Social media can provide your business with tremendous potential in terms of marketing, but in order to make the most of that potential, you need to know how to capture prospects. Gone are the days when you simply picked up the telephone and called strangers at random. In the last few years, social media has grown by leaps and bounds and has quickly replaced cold calling. According to Business Insider, Facebook has more than one billion monthly active users, while Twitter reports more than 230 million users actively use Twitter on a monthly basis.
Despite the growth of social media, many companies still struggle with getting a handle on how they can utilize their social media platforms for prospecting and impacting their business.
Social media is often touted as a great tool for selling, but it is actually rather ineffective for providing immediate sales. While social media is not a solid driver of sales, it is an excellent medium for prospecting. In the typical sales cycle, the beginning is focused on prospecting, which is followed by increased awareness, the development of trust, and finally a purchase. Traditionally, prospecting has served at the most important element of selling.
Sadly, many small businesses make the critical error of simply hoping that prospects will find them. Social media provides the opportunity to cast a wider net and cultivate qualified prospects. Although there are numerous reasons for being active in social media, the opportunity to build new business is certainly at the top of the list.
Yet, many businesses remain hesitant to reach out and take hold of the power of social media for improving their prospects. Among the top reasons for the failure of businesses to utilize social media for prospecting include:
· It is difficult to use social media for prospecting ethically
· Searching for data through social media is more complex than other methods
· It is too difficult to quality prospects using social media
There is also sometimes a common misconception that a business needs to wait until it has accumulated a large social media following before attempting to use social media for prospecting. Regardless of the size of your following on social media, it is still important for you to leverage the fact that you have an audience. By capturing your visitors contact information via social media, you have a golden opportunity to then retarget your visitors on other marketing channels with targeted messaging to build upon your relationship with them and move them toward a sale.
In reality, when handled properly, social media can actually make it much easier to prospect in an ethical manner and the tools available today ensure that prospecting, including the qualification of prospects, can be handled quickly and easily.
Among the first questions many businesses have about using social media for prospecting is how to actually go about it. One way in which to do this is by looking for people who are searching for service providers within your area of expertise or people who are asking questions. For example, if you use LinkedIn and you are looking for B2B prospects, try searching the Answers section for people who are asking questions and looking for solutions.
Once you have identified someone who is asking questions, try branching out and look for other people who are in that individual's social network. Responding directly is an obvious choice, in a non-sales way, but don't overlook the opportunity to connect with them as well as others in their network.. This is an effective method of using third-party suggestion to create credibility, build trust, and expand the relationship.
Using Social Media Application Builders
Social media application builders are also an affordable and easy way to capture leads through social media. With these tools, you gain the opportunity to retarget your brand message to your precise target demographic. Currently, one of the best tools for use on Facebook is an application builder is ShortStack. With this tool, you can build an application in Facebook to attract prospects and capture data. Their system is very user friendly and you won't need the assistance of a developer in order to use it. It's very user friendly with dozens of custom templates available to fit your promotion.
Prospecting with Twitter
Twitter works a bit differently than other social media platforms, which means that you need to utilize a slightly different strategy for prospecting. Begin by sharing pieces of content that are related to keywords or trending topics you would like to target. Retweeting content is an excellent way to begin engaging potential prospects as well. You can then click Favorite for tweets that are relevant to your industry and responding to questions that your followers have tweeted is also a great way to become established as a leader and build trust.
Using social media for prospecting works well for businesses of all sizes. Whether you are a large company running multiple accounts and promotions at the same time or you are a local business managing your own social platform, social media prospecting can work for you.