Marketers are spending more time learning the latest martech tools than understanding their customers, and it’s costing them results. In this episode, Michelle J Raymond challenges the obsession with tools and brings the focus back to what really drives growth on LinkedIn: customers.

Discover why martech is only as good as the strategy behind it, how to spot when you’ve fallen into the “shiny tools trap,” and practical ways to shift your time and energy back to researching, listening to, and connecting with your buyers.

If you want to stop burning money on tools and start building trust, this episode will show you how to put customers first — and let martech amplify your efforts, not replace them

Key moments in this episode - 

00:00 The MarTech Distraction

00:47 Reflecting on LinkedIn Strategies

04:28 The MarTech Trap

08:39 Customer-Centric Approach

13:37 Practical Steps to Refocus on Customers

18:58 Building a Strong LinkedIn Strategy

CONNECT WITH MICHELLE J RAYMOND

• Michelle J Raymond on LinkedIn
• Book a free intro call
• https://socialmediaforb2bgrowthpodcast.com/
• B2B Growth Co newsletter

Today's episode is sponsored by Metricool. Make sure to register for a FREE Metricool account today. Use Code MICHELLE30 to try any Premium Plan FREE for 30 days. 

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Newsflash MarTech tools don't close deals.

Clients do.

So if you've been spending all of your time lately researching MarTech and not

getting to know your clients better this week, it's time to shift your focus.

G'Day everyone.

It's Coach Michelle J Raymond, your trusted guide for building your brand

and growing your business on LinkedIn.

And listeners, if you've been following along the podcast over

the last few weeks, you'll realize I'm in a bit of a reflective mood.

I've gone through the process of almost wanting to quit LinkedIn

'cause I was over it to having a look at what's working and what's not.

What kinds of things I needed to shift both in my mindset and in my business.

And this week I wanna talk about what I've discovered is going on in the

platform around me, which I think is actually causing far more grief and

not helping us as much as some of these other experts might have you think.

There's been an enormous amount of pressure this year for everybody to

adopt AI and MarTech tools in general?

These are meant to be our saviours.

They're meant to be here to give us so much more time back, increase our

productivity and make us like a thousand times better than we currently are.

I've got a question.

For all that effort that you're putting into researching these

tools, trying to figure out how to use them, becoming prompt engineers,

is it really working for you?

Honestly?

For all the effort that you've put in are you seeing a return in your business?

Be honest.

Are you sure?

Because from where I sit, it looks like the world's biggest distraction has

happened this year, and we've taken our eye off the ball and forgotten

that if we put this much effort into researching our clients, their needs

and being in service of that person that we've done all of the research

on our businesses would be growing.

We wouldn't be seeing such poor results on LinkedIn like we are.

And so I wanna have a chat around that today because you know, I

have spent 20 years in B2B sales.

I have spent 10 years selling on LinkedIn.

And my success has always come, not from having the latest tools, but from

having built networks and relationships with people that are strategic,

that I spend my time nurturing them.

So in today's episode, I wanna have a chat about this.

Where should you be focusing your time and energy to generate growth

from your efforts on LinkedIn.

So let's have a chat about that right after this quick word

from our sponsors, Metricool.

I wanna start with the MarTech trap, and there are so many different

varieties of MarTech out there.

So it could be things like the large language models, ChatGPT, Claude,

Perplexity, those kinds of things.

We've got tools for repurposing content.

We've got tools for writing content.

We've got tools for automating messaging.

We've got tools for, you know, pretty much everything.

And I did a quick search and there's about it's estimated around 15,000

different MarTech tools out there.

And of course there's a portion of them directly related back to LinkedIn.

And it's crazy to think like, how are you ever going to find exactly which

one is best for you and your business?

And in my experience, whenever I try these new tools, it's super time intensive.

The learning curve is pretty steep.

And when you are busy, I'm not sure that we ever have enough time that we can

invest into these tools and really get out of them what's promised on the box.

And I think when I looked at this for my own business, and please

don't take this as I'm anti-tech or anti ai, I am certainly not.

But what I've realized is people are so focused on that.

I think we've forgotten about the people that we're in service of our

ideal clients, the reason that we're showing up on LinkedIn, and for me it's

really this focus on productivity and move away from relationship building.

I think is partly responsible for some of the results that

I'm seeing in my own business.

And I know that it has an impact because I don't enjoy things as much right now.

And when I stopped and did an assessment, it was because I hadn't been

putting as much effort into nurturing relationships, building strategic

communities as I have done historically.

And I liken it to those people that always want the shiniest best tool.

Now off LinkedIn recently, I've been doing a lot of DIY renos, and I can

promise you that even if I bought the most expensive tool in the shop and

brought it back, so let's just say I've got the most expensive, you know, saw.

I've got the most expensive hammer, screwdriver set, like the whole lot.

I'm kitted up.

That doesn't make me a builder.

Right.

It is not going to just make up for the fact that I've had no industry experience.

I've had no training.

I haven't done an apprenticeship, I haven't had any other hands-on

experience, so as the saying goes, all the gear and no idea.

And I think that's what's going on right now.

We're expecting that these tools are going to make up for lack of strategy.

Now, the tools cannot help you with that.

They are going to amplify what you put in.

But are you putting in the right ingredients upfront?

And based on the conversations I'm having and the LinkedIn strategies

that people come to me, uh, they wanna do a power Hour where I review it.

And I have a look at these strategies and I'm like, whoa.

If you spend your time and effort doing what this generic churned

out ChatGPT strategy, for instance is, you are gonna get nowhere.

In fact, you're gonna fall behind further from your competitors because you've

skipped to trying to make content better and have not spent any time whatsoever

trying to understand your clients.

I'm trying to slow people down a little bit.

I, I get that the focus is often on, do more content, whether we wanna

call it thought leadership content.

It's still rubbish if we haven't done our customer research.

Today I wanna go back to what is it that I think can help people.

Move the focus back onto what's important, the customer, what kinds

of questions you should be answering, and then how we can then take the

MarTech to help us get better results.

Not the cart before the horse.

So it's not MarTech first, customer second, we need to

flip these things around.

How do I know that somebody's got a customer first approach?

It's really easy.

When I land on their profile, everything is designed with that customer in mind.

So when I'm rewriting client profiles, we ask the questions.

Who is it that you wanna work with?

What is it that you can do for those people?

What makes your product or service different?

And getting back to some of those fundamental, basic questions that

can help us to write in a way that the person on the other side.

Easily, quickly can identify that they are in the right place.

And so the LinkedIn profile is dialed in.

I know when they write content that they use the language of their ideal clients,

that they've done the research to find out what is the problem in that ideal client's

words, on the other side that you solve.

What kinds of problems are keeping them up at night?

What is it that is stopping them from achieving their KPIs?

How can you build trust so that they can make an easy buying decision

when they're ready with you.

The more that you have empathy?

My favourite word when it comes to LinkedIn, the more you put yourself

into their shoes and understand what a day in the life of that business or of

that person on the other side is really like, and what matters to them, then

you can nail your content just like you have nailed your LinkedIn profile.

But too often we're so focused.

On how to write the best hook.

Can we get ChatGPT with a prompt to write like us as fast as possible?

Can we save time?

Can we reduce the amount of effort that we are putting into relationship building?

When your focus is that it almost feels like what you're putting out

there is hollow, that it doesn't resonate and it really doesn't apply

to the person on the other side.

You might be thinking, Michelle, how do you know all of this?

Fair question.

I know this because you are having exactly the same experiences I am right

now when I'm scrolling LinkedIn and there is so much bland, soulless, generic,

content out there that everything is just a clone of a clone of a clone

and it's become so bland and boring.

Or should we call that professional?

My other favourite word when it comes to LinkedIn, and from that

perspective, you know that that's what you are on the receiving end of.

But my question is, if you were to take a moment and have a look at the content that

you've been putting out recently, or the messages that you've been sending, or if

I was to read your LinkedIn profile, does it really speak to your ideal audience?

Are you spending time making sure that you are connecting with them?

And we know these days with the Gen Z and Millennial buyers, they

want trust, they want transparency.

They want authenticity.

Now that doesn't come from a carbon copy paste of everyone and everything else.

When we look at this, the missed opportunities on LinkedIn are

coming from the fact that we are not having a customer first approach.

Today we're gonna flip that script and start to think what actions can I take

that are in service of that audience?

How can I get them closer to their goals?

And what is it that I have to shift in my behaviour on LinkedIn?

And by that it can be your company page content.

It can be your personal content.

I know I've got listeners that are responsible for their own content.

I've got others that are responsible for creating content for the business.

It doesn't matter which side this applies to everyone.

Let's have a chat about shifting focus after this short break.

What are the practical ways that you can be shifting your focus away from

features and functions of MarTech and getting distracted that way to

focusing back on your customers?

And sometimes it's as simple as asking, it could be your sales

team, it could be someone else within the business, but go and have

conversations with your colleagues.

Find out what's going on in your industry right now.

Not what you think is going on based on your experience from

your little part of the business.

Talk to your colleagues, go and have a chat.

What are the customer service team dealing with most right now?

What are your quality team having issues with?

Where are the most inquiries coming from?

What's the most commonly asked questions that your sales team gets?

To have conversations internally.

If you are part of the marketing department, you can't do great

LinkedIn content without having these conversations, and if you're part of

a sales team or outside, and it's not directly your responsibility for creating

content on behalf of the business.

Honestly, you want to be proactive and go and help your colleagues.

The more that everybody works together, that power of two that I'm

so famous for saying is about bringing things together for better results.

So absolutely talk to your colleagues and start to learn the language that

your ideal customer uses to describe the problems that they're having.

The more that you can really dial in things so that when they come across, and

it could be your content or the profiles, as I said, when they land on it, they're

like, oh my God, are you reading my mind?

And the craziest thing that I ever had somebody ask me was, Michelle,

can you listen in on our phones?

And I was like, what?

Why do you think I'm so powerful that I can listen in on your phone?

And the person who has since become a client said to me?

Well, we were in the boardroom having a discussion around LinkedIn and your

message came in and it basically was word for word, what they were talking

about was the issue on their side, and I just nailed it in my messaging and

she reached out, booked a call, and has become a long-term client of mine.

But I had spent so much time trying to understand what is life for a B2B marketer

who's trying to get the business found and discovered and stand out and grow

on LinkedIn, what's it like for them?

So they always feel like I've done my research, they feel seen, they feel heard,

and they feel like I actually get them.

And it is so much easier to build rapport like that when you've done your work.

No different to if I was back in my role as an account manager going and

visiting customers face to face, I had to do the work to know who they were,

both in their role and as a human being.

That is who you're actually dealing with.

You'll be very surprised that when I meet people very quickly, I almost

end up knowing their whole life story.

Like Lil will laugh when we go on holidays.

I'll come back from having a swim in the pool and then we'll walk past somebody

later and I'll go that's Jim and Mary.

They're retired.

They come from, you know, Illinois USA.

She was a teacher, he was an engineer.

They've got three kids.

Their grandkids are this.

They're now traveling the world.

She likes this.

He doesn't like this.

And I can tell you everything because I listen, right?

I am looking for how can we personally connect.

And so I want you to think about how can you do that on LinkedIn, and that

can sometimes be as simple as reading somebody's profile and finding something

that you have in common, or asking them a question about a particular point

that you read in their About section.

Or maybe it's a post you saw that you went, actually, I have

something similar happened to me.

What I'm asking you to do listeners, is actually care about the person on

the other side just as much as we care about the features and the functions of

the products that we're looking to buy.

So products, technology will get us so far, but if we skip over the most

important step, which is why are we doing this and who are we doing it for?

You are basically just burning money.

And I am seeing that right now with people that have invested heavily in

tech, skipped over the customer phase, and are wondering why the tech doesn't work.

In most cases the tech is amazing and is going to deliver when you

have a really strong foundation set up based on customer research.

So my question for you listeners is what of your behaviors can you change

between now and next week's episode where instead of spending all your

time researching tech, you spend more time researching your customers?

Can we make that deal?

Let's get back focused on our customers, build a strong foundation,

and then jump onto MarTech.

Cheers.