Just like a sales letter sent out as a direct mailer or posted on a website, using social media to monetize B2B sales requires finding out ways of using the internet to solve a prospect’s problems. Businesses now have the opportunity to identify the needs of customers through monitoring online conversations and addressing these, thereby improving engagement.
Tune in to online conversations
The first step in the social engagement process is to carefully tune in and observe the conversations that are going on with the objective of identifying the problems that are being addressed on the social media platforms that are focused on business such as LinkedIn. Use industry specific keywords to assist you in your search. You will be quite surprised at where professionals hang out. Don’t assume that they are all on LinkedIn or Twitter, use keyword phrases to perform your search.
Whatever business you are in, you are bound to find business owners that are convinced that their business is different and requires some unique marketing strategies. Focus on these business owners who are struggling with a problem in their business that your organisation can alleviate.
Provide simple & affordable solutions
Use your expertise to provide solutions to the problems stated in the form of feedback. As far as possible avoid jargon and suggest solutions that are easy to implement and are affordable. The less effort your solution to a problem is the more likely it will be implemented. Anything that’s too complex may not even be attempted. As you begin to provide feedback regularly, you will find people thanking you for your solution, and your popularity will begin to climb up the ladder.
Sometimes you may find that the problem stated cannot be easily answered. Instead of just giving up, a good idea is to visit websites of industry experts who generally have tons of information on these kinds of issues, as they have spent time researching these problems. Extract information from these websites and post your feedback. Also begin to hint how your company solved a similar problem, so the reader has the option of contacting you and paying for your services so that the problem can be solved.
Initiate your monetization strategy
Once you become a regular contributor in the online conversations and gain credibility, you are ready to take your B2B online interaction a notch higher. The simplest way to do this is to set up a blog, by itself or on your website and post informative content that addresses some of the problems that you have come across while observing members of your online community. When providing feedback provide a link back to your blog post, so readers get into the habit of visiting your blog posts.
As you find more visitors reading your blog posts, get your visitors to sign in to an opt-in form where you can capture their email address. In this way you will be able to develop a list of prospects interested in what you have to say. Initiate an email marketing campaign, and provide useful industry information and news that your readers may not have ready access to. Intersperse these informative emails with special offers for your products and services. Since you have developed credibility, you will be perceived as an expert and will have a greater conversion rate for your offer than if you were making the offer to a cold market.
So start by building business relationships using social media sites, position yourself as an expert in your niche, and then go ahead and implement your B2B monetization strategies.
