Social Networking

Making Social Media Work for Your Business

By now most people are tired of being told how wonderful Social Media is for their business. There are many people who try social media but cannot quite make it work for their business, they may get followers or linked into a network etc but it never seems to quite generate the business or the interest and demand for their product or service they had hoped for. Unfortunately for these people they have either not quite got the hang of it to do it properly or have underestimated so under utilized these social platforms in order to create demand.

The fact is, prospective customers are engaging with your business long before they interact with you directly. When used correctly social media can deliver two important success beacons the first is it can create an impact on your generated revunue and secondly is it can also help to greatly shorten the time it takes to generate a sale.

This process has four stages, base development, lead development, opportunity development and customer development. . This article will look at how best to use these processes in your everyday marketing mix in order to create demand for your product and service.

1. Base Development.

This is the creation and development of first contact relationships, using social interactions, like all interaction you must build trust, which means building good relationships with your prospect without asking for any contact details. This can be done through your social network or through your website using great content without requiring registration.

Now I know that this defies the standard logic of getting customers to fill in a form, but if the content is compelling they will come back and be more willing to sign up to something from you. It does not follow just because you cannot identify these people that they are not qualified leads.

Many people will fill in a form just to have a look or from curiousity that does not make them qualified and they filled in your form. Instead provide good content to help develop a relationship with them that is open-ended in the way you would if you possibly networked with them face to face, if you do not your competetors may well beat you to ttheir cutom.

2. Lead Development.

If you build a good base relationship with your prospect then this stage will be easy to implement as you will be building on that base by maintaining your relationship with that contact. Many internet business owners do this through newsletters that continue to educate a prospect to their products or services and content. This is not just newsletters it is email or telesales calls. In terms of Social media however you should attempt to use your interactions and conversations in the same way you would use your website to help increase and target your marketingand sales.

Do this in a very focused way that prequalifies a person, to do this listen to the conversations going on find one that is relevent to your field of expertise and join in do not offer your services just show your knowledge, then use what you have learnt or discussed to hone in to people who maybe interested in your services by making discussions with them more relevant.

Then you need to segment and start your marketing campaigns based on the knowledge you have gained through social interaction. Then as with all marketing track marketing, your social interactions and engagement activites such as downloads and click through rates and web site visits from your social media platforms.

3. Opportunity Development.

This is where you utilise social media to support your business’ sales cycle once someone goes from being a prospect to a buyer. For this to work properly you must establish the difference between a lead and a sales-ready lead and after the sales process has ended what time frame and how this customer now goes back into the marketing process again for further opportunity development.

Social media can help to provide a good insight into the sales readiness of a prospect and any buyer intent, this means that social media can be critical to keeping your leads moving along the lead life cycle path. Some key ways to make this work for you is to use conversations going on to your advantage by paying attention to what people are saying to each other, what needs may come up, what surges in interest and comments are being given.

All of these things can improve the way you market and generation demand and leads, remember to continually monitor these behaviours is the main key as if there is an upsurge in your area of expertise you want to market to it and generate demand and leads from it by re-establishing contact with that person, persons or group.

4. Customer Development.

This stage is used to improve on your relationships with your existing customers. This is the stage many people let lapse, Existing customers are a great source of new and continuing revenue, and must be continuously contacted and developed, I would probably say more than a new lead as you have history together.

Think about using social media to stay in touch or tell others how valued they are, be ultra nice, send addition information in the form of tips, trick or tutorials whether paper, email or video based or to reaffirm purchase after they are made.

Try to establish a methodology to keep your drip marketing campaigns highly targeted, timely and relevant to your audiences needs, listen for new needs and requirements constantly, be adaptible so that you can leverage these new needs or requirement so you do not lose out to your competitors.

By using these four development stages within the social media arena you will be able to generate a base for your lead generation process using simply your interactions and conversation with others to help you develop qualified prospects to contact as and when they show a need for your product or service.