Ep 154: Revive Your Referrals: LinkedIn Networking for B2B Service Businesses

LinkedIn Prospecting Workshop - September 22 @ 12pm CST

Apply for the Tiny Marketing Club

LinkedIn | How I hit multi-six figures in year one.

Ever wonder why those steady referrals that built your business suddenly dried up? In this episode, I unpack the exact strategy to reignite your referral engine without begging, pestering, or resorting to desperate tactics.

After my own journey from relying on past employer referrals to building a sustainable pipeline, I've mapped the patterns that repeatedly work for B2B service businesses. The secret isn't becoming a social media superstar—it's becoming remembered, trusted, and recommended within specific circles where your expertise matters most.

Discover the "niche networker" approach that blends strategic community participation with intentional LinkedIn relationship-building. Rather than passively posting content hoping someone notices, learn how to curate your feed with direct prospects, referral partners, and industry peers who can naturally connect you to opportunities. I share how one client went from zero pipeline (and three months away from missing mortgage payments) to a wait list in just six months using these exact methods.

The process hinges on three key components: finding the right niche communities where your dream clients already gather, crafting a gateway offer that gives people an easy way to recommend you, and mastering the "magic DM" approach that turns LinkedIn connections into meaningful relationships without being sleazy or salesy.

Want to put this into practice? Join my LinkedIn Prospecting Workshop where I'll share the templates, systems and exact approach that generated $94,000 in just 30 days—no paid ads, no spam, no cold calling. Check the show notes for details and keep marketing small

Join my events community for FREE monthly events.

I offer free events each month to help you master your business's growth through marketing, sales, systems, and offer strategy.

Join the community here!

Are you tired of prospects ghosting you? With a Gateway Offer, that won't happen.

Over the next Ten Days, we will launch and sell our Gateway Offers with the goal of reaching booked-out status!

Join the challenge here.

Chapters

• 1:34 Welcome to Tiny Marketing
• 3:05 When Referrals Dry Up
• 6:21 Niche Communities and LinkedIn Strategy
• 10:42 Gateway Offers That Drive Referrals
• 17:17 Dream Prospect Mapping
• 22:42 The Magic DM Approach
• 31:49 LinkedIn Prospecting Workshop Invitation

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:47

Welcome to Tiny Marketing. This is Sarah Noir-Block, and this is a podcast that helps B2B service businesses do more with less. Learn lean, actionable, organic marketing strategies you can implement today. No fluff, just powerful growth tactics that work. Ready to scale smarter. Hit that subscribe button and start growing your business with Tiny Marketing growing your business with tiny marketing.

Speaker 2: 1:16

Hello, I'm Sarah Noelle Block and this is tiny marketing. This is episode 154 and it's my first solo episode in months because all summer we did the uncut summer series. So I mean to you they were solo episodes because a lot of them were sharing trainings that I have recorded in the past, but to me I haven't recorded a solo episode in probably six months. It's kind of crazy, but it's good to be back. Hi, I've got some cozy mood lighting If you're watching the video on YouTube. If you're not, you can catch it there.

Speaker 2: 1:54

And welcome back. So this episode is for those B2B service founders, fractional leaders, indie consultants who need to do more with less You're all on your own. More with less You're all on your own. And I'm going to focus in on my mission three inside the Tiny Marketing Club today, and that's niche networker. So if your referrals have dried up, then this mission is the thing that will flip it back on A lot of people. When they come to me, they tell me that they survived. Their business survived on referrals. Maybe they had a client from a past employer. Actually, this is pretty much the story of every client I've had, but it's also my story now that I think about it. My first client was a past employer and they liked my work, so they hired me as a contractor when I built my business Actually my first two, now that I think about it and then they referred me to other people and that's how my business expanded. And I have a LinkedIn post that I wrote where I share all the other things that I did to fill in the gaps when I was building out my business to multi six figures in the first year. I'll share that in the show notes to share the whole shebang. But that's not the point of today.

Speaker 2: 3:29

Today is how to get referrals to turn back on when they dry out. Because they do. They do when you first start a business. People are so giving and they want to help you, they want to see you succeed. So referrals come like fast and easy because they're thinking of you, you're top of mind, they care about you. But probably when you get to about the two-year mark is when people usually see that referrals are drying up. They're not coming as easily because, well, new businesses have started, they're supporting them, they're helping them grow. So you need a way to be able to turn them back on.

Speaker 2: 4:16

Referrals are amazing when they're flowing, but when your business is relying exclusively on referrals, it's terrifying because they can just stop. A referral is goodwill, a referral is goodwill. So often this happens because your network forgets about you. That's one of the reasons. When you first launch your business, you're in launch mode. You're talking about your business, you're telling people you started a business and then, as the years progress, you get busy with client work, You're not talking about it as much and your network just kind of forgets. They start thinking about the people who are talking about their business regularly, or maybe you haven't been visible in the right places. So all fine and good. You get referrals within your little bubble, your niche, but as those start to dry out, you aren't visible in the places where your dream clients are hanging out.

Speaker 2: 5:21

So for most people who watch or listen to the tiny marketing show, that's going to be LinkedIn and that's going to be niche communities. Those are the two biggest ones for me and my clients. So I won't get into the whole process. I've gotten into it before. I'll share one of the episodes, but in the show notes, just in the show notes.

Speaker 2: 5:49

But here's the gist of the process. I will join a niche community that has my ideal client. I know they're hanging out there and when I see that they have a question that applies to my particular expertise, I'll answer that question. I might DM them and see if they want to go deeper on it and I'll connect with them on LinkedIn. So connecting with them on LinkedIn gives me the opportunity to be able to nurture that relationship long-term. They're seeing me on there, they're seeing the content I'm writing and they learn to trust that I know what I'm talking about. So that's the general process, like for me anyway. Niche communities is where the discovery happens. I find them, they find me, we talk and I start to become connected as the person who is the expert at that thing, and then the nurturing happens on LinkedIn. So make sure that you're in the right places. You're finding those niche communities where your ideal client is hanging out.

Speaker 2: 6:56

Another reason that referrals dry out is you haven't given people an easy way to recommend you, so you don't have an easy, yes, gateway offer that lets people say, oh, you have this problem. Okay, you got to try this offer from so-and-so and they're so good at it. Like the gateway offer is the reason that it's so easy to refer my clients and think of them right off. The a client let's get into that who felt invisible on LinkedIn. She was showing up all the time but no one was really engaging with her content. She kept just waiting for people to come and find her, but weeks went by. Nobody turned into a lead. And if you're doing it, if you're doing LinkedIn passively, that is going to happen. You can post all you want, but if you're not building this community around you on LinkedIn, it won't really matter. People need to care what you're talking about and even be aware that you're talking about the thing.

Speaker 2: 8:22

So one of the things that we do inside of Mission 3, the niche networker in the tiny marketing club is we have the LinkedIn playbook and it shows you exactly how to build the algorithm around you. So your dream clients are in your feed and they're seeing your content and you're building an active relationship with them, and that's why leads come from LinkedIn is because you're building a relationship. It's not about how amazing your content is, although that helps. It's more about, like, I know this person, I see them all the time, we're friends and I trust that they know what they're doing. So it's about building a community around you and ensuring, kind of like curating your feed so the right people are seeing you. So that's incredibly important and that's what happened with this client. So she was posting. No one was really responding. She didn't want to take the time to build those relationships until we went through mission three and then it started to become fun. She started to build relationships and get into the DMs, have real deeper conversations, and then, all of a sudden, the lead started turning on and not only was she getting clients really easily, but she was getting speaking opportunities because the right people were seeing her content. It made it a lot easier.

Speaker 2: 9:53

Another way to be able to get more leads from LinkedIn is to just make it super freaking clear exactly what you're doing in every single post. So I don't recommend selling directly in a post at all, but I recommend always having a super signature that tells people who you work with, what you do and how they can work with you. That makes it a lot easier. So you're teaching something and then you have your super signature which shows them how they can work with you, and then people will start sliding into your DMs and asking those questions asking how they can work with you, because and then people will start sliding into your DMs and asking those questions asking how they can work with you because you're making it easy. Every single post tells them exactly what you do, who you do it for and how they can work with you. Without it being salesy, it's more passive. So all of this you also learn inside of mission three niche networker. All of this you also learn inside of mission three niche networker.

Speaker 2: 10:55

So networking isn't about collecting business cards business cards um, who even has business cards anymore? But you get what I'm saying. It's not about like adding people to your crm or growing your follower count to 10,000 or whatever. It's about becoming the person people remember when a problem comes up. That's why the gateway offer is so important, because you have a clear promise in that gateway offer Like within two weeks you're going to know how to solve this problem. That's pretty. That's pretty good. By the way just side note the gateway offer is mission one. That's. The first thing we do is figure out what your easy yes offer is that leads into those high ticket offers. Okay.

Speaker 2: 11:40

So you want to be top of mind in a very specific circle. It's not about becoming an influencer or having everybody know your name or being in magazines and featured in quotes and whatever. It's not about that. It's about being the go-to person for very specific people. You don't need to be freaking famous. You need to be known as the person who solves this problem. So when someone says I need help building a marketing system, I want people to instantly think Sarah Noelle Block, tiny marketing, she is the one who knows how to do this and let's get into that. So one of my clients inside of the club.

Speaker 2: 12:28

She started off with no pipeline and that's really hard because, for reference, you want your sales pipeline to equate to three times what your annual revenue goal is. So when you're at zero, that's real rough because you're looking at a pipeline in the negatives. With that, you just have overhead at that point. So she was at that point where she had started her business maybe six months before reaching out to me and her pipeline was at zero. She wasn't sure how to funnel people into her pipeline and that is so common. I didn't. I didn't know how to do that for a long time. I was doing a lot of like active work to fill my revenue and my pipeline in those early days because I didn't know how to get people to hand raise or identify me as their person. I just knew how to get work. It's hard. It's hard when you're starting out. I was there. So that was her.

Speaker 2: 13:45

She was in a position where she had bought a house right before getting laid off and when she got laid off she was like you know what? I'm just going to try and do the thing and build a business. So that's what we worked on and she reached out to me when it was getting to the point where she was about three months away from not being able to pay her mortgage. And we built out her gateway offer first, what is an easy hell yes offer that people at like a no brainer price that people can fill into. And first we just sold that to warm people who already knew her. So we didn't have to start from scratch. It was just like people she used to work with. It was people who were already in her network. And then we started going into mission three, the niche networker, where she found those pockets of people who would be the perfect fit for her offer, who would be the perfect fit for her offer. And then within 60 days she had filled out her like she was at max hours, she had booked herself out and six months later she had a wait list and a scalable offer.

Speaker 2: 15:09

So it was all really down to the combination of having that easy yes offer right off the bat and knowing where to spend time to be able to sell that offer, because the gateway offer fills in those high ticket offers. That's the goal. You sell the easy hell yes offer and then you upgrade them into the execution piece of the offer, which is your high ticket main offer, and that's how it works. You build trust with that gateway, but it also allows you an opportunity to say you know what I didn't like working with them and I wouldn't want to work with them again. So you can choose not to upsell them. So it's a little test for both of you at a price that is easy to say yes to. I like to stay right underneath $1,000. That's enough money that people are like, okay, I need to take this seriously. Um, but it's not so much that they're gonna say no, it's, it's an easy yes answer. It's a easy yes price is what I mean. Okay, so, um, let's get into the dream prospect map. So I have notes right here. If you're watching on YouTube, that is what I'm scrolling through is my notes.

Speaker 2: 16:41

Instead of shouting into a void, you need to map out exactly who you need to connect with in order to get the right people to see your content and build relationships with them. So you want to fill your feed with direct buyers, or I mean at first it'll be direct prospects, people who would be a good fit for your offers. You also want it filled with referral partners, so other people who work with your dream clients but don't do the same thing as you, and then industry peers who might bring you opportunities. So this could be like agency owners. It could be old co-workers, something like that, People who do similar things to what you do, but not exactly what you do Like. I'll give you an example Probably in like year two and three of my business, I was working heavily with a lot of marketing agencies because they didn't want to do content strategy.

Speaker 2: 17:50

They wanted some expert to do it. So they would pull me in to do content strategy for their clients and then they would do the execution piece. So, even though they're kind of a competitor, they're not really a competitor because they didn't want to do that work. They wanted someone else to do it and that person was me.

Speaker 2: 18:08

And there are in any industry that you're in because, like people inside of the tiny marketing club, they're often in the finance space, they're in the operations space, a lot of marketers too, actually, because the tiny marketing club goes from like offer into actually offer to offer, because the first mission is gateway offer, the easy yes offer. And then we go into fast cash, which is a sales sprint where we're selling a bunch and making money. And then we go into niche, not worker, which is mission three, and then we get into marketing pieces, the lead waterfall, so scaling lead generation. And then we get into what does a scalable offer look like? I'm booked out, I don't have time, but I want to increase my revenue. What does this look like? So there's six missions inside of the club, so we have, like finance ops, marketing pretty much anyone who'd be in the C-suite that are inside, perhaps marketing pretty much anyone who'd be in the C-suite that are inside.

Speaker 2: 19:16

So there's someone in each one of those categories that are technically a competitor but don't want to do exactly what you do. Like the client I was talking about a few minutes ago, she works in the finance space. She doesn't do bookkeeping, though. She only does taxes. So you can see that she can connect with a bookkeeper and that would automatically fill her sales pipeline. Because they don't want to do taxes, she doesn't want to do bookkeeping. It's a symbiotic.

Speaker 2: 19:52

I think I pronounced that right. I think I pronounced that right. Relationship. Okay.

Speaker 2: 19:59

So a quick exercise for you. If you're listening or watching, pause and jot down 10 names of people that you could connect with right now to get clients tomorrow. That's an easy thing that you can do is write down 10 names. Pause. It's an easy thing that you can do is write down 10 names. Pause. Write down 10 names of people you can connect to, who can connect you with clients, okay. So when I was going through this, I wrote down one.

Speaker 2: 20:37

All of those aggregators of like. I used the mom project, I used marketer hire. Those were simple ones, because people are already going there saying they need marketing support and then I would connect through them. Other ones for me were marketing agencies. Ones for me were marketing agencies. I also connected a lot with website designers because I would do the copywriting, I would do the strategy, or they would have a client who didn't have any marketing and they now they have this beautiful website, but they didn't know what to do with it afterwards. So they were great referral partners for me too, because they would come to me and they're like okay, so they have an awesome website now, but they don't know what to do next. So I was their next person. So find your hidden allies that you aren't tapping into and tap into them. Okay, all right.

Speaker 2: 21:31

So next is building credibility through connection, and that really comes down to those niche communities. So how I found most of mine is through connection calls. I would connect with people who had the same dream client as me. They work with the same person as me and I would ask what communities they're part of. That was the easiest way to find perfect ones.

Speaker 2: 22:01

Some of my most profitable niche communities came from recommendations from other people. That's the first thing I would do Ask. Ask people who already have the same clients that you want. Another one is just go on LinkedIn and write a post, say I'm looking to connect with more of X. Whatever your dream client is, what communities would be a great place for me to start building those relationships. So, instead of trying to be everywhere and having a profile on Facebook, instagram, tiktok, youtube, just everywhere, just show up consistently in like one to two spots. For me, that is my niche communities and that is LinkedIn. For you, it might be something else. I don't try and box you into my box, no-transcript. So one of my offers is called the strategic story and in it, clients come to me and they ask me to, and what I basically create is an all-in-one messaging, content and marketing strategy. Interview their clients and I find out how they make buying decisions, and pretty much all of them have told me that they go to their trusted network first and they ask for recommendations. So when you become that trusted network, or known to that trusted network or network through niche communities, you become an easy person to refer because you're a trusted referral and that's what people are looking for. They're not looking for somebody to find the best trending sounds, unless they're looking for a social media person. They're looking for someone that's trusted.

Speaker 2: 25:12

Okay, this is going a little long for a solo episode, so I'm just going to touch on two more things before I wrap up. So how do we move people from you know, reading your content maybe passively, not even liking it, who knows to having an active conversation? That's where the magic DM comes in. So the magic DM is basically a non-slimy way to get hand raisers. So basically, what you do is, instead of cold pitching so so I get so many, so many cold pitches in my LinkedIn DMs and it's like, hey, I do this, want to get on a call, here's the link. It's gross and I don't have time and I don't know you, so no, what the magic DM is is when you're connecting with someone. Tell them where you found them. So there is that connection point, like, hey, I found you in insert niche community and I thought you would be a good connection.

Speaker 2: 26:22

And then the next line is basically that super signature what you do, who you do it with and how people can work with you and then end it with some sort of soft close like I'm really looking forward to your posts. So that is the magic DM and it intentionally will filter out people who aren't interested in ever working with you, because that signal when you tell them what you do, who you do it for and how people can work with you, if they accept that connection request, that's a little signal that they are interested in possibly working with you one day. They're at least not shutting the door on the possibility. So that's the first thing I would send in a connection request. And this turns strangers into warm leads without any pressure. They have passively nodded their head to your offer and you can start having a conversation with them. Ask them so tell me more about your business, what is, what's a project you're really excited that you're working on right now and that you want to eventually turn that into a connection call, which is just like a low pressure 15 minute conversation. Or you can learn more about them and see are they a good fit or are they a friend who knows Fit or friend fit or are they a friend who knows Fit or friend?

Speaker 2: 27:50

Okay, so step four is the follow-up flow. So the magic DM is it's a hello, but it flows into a conversation. So you want to keep that conversation going and your goal is to eventually get them on a call so you can figure out fitter friend and then keep track of those conversations and follow up with value. So I take notes on every single conversation I have, like what can I do to support them? What resources would make sense for me to share with them? Pay close attention to the people that you're having these conversations with so you can be helpful, comment on their posts, share their posts, be really encouraging and just an ally for them.

Speaker 2: 28:48

So here's a quick tip If you can follow up with just like just two or three times with value, you'll stand out from 99% of the people on LinkedIn who are just connecting with them and then not building a relationship with them. You don't have to like inundate their DMs with a thousand different things like, hey, I'm doing a webinar, here's the link, sign up. That's might be doing them a service, but it's also like I'm asking for an hour of your time. That's not super valuable. What is valuable is finding out what challenges they're going through and then sending them some resource, even if it's not your own, that could help them through it. So make sure that you continuously be a value for them. This should be part of your business development strategy.

Speaker 2: 29:39

Okay, so if all of this my meandering conversation has been helpful for you, has been helpful for you, we have to acknowledge the elephant in the room. You might be thinking, okay, but what do I say? How do I write these DMs without sounding awkward? How do I build these relationships? That's where my workshop comes into play. So if you're listening to this early, then you can still sign up for the LinkedIn prospecting workshop, which is happening, I think, a week from when this will air. So I'm going to drop the link for that in the show notes page If you missed it. If you're listening to this a year later, that happens all the time that's okay, because the replay is also available and you can just DM me if it's not readily available to you and you don't see it. But LinkedIn prospecting I'm going to show you exactly how to curate your feed so the right people are seeing you and how to slide into those DMs without being a creep. So how to have these natural conversations and I'm sharing the templates. We're going to build it out together. It's going to be awesome. We have a good group already going, but I'd love to have you too. So I will have the link to sign up in the show notes and if you're listening to this late, just DM me and I will send you the page to sign up for the replay. Sign up for the replay.

Speaker 2: 31:32

So this particular workshop will explain how I was able to make $94,000 in 30 days with LinkedIn. It actually was a combination of niche communities to LinkedIn. It was that process that I mentioned earlier. So I'm going to show you the exact LinkedIn system no paid ads, no spam, no cold calling that I used to fill my pipeline and make that $94,000. So inside of this you're going to get your dream prospect map. So how to curate that feed that's basically what that means the connection blueprint. So how do you have those conversations without coming off awkward or salesy? The magic DM template, a prompt pack and a follow-up system. So you know exactly what to say to keep that conversation going. So you continue that relationship.

Speaker 2: 32:25

So the workshop itself is $97. You can grab it and you also get a guest pass to the next tiny marketing club office hours. So that's super exciting because once you go through this workshop and you start playing with these ideas and testing them out, you might have some questions. So you're getting a guest pass to the office hours where you can join me live and come with them. Come with your questions. Seats are limited, but go to the show notes and see if they're still available now.

Speaker 2: 32:57

So, to wrap it up, mission three in the tiny marketing club is all about being remembered, trusted and recommended. So I invite you to join the workshop that is available to everyone and put this episode into practice and then maybe, if it's a good fit for you, you want to apply for the Tiny Marketing Club. That would be amazing, and you can go through those six missions with me and we will build you out a booked out business together. So I mean, that sounds pretty fun, doesn't it? Keep marketing small but making it big. So I can't wait to see you at the workshop. Head down to the show notes and I'll see you there.

Speaker 1: 33:45

You love all things tiny marketing. Head down to the show notes page and sign up for the wait list and I'll see you there.