LinkedIn,FACEBOOK,TWITTER - As a Marketing Tool

Top Salespeople Use LinkedIn to Sell More

By Steve W. Martin

I recently interviewed 54 top salespeople about how they use LinkedIn to research accounts, prospect for leads, and generate sales. All of the study participants sell technology-based products to the IT departments of mid to large size companies.

The study included three types of salespeople: 33% were inside salespeople who sell exclusively over the phone, 41% were outside field reps responsible for acquiring new accounts, and 26% were outside field reps who managed existing client account.

The results suggest there are four basic LinkedIn user classifications:

Enthusiasts: Twenty-five percent of the study participants would be classified as "Enthusiast" LinkedIn users. Enthusiasts have fully developed LinkedIn accounts and use LinkedIn continuously during the day. They believe it is an important tool for generating product interest and promoting their company to potential customers. Enthusiasts were more likely to be outside salespeople responsible for acquiring new accounts. The average Enthusiast has around 700 contacts, and one had over 1200. Half of Enthusiasts have paid for an upgraded LinkedIn subscription at their own expense.

Casual: Forty percent of participants would be classified as "Casual" LinkedIn users who access their account on a regular basis. They consider LinkedIn a useful tool to research and learn more about prospective clients. Casual users have about 250 contacts on average, and all use a free LinkedIn subscription.

Personal: Fifteen percent of participants would be classified as "Personal" LinkedIn users. Their LinkedIn accounts have ample information about their job history and past accomplishments. Their main purpose for having a LinkedIn account is for job-related networking and they rarely, if ever, use LinkedIn for work-related purposes. Personal users averaged around 300 contacts.

Non-Participants: Twenty percent of the salespeople were "Non-Participants." Non-Participants don't have a LinkedIn account or their profile contains very little personal information and fewer than 20 contacts. They don't consider LinkedIn a priority and seldom log-in to their account. These people were more likely to be older than Enthusiasts, and the majority worked in the same position or at the same company for many years.

                                                              

Here's how data from the first two groups breaks down:

Contact Types

The composition of contacts varied greatly between Enthusiasts and Casuals. About 30% of Enthusiasts' contacts were with existing clients, compared to only 5% for Casuals. Over 85% of Enthusiasts indicated they use their LinkedIn account to engage prospective customers during the sales process, while only 20% of Casuals did. Twenty percent of Enthusiasts contacts were prospective customers, on average, whereas it was less than 4% for Casuals. Partners (resellers, consultants, industry influencers, etc.) who affect customer purchasing decisions account for about 28% of contacts for Enthusiasts and roughly 17% of Casuals.

Customer Research

Every Enthusiast and nearly half of Casuals use LinkedIn to find out who they should contact in order to secure customer meetings. Over 90% of Enthusiasts and 65% of Casuals use LinkedIn prior to customer meetings to find out more about the people they will meet. Specifically, they are interested in where they have worked in the past and who they might know in common. Both groups also use LinkedIn extensively to verify a person's title. About 55% of Enthusiasts and 10% of Casuals use LinkedIn to research their competition. In addition, Enthusiasts mentioned they will monitor a prospective customer's connections to find out which competitors and salespeople are working on the account. Overall, LinkedIn was rated as a research tool (on a scale of one to five with five being highest) by Enthusiasts at 4.1 and 2.5 by Casuals.

Account Prospecting

Less than 15% of Enthusiasts and none of the Casuals ever reported making an unsolicited initial customer contact directly through a LinkedIn invitation. Nearly all salespeople commented they were fearful this would be perceived negatively by the prospective client. Instead, over 85% of Enthusiasts and 50% of Casuals indicated they would use LinkedIn to ensure they were contacting the right person but make first contact via email. The majority of both Enthusiasts and Casuals indicated their companies supplied better prospecting tools than LinkedIn. Overall, LinkedIn was rated as a prospecting tool by Enthusiasts at 3.8 and 2.1 by Casuals.

Use of Groups

On average, Enthusiasts belong to 12 groups and Casuals to four. Both Enthusiasts and Casuals indicated their main purposes for joining groups was to keep in touch with colleagues they worked with in the past, follow companies of interest, and to improve industry related knowledge or sales-skills. About 40% of Enthusiasts and less than 20% of Casuals responded that they belonged to groups that their prospective customers were part of. No one indicated they had generated an initial customer meeting based upon a group membership.

Existing Client Communication

Seventy percent of Enthusiasts and 18% of Casuals reported they had used LinkedIn to keep existing customers informed about their company's offerings. Those who did used LinkedIn to send short messages that contained links to press releases, white papers, analyst reports, product announcements, and company produced videos. However, both groups overwhelmingly preferred to use e-mail to stay in touch with existing clients. LinkedIn was rated as an existing client communication by Enthusiasts at 2.1 and 1.5 by Casuals.

LinkedIn Generated Revenue

Over 40 percent of Enthusiasts indicated they have successfully generated revenue based upon LinkedIn-related efforts. Conversely, less than 20 percent of Casuals successfully generated revenue directly attribute to LinkedIn.

Overall, 18% of all survey respondents indicated they have generated additional sales as a direct result of their LinkedIn activities. However, this number is deceiving. In order to truly measure LinkedIn's effectiveness you must take into account how many salespeople are Enthusiasts, Casuals, Personals, or Non-Participants.

10 Tips for using linked in sales prospecting         

1. Never miss a chance to connect

2. Discover a better way to map your prospects

3. Never make a cold call again

4. Get pass the Gate Keeper with In mail

5. Unlock a smarter way to search

6. Learn what’s happening in your prospects companies

7. Use groups for more than simply keeping up to date

8. Make your profile work harder for you

9. ‘The Look’ and ‘Look Back’ Trick

• The fact that someone looked at your profile is a good excuse to reach out with a connection request
• If you look at other people’s profiles, a certain proportion will always look back
  

10. Integrate LinkedIn with salesforce

Use Facebook as Small Business Marketing Tool

Almost Six years ago, Facebook was nothing but a thought. Today, it is not only the most popular website on the internet, but it is also where 400 million users visit to exchange messages, posts photos and play games. 

Facebook is a marketing opportunity that you cannot pass up as a small business. Many large businesses use Facebook as a way to market themselves, and as a small business you should be thinking of marketing yourself on Facebook. How do you go about this? Well, it is surprisingly easy.

1. First of all, you want to add as many friends as you can to begin this form of small business marketing. Facebook as a limit of 5,000 friends but that offers you a great networking opportunity. Add your friends, their friends, family and more and you will see your friend list greatly increase.

2. Create a fan page for your business. This fan page is where you will put up pictures of your business, information about it, and how people can reach you.

3. Invite all your friends on Facebook to your fan page. This will give you hundreds or even a couple thousand fans on your fan page.

So, now what do you do?

Now you use the fan page to its full advantage for your small business marketing. The first thing you do is begin to put up notices on the fan page to get people interested. These can include things like "Today only, 50 percent off!" and that will help notify people about your sale on your website. Every time you post something on your fan page, your customers will see it on their own Facebook pages. It is like giving them an advertisement without them even realizing it.

Another way you can make sure that you help get customers coming to your website to buy products is by offering special deals for your customers. So, you put something on your fan page that says "Come to the website and use this Code: K838HL and get one free product with anything you buy! So, now you are giving a special offer only to your fans that they will be able to take advantage of. If your fan page has 10,000 fans, you are reaching as many as you would with a newspaper or television advertisement without ever having to pay a dime, except for the cost of your internet.

How to Use Twitter for Business and Marketing

Twitter shares some features with the most common social media tools (Facebook, Pinterest,  LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube).

Twitter falls into the category of microblogging tools because of the short, disconnected messages it distributes. Other microblogging tools include Tumblr, FriendFeed and Plurk.

Step #1: Present Your Brand

Step #2: Build a Strong Foundation    - Complete Profile

Step #3: Start Following People

Step #4: Start Talking

Step #5: Talk Smarter

Step #6: Drive Traffic to Your Website and Blog

Step #7: Connect Your Online Presence

Step #8: Get Mobile With Twitter

Step #9: Share Photographs in Your Tweets

Step #10: Add Video to Your Twitter Timeline

Step #11: Organize Your Followers Into Conversation Lists

Step #12: Expand Your Audience With Hashtags

Step #13: Pinpoint Potential Local Customers