the problems they face as a marketer.
In our example, you would reach out, greet them, mention that you’re building an app but don’t over-promote it, a simple list of 1 or 2 features you offer.
Once you write this, say that you’re looking to make your app even better, and even more useful for marketers, and that you were wondering if they have anything they struggle with on a day-to-day basis that they wish there was an app for, or that they wish they could do even quicker.
Say that their insights are very valuable, and if they are willing to help you out you would love to offer them a free trial, or a discount in case your app already solves any of the issues they are dealing with
7. This can go multiple ways, but here are the most common ones I see
– First one is that your app solves one of their issues, and they would like to learn more or have an idea on how to improve it
– Second one is that your app doesn’t solve a problem they have but, they have something they struggle with which you can take and turn into a feature and use it as a pain point when pitching your app to other people who have the same problem
– Third one is, well, people who leave you on seen or just respond that they’re not interested, but even with that, this system brought me the most success when messaging people than any other one I tried, and it’s obvious no method will bring you 100% success rate
Some other things that help are of course having a good-looking profile, and no you don’t need a professionally taken photo (I took mine on my balcony lmao), just a clear photo where you’re smiling, as well as a clear bio of what you do, with an about you that describes your journey
That’s pretty much all, hope this helps anyone who is already on LinkedIn but is struggling trying to get any replies. If anyone has any other ideas, or tricks that everyone can use, make sure to comment them down below. Best of luck to everyone 🙂
TL;DR
- Find an ideal client by joining events about your industry and going through attendees list
- Send connection request with simple note saying you want to connect
- After connecting, if possible, comment and like on their post before reaching out
- When messaging for the first time, ask about things they struggle with as a marketer, developer, designer, etc
- Mention your app but very briefly (1-2 features) in case it already solves their problem
- Be kind, and thank them for answering your questions, or if possible offer a free trial or discount
- Bonus – make sure you have a good-looking profile
