How do you nurture your prospects and keep them moving forward in your sales funnel? More importantly, how do you nurture your prospects in today’s digital and social media savvy world?
This interesting infographic provides social media tactics to move prospects and leads through the sales funnel. To be clear, I do not agree we should abandon traditional tactics that are continuing to provide ROI but there is probably something new in the digital world you can add to improve your lead nurturing. I will highlight below the points which are relevant to B2B lead generation.
According to the infographic, 80% of customers expect businesses to be active in social media. I think this can extend to sales teams as well. The majority of prospects and leads expect your sales team to be active in LinkedIn at a minimum.
What does a sales funnel look like in today’s world?
Awareness is achieved through repeat visibility and engagement. How do you ensure you are uppermost in your prospects’ minds? You can:
- create compelling content to share on social networks with creative calls to action
- run paid targeted social ads (note: LinkedIn advertising is not included but I think it should)
How to nurture prospects in this “new” sales funnel?
1. Build a community. Do not simply post content and hope to get some engagement with it.
2. Create a social editorial calendar to strategically plan content relevant to your prospects
3. Do engage followers and the community you are building
4. Create landing pages to match the creative calls to action you are posting across social media to capture interest when prospects are ready to take the next step (note: this should include growing your email list).
5. Measure and take action through retargeting advertising for visitors who come to your landing pages, do not take action and leave. You can continue to remarket to them until they are ready to take the next step.
6. Follow a multi-channel strategy by posting relevant content and calls to action across different networks and media such as email, blog, webinars, social networks, etc.
7. Even after a sale has been completed, continue to engage with your clients through social media. Some of your new clients can become social advocates for your company.
The full infographic is below. How do you use social media to move your prospects through your sales funnel?
Infographic source: http://winthecustomer.com/