As CEO of a fast-growing sales and marketing contact database, I scan TweetDeck and other social media platforms each morning to find what digital marketers are saying about us, our competition and the tagged threads about the industry. It has become impossible to imagine running a business without this level of access and transparency.
Tracking conversations through tools like TweetDeck is great, but finding the social activity of all target customers and prospects in one place is very difficult. All marketers actively maintain and grow databases of contact information on customers and prospects. Digital marketers need to be able to tie these contacts to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media profiles. They also need the ability to find who are the most socially connected among them.
Whether having a conversation with prospects or current customers, relevant content is a digital marketer’s best tool because it enables them to effectively engage with prospects’ in and beyond social media. When you have a conversation, you’re not only exchanging content, you’re building a relationship and trust. As any good marketer knows, relationships and trust are the keystones to a successful business development campaign. Not having this level of insight is a point of friction, and leads to lost sales opportunities for marketers – something that in this day and age they simply cannot afford.
Over the past year or two, skilled business-to-business marketers have figured out how to break through the clutter and engage audiences with webinars, podcasts and other learning materials. Businesspeople have given a big thumbs-up to these learning opportunities, which help keep them up-to-date on the fast-moving world of business tools critical to building efficiency in their businesses.
We are entering a conversation economy that will transform business communication and efficiency. With the addition of social media, marketers can connect to prospects with relevant conversations, opening up possibilities for truly scalable electronic conversations for the first time. Creative integration with social media will unleash enormous potential for digital marketers.
