During the California Gold Rush, miners extracted more than 750,000 pounds of gold. Back then, no self-respecting prospector set out into the wilderness expecting to strike gold without first acquiring the right tools and determining a strategic place to put shovel to dirt.

It’s no different when prospecting for new customers today. Those who strike gold are equipped with an arsenal of marketing resources and a well-thought-out plan of action. 

The following are tools that will help you extract the riches from your own goldfields.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a veritable gold mine of prospects if you know how to use the tools. You can start with a general search by location, company or industry to identify potential customers. Once you find companies you’d like to engage with, follow their profiles for updates that will help you formulate a personal message when you reach out.

Here are a few more tips for using LinkedIn effectively:

Be a Joiner

Go to your homepage and click the “Groups” section in the “Discover More” box. There, you can search for and join groups that are relevant to your industry. You can follow and add to content, and get to know companies and individuals who may be a good match for your product or service. 

Clone Your Best Contacts

Visit the profile of one of your best customers or ideal prospects, and on the right you’ll see a box with the heading, “People Also Viewed.”  These are users who are similar to your contact, making them great prospecting potential!

Follow the News

Click the “Notifications” tab and look for connections who have started a new job, just had a birthday or have shared a new blog post. These events are all reasons to say hello and start a dialogue.

Meet School Chums

Sharing an alma mater is a great foundation for connection. If you copy https://www.linkedin.com/edu/alumni into your browser, you’ll get a list of alumni from your school.

Find Your Followers

Anyone who has a free LinkedIn account knows that you can only see a limited number of the users who have viewed your profile, while Premium users can see them all. But did you know that you can see everyone who has interacted with your posts, no matter what type of subscription you have?

Heres’s how: Go to your profile dropdown menu, and click “Posts & Activity.” There, you’ll see the articles and posts you’ve shared, along with a list of everyone who has interacted with them. 

Click the “Your Followers” tab on the left sidebar to see who’s followed you recently. 

Referrals

Mining your existing client relationships for new prospects is an oft-overlooked strategy. Who could be a better source of future business than those people with whom you’ve had successes in the past? 

The first step is to identify the people who are most likely to help you. One way to identify your advocates is with a Net Promoter Score (NPS). An NPS is a customer satisfaction indicator that measures how likely your customers are to recommend your business to someone they know. In order to determine a customer’s NPS, you simply send out a single-question survey that asks: How likely are you to recommend my company/product/service to a friend or colleague? 

Those customers who give you a 9 or 10 are most likely to provide you with referrals, so now you know exactly who to ask for new prospects! Be specific about the type of client you are looking for. Narrow down quality leads by asking who they like to do business with that may also be a good match for you.

Remember that givers gain. If you’re someone who gives referrals, you’re more likely to get them in return. Be present to helping your customers and contacts grow their businesses through your network. Make introductions via email, share their work on social media or give them a great review. 

Industry Blogs & Forums

Being up-to-date on the news circulating in your customers’ industries will help you 1) identify prospects; and 2) know what to say to them when you reach out.

Blogs and forums are great resources for discovering new companies, researching successful companies and learning about new industry trends. 

Twitter 

Using Twitter is an opportunity to put all that knowledge you’ve acquired from industry blogs and forums to good use. If you want to make the most of your time in the Twitosphere, make a list of the three or four keywords your prospects care most about and search Twitter using variations of those keywords. You will find the people who are tweeting about those topics, and you can join the conversation. 

Once you’ve identified a few prospects, you can use private Twitter lists to monitor their feeds and connect at a strategic time. 

Local Chamber of Commerce 

For business-to-business enterprises, you may hit pay dirt with your local chamber of commerce. Many chambers of commerce organize their business directories by industry. If you know exactly who your ideal customer is, these directories are like treasure maps leading to a cache of customers right in your own community. 

In 1849, prospector/adventurers sold everything they had and made their way to California by trail, ship and covered wagon. They came from all across America, South America and even from as far away as China to claim their fortunes. 

Fortunately, mining for prospects is far easier. If you’re a face-to-face networker who is feeling frustrated by the limitations of social distancing, this is a good time to sharpen your digital tools and let the gold rush in!

If you’re looking to harness the power of digital marketing to strategically grow your business, Big Chief Creative Media can help. Contact us at https://www.bigchiefcreative.com/contact-us/.