Tag Archives for " social selling "

5 Ways To Grow Your Customer Relationships Through Social Selling

Social selling is a tool that almost anyone can add to their professional toolbox. While sales professionals have traditionally applied social selling, it can apply to anyone using relationships and relational marketing in their career. Social selling solves the problem of needing to fill a pipeline and connect with customers by building relationships.

For example, recruiters can use social selling practices to identify prospects, build relationships and grow trust with potential candidates before a job opportunity arises.

Social media doesn’t replace your existing selling or relational tools. Instead, it is a different tool that helps leverage the selling skills and the relationship-building skills that one has already fostered in their career.

 

5 Ways To Grow Your Customer Relationships Through Social Selling

To explain how social selling helps to grow customer relationships on a one-to-one basis, let’s look at these five ways to use it effectively:

1.  Understand what Social Selling Is (and Isn’t)

Social selling is the art of using social media to find, understand, connect with, cultivate and nurture potential sales prospects.

There are four key steps in this process:

• Identify prospects online
• Enrich ideal contract profiles
• Showcase knowledge and expertise
• Build one-to-one relationships

While it seems obvious, it bears repeating:

Social Selling is not Social Media Marketing.

Though both happen on social media platforms, Marketing and Sales use different approaches to achieve very different outcomes.

Social media marketing supports driving attention and building affinity at a large scale, with multiple audiences in mind. Organic social media marketing supports the big picture and aims of an organization.

Contrast that with the messages delivered through social selling — messages dialed in for a specific audience through more personalized content. While the Marketing team is broadcasting from one to many, social selling is ideal for that one-to-one communication.

 

2. Grow Your Network

A key to understanding how best to use social selling is understanding who is really in your audience. When we pull back the curtain and reveal who’s really in our social media audiences, the results are always different than expected. Remember: Those who are paying attention to your channels are not necessarily who is the most active.

In social selling, we must dive into our respective audiences outside of the brand pages.

Think about your own LinkedIn connections and Twitter followers. They most likely include a mix of the following people:

• Prospects
• Co-workers and colleagues
• Industry peers and competition
• Adjacent peers and competition
• Peers from a group, event, or networking event
• Friends, family, and acquaintances

Who do we want in our audience? When social selling, prospects are in our direct line of sight. However, don’t rule out the importance of developing connections with adjacent peers and competitors or others in the peripherals of your network. This is especially true when seeking out who can connect you to a second-level connection.

Build connections by adding value to their newsfeeds. At Convince & Convert, we are true believers that Youtility marketing pays off in dividends. When relationships are founded because we are helping, not selling, we become indispensable.

Transactions happening online take many forms — you may not get a direct sale, but an introduction or a recommendation from your network can lead to additional opportunities.

Focusing on helping people first, rather than only considering the next sale or deal, can build trust with our audience. Youtility is relevant in any form: Information, entertainment, and perspective. There are several ways to put Youtility into play.

When you’re relevant to gain someone’s attention, they permit you to earn their trust. Every salesperson knows that trust is the way to unlock that relationship and get closer to the desired outcome.

 

3. Be a Good Listener

We coined the term “Acceptable Eavesdropping” to describe the ideal way to listen to existing conversations happening online. Adapting social listening rules to how individuals can eavesdrop pays off in these ways:

• Follow prospects & peers and join the conversation they’re already having
• Comment and engage in content in a relatable way
• Join adjacent and industry groups of your target personas. Participate lightly and gain insights from the
• conversations, questions asked, and answers given.
• Follow relevant hashtags to find new prospects involved in similar conversations.
• Use Notifications and tools like Spoonbill.io to identify and react to profile changes.

Credit: Spoonbill.io

Our actions online are generally public unless we expressly limit them. What is posted publicly is available for anybody to eavesdrop on if they know how to do it. From a social selling perspective, listening to existing conversations provides insights that help sellers fine-tune messaging and identify opportunities to contribute.

Comment on and engage with content and conversations, even if it’s not directly related to your sales effort. Applying a Youtility-first mindset, try to add value with any response or answer. Having an actual conversation builds trust and rapport.

Joining and participating in groups that attract your target personas or adjacent can lead to insights into how those individuals generally talk about their business challenges and needs.

One of the early steps I made this year while working on a startup idea was to join groups on Facebook and Reddit that help me identify and note the challenges of users that my idea will solve.

While I am not participating actively, being part of the group allows me to get familiar with this audience group’s challenges, complaints, and celebrations. Those insights are invaluable as I begin to build my product and demonstrate that I identify with the users’ needs from their point of view.

Wherever you choose to listen, do so to connect within your industry or specialty. Use that time to share information and expertise, ask for advice and build relationships. Select the social channels, groups, and hashtags that reflect the communities within your target audiences to get smarter about prospects and current customers.

 

4.  Engage With Purpose

Listening should inform what content to create and share. All content should start from a place of understanding:

• 1) Who are you trying to reach?
• 2) What does that audience care about?

The Convince & Convert team says this all of the time, but it’s true: creating content your audience cares about is a surefire way to help them find you and stay with you.

But too often, employees are creating content that only they or their employer cares about. The effects just aren’t as appealing. We’ve all seen this as we’re scrolling through our newsfeeds, and we scroll right by what isn’t the most relevant or interesting content.

There needs to be a balanced approach between a company’s social marketing strategy and the employees taking ownership of their personal brand.

When directly engaging with your network, remember the golden rule of engagement– add value to your conversations. Do this by researching their industry and tailoring your content to their interests and needs. Be mindful of all information you share.

A good rule of thumb is to avoid using the word “I” in the first ten words of your post, caption, or comment. Engaging from a place of help means the conversation is not about you.

Stop defaulting to the “Like” (thumbs up) reaction. Using these other reactions will stand out among the different reactions, as others do not often use them.

If the post or article is noteworthy, consider sharing it and crediting the author. Send the author a direct message appreciating the post or tag them in your comments.

Use the Articles & Activities section to see what your contacts are commenting on.  This will give you important insights into what they are interested in and allow you to open a conversation on a mutual piece of content you have engaged with. If your contact is not posting actively, this may help open a dialogue.

 

5.  Measure the Effectiveness of Social Selling Efforts

Social media is a great way to generate leads, sure. But how can we measure the social selling steps of connecting with an audience, building credibility, and earning their trust? How do you know if your social selling plan is effective?

Here are a couple of ways to measure the effectiveness of social selling efforts.

 

Social Selling Index:

LinkedIn’s own Social Selling Index can be a barometer for individual progress. According to Linkedin, the SSI is a helpful measure of how a salesperson’s social selling skills and execution come together.

LinkedIn Social Selling Index

This self-report card allows for progress checks over time as a good base for identifying what steps taken are helping.  It’s calculated by evaluating four distinct pillars:

• Establishing your professional brand
• Finding the right people
• Engaging with insights
• Building relationships

SSI scores update day to day, providing real-time feedback based on your activity and the health of your network over time. The score is based on a scale of zero to 100, with a maximum score for each pillar being 25.

Linkedin reports that social selling leaders create 45% more opportunities than those with a lower SSI as if we needed an incentive to boost scores. The more consistent you are using LinkedIn, the more significant the impact on your SSI score–but more importantly, the greater impact on your network overall.

 

Trackable Touchpoints

Making every touchpoint that we have with individuals trackable seems impossible. But in digital, we can get close with the right tools in place. Using data capturing and tracking technology makes it easier to qualify prospects and understand when they’re more ready and open for conversation.

Avoid duplicating Marketing’s role by trying to create campaigns on your own. Instead, it is more effective and more manageable to make individual touchpoints interactive.

Augment your emails and shared content to track when they are opened and viewed. Some of our favorite tools to do this include:

• Video tools that allow for viewability reporting, like Vidyard GoVideo
• Email enhancers like MixMax for automation and Sigstr for signatures 
• Campaign URL builders and short URL providers
• SMS Messaging

 

Go Forth and Prosper

When applying social selling to building relationships with your social network, remember this: Doing it wrong is worse than not doing it at all. Take these ideas, and don’t hesitate to make subtle shifts in how you approach social media individually.

By focusing on the social more than the selling, success will follow.

Need an assist? The Convince & Convert Consulting team offers workshops on how teams can apply social selling to Sales, HR, and Professionals of all kinds.

The post 5 Ways To Grow Your Customer Relationships Through Social Selling appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com

The Secrets of Unboxing Videos

 

Social selling of consumer products often includes sharable “unboxing video experiences” posted by influential reviewers and fans. They range widely in production values, but the secret is not just in the video. The key is in the star of the show—the box itself.

—By John Parsons

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

In 2011, Google popularized a concept dubbed the “Zero Moment of Truth” or ZMOT.

It is the consumer’s experience of research and discovery, primarily on the web, learning about a product before they first experience it, often on a store shelf—Procter & Gamble’s “First Moment of Truth.”

The ZMOT is at the heart of all social selling.

Of course, a brand’s web presence for a particular product must start with basic, easy-to-find feature descriptions, comparisons, pricing, use cases, and practical tips or how-tos.

But it cannot stop there. It must also include product reviews, ratings, and other media designed to inspire the consumer and capture their imagination.

Then, to complete the process, all this information must be readily shareable on social media.

No matter how good your web promotional material is, there’s nothing so powerful as having it shared between trusted friends.

 

Using the Right Medium

Increasingly, the preferred medium for this type of social influence is video.

For consumer products, these videos feature shots of a purchaser holding, talking about, and or actually using the product.

They can be elaborate commercials (think Super Bowl ads), or they can be strictly amateur productions.

The latter is typically impromptu footage—or made to look so—captured on smartphones and shared on social media.

Often, they are produced by popular reviewers and influencers—who may or may not be compensated by the brands they promote.

Their socially shared video creates an emotional affinity—an “ah-ha” moment—that hopefully drives product purchases.

 

The Unboxing Experience

However, not all social selling videos are about the product, per se.

An increasing percentage of shareable, ZMOT video features the box or package the product comes in.

Specifically, the video shows the reviewer or influencer sharing their experience from the viewpoint of someone opening the product for the first time.

The social selling “hook” is to convey the excitement of the first-time buyers when they open their newly purchased box.

There are many, many such videos on YouTube today, created by (probably) unpaid enthusiasts, especially for items like consumer electronics, cosmetics, and pop-culture memorabilia. (The last example comes with a language warning.)

Unboxing videos typically break the “shorter-is-better” rule for marketing videos, since they are designed to appeal to an already loyal fan base.

They can also range in production quality—from simple, first-person vlogs to reality television-like shows such as Arun Maini’s MrWhoseTheBoss channel.

(His over-the-top video, The $200,000 Smartphone Unboxing, contains many great examples of unboxing video techniques, including point-of-view shots of each step in the process.)

 

Even seemingly mundane aspects of product packaging (the protective plastic) can be filmed in a way that heightens the memorable, “you are there” experience, complete with enhanced sound. (From Arun Maini’s The $200,000 Smartphone Unboxing.)

The revenue model varies for videos of this kind.

On YouTube, the poster will often add links for purchasing the item, as well as the usual subscribe buttons and sponsor links.

 

Know the Rules before Entering the Fray

Although the popularity of unboxing videos is undeniable, marketing professionals should know the rules before entering the fray.

Production values are critical.

It takes real skill to make an unboxing video simple and easy to watch—especially when the narrative pushes the video’s run time over the usual length for marketing videos.

Strive for authenticity, not fancy camera work.

Production values are important but remember that the vast majority of good unboxing videos are produced with simple, single-camera shots.

Typically, this means alternating sequences of the narrator and point-of-view shots of the box being opened.

The storytelling must simulate the senses.

By its very nature, a physical package involves more of the senses than just vision and hearing—the only two that today’s video medium can handle.

So, the narration and the visuals must also convey, however subliminally, the tactile experience—and even the olfactory experience, if there is one—of a well-designed box.

Social sharing is the goal.

An unboxing video is not an elaborate tutorial or how-to.

To move viewers to share it with their followers and friends, the video must evoke the feelings of receiving a holiday or birthday gift—or at least the opening of an exciting new purchase.

Communicating those feelings is the essence of social selling.

 

The Real Star of the Show

An unboxing video can follow all the rules and still fail as a social selling tool if the product box is just an ordinary box.

Even the most die-hard fan of a particular product will likely not finish, much less share, a video of an uninspiring package design.

But too few marketing professionals fully appreciate what makes consumer product packaging appealing—both on the store shelf and in a video.

Product packaging is the single most complex branch of printed graphic communication.

It has to be practical—for both shipping and store display—as well as provide basic information (ingredients, parts, size, price, barcodes, safety information, the list is almost endless).

On top of that, a package must also attract a shopper’s attention, given the fact that the time spent making the decision to pick it up from the shelf is only about 2.6 seconds.

No pressure.

Other attributes of a product box communicate value—to the shopper in the store, to the customer who receives it in the mail and especially to the person opening it for the first time.

Its visual layout, use of color, and typography are also essential, albeit subliminal ways to increase its perceived value.

(In 2003, a University of Alabama study illustrated the powerful role of packaging in communicating brand meaning and strengthening the consumer-brand relationship.)

Even the weight and heft of the cardboard used for the box, as well as its texture and special printing and finishing effects, all send a subliminal message—one that cannot be literally conveyed in a video but must be described well.

 

Common printing and finishing techniques, such as raised metallic texturing or embossing, can be filmed in a way that evokes the tactile experience of a package. (From ASMR’s GlossyBox May 2021 Unboxing.)

The outer box is just the beginning.

Many consumer products (famously, Apple and Samsung smartphones) take special care to place individual components in their own, distinctive packaging within the main box so that each new piece becomes its own, memorable step in the experience.

In other words, when all aspects of the packaging are designed to be a pleasant process of discovery, then that process is ideally suited to be shared with others.

 

The Big Picture

The principles of social selling are not new. People have been telling their friends and family members about the great new thing they bought for as long as we’ve been buying and selling great new things.

The difference now is that we can amplify those stories via social media.

And, because moving pictures speak louder than words, the best medium for sharing our delight in opening a new, well-designed product box is a video that can be shared freely with online connections.

About the Author

John Parsons is a Seattle-based business and technology writer and co-author of the IntuIdeas Video Marketing Guide (https://intuideas.com/video-marketing-resources).

The post The Secrets of Unboxing Videos appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com

Who Really Owns Social Selling?

“A-B-C. A: always, B: be, C: closing,” is the immortal advice Alec Baldwin’s character Blake imparts to a group of hapless salesmen in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross. This basic sales tenet has not changed much since, but the role of sales and marketing has definitely moved on (for the better).

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

Although many companies are taking social selling seriously these days and developing a solid social selling strategy, who within your organization actually owns it?

The obvious answer would be the sales team.

They’re the ones selling.

But the reality is that in many organizations, marketing is driving the initiative in terms of social techniques, where to prospect, and creating content that drives the conversation and engagement with potential buyers.

In some cases, the marketing department is even funding the cost of the technology used by sales to do social selling.

There is definitely a lot of “selling” involved in social selling, and the sales team needs training on creating personal brands, using social listening technology, engagement, and measuring their success.

But the marketing department has an important role to play in most organizations.

 

Here are some areas where marketing can help:

Identifying Watering Holes

By using the same buyer personas created and used by the marketing department to develop the overall marketing strategy, marketing can identify the right micro markets for sales to focus their social selling efforts on social channels, like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

Compile a list of online groups, forums, and key influencers your salespeople should follow and get to know.

 

Sharing Social Media Techniques

Marketing departments have been engaging with their audiences via social media for years and will have an established social selling strategy, which sales teams need to take advantage of and integrate with.

Sales should start by social listening and plugging into online conversations to understand the important issues and topics of potential prospects.

This will fuel authentic conversations.

 

Empower Sales to Have Intelligent Conversations

Social selling is much more about sharing quality content than driving a sales angle.

Marketing should have a library of developed and curated content to share with sales for target personas, hopefully for each stage of the sales cycle.

Build social selling campaigns “in a box” that share the right messages, the right calls to action, and in the right format for social channels for sales to easily deploy.

Adding some creative elements or image files can help improve engagement for the team’s developed posts and messages.

 

Sales Training and Enablement

The “last mile” in any good campaign is sales enablement.

Marketing needs to ensure that the sales team understands the campaign messaging and what materials are available, as well as where to find them easily.

Make sure there is sales leadership support.

The campaign launch should be part of standard sales training or enablement, so that the sales team sees it as something they need to do, rather than just information from marketing.

 

Working Together for Your Social Selling Strategy

The best part of social selling is that it gives sales and marketing another opportunity to work together in the ever-blending roles of the two teams.

With the customer experience at the center of both marketing and sales department strategies these days, only by working together will social selling success.

It’s called social selling, but there’s a lot of marketing involved.

This blog was updated by Michelle Saunders, Director of Content.

The post Who Really Owns Social Selling? appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com