Debunking the Myth that Your Prospects Aren't Social

By thought-horizon | Sep 22, 2019

Where are your customers? On LinkedIn? On Facebook? Or on XYZ? The answer may not be as straight-forward as you imagine. Businesses struggle to identify the right platforms their prospects can be present on, or at times, overlook the potential of one of the platforms when it comes to prospect hunting. However, getting any one of these wrong and ignoring the platforms where your customers look for business or help can be disastrous- mainly if your competition is investing more than you in those channels.
Saving yourself from this requires one to address two key aspects: One, identify your target market from 3.4 billion active users on social. Two, Analysing their involvement on these platforms.

Identify Your Target Market and Their Preferred Social Platforms

Who do you sell to?
For most of the sales pros, the quick answer is CEO or CIO or probably, some other executive level. But is it true? We doubt. Even if ultimately the C-Suite needs to be on board with your solution typically there will be many others involved with the decision who may or may not have enough clout to sink the deal. Even if you think they are inconsequential, do you really want to risk it? Additionally, you will never grow your share of the wallet without impressing the functional teams with your ability to help. Research shows that there are many decision-makers involved in most B2B sales.  If you look at who your sales teams interact with on a day-to-day basis, you may begin to know the full range of decision-makers who make your ‘buyer personas.’ Capturing these titles and their level of influence is your first step in determining if they are available to you online.

Figure Out the Platforms Your Prospects Use

Once you are done having a buyer persona you can rely on, it’s time to identify the platforms that intrigue your potential customers. Not every platform attracts users of a certain age or interests. While you may find maximum Millenial userbase on Instagram, LinkedIn more inclined to serve professionals from diverse industry verticals. However, stereotyping a platform or overlooking its potential is not wise. You need to dig deeper to understand each network and identify the areas that might work in your favor.

Analyze their Involvement

The second step is to understand your geography base and the industries you sell to. This is much easier, but it needs to be included in those buyer personas. Once you have this data, it’s time to research how many similar buyers are available. Thought Horizon offers help here. Our Social Media Market Heat Maps search all of LinkedIn with your buyer persona information. We then give you a graphical description of just how many target buyers are on LinkedIn. This data has helped other companies determine investment in social media and predict outcomes in ROI of that investment.

Social Listening and Strategic Implementation

Social media generates leads; all you need is to support it with a robust content strategy.
Once you have got insights into what activities your prospects involved in, you got to craft your content marketing strategy that resonates with your audience.  Identify the type of content that excites them, the problems that they generally face, the questions they seek the answer for, and similar. Deliver the right content accordingly.
Keep in mind, no one loves being sold to. Don’s shove sales pitch off their throats every time you converse. Keep it a balance and ensure to deliver value in every single word you write.

Take-Home Message

Sales prospecting is all about recognizing your prospects’ problems—and finding a way to solve them. Toss the sales pitch out the window. Focus on building meaningful relationships with your prospects. Turn them into friends. And above all, provide them with value. Thought Horizon’s heatmap tool is a great aid to help you with the same. Make sure you book a demo right away and leverage advanced tools to boost your social selling efforts.