Can Social Media Help Me Generate Revenue for My B2B Business?

You have to have a presence on social media. If you aren’t posting on Facebook, tweeting on twitter, creating stories on Instagram and updating your audience on LinkedIn your business will fail.

At least, that is what you’ve heard. But is it really true? Or is it only true for B2C companies?

Well it isn’t true that your business will fail if you don’t have an active social media presence, but even B2B businesses should leverage social media for one key reason:

Social media can help you generate revenue.

The most obvious way social media can help you generate revenue is through lead generation, but there is more to social media then just a way to get sales. Being on sites like Facebook, Twitter and Linked can also help you find prospects and maintain customers.

Social Media Can Help You Find Prospects

You may have heard the motto “Your customers are talking about you on social so be part of the conversation”.

It is true that social media sites are where people go to talk about you and your competitors, as well as the types products and services you offer. It is important to be a part of that conversation to help educate people about your organization and steer them towards your business as a solution.

Before you can even do that, however, you need to be able to find these people. The best way to find people while they are having these important conversation is to set up social media alerts. You can use scraping tools, like the ones offered through data-as-a-service companies, to look for key phrases. Those phrases can be keywords that describe the services you offer. Or you can create an alert to search for when your competitor is mentioned.

This leads you to people who are not only a good fit for your offering, but are already searching for a solution. You can get in front of them at the right to time to begin the education and nurture process that turns them into sales.

That is just one way to use social media to help you find prospects. There are many different ways to use social media for prospecting, including:

• Using Facebook’s lookalike audience feature
• Searching Facebook and LinkedIn Groups where your prospects hang out
• Using LinkedIn’s  Sales Navigator Advanced Search

You will want to experiment with different tools and even use multiple tools in your search for prospects. Social media sites give you the ability to access thousands of people in your market. Take advantage of this access to learn how to refine your search parameters to find the best prospects for your business.

Once you find your prospects, you are ready to start nurturing them so that they will become customers.

Social Media Can Help You With Lead Generation

You may have tried using Facebook and LinkedIn for lead generation before and quickly became frustrated. Social media can help you with lead generation, if you are patient and try to strike up a conversation with people instead of starting off with a call to action. But instead of lecturing you with a lot of boring stuff about engagement, here is a list of all the ways people use social media that helps you to turn them into customers:

• People fill their LinkedIn and Facebook profiles with useful information
• People create reviews on social media that attract other prospects
• People become brand followers and will promote your company
• As people talk about your company you gain a social media presence
• People will use your presence on social media as a way to learn about you
• People will go to your website from a social media site
• People watch how you interact with customers on social media

Conversations with prospects and customers on social media sites creates excitement about you and your services. And the more people talk about you, share your content, and like your comments on social media, the higher you rank in social and on search engines. This increases your visibility to influencers and other prospects in your market.

Social Media Can Help You Keep Customers

People expect companies to have a social media presence. They also expect to be able to communicate with you via social sites when they have questions or problems.

This is an expectation your business needs to live up to if you are going to retain existing clients and gain new customers. The way you react to a negative comment or handle a customer service issue will be seen by your entire social media network.

If you are able to turn this negative feedback around, you will not only save that specific customer, you will also create excitement about your company with potential customers. These prospects will see how you treat customers and how you respond to negativity. People realize that things can happen, it is how a company handles issues that occur that sets it apart from its competitors.

When you interact with customers via social media you also turn them into brand advocates. Prospects and customers don’t want to hear from you only when you have something to sell them. Show customers you care about them and not just the revenue they generate for you. Then they will be more likely to recommend you to others and buy additional services you have to offer.

Social Media, the 360 Degree Revenue Generating Tool

Social media sites aren’t just for cute cat videos or memes. It is also a way for you to create a network of prospects and customers who love you and your service. This loyal tribe of people will share your information with others, who in turn will recommend you to even more people. They will buy your products and will become customers for life, increasing your customer lifetime value.

The potential for generating revenue through social media can only be seen when it is supported by the right platform. This is where many businesses fail, and they don’t see a return on investment from their social media activities.

Got Questions?

Are you struggling with your social media presence? Have you tried to generate leads on LinkedIn but failed? If you have questions about how to find prospects, generate leads or create a return on your investment for your LinkedIn activities I would be happy to help. Send me a message here on LinkedIn or schedule a call with me so that we can discuss your business goals.