Ever wondered what the ROI of social selling on LinkedIn is? You’ll see the numbers shortly. 

But first, Dreamdata. 

So, on February 23, 2022, I was diving deep into a case study on a marketing website when I stumbled again on Dreamdata. Previously, I had seen some employee posts on this B2B revenue attribution platform and my gut told me to check them out.

What I found blew me away. 

You know, everyone who’s been in B2B long enough knows that acquiring B2B leads is a hard nut to crack, even on LinkedIn. But when you attract your ideal prospects without spending ad dollars, it becomes a thing of beauty.

That’s exactly what Dreamdata does by making employee advocacy the core of their LinkedIn social selling strategy.

According to Hootsuite, social selling is the practice of using a brand’s social media channels to connect with prospects, develop a connection with them, and engage with potential leads. While connecting with prospects via a brand account is good, connecting through the content from employees’ accounts is even better. 

Here’s why: 

• Employee networks have 10x more connections than their company’s followers (LinkedIn)
• Content shared by employees receives 8x more engagement than content shared by brand channels (Social Media Today)
• Employee content can generate 5x more website traffic and 25 percent more leads (Inc)
• By 2023, 90% of B2B social media marketing strategies will incorporate scaled employee advocacy programs (Gartner)

All of these stats prove that the main driver of social selling engines are no longer brand accounts, but employee accounts. 

So, What is Employee Advocacy?

Employee advocacy is an internal culture where workers actively promote their organization to build relationships and attract their ideal customers. While your team can do this both offline and online, social media proves to be the most cost-effective channel for running employee advocacy programs. And brands like Dreamdata can attest to this.

Consistent employee advocacy helped 6 Dreamdata employees build a social selling engine that saves an average of $5.26 per click and $6.59 per 1000 impressions on LinkedIn.

At 520,447 views by the end of their LinkedIn campaign, these employees had saved their company a boatload of money that would’ve been spent on LinkedIn ads.

I mean, see their LinkedIn social selling scorecard in just 91 days: 

Impressive, right? 

But there’s more. 

By continuing with the same LinkedIn playbook for one year, these 6 employees would have provided about $200,000 worth of value for Dreamdata. 

Munch on that for a second … $200,000.

Dreamdata would have to spend this exact amount to get similar views and engagement like their employees did throughout the year. And considering that Dreamdata’s product is priced at $749 per month (the cheapest option aside from the free plan), a 1% conversion rate from those engaging with the employees’ content would be a gamechanger, especially if the average customer lifespan is up to 12 months.

Now that you know what the ROI of social selling on LinkedIn looks like, I’m sure you have lots of questions.

• How did Dreamdata do it? 
• How did they track the data?
• How did they know what to post?
• How did they realize the value of social selling?
• How did they attract the right people to their content?
• How can I encourage my employees to adopt a social selling strategy on LinkedIn?

These are excellent questions and we’ll answer them all. 

** But before we dive in, we’ve created a template that will help you and your team step on the gas and get your social selling engine running. It’s the exact template we use at Foundation. Get it here 👉 LinkedIn Social Selling Content Template.

That said, let’s uncover how Dreamdata built its social selling moat.

Dreamdata’s LinkedIn Strategy Was Lit by One Post

Yes, one post. That’s all it took Dreamdata’s LinkedIn social selling engine to power up. And this post didn’t take hours to write. It was a simple story turned viral post of how Laura Erdem, Dreamdata’s Account Executive, closed a contract with a fantastic client.

Laura didn’t expect much engagement since she usually got just a few reactions and comments on her posts. A quick look at the LinkedIn reactions and comments from Laura’s last five posts gives credence to this line of thought.

Here’s what the engagement of Laura’s last 5 posts looked like: 

You would expect the next post to have no more than 50 reactions and maybe 20 comments, right? Nope! 

Instead of settling for a measly engagement rate, Laura’s next post set LinkedIn on fire and attracted 378 reactions and 83 comments. This sudden spike in reactions and comments wasn’t by accident. It happened because the post attracted a single comment from Chris Walker, a marketing influencer on LinkedIn, who currently has 89,000+ followers. Chris’s comment was enough to trigger the LinkedIn algorithm to show the post to more relevant people who fit Dreamdata’s ideal customer profile.

The result?

• The post had more than 40,000 views
• The Dreamdata website had its best-ever day in terms of visitors
• Dreamdata had the most marketing qualified leads ever

These kinds of results can quickly build up an adrenaline rush of excitement that could propel a brand to go into pitching mode with those who engaged with their viral content. 

But no, Dreamdata wasn’t going to do that.

In Laura’s words:

“We were very excited and torn between two options. Should we go and contact all the likers and commenters with a Dreamdata pitch, or should we let it go and wait for them to come to us organically?

We chose not to pitch, but to connect with everyone who engaged with the post. And by continuously building messages in the same field, a lot of the prospects started to organically ask for demos or trial accounts.”

To keep the demo and free trial requests coming in, 6 members of the Dreamdata team decided to double down on LinkedIn after seeing the success of Laura’s post. So they created a simple goal  👉 If they hit 300,000 views of their combined posts in Q2, they’d be treated to a team dinner at the end of the quarter.

That’s it.

It was a simple goal that was completely based on experimentation.

There was no roadmap on how they’d get there. 

But eventually, they did, and almost 2x their goal with 520,447 views by the end of the quarter.

Let’s take a look at the kind of content that worked for Dreamdata.