For B2B companies, keeping the sales funnel full is one of the most important aspects of growing your business. You can never settle after signing one big client because now you have to start working on closing the next deal. But as the buying process continues to change, and as the demographics of corporate buyers shifts to millennials, properly using social media to keep your sales funnel full has become very important.

This is especially true with Twitter. When used properly, this can be an important tool in generating new prospects and converting them to leads. But this is not your dad’s sales funnel. And those companies that are able to adapt and leverage this new funnel will continue to grow. Those that don’t will fall behind. You can also use eclincher to boost twitter engagement as well.

Not everyone that follows you on Twitter is a lead. That means you shouldn’t send direct messages to every follower treating them as leads. More often than not, they’re more interested in the content that you share then in purchasing anything. That’s okay and part of the new sales funnel. Sharing content develops trust and creates the brand awareness that can help your business down the road. But that doesn’t mean you have to spend time and energy trying to turn that follower into a lead.

Your job is to tell the difference between followers and potential buyers. This will help keep your sales funnel full and help you generate more leads.

Three Steps to Keep Your Sales Funnel Full Through Twitter

1. Understand Your Sales Funnel

Before you leverage Twitter to keep your sales funnel full, you need to understand your current sales funnel and how your Twitter strategy fits into it. You can do this by asking three questions:

• How do you obtain new leads?

• What is the sales follow-up process?

• How long does it take to close the sale?

Once you understand your current sales funnel, you can figure out how to leverage Twitter to continue filling it. Remember, through social media marketing and Twitter, you’re more likely to reach potential buyers earlier in the sales process. This is important to your strategy because you cannot dive right into selling once you’ve generated a lead through Twitter.

But just because these prospects are still further away from purchasing doesn’t mean they’re not worth pursuing. It just means you have to treat them differently.

2. Social Media Leads are Different

Earlier in the sales process isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Think of it as a great opportunity for you and your brand to develop a trusting relationship with this prospect so that when it does come time to buy, you can fall back on that relationship.

Avoid the temptation to start selling them right away! They’re not ready and selling will only push them away. They’re still looking for information, not to purchase. So, provide that information.

Have a strategy in place to share content that will push them through the sales funnel. This content should include posts that answer questions your prospects ask, content that overcomes common objections, and provide opportunities to premium content that will convert soft leads to hard leads.

3. Think Like Your Potential Customers

You need buyer personas to understand to your target audience. What drives them? What are their pain points? What is their buying process?

Once created, you’ll have a better understanding of how they use social media. What are your prospects searching for on Twitter? What are they tweeting about? Search for those terms and now you have a list of potential buyers.

Of course, not all of these will convert into leads, but now you have those suffering from the pain points you focus on listed right in front of you. This provides you the perfect opportunity to reach out and develop relationships. Maybe you could tweet directly at them. Or you can even send a direct message.

That’s why using social listening tools such as Social Monitoring are important. It provides you the opportunity to have tweets containing certain terms in their own feed. This makes it so much easier to track and to keep the important tweets separate from the clutter of your main feed.

4. Use Twitter Landing Pages to Generate Hard Leads

Creating premium content should be one of the main focuses of your inbound marketing strategy. This is a great way to leverage your website as a company sales rep that never sleeps, constantly generating leads. Premium content can include:

• eBooks

• Whitepapers

• Infographics

• Webinars

• Many More!

Whatever type of content you decide to create, make sure it’s important to your prospects early in the buying process. Because the leads you generate on Twitter are earlier in the buying process, the premium content posted behind landing pages should be focused on converting soft leads (email subscribers) to hard leads (actually looking to buy).

Don’t send this content too early or too late! Too early and you’ll scare potential buyers away because they’re still simply looking for information. Too late and they’ve already turned their attention in another direction.

5. Track and Analyze Data

The most important aspect of any marketing strategy is to set goals beforehand with relevant KPIs. That way you know what defines success to you. Without creating specific KPIs that are important to your strategy, you can easily end up posting blindly and just hoping for the best.

This is especially important when it comes to Twitter, and social media marketing as a whole, because the sales funnel is completely different than your regular sales funnel. Plus, all of the data is trackable. By tracking the KPIs and results, you can see where your strategy is successful and where it’s falling short.

This can be through simple A/B testing, such as changing the color of you CTAs or on your Twitter cards. But it can also include which premium content converts the most soft leads to hard leads.

The data is there. Use it.

Leveraging Twitter to Fill Your Sales Funnel

Your potential buyers have access to all the information they’ll ever need. That amount of content has completely changed the buying process. Your company needs to use social media marketing to create the brand awareness and develop relationships with your prospects.

One of the best tools for this is Twitter. Especially for B2B companies, Twitter provides an opportunity to present your company as an industry expert and thought leader by sharing content relevant to your potential buyers. Your future customers are searching for information to solve their pain points. Generate premium content to share on Twitter and convert soft leads to hard leads.

Use these techniques to develop the relationships and brand awareness your company will need moving forward. Continue reading to see if your social media marketing campaign is working.

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