The key to growing your business is understanding your audience and who your prospective customers are. With the recent workplace changes, zoom meetings, and virtual cups of coffee how are you connecting with that audience? Are you reaching out via a newsletter to stay top of mind? Do you regularly post on social media channels where your customers are? Are you using postcards and/or snail mail to stay in touch?
Sharing relevant content on your social channels is a great way to keep your audience abreast of industry updates, new products, and/or accomplishments. This type of information can come directly to your inbox by way of Google Alerts. If you are unfamiliar with the term or the process to set up an alert, here is a quick how to link.
Look for your customer’s pain points. For example, if a prospect mentions a problem they’re having that you can address, a Google Alert can enable you to quickly get involved in the conversation with a helpful piece of content or insight. If a potential buyer’s company hires a new CEO, key personnel, or expands their business, you should comment on the alert’s trigger event as soon as possible to get on their radar. Based on your need, these alerts can easily be adjusted.
As it pertains to LinkedIn, make sure your LinkedIn profile is optimized. Identify the groups where your potential customers are members, follow and participate in discussions. These discussions can often reveal the current pain points a customer is experiencing.
NURTURE DON’T SELL
When developing online relationships avoid the hard closing tactic and nurture your leads. Understanding who your leads are is key to your sales process. Social selling is the process of researching, connecting, and interacting with prospects and customers on social media networks — notably Twitter and LinkedIn, but others certainly fit the bill. Through commenting on, liking, and sharing prospects’ and customers’ posts, salespeople create relationships with buyers and boost their credibility by taking an interest in what they’re discussing.
As you share success stories from current customers, third party validation helps build your credibility with potential buyers and allows prospects to relate to your customers’ experiences. If you have provided a solution to a problem a potential prospect may be more likely to envision the same solution solving their issue as well.
Likewise, are you monitoring customer satisfaction within your company’s service delivery and addressing any unresolved problems and issues? How often before hiring a company or service, going to a restaurant, booking travel, etc. do you look at customer reviews? As a consumer, do you have a better image of the company if they acknowledge the issue and make amends? Let’s face it, we’re not going to please everyone 100% of the time, but if your company consistently has 2 or 3-star reviews it may be time to look internally.
IF YOU’RE NOT MEASURING YOU’RE NOT MARKETING
Measure your engagement in the form of likes, comments, and shares. The higher the engagement the more likely the content resonated with your audience. By paying attention to what content gets the most engagement with your audience, you can see what content or conversation topics are of interest to your prospects. This is a good indication that you should seek out and share more about that topic.
It boils down to this…
- Know your target market
- Provide relevant information and nurture prospective leads
- Track your engagement and provide more like content
- Develop social relationships that allow you to close the sale
If you are unsure of your audience, their pain points, or how to engage and track performance, contact the Edmiston Group or call 724-612-0755.
About the Author: Autumn Edmiston is the CEO and owner of the Edmiston Group. The Edmiston Group is a multifaceted Pittsburgh based marketing consulting firm providing senior-level marketing management services to businesses and non-profit organizations on a short or long-term basis. Core areas of service are business development strategies, website creation and management, social media management, marketing, strategic planning, and public relations. The Edmiston Group has consistently delivered and implemented real-world, proven business marketing ideas and strategies for business. Contact the Edmiston Group today to learn how we can bring fresh ideas to help grow your business.