Angelo Sorbello of Astrogrowth: How to Use LinkedIn To Dramatically Improve Your Business”

Use Humor to Differentiate Yourself. When sending outreach messages most of the people will be boring and make their message all about themselves. Don’t be average. Your goal is to start a conversion, not to sell right away. And what a better way to differentiate yourself than using humor? Even if you work in the most ‘serious’ industry of the world, your prospects are still human beings and they’ll most likely enjoy and remember you.

As part of my series of interviews about “How to Use LinkedIn To Dramatically Improve Your Business”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Angelo Sorbello. Angelo is an Entrepreneur and Growth Marketer. He started his first online business at 13 years old, and without any considerable marketing budget, he later sold it after having signed partnerships and contracts with companies such as Microsoft, DigitalBros, and 888. He now runs Astrogrowth, a marketing agency specialized in running Facebook Ads campaigns for B2B SaaS.

Thank you so much for doing this with us Angelo! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I started delving into online marketing when I was a kid. I liked writing and video games, this led me to open a video games magazine when I was 13 years old. Shortly afterward I realized that what I wanted wasn’t writing as a professional but closing deals and managing my team instead, this led me to close a contract with Microsoft, 888, and other multinationals when I was 15 years old. When in college, a past student from my University discovered my profile on LinkedIn and my past experiences. He asked me for some advice on how to grow his B2B company. That’s when I realized that there was value for others in what I was doing as a kid, so I decided to start a digital marketing consulting business which now specialized in running data-driven Facebook Ads campaigns for B2B SaaS.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started this career?

During one of the first sales calls, I had to sell an advertising banner on one of my magazines. I had to talk with the CEO of this large company with decades of experience in sales. I felt intimidated, that’s why when I hopped on the called the first thing I told him was: “Look, I’m sure you will spot every sales tactic I’m going used. Therefore I’ll try to be authentic.” He replied to me: “Angelo, the best sales technique has a great product.” This advice made me realize that the most important thing is always to put your customers first.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

When I started running my video games magazine I was just a kid with a baby voice. I started reaching out to all the director responsible for the press working for the major video games producers worldwide. When some of them didn’t reply to my e-mails and follow-ups, I decided to call them. I tried in funny ways to make my voice sound more profound. Putting a pillow on my face, a hand, and so on. Funny enough, people couldn’t hear me on the other side of the phone. Even more curious, most of them liked my persistence and agreed to add my site to the ‘press circle’ which involved getting games for free to review them.

Which social media platform have you found to be most effective to use to increase business revenues? Can you share a story from your experience?

LinkedIn has been game-changing for me.

First of all, it inspired me to start my business.

When I was in my third year of college, I only knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I had no idea what business to start.

I can’t forget the day a past student from my University replied to me the message I sent him on LinkedIn, he read my profile and wanted my advice on the growth strategy he created for his B2B SaaS.

That’s when I realized there was value in the expertise I built over time.

Since then I kept working on my LinkedIn presence. This activity got me interviews, helped me to meet up with some of my heroes, and get to know other outstanding professionals.

Most importantly it got me to help my clients over the past two years.

Many of them went from 0 to thousands of visitors to their website.

LinkedIn gave a platform. I went from zero to 3.5 million views on my posts last year.

Let’s talk about LinkedIn specifically, now. Can you share 5 ways to leverage LinkedIn to dramatically improve your business? Please share a story or example for each.

Here are some ways how I managed to get 3 to 10 targeted leads for my business through LinkedIn and how you can do the same right now:

• Create Content around your target market biggest challenges and objections. That’s an incredible and untapped opportunity if you think that among the used by 500 million people daily, only 3 million post content daily.
• Use Humour to Differentiate Yourself. When sending outreach messages most of the people will be boring and make their message all about themselves. Don’t be average. Your goal is to start a conversion, not to sell right away. And what a better way to differentiate yourself than using humor? Even if you work in the most ‘serious’ industry of the world, your prospects are still human beings and they’ll most likely enjoy and remember you.
• Create Small Circles of Friends in Your Niche. Invest time into reaching out to other people in your niche. Building relationships and small groups of professionals gave me the change to launch a B2B Marketing guide that peaked ProductHunt with some of the most relevant experts in my field. It also granted me access to entrepreneurs that just a year ago didn’t even reply to my messages and I now chat and meet up with regularly.
• Use the ‘Sales Navigator’ to Find Prospects Based on the Technologies They Use. A Sales navigator function that not so many people know about is the chance to reach out to prospects based on the technology they use on their site. For instance, if your target market is composed of eCommerce businesses that have 11–50 headcounts, you can easily find them targeting them based on “Shopify” or “Magento” as a technology used.
• Consistency is Key. Both in your daily effort to build relationships with potential clients and fellow professionals in your field and in your content creation process, showing up every day is the most relevant factor to win in the long-run.

Because of the position that you are in, you are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

We spend a great deal of energy thinking about how we can help others. But our focus shouldn’t be only on giving out food and clothes to who is disadvantaged, but instead on empowering these people to start activities such as a small business. Provide others not only with mere knowledge but also competences. Give them the chance to create value for others, because if they can feel like they’ve created something themselves, it’s inevitable that they’ll switch their focus from what others can give them, to what they can do right now to change their situation instead.

Some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)

Ryan Holiday inspired me to delve more into stoicism and understand more the effects that my ego have on myself and how I deal with other people and circumstances. It made me reflect on the importance of being serving others, focusing on what you can control, and using the right perspective to get the best out of every situation.

Thank you so much for these great insights. This was very enlightening!