by leadsift | Sep 30, 2013 | Blog, Community Management, Customer Service, Social Selling
Social media continues to change the way we do business. It’s changing how we interact with our customers, partners, suppliers and even our colleagues. It’s changed the way we do business and has changed the way we tell our brands story.
For years, we’ve looked at the concept of a business lead through the lens of a transaction. We’ve looked at a lead as a potential sales opportunity. Yet, in the past, we didn’t live in a world that was as connected as it is today. Right now. As you read this text, there are potentially hundreds of conversations about your industry, brand and offering. Some of these conversations will be highly relevant to your business while others will be nothing more than noise. Those conversations that are both relevant and engageable are what we define as a Social Lead. It’s actionable. It’s relevant. And it’s timely.
Social leads are what our platform delivers to our clients on a daily basis. We sift through the noise and find the signals that are true business opportunities for them to engage with. We’ve put together this slideshow to show you the power of social selling while redefining the social lead:
by sreejata | Jul 30, 2013 | Blog, LeadSift News
We’re proud to announce the LeadSift launch as we open up the platform to serve relevant social leads to all businesses looking to drive sales and grow their businesses via social media.
After months of beta testing and gathering feedback, we collected data that’s so compelling that we’re extremely excited to bring the power of social selling to the rest of the world. During our tests, we’ve observed increases of site traffic up to 100%, increase in follower counts from 0 to 102 within 2 weeks (no spam-bots) and unheard of click through rates of 16%-25%. Simply put, customers engage with you more when you actually talk to them one-on-one instead of shoving unwanted generic advertisement in their face. Who knew!?
Using our web-app, clients are able to find, engage with and track targeted social conversations and fill their sales funnel while nurturing a healthy social community. In the easy to use cloud platform, they can set up geo-targeted projects and start receiving leads that’s relevant to them within minutes of getting started. LeadSift provides further qualifying demographic and psychographic insights for these leads to make it easy to engage with their customers in a personal level. For example, if a customer posts that they’re looking to buy a car, LeadSift provides insights such as they have a family and a pet so the social sales agent can suggest a larger car to accommodate their needs and thus, instantly bringing them closer to their customers.
If you’re already using a social media monitoring platform but need help cutting through the noise and finding engage-able leads without sifting through the massive amounts of data – NO problem. LeadSift is integrated to SalesForce Marketing Cloud (Insights partner) and HootSuite (App Exchange) to help you find relevant leads right within your workflow so you can stop digging for valuable conversations and start investing the time in actually building meaningful relationships with your customers.
So, if you’re ready to take your business to the next level in the evolution of social media, we’d love to hear from you and show you a demo for how you can cut out the noise and engage with your customers with targeted conversations!
by leadsift | Mar 12, 2013 | Blog
Social media has become a major part of most businesses’ marketing plans. Social Media channels like Twitter are able to not only drive traffic to a brands website but also create relationships with potential customers and generate leads.
While there are many industries that can leverage social media, one industry in particular inching very slowly towards fully grasp the power of social media is real estate. There are some real estate companies who have a Facebook page, an account with LinkedIn and Twitter but for some reason are seeing the same amount of sales as before social media, while a minority of savvy real estate professionals embracing the idea of social media and finding success. Below are three tips by the real estate agents who find success on social, on maximizing your potential and capitalizing the power of Twitter.
Develop a Personal Brand
Building a personal brand online is a must to gaining trust and earning the business online. The Real Estate industry is one where a buyer or seller is much more likely to do a background search on their agent before connecting face-to-face. For that reason, it’s more important than ever to build a brand through a mix of both educating and engaging your audience.
In a world where more than 70% of consumers are using social media, it’s becoming more and more likely for potential clients to make assumptions based on your online persona. Thus, it’s important for you to invest in putting effort into your network on social media and establishing yourself as an authority as it relates to real estate.
To be regarded as an authority in the real estate field, you must provide quality content that speaks to the needs of both buyers and sellers. You will wan’t to create and share content ranging from Tips & Tricks for Fixer Uppers to the Ultimate Guide to Home Staging but more importantly, you need to help people out in your area of expertise. This will allow you to stand out from the crowd and become an authority in your region and industry.
Spend Your Time Effectively
It’s easy to get distracted when using social media amidst the hundreds and thousands of notifications on Twitter & Facebook & LinkedIn.
When you’re using Twitter you need to ensure that your goals are being thought about. If you’re looking to increase the number of relationships you have within a specific community; you need to use Twitter to build real relationships with people. Send them a tweet wishing them all the best when they announce that they have a new job or respond quickly when they ask where the best coffee shop is downtown. These simple tactics allow you to build a relationship and ideally a future client.
Listen Attentively
An often neglected side of social media is that of listening. Listening is a great way to not only better understand what your customers want but also a way to truly add value to the conversation. Too often do people jump into Twitter without gauging the conversations. Sometimes these individuals make the mistake of jumping into conversations without accurately knowing what they’re getting themselves into.
Think about it: identifying, generating and closing leads is all possible if you listen to conversations on twitter. It could truly be the difference between being irrelevant and having great success over the next five years. You have the opportunity to start building relationships with people who are going to be on the market for a home in the future, today. You have an opportunity to not only build a relationship with them personally, but also an opportunity to develop a reputation for your brand.
Social Media, most significantly Twitter is the new word of mouth. And since Real Estate Agency is all about reputation, you can reign the market if you start early and use Social Media wisely.
by leadsift | Feb 28, 2013 | Blog
Engaging in social media can be one of the most effective ways to gain sales intelligence, identify leads, and drive sales. With channels like Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook continuously expanding their features for businesses and advertising, now is as good a time than ever to think about how your business can find and close leads using social media and here are six great ways that you can use social media to create and nurture an effective lead generation system using social media:
1. Blog helpful information
Since we are living in a time when there is information overload, marketers need to ensure that the information they are sharing is relevant to their audience.
Produce how-to content
People look for content that explains in a step-by-step design how to do a specific task. Connect this to your product and develop instructions about how to do something that is relevant to your audience.
Focus on the customers needs on an industry scale
Develop content that is related to your industry, not just your product or business. Presenting content that isn’t all about you can build trust and help customers connect with your brand.
Link to other useful content
It’s not all about you. One way to strengthen your relationship with your leads is to not only create your own helpful content, but also to direct people to other useful information that they may not have found otherwise.
2. Share peer referrals
Word of mouth is an old-school idea but social media has given it a new-school practice. Social media has amplified the effectiveness of word of mouth marketing, allowing anyone to find good, bad and ugly opinions about almost every product or service available.
3. Link back to your landing page for conversion
A landing page is often referred to as a lead conversion page. It’s the webpage that appears as a result of a click to an online ad or link. The landing page promotes a call to action by encouraging the visitor to do something once they arrive and it’s crucial to include links in the content you’re sharing.
4. Promote a strong call to action
If you want someone to do something you have to come right out and ask them to take a specific action.
The most effective call to actions will grab a hold of your attention with attractive and compelling visuals, witty or funny text, and also with an offer you can’t refuse, like special offers and discounts.
5. Promote offers
It’s safe to assume that visitors to your Facebook page and your Twitter followers are at least somewhat interest in your product or service. Use a relevant coupon, discount, or trial offer to encourage them to learn more about you and turn them into a lead.
6. Speak up
Nobody likes to be ignored. Always respond to people when they engage with you. Anytime someone tweets you, comments to your blog, or wants to connect with you, you should respond in return. And do it quickly. This demonstrates that you’re paying attention and that you care. This keeps you engaged with your network and helps you to build your potential leads.
by leadsift | Feb 17, 2013 | Blog
Last year, 82% of social media driven leads came from Twitter. An additional 9% came from Linkedin & 9% came from Facebook. There is no question that social media is presenting businesses around the world with new opportunities to connect with customers and make additional sales. Social media is presenting businesses with an opportunity to not only turn prospects into customers but customers into raving brand advocates.
When developing your marketing plan and strategy for the upcoming year, it’s important to think about the role social media leads will play in the mix. Social media can not only drive relevant web traffic to your site but also present an opportunity to convert those in the midst of a purchasing decision. Using social media monitoring, content marketing, influencer outreach, and ongoing networking, you will have the ability to generate leads like never before.
Managing multiple social media channels and looking out for leads can be like riding on a roller coaster. While the experience can often be filled with the excitement of closing ten deals in a row, there will be moments when you look around and can’t help but be nervous about what’s coming up next. Whether it’s a customer looking to switch service providers or someone talking negative about your brand; it’s important to keep your head on straight and always look for ways to improve your ability to close and generate leads through social media.
To help you with the ongoing roller coaster, here are 27 easy ways to generate social media leads:
– Create a Twitter account and follow people talking about your brand
– Create Content that is worth talking about & sharing
– Develop a brand presence that people recognize
– Use relevant hashtags on Twitter when sharing blog posts
– Offer products & service for free in exchange for contact info
– Focus on retaining existing customers through superior service
– Engage in relevant & organic conversation with people on Twitter
– Use Facebook as a channel to spread your message more effectively
– Share updates on discounts, offers, deals and specials
– Join conversations happening within Linkedin Groups
– Optimize your website for mobile & tablet visitors
– Blog about items that your audience will find interesting & important
– Recognize and embrace soft leads just as well as hard leads
– When sharing content on Facebook ensure that your brand is present
– Optimize your sales purchasing funnel for effectiveness
– Use Quora to answer questions about your industry, business & interests
– Measure and optimize results from various channels
– Do not limit yourself to a channel because it’s popular
– Understand & utilize Linkedin & Rapporative if you’re in B2B
– Develop a CRM process that is scalable and optimized for ROI
– Look for conversations that are tied to customer churn
– Build relationships with editors at the media channels your audience reads
– Embrace two way conversation between you and your customers
– Demonstrate the personality behind the brand through Twitter
– Answer and respond to high-risk inquiries and comments
– Use social advertising when necessary to increase brand awareness
– And lastly, use a Social Lead Generation application to make it simpler!
What are some of your secrets to generating quality social media leads?
