Is it your strategic planning? Is it the quality of your service? Is it your dedication? Is it your team members?
What really is the secret weapon?
The answer to all of them is probably Yes. Running a business is hard, but to stand out against competition is harder. Your business not only needs to be found in all the channels and platforms; it needs to also evoke confidence in your customer’s minds.
Like the old saying goes – First impression is the best impression – it is true for your business also. Where does your customer get to know about you or your business for the first time? Do they hear about you in Radio? Do they hear about you in TV? Possibly not that’s too costly to promote your business. Do they get to hear about you from your existing customers? That’s a real good thing. That will directly translate your quality of your service to good referral. Where else does your prospect reside and how do you get in touch with them?
For years, there’s been a debate raging in the sales community: When reaching out to a prospect for the first time, should you call or email? Many experts think “phone vs email” is innately flawed. There is a better way to get started. Your default shouldn’t be calling or emailing. It should be using your network to get an introduction. Having a referral makes a buyer five times more likely to engage.
Now that we are talking about your network and connections, where is your network and connection and how do you keep track of them. How do you know if your customer is connected to your network? Here comes the power of Social Media. There are top 5s – Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter. But here I will like to focus on the power of LinkedIn. You may not realize what an absolute goldmine this can be in terms of building your brands out in the marketplace.
Why would you need to have LinkedIn?
Because all your prospects are literally living online. Everything they are looking for or checking out, they go online. If they receive referral from someone and they say XYZ is a terrific company, they will take that referral, but they will also look you up. It’s important to start thinking in a way that is in alignment with your prospects. That is the first reason.
The second reason is that when you are online it gives you the opportunity to build your own brand. It also allows you to build a community, people will follow you, like and comment on your posts. It also builds your experts status. Imagine, your town and your competitors and if you are the voice in the online talking about issues and problems occurring in best prospects world and mind, then you become the industry expert. That means people will gravitate towards you because they know you and hear important things from you all the time.
Social media profile carries a lot of weight in building your brand than you can imagine. So, here are 5 things you can do today to get your profile in shape.
1. Empower Brand You: People buy from people not essentially from a company, unless it is big and established. You need to position yourself as the face of your brand. It all starts with a compelling photo where you are directly looking at your audience. The cover photo needs to give ideas about what you and your company is about. Direct messaging is key. People don’t have a lot of time to solve riddles to understand what you do. Get your website redesigned.
2. Elevate Your Brand: After the first impression with good photo people if they are interested will dig deeper into your profile. Write good intro about what your business does in a very personal conversational style. Try to avoid big buzz words, that doesn’t connect people. Think of how you would have conversed with them if you met them face to face. Directly state the services you offer and how can it help your prospects. You can also elaborate here how you are better than your competitors.
3. Engage your Prospect: You can use sales navigator in linked-in to laser focus on the prospect and have conversation with them. You need to build relationship and relate to them. You should have the attitude of giving and helping people in the network without pushing to sale. Provide your value and expertise in other people’s posts and articles or questions.
4. Generate Interest: Write meaningful articles about your industry and your prospects industry. Let your connections share and comment on the articles to get more eyeballs on the content. All your articles may not stand out – but some will just be right over the period. The process of writing articles not only increase your exposure, it also helps you to stay current on your prospects industry affairs which in turn helps you to modify your process for the betterment. How many articles should you post? At least once a week and if possible, daily.
5. Generate Leads: Connect your linked in article to your website blog. This is where you will take the audience off the social media and drive them to your website. You can talk about your service, estimation in your website and get the user request generated. You can embed forms to collect customer information while you provide them free services or products. Free services could be like free trial, free estimate, free consultation. Free product may be downloadable e-book or mini size products. Use ServiceWorks online booking page to drive customers to your own portal. This will help you collect new customer information even when you are not at your desk.
