If you’re working on developing inbound marketing strategies, you’re likely focused on a limited target audience. Your interests center on a niche industry, location or particular enterprise. But one of the best methods of building your relationship with buyers is through social media, typically a top-of-funnel channel, but one that account-based marketers can’t afford to ignore.
What are some of the best ways to use social media to engage your target leads? Here are seven tips.
- Bide your time
As much as you’d love to send an email to your account contact each week, having patience pays off. Looking for a less intrusive way to keep in touch with your B2B account between check-ins? Social media provides the method. You can reply to posts mentioning valuable keywords, which might lead to a call. Have your account executive use social interaction to start the conversation.
- Ask for contacts directly.
Capturing lead data through content campaigns, form fills or list buying is one way to build your contact list. But why not ask for emails instead, or even phone meetings?
Through Twitter, Ethix sets up 2-3 calls through direct messages each week. Tallwave offers information about its company and then asks prospects if they can learn more about their business – 64% respond, with a high conversion rate to phone calls.
- Find the movers and shakers
Build your charts of the stakeholders in target accounts based on job title and company – you can usually find the info readily available in their social media profiles. Know who the gatekeepers and decision-makers are. Bizible suggests creating Twitter lists of the leaders at your target companies. That way, you can more easily monitor streams and engage the ones that are likely to respond to your offers. The best part? Adding a stakeholder to a public Twitter list results in a notification to them, generating an extra impression for you.
- Mention your target accounts.
Working in the names of your target businesses or leaders into company blog posts helps create a sense of appreciation between you and your prospects, according to Bizible. It also gives you another opportunity to mention them on Twitter when you share the post. They’ll notice. Leadtail also suggests referencing quotes from company executives, including links to their company blogs in your content, and inviting contacts to write guest blogs. Your target leads will appreciate the mentions. Act-on says sharing target companies’ content on social media, signing up for their blogs and getting on their email lists are more great ways to ensure your company stays on their radar. Don’t overlook the third party content your leads share – it can offer you direction as to where you should focus your paid media budget, for example.
- Give them content they want.
Your targeted leads are far more likely to engage in content that is geared toward them specifically, says Marketo. MarketingSherpa data says 82% of prospects value content developed for their industries specifically, and 67% for their job functions. Account based marketing is by its nature already more personalized – why not take your content to the next level and really make an impression? Docurated suggests designing content around pain points, which can be gleaned from keywords, mentions or other interactions such as re-tweets. See what your leads are talking about the most. Socedo’s social lead monitoring tool allows you to more easily personalize your content. You can route to those target accounts the content you already have, or you can use the data to create new content that speaks clearly to your audience. An eBook, for example, can be reworked with specifics targeted toward particular industries. Act-on suggests cataloging the content you have, determining what can be retooled for another audience, and filling in the gaps with your editorial calendar. Make sure you understand what goes into creating effective content.
- Optimize your campaigns.
Measuring and analyzing your campaigns over time allows you to get the most out of your account based marketing plan. Marketo suggests analyzing several metrics over time, such as monitoring conversion metrics:which target accounts are accessing your website and how. Measuring as you launch your campaign, sometime during it, and after the fact can help you get a stronger picture. Terminus reminds us not to forget to involve the sales team – are they having an easier time connecting with certain accounts? What do they attribute that success to? How can you better help them? Remember, personalized messages help shorten the research phase of a buyer’s journey – your sales cycle length should be part of your metrics.
- Retarget your leads.
You can use that analytical information to further narrow and develop custom campaigns toward your target audience, keeping your brand top-of-mind as you direct messaging. Metadata suggests retargeting based on users’ IP addresses (location) rather than by cookies, which can be deleted or expire. Or retarget based on behavior, such as whether they prefer videos or whitepapers. If your leads visited your “Contact Us” page, for instance, they may be interested in getting in touch.
Remember, when an employee at a target company engages with your brand on Twitter, send an alert to the account executive – it’s time to follow up. And learn more about how Social Lead Monitoring can help you personalize your account-based marketing today.
Want to learn more about any of the topics discussed in this article? Here are some suggested classes: Using Social Data to Improve Email Marketing, Content Marketing Implementation: Executing a Winning Content Program, Creating and Curating Content People Love
Visit the Online Marketing Institute to browse over 400 classes in the digital and social media marketing space. Ready to start learning? Sign up here here.