Social intelligence is about the art of listening and paying attention to what decision-makers and influencers are saying. In Account-Based Marketing (ABM) paying attention to the information, your customers and prospects are posting on social media is an integral part of staying informed, starting a conversation and building trusted relationships.
The explosion of social media has led to companies and executives using social media in unprecedented volumes to broadcast strategic insights, company meetings, and share personal opinions. However, the challenge with social listening is gaining quick access to the right social media posts and news about key executives at target accounts. Given the cryptic nature of Twitter finding the right Twitter handles of executives is a time-consuming activity, which is why a majority of B2B salespeople abandon social intelligence at great cost.
A general misconception in enterprise sales is that social media, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, is the exclusive domain of millennials and the younger generations who unashamedly and overabundantly express themselves all the time – online. However, when it comes to social media-induced enthusiasm, business executives behave exactly the same way as the millennials – instead of posting about their favorite new song or clothing store, the executives are posting and retweeting content relevant to their business interests. If your prospective customers are actively posting on social media you’ve got your conversation starter.
How to initiate a conversation with a prospective client?
ABM is about hyper-personalized interactions. Social listening is an essential part of getting to know your customer and being able to engage with them at the right time. Craig Rosenberg, editor of the popular sales and marketing blog, www.funnelholic.com offers great tips to teams using ABM on how to use social intelligence to gain the attention of your target audiences and initiate a conversation:
- Follow your prospect on Twitter and actually engage with them. It isn’t enough to just follow – retweet, quote or directly engage with them.
- Got a relevant piece of content to show them? Do so. It’s especially good to do this when you see they’re posting content themselves.
- Don’t neglect the power of LinkedIn. If you want to connect with your prospect, chances are they’re active on the business social site. Try to use LinkedIn InMail for best results.
- Don’t forget Facebook, either. Like a status update they share and you’ll get their attention.
- You’ll also have to work on your own social game, as well. Keep your profiles updated and create room for engagement.
Establish credibility and drive engagement
Using social intelligence, you can convert “trivial” social media connections into trusted relationships by consistently engaging with customers and prospects equipped with intelligent insights at the right time and proving to them that you’re interested in them. Engage actively with prospects on social media in a casual non-business setting. If they like a certain ball team engage with them when the team wins or loses. “Yes, go Colts!” “Sorry about the Red Sox, man.” Little things like this can let them know they’re on your radar and you care about them.
“Someone once got me with the following message says Craig Rosenberg: ‘I just read your blog and decided ‘I have to talk to this guy. I work with incredible entrepreneurs like you, too…’” This just goes to show that even the smallest intelligent engagement can make a world of difference when it comes to social intelligence. That’s why it’s so important for account-based marketers to pay attention to every little detail.
xiQ’s integrated Account-Based Marketing platform provides account teams with a single solution for real-time account intelligence, curated content for personalized engagement, access to multi-channel communications and dashboards to monitor customer engagement. Want to learn more about how xiQ enables ABM? Check out the xiQ for more relevant info.
