Ellen Melko Moore, How to Dominate Your Target Market on LinkedIn – InnovaBuzz 487

Ellen Melko Moore, SuperTight Social Selling

In this episode, I’m really excited to have as my guest, Ellen Melko Moore of SuperTight Social Selling. Ellen has done brand consulting work for Oprah Winfrey, The American Marketing Association, and the Zappos guys, and now creates and teaches LinkedIn social selling strategies for some of the top thought leaders in the digital marketing space.

In our discussion, Ellen talked to me about:

• Using LinkedIn to test your target audience and message
• Instead of telling people what you can do for them, start to teach it
• The doorknob you put in people’s hand…(story)

Jason Van Orden in episode 275 and Michael Roderick in episode 328 introduced us to Ellen.

Listen to the podcast to find out more.

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There's a big difference between talking about how you are going to help and just helping. @MoreEllenMoore on #InnovaBuzz podcast Click To Tweet

Show Notes from this episode with Ellen Melko Moore of SuperTight Social Selling

Key points and takeaways from this episode include:

• The first step to addressing or changing something is to accept that the problem is there.
• Most of us have EES (Extreme Expert Syndrome). The more we are an expert at something, the more we want to get into all the details of how things work which is not the best way to approch our audience.
• The door knob is the story. It’s the entry point to what you are doing.
• People don’t generally buy a HOW. They buy the WHAT.
• Keep your door knob pretty simple. Make it easy for the right people to come into your world. Give them a chance to come into that door and make sure that you’re not being a high-cost transaction.
• When something is supertight, it’s just on point. It all folds together very quickly.
• Your brand is either hot or not. It is either front of the line or middle of the pack.
• Picking a more specific target audience is one of the easiest ways to create a supertight brand.
• You can use LinkedIn to test your target audience. If it’s not working, you can change it very quickly without spending a bunch of money. It doesn’t matter if you’re not getting regular clients from it. You don’t have to change your brand and you can leave your website and everything else at it is.
• Just because your website is different doesn’t mean that people aren’t going to buy. If you’ve done a good job of getting people interested and educating them instead of talking about yourself, they will come back and buy from you.
• Cutting people out because they’re not a good fit is a lot more pain free than never taking the chance to find out what will happen if you target a more specific audience.
• One of the easiest ways to double or triple your revenue is to start tight then go a bit further.
• Pretend that your profile is a conference that you’re hosting for your most desirable target audience. Make sure that every room in that conference is a place where they can learn from you. By doing so, they will not only connect with you but they will also find that what you’re offering is really cool and will engage with you.
• There’s a big difference between talking about how you are going to help and just helping.
• The most successful people are the ones that don’t talk about how wonderful they are or how great their service is. They just answer the common questions that other people have.
• Google a phrase that applies to your industry. Look at the five most common questions that people ask and see if they would apply to your audience.
• People will stick around when you start teaching really useful things about your brand that apply to their industry.
• Studies found that 74% of people will buy from the very first expert that really changed their mind about something.
• 2018 called and it wants its marketing back! We’ve moved from this place where everything is just about persuasion and manipulation into a place where people who are willing to use their materials to teach really cool things are the ones that vacuum up the share of efforts right now.
• Frequently answering a common question in lots of your content brings you up in the SEO scale.
• People understand what their pain points are. They don’t need to be poked in them by you. What they need to see is that you understand what they’re going through and that you’ve put together a solution that speaks to those pain points without constantly jabbing them.
• You develop trust when you answer people’s common questions.
• Make your LinkedIn connection about them and not about you.
• LinkedIn is the oldest social media platform and it wasn’t designed to be a social media platform. LinkedIn is all about developing a deeper network.
• Things will go better if you understand the context of what LinkedIn is for. You’ll be surprised how quickly you can master this platform past almost anybody if you adopt some of its basics and do it consistently.
• Understanding why people are on LinkedIn and what they are looking for is key.
• People don’t go on LinkedIn to watch an hour of video. They go on LinkedIn to look through some things quickly as well as to establish their personal brand. They go there to share their digital brand, and if they want to learn something, they want to learn it quickly.
• Newsletters are all about the open rate. You don’t need thousands of people. You just need hundreds of them that are opening it 55-65% of the time.
• Don’t throw all your eggs in the creator basket. If you do, make sure that what you’re doing is really short. Don’t do videos on LinkedIn that are longer than 45 seconds.
• The best way to master LinkedIn is to go slower and deeper. Test it and see what happens.
• People already have a code for what LinkedIn is and you can’t sell against it. You just have to understand that it’s there and operate within that.
• If you’re not understanding your audience and why they are there, a lot of what you’re doing is going to fall through the cracks.
• Consistency is what matters on LinkedIn.
• It’s good to have short videos of you teaching something on your “featured” section. Think about the top 3 questions that you are answering the most and post a video of your LinkedIn answering those questions. Make sure that your videos are also transcribed.
• LinkedIn’s algorithm is judging you the second you walk through that door. The number of people who are going to see your post depends on how popular your post is, so make sure that you’re getting that engagement right out the door.
• Be compelling on camera. Keep your videos short, brief, and on point.
• All these tests are meant to get you to one place and one place alone. It’s the place where you know who your target client is and you’re consistently showing the same lighthouse to that same client.
• Constantly innovating your target and your message is an incredible waste of time. Do your testing but don’t keep adding innovation after innovation in business.
• People don’t always look for something new. Sometimes what they want is consistency.
• Great referral sources, friends, and people that you can collaborate with in different ways are worth more than any one client.

Picking a more specific target audience is one of the easiest ways to create a supertight brand. @MoreEllenMoore on #InnovaBuzz podcast Click To Tweet

The Buzz – Our Innovation Round 

Here are Ellen’s answers to the questions of our innovation round. Listen to the conversation to get the full scoop.

1. #1 thing to be more innovative – Bring different parts of your life together.
2. Best thing for new ideas – Listen to your audience. Let them talk and listen to them.
3. Favourite tool for innovation – LinkedIn, newsletters, and Zoom Honey Traps
4. Keep project/client on track –  Set up the expectations right at the beginning. Make them read all that and agree to it before they give you money. Create an accountability tracker.
5. Differentiate – Choose a more specific target audience, differentiate yourself by results, and understand emotional resonance.

To Be a Leader

It’s so easy to lose your joy when you take the thing that you love and turn it into a business. The marketplace doesn’t care about your passion and purpose, but there are people within it who do. Find a way to enjoy your personal path of discovery as much as you can. Understand the market as well as your own pathway.

Reach Out

You can reach out and thank Ellen through her website and on LinkedIn. 

Suggested Guest

Ellen suggested we have a conversation with Steve Brody, CEO of Brody & Associates. So Steve, keep an eye on your inbox for an invitation from us to the InnovaBuzz Podcast, courtesy of Ellen Melko Moore.

Links

• Website – SuperTight Brand
• Website – SuperTight LinkedIn
• Twitter – @MoreEllenMoore
• LinkedIn
• Facebook

Cool Things About Ellen

• She was a former English teacher. She taught creative and persuasive writing at the University of Denver.
• She got her B.A. and M.A. in Literary Studies from Northwestern University in Chicago.
• She loves dogs, literary fiction, and pop culture; especially hip hop.

Great referral sources, friends, and people that you can collaborate with in different ways are worth more than any one client. @MoreEllenMoore on #InnovaBuzz podcast Click To Tweet

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