How To Use Social Media To Win New Clients

I was recently watching a very helpful youtube video on how to develop new clients through Social Media.  The video is about 30-minutes in length and goes over everything from how to find potential contacts in your relevant industry, to companies and ultimately the person who you should be communicating with, a.k.a., the decision maker.

The described methods use Linkedin as a medium.  Here is a brief step-by-step strategy that you can implement for your sales and business development strategy:

Step 1

Do a keyword search on your particular target industry or target market.  There are a number of tools out there, I would start off with the Google Adwords Keywords tool to become more familiar with how to do a keyword search, I would also recommend looking up articles and How-To videos on YouTube as they will give you additional insight into KeyWord search (even for seasoned practitioners).

Step 2

Enter your keyword or keyword phrase into Linkedin`s advanced search engine.   This will give you several hundreds to thousands of search results (people).  You can drill down even further by specifying country, region, and companies (all on the left-bar navigation on the search results).

Step 3

Contact your potential lead through Linkedin.  If you`re a paid subscriber you can use Linkedin`s iNmail to send an inquiry to him/her directly.  If you don`t have time to wait for a response, or, can gauge that the person is not accessing his/her Linkedin account that frequently, I would send a direct email to their corporate account.

You can do this through the following search string:

"email * * domain.com"

For example if Harry Potter worked at Price Waterhouse Coopers in London you would use the following search string:

email * * pricewaterhouse.com
email * * pwc.com

You would get a number of email aliases that have the domain name with Price Waterhouse and can deduct that harry.potter@pwc.com would be this individuals Corporate Email address.

Step 4

Sent an email of something of value, it may or may not register with her/him.  If you can follow up with a warm lead (perhaps a mutual connection or something of common between you two) this would be even better.

Example:

"Hi Harry,
I read your details through Linkedin.  I wasn`t sure how active you are on that account so I am contacting you directly, hope you don`t mind.  I understand you`re involved with the CRM software division for the Retail Industry.
My company CutRedTape.com has developed a CRM platform specifically for the Retail Industry.  We have a number of high-profile clients including WalMart, Uniqlo and other well-known names that are gaining great benefits through using our product.
I would like a few minutes of your time to see if we could discuss over the phone.  Even if you are not immediately interested or have a need, it will give us a chance to connect and network as peers in the industry".

Summary:

Using Social Media, specifically Linkedin in this case, is a great way for you to develop your sales pipeline!