Lifecycle of a Lead: How to Turn Prospects into Customers Using Social Media

Closing deals in 2023 has been a challenge for many sales teams, but we’re uncovering little-known tips to help you keep your sales pipeline flowing. Long gone are the days when sales teams and social media are estranged – combine the two together and your results will be a powerhouse for converting leads into customers.

The buyer journey has changed, making it difficult for sales teams to guide leads through the sales funnel. B2B buyers have traded in conversations with sales reps for independently researching solutions, and they spend considerable time doing so on social media themselves. This leaves sales teams searching for ways to get an indication of where these buyers stand, who is likely to convert, and how to get them to do it. Here’s the solution: harnessing social media engagement insights.

We’ll run you through how social media can turn your prospects into customers, starting from their first ‘like’ all the way to closed-won, and how you can use Oktopost to achieve it.

Jump Ahead:

• The Lifecycle of a Lead
  • Step 1: Lead is attracted to your brand 
  • Step 2: Your lead shares their information
  • Step 3: Uncover social media insights about your lead
  • Step 4: Guide conversations with social media insights
  • Step 5: Nurture your lead until conversion
  • Step 6: Utilize new customer insights to enhance the sales journey
• Close More Sales Deals with Social Media

The Lifecycle of a Lead

Step 1: Lead is attracted to your brand 

The first step of any sales journey is bringing awareness to your brand and attracting leads to your product or service. 

While common practice leaves the bulk of this responsibility to the marketing team, it shouldn’t be left to them alone. You can take part in attracting leads to your brand through social selling, and the benefits of this strategy are endless. Not only will this raise awareness for your brand, but it will also help you stand out as a thought leader in your industry, build a following of qualified leads, and help you close more deals in the long run.

By having marketing teams and sales reps working together to raise awareness online, your brand will stand out to prospective customers and attract leads to your marketing ecosystem. 

They may begin interacting with your social media content in small ways – perhaps a like on one post, and comment on the next. All this data will appear within Oktopost’s People Database showing you who is interacting with your content and their topics of interest. 

Step 2: Your lead shares their information

This is where sales teams can get to work. 

Your combined efforts with marketing have attracted leads, ultimately leading them to leave their contact information on a gated asset and find a comfortable spot in your CRM. 

Once your marketing team has connected Oktopost with your CRM platform, such as Salesforce, sales teams will be equipped with a wealth of information from social media giving them full transparency into what their prospects are doing online. This connection allows social media engagement data to be matched with prospects’ profiles living in your CRM.

But why is this so important? The B2B buyer journey has changed, and prospects are using social media, mainly LinkedIn, to search for solutions, They’re researching your brand, educating themselves with your social media content, and engaging with your posts online. As a salesperson, being able to see what your prospects are interested in, and engaging with in real time is a dream right? Well, here’s the real kicker: this invaluable information isn’t being tracked by brands – it’s just sitting in silo. 

This is the benefit of having Oktopost – it consolidates invaluable social engagement data from your prospects onto their Salesforce content record. Rather than having a random cold lead pop up in your CRM system, leaving you with just a vague idea of how to initiate contact, you now have access to social engagement insights that unveil their interests, facilitating a more informed approach to converting them to closed-won deals.

Step 3: Uncover social media insights about your lead

By now, your prospects and their social media engagement data will be visible on your Salesforce social activities tab. 

As a seller, this is your holy grail – you’ll be able to see everything you need to know about your prospect all in one place. Along with their contact information, you’ll have access to viewing their social media engagement across various platforms, their preferred content campaigns, and the profiles they engage with (including your corporate accounts or employee advocacy content). You’ll even view a timestamp of each engagement for real-time insights into their online activity. 

Here’s how this works in practice: Let’s say your business offers project management software, and a prospect from your target account engages with your social content. This is what you can take away from their online activity – they’ve engaged with multiple pieces of content about time management, spanning across your company’s corporate LinkedIn account and your social media manager’s LinkedIn account, all occurring over the past three months. 

Now, you have actionable insights indicating their consistent engagement with your content, signaling intent to purchase. They’ve shown a clear interest in finding a tool to address their time-management needs, and you even know precisely when they engage with your content – potentially just before a demo or follow-up call. It’s a sales win – the kind of predictive insights you’ve wished for countless times. 

These insights empower you to build a comprehensive profile of your prospect, including their pain points and challenges. You can even set up alerts to be notified whenever they engage with your company’s social media posts. We know, it’s a sales dream. 

Step 4: Guide conversations with social media insights

The next step is simple: use the insights gained from social media data to guide meaningful, relevant conversations with your lead, positioning your brand as the solution to their needs. 

You can do this in several ways. For example, if you have a scheduled demo or follow-up call with your lead, you can use what you have learned from their social action, such as a comment or like, on a specific topic in the conversation. You can then emphasize how your product addresses their time management challenges. Or, if there’s no scheduled meeting coming up, you can contact your lead via phone or email, and recommend content related to the topic that aligns with their interests.

The aim of this step is to engage your lead with relevant information to add to the conversation about time management, leveraging your knowledge of their interests. 

Step 5: Nurture your lead until conversion

By this step, armed with insights and meaningful interaction, your goal is to move your lead from the bottom of the funnel to a closed-won deal. 

As most salespeople know, this won’t happen overnight – nurturing your prospects is essential. Social media insights serve as your golden ticket, enabling to you guide further conversations without overwhelming your leads with unnecessary interactions that might drive them away from your brand.

Step 6: Utilize new customer insights to enhance the sales journey 

Now that your lead has successfully converted into a customer, you’re equipped with valuable first-hand insights to better understand your prospects.

Analyze their pain points, the solutions that resonated with them, and the key factors that guided them through the sales funnel. These findings will enhance your future sales journeys for your new leads. Apply these insights to your sales calls and social selling content to establish yourself as a thought leader and attract more leads.

And now, you can start the cycle again.

Close More Sales Deals with Social Media

Social media and sales go hand in hand, and when used correctly, it’s a powerful tool for lead conversion. 

Social media provides the insights you need to inform your sales conversations and present the information your prospects need to make informed decisions and cross the finish line. Connecting these data with your CRM platform enables sales teams to access actionable information throughout the buyer’s journey.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to maximize the potential of your social media data and boost your conversion rates, contact us today.