How to Use Social Networking to Connect with Prospects

When you want to connect with your prospects, using social media to do it is very important and best of all, easy to do. Let’s explore how you can use social networking to connect with prospects.

What Is a Prospect?

First, it’s imperative to understand the terms that we are using here. A prospect is a lead that you’ve had first contact with. This means they had some interaction with you already. More likely, they are already on your email list. Now you want to connect with them on a more intimate basis through social media.

Know Who They Are

If you have an email list, everyone on it is already a prospect. If you have customers who have purchased from you, they are also prospects that you can target for other products and services you want to offer. You can use the data you collect about these people to craft a prospect persona or avatar that will help you target your audience even better.

Know Where They Are

You have prospects on your email list. Sure, but where do they hang out to get their information? What forums, groups, and gurus do they like to listen to and participate with? This information can help you know where to place ads to get their attention.

Cross-Promote

When you email your prospects, invite them to different social media platforms to engage with them on a new level. Send out an email for each social media platform separately so that they don’t miss out.

Capture Their Email Addresses

Remember that a prospect is a lead that you’ve already determined is someone who will want to use your product or service, and who has dealt with you already in some way. However, depending on how this happened, you may not have their email address. It’s important to get them onto your list so you can remarket to them using email.

Display Remarketing Techniques and Technology

When you’ve already had contact with someone and interaction in some way, and you’re sure they are really part of your audience and should be your customer, you can use remarketing techniques and technology to get them to connect with you on social media.

For instance, you can upload their email address to Facebook to deliver special ads just to them or to the entire group. You can also install the Facebook pixel to your site so that anyone who visits your site gets remarketed to via a special advertisement.

Engage with Them Consistently

Once you have them on your social media platforms, it’s imperative that you engage with them consistently and regularly. Post updates, answer questions and provide value, and they’ll be more likely to want to connect with you.

Listen to What They Say

Once you do have a way to connect to your prospects on a deeper level, it’s important that you use this advantage to get to know them better by listening to what they say. What do they dream about? What keeps them up at night? What other problems do they have that you can solve?

Pay Attention to Their Actions

When you do get them on social media, pay attention to how your audience acts. What is their behavior? Do your prospects engage with you easily, or do they need to be encouraged and incentivized? This is information that can help you get more from the relationship.

Include a CTA

When you do anything, it’s important to know why you’re doing it. Is your blog post designed to get more email sign-ups, or is it designed to inform and engage, or something else? What do you want the prospect to do?

Networking with prospects is the best way to create a dedicated audience who will become not only customers but your advocates. When you build a solid social media community full of your prospects, suddenly, social media marketing doesn’t seem so difficult.