The three essential targets that help you win new business with social media
Can you imagine selling successfully without targets?
This is virtually unthinkable in today’s business environment. Nearly every salesperson has a target. Some sales people are simply told to go and win a certain amount of business. And, increasingly, people are also given an action plan to achieve this target.
There is one big thing lacking in all the sales activity plans that I have seen. Yes, you’ve guessed it: it’s social media activity. This doesn’t yet appear to have a place in planned sales activities. I think this is a big omission.
Just like sales, successful social media activity needs goal setting
What social media goals will you set yourself?
Imagine what would happen if you didn’t set sales targets. You’d never know if you were bringing the right amount of work to keep your company in business. You wouldn’t be sure if you were carrying out the right activities to meet your targets.
It’s exactly the same with social media. If you don’t carry out of the right activities with the right regularity, you will not achieve social media success. The other advantage of having social media goals is that they encourage you to make sure your take the right activity at the right times.
Here are three goals you should set if you want to succeed with social media.
1. Set an end target
What you want out of your social media activity? Naturally, the answer is more sales. But let’s be more specific about this. In order to achieve the right level of sales, how many new prospects do you need to move into your pipeline every week or month?
The end goal of social media is to move prospects into your sales funnel. You will know the average value of a new customer from your traditional sales activities. You will also know on average how many prospects you need to speak to in order to create a new customer. (However, when you have been carrying out social media for some time you may want to check this statistic. It may well be that your conversion rate is higher with social media prospects because they are more engaged before you move them into the sales pipeline.)
Once you know these figures, you know your end targets for your social media activity. Then it is much easier to plan out and work out the other activity that is necessary in order to achieve this target.
2. Find prospects and connect with them
The next key social media activity is to make sure that you are building your social network. It is important to devote regular time to finding prospects on social media.
I recommend setting a target for the number of new prospects that you connect with. Once you have connected with prospects you will want to turn them into clients. That’s where the next social media goal comes in.
3. Reach out and convert
To turn social media connections into clients you have to turn them into real life connections. You have to reach out and have a call or a meeting with them. You should set yourself a target for the number of people that you actually manage to speak to.
So how do these goals translate into the right sales?
To make this goal setting work for you it’s best to work backwards. So the first target that you should set yourself is the sales revenue that you want from your social media activity.
Once you have done this, you can set the number of successful conversions that you need to make. You can also set the number of prospects you need to move from social media into your sales funnel in order to achieve the right number of conversions.
Finally, it’s time to set the number of prospects you need to connect with to make the sales target.
“Just like sales, successful social media activity needs goal setting” https://t.co/sVoyedQcaa
— Matthew Parker (@PrintChampion) August 14, 2017
What happens if you don’t set social media goals and activity plans?
Social media networks are littered with inactive accounts. These are the graveyards of those who jumped in too enthusiastically when it came to social media. I’m willing to bet that well over 95% of them failed to set any goals.
At the end of the day, that’s what led to the failure of the social media accounts. People started off without any proper view of what they were trying to achieve. They didn’t work out exactly what they needed to do.
As a result, they failed to get any meaningful results from social media. So they gave up on their social media activity.
Set yourself goals today
It could make all the difference between success and failure with your social media sales.
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P.S. You can find out more ways to get the best out of your social media activity by downloading the free e-guide below.You’ll also be signed up to “Views from the buyer” where I share tips, stories and resources to do with selling print and social media.
