Here is the #1 Challenge you’re most likely having with your current sales process. You have to dig, dig and dig to have your prospects return your calls. After you call all day, you wish you had a simple trail of breadcrumbs, which prospects followed all the way to a sale. You also wish these breadcrumbs could leave behind a path, to mark for other prospects to follow the same direction.
The consequence of not having a system that leaves breadcrumbs for your buyers is very simple:
- They follow the breadcrumbs of your competitors
- They don’t know where to go, so they stay home doing nothing
“Social Breadcrumbs” is Social Selling in its most basic form. It’s using content (which could be blogs, video’s, guides, eBooks, infographics, etc.) to help prospects walk through the proverbial “buying process jungle”. Without these breadcrumbs, buyers become lost, confused and have a difficult time finding you.
Every time your sales reps are curating an interesting story, or marketing pushes an eBook that goes viral – multiple positive changes happen for you and your buyers.
- You organically climb the Google SEO ladder
- Your prospects stumble upon your assets in LinkedIn & Twitter
- Buyers completely change the way they evaluate your “expertise & core value”
- Your team adds “one more brick” in a potential “yellow brick road”, leading to your Contact Us page
Since the buying landscape is becoming so complex, why aren’t sellers creating easy to follow paths for their prospective buyers?
Where do I begin?
Content is absolutely king. Content is your digital fingerprints left all over the internet. The very first place to start is to think about your buyer (buyer persona) and identify triggers, ideas, subjects that would get them very, very interested to learn more.
What are the assets that work?
For us, the baseline begins with blogs (both written & video). These blogs lead prospects down a path with guides, further videos and a landing page. If you’re looking for simple landing page software, check out Unbounce . Just like the song “the shin bones connected to the… thigh bone”, your assets MUST all interconnect to build the easy-to-walk path.
How do they all link together so buyers can walk down our path?
They all link together with simple Forms ( JotForm & Form Assembly ) and a call-to-action at the end of each asset leading buyers down a customized buying path. This might sound simple, but most companies still neglect to connect everything and are not taking advantage of nurturing their prospects till they are in a buy ready state. All of these movements are trackable with tools like Marketing Automation , Forms, Bit.Ly and more… but without the right tools; your buyers can be left running around in circles and eventually going to a source that can connect the problem solving dots better than you can.
The Bottom Line
If you don’t want to be left behind the 8 ball – you really need to start to take action. The following blog posts on utilizing Social Selling strategies using LinkedIn can help you start. If you are really looking for some hidden gems on how you can attract a very specific prospect, I recommend you check out – 42 LinkedIn Tips
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