Jordan Evans, Founder and CEO of Target Connect Co, has helped clients secure over 2,500 qualified meetings using LinkedIn automation powered by Dux-Soup.
In a recent live webinar with Dux-Soup, Jordan revealed his proven 3-step strategy that’s driven more than $1 million in closed sales, starting with an optimized LinkedIn profile.
In this blog recap of the session, you’ll discover Jordan’s actionable techniques to:
- Turn your profile into a high-converting asset
- Align your messaging with your offer
- Use content strategically to warm up and engage your audience
Jordan’s expert insights will guide you through how to:
- Optimize your profile so prospects immediately understand who you help and how
- Craft compelling messages that resonate, stand out, get accepted, and avoid common pitfalls
- Follow up with valuable content to stay visible, build trust, and boost LinkedIn engagement
The outcome? More replies, more booked meetings, and deals that move faster.
You can watch the full webinar or keep reading for a condensed version of the key takeaways.
Introduction: Tackling the Common Pitfalls of LinkedIn Outreach
Jordan’s strategy starts with identifying the key challenges that businesses often face when automating their LinkedIn outreach:
- Cold and impersonal messaging – Automated messages often come across as generic and scripted, leading to low connection and response rates.
- Weak positioning on LinkedIn – Whether it’s your company page, personal profile, or overall brand, a lack of clarity around who you serve and why it matters can make your presence easy to overlook.
- Lack of trust and credibility – When prospects don’t know who you are or why they should care, your messages are more likely to be ignored or archived — costing you visibility and opportunity.
The objective is to overcome these barriers by building a stronger, more engaging LinkedIn presence.
The solution? Align your content, profile, and outreach efforts to create a LinkedIn strategy that actually converts.
Step 1: Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile
Your LinkedIn profile is often the first thing prospects see when you reach out — and it plays a crucial role in whether they choose to engage. An optimized profile helps you build trust, showcase your value, and establish credibility at a glance.
Think of it as your digital storefront — here’s how to make it work for you and support your outreach efforts.
Your profile has 5 core sections that you can optimize.
Intro
Start with a clean, professional profile photo and a banner that visually reflects your brand. This could include your logo, brand colors, or a simple message that communicates your core offer — all of which help create a strong first impression.
Next, focus on your headline. As one of the most visible parts of your profile, it should be clear, concise, and benefit-driven. Jordan suggests keeping it to a single sentence that highlights what you do and the value you deliver — think core services and outcomes, not job titles.
Finally, make use of LinkedIn’s custom buttons. Add your website link — it’s one of the first things new visitors look for. If they can’t easily find more information about you or your business, they’re likely to click away. Make it easy for them to take the next step.
About
Start by sparking curiosity in the first 3–4 lines of your About section — this is the preview text people see before clicking “See more.” Use it to hook their interest and encourage them to keep reading.
Once they expand the section, clearly explain what you do. Your value proposition should be immediately obvious — keep your language simple, direct, and benefit-focused.
To keep readers engaged, make the content scannable. Highlight only the key points someone can grasp in 30 seconds. Use bullet points, short paragraphs, and clear formatting to make your message easy to digest at a glance.
Featured
Many people overlook the full potential of this section. It’s your opportunity to showcase the content you want your audience to see — whether that’s a blog post, case study, special offer, or a new product or service.
Jordan recommends including a mix of visual media that reinforces your value and builds trust, such as client results, testimonials, or service overviews. Done well, this section can make your profile feel complete and significantly boost your credibility.
Experience
This section allows you to strengthen your credibility, clearly define your current role, and highlight your past work and the experience you've built over time.
Projects
Often overlooked by LinkedIn users, the Projects section is a valuable space to showcase specific work you've done for clients or employers and highlight the results you delivered.
Keep each project clear and scannable, focusing on the key outcomes and benefits. You can also tag or associate clients where relevant — a great way to add credibility and turn each entry into a mini case study.
Step 2: Crafting connection messages that work
▶️Your first impression matters ◀️
You can have the best drip campaign with fantastic content waiting in Dux-Soup, but if people don’t accept your connection messages, they won’t ever see your follow-up messages.
Your connection message is make or break to the success of your outreach campaign. Increasing your connection acceptance rate by just 10% can have a big impact to your end result.
So what does Jordan recommend?
Connection messages: What not to do
It’s important not to make your connection messages feel impersonal, pushy, or scripted. So Jordan recommends following these rules:
- Avoid templated language. If it doesn’t read like something you would say, rewrite it. It should sound natural and conversational
- Don’t sell. Your single objective for a connection invitation is to get someone to accept, not to sell anything; this is a real turn-off. If you lead with a pitch, your conversion rates will be low
- Don’t cover too much - keep it light, and explain why you want to connect. Remember, you only have 300 characters.
Here’s an example of a connection message that doesn’t work:
Connection messages: what to do
Your connection requests should feel natural, personal, and conversational. Taking an inquisitive, feedback-oriented approach helps reduce resistance and opens the door for genuine dialogue.
The advantage of using questions in your message is that people enjoy talking about their interests. Just be sure to keep the questions relevant so you can seamlessly steer the conversation toward your offer without it feeling forced.
Here’s an example of a connection message that works for Jordan:
You can get further guidance on connection messages that work from our LinkedIn article.
Step 3: Utilizing content on LinkedIn
▶️Stay top of mind and build trust ◀️
Most marketers understand that it typically takes about seven touchpoints to spark genuine interest. Content can play a key role as one of those touchpoints, helping you connect more closely with your target audience.
By sharing valuable content, you reinforce your expertise and position yourself as a trusted professional within your niche. When you provide value to your network, they’re more likely to engage, share their own content, and open new conversations with you.
Jordan suggests incorporating at least three passive content touchpoints into your strategy. For example, he often shares posts from partners—like Dux-Soup’s content—which generates likes and conversations within his network, effectively igniting new discussions.
The more touchpoints you create, the greater the chance prospects will want to connect with you, having already built trust through your content.
Content helps warm up cold prospects — by the time they’ve engaged with your posts, gained value, and seen your expertise in action, receiving a message feels more natural. This trust significantly increases the likelihood they’ll agree to a meeting or call.
Even after the initial conversation, your content keeps you top of mind, continuing to work on your behalf by nurturing relationships and helping turn meetings into customers.
Jordan’s experience shows that prospects he met with months ago often return, influenced by the ongoing content they’ve seen, proving just how effective this approach can be.
What makes good content on LinkedIn?
It might seem obvious, but in an era where AI-generated content is flooding the internet, authenticity and genuineness in your content truly stand out.
Most marketers can easily spot content written by tools like ChatGPT. If you want to build real trust, you need to share your unique insights, experiences, and opinions — that’s the kind of content that resonates and sparks engagement.
▶️ Authenticity beats polished perfection every time ◀️
More and more, people crave honest content — the good, the bad, and even the messy.
It also makes sense to keep your content relevant to your audience. Talking about topics your followers don’t care about only risks losing their interest and disengaging potential prospects.
Posting consistently keeps you visible. The LinkedIn algorithm rewards consistency, so posting twice a week will start to get you into the feeds of your 2nd and 3rd-degree connections. You can then use Dux-Soup to target people who like your content on LinkedIn and start to nurture this engaged audience.
Don’t just post and forget. Ask questions, have conversations and respond to people who comment on your posts. This all helps to expand your reach, getting you in front of more people.
Bringing it all together
Jordan’s strategy focuses on thoroughly warming up a prospect before you bring everything together using Dux-Soup’s drip campaigns feature (available with a Cloud or Turbo license) for direct outreach.
And it’s this direct outreach that is where the conversation truly begins, actively engaging your prospects and turning interest into dialogue. It represents the final step that brings all your efforts together.
Here’s an example of what your outreach strategy might look like:
Summary
With Jordan’s strategy, you’ll benefit from all of the preparation work prior to launching your outreach campaigns.
Establishing credibility with your LinkedIn profile, creating curiosity with your connection invitations and building passive trust with your LinkedIn content will work hand in hand to increase connection acceptance rates and reward you with more conversations from your drip campaigns.
It's this strategy that has ultimately led to Jordan closing $1million in sales as a result of LinkedIn outreach.
