In the modern marketplace, social media has developed into a strong tool for gaining new customers. To get to know prospective new customers well, you need to learn as much as possible about them. In addition to identifying their geolocation and language, you need to know their age group, gender, marital status, profession, interests, passions, and behaviors on the web. Along with knowing how to contact them, this information will help focus your efforts in the right places – and much of this information can be gained through viewing social media activity from your top prospects.
Dimitri Akhrin knows a thing or two about this. He is a business executive with considerable experience in the B2B and CRM industries, and his businesses are incredibly successful at generating new clients that are interested in buying his solutions. Below, Akhrin has shared several tips for attracting new customers with social media.
Answer questions from your target customers
First, Dimitri shares how important it is to gain the trust of potential customers. A good way to do this is to educate them about topics that interest them. Listen to what your ideal customers are saying on social media, and create content and use your website to answer their questions. Use your creativity!
It is possible to do this through video, articles, a question and answer page, a podcast, photos, etc. Use tools like Quora or interviews with current customers to identify potential pain points, and create content and sales collateral that positions your software/product as the solution to their challenges. You can also directly interact with prospects and current clients by creating a group on Facebook or LinkedIn. This way, you can answer their questions directly and give them confidence that your solution is what they need to find success.
Tailor your LinkedIn requests and responses
It pays to personalize your LinkedIn requests and responses. Dimitri believes that if you do it right, a significant portion of your sales pipeline could come from leads driven by social media. He recommends taking the time to respond to all requests with a short personalized message in order to know where the person has heard about you and to showcase your strengths in terms of listening and customer service. From there, you can share a new piece of content relevant to that prospect, or offer to connect them with your team for a demo of your product. Tailor your next step based on how far along in the sales process they are, so you don’t put them off with demo requests when they haven’t even had the chance to research other options in your industry for example.
When reaching out to new prospects, ensure that your team doesn’t automatically go into “pitch mode,” especially for a cold lead that has not interacted with your brand previously. Alternatively, you can comment on their company’s recent news, congratulate them on a new promotion, or share an interesting industry article that you think would benefit them. Start from the perspective of providing value for cold prospects and soon they will be far more willing to listen to your sales pitches and demos.
Find influencers who have a strong web presence in your industry
If you sell products or software solutions, you can find influencers in your industry to test them out and talk about them on their social media channels with large audiences. However, by doing so, you must agree to receive reviews that could be negative. Even if some will render this service to you voluntarily in exchange for a free product/exposure of their own, you should be aware that others ask for money in return. Still, it pays to engage with the high visibility users in your industry as their brand awareness can have a positive impact on yours as well.
Use social to build an email list
Email marketing has never been so popular. By using it effectively, you can, among other things, increase your sales while building a great relationship with your community. But first you have to build an email list of interested prospective clients.
Social media is a powerful way to get your content offers in front of prospects, which they can download after sharing their email or other contact information. That way, you are both educating your prospects and providing value while also generating an email list to which you can send additional tailored follow-ups later.
To make this even more powerful, you can run paid advertising for your most popular content offers. This could be a free web conference, ebook, video, etc. Make sure, however, that your links lead to a specific landing page on your website and that your system is set up to gather the email addresses and incorporate them into future email marketing campaigns.
Inform your following of your current projects
You can use organic social media to inform prospects of your most current, interesting updates as well. Share your innovative new features/enhancements, company news, investments, growth, and more to give your social audience an inside look at what your company is bringing to the table. If you do it right, prospects and current clients will be just as excited as you are about your business’s latest developments and improvements.