Social selling without content marketing doesn't work
In the past few months, the whole social selling topic has become a major trend. Everyone across the B2B space is now looking into this topic and analyzing their options. As usual, there are the early adopters which have been doing it for a couple of years like IBM and have seen amazing results, but as social selling takes center-stage there's a few things that most people overlooks.
One of the most important misconceptions that I find in social selling conversations is that sales people tend to think it's the new version of companies databases that they used to use. As much as this is one aspect of it, there is a lot more to social selling than just a list of names. Social media allows you to view a lot more about a person so you can plan the best way to approach them to have a relevant conversation.
The second thing that I find most shocking is when people actually think they can find a list of names from social networks and then just start sending them unsolicited promotional emails that have no personalization or relevance to each individual. This is the worse way to create a first impression in a relationship.
Another common theme when talking about social selling issues is the trend to treat it as a cold calling tool. Identifying people that are prospects and sending them cold and unsolicited messages asking for an appointment or a call is not really the best way to approach them. This only shows that you have a template message that are just sending around to lots of people and you didn't even take the time to do a bit of research in terms of what are my interests and find a topic that can add value to me in order to get a conversation.
The final most important thing in social selling is that it is very much aligned to content marketing. You can do social selling without it, but it is so much more powerful when the two things work together. When you have both things, the sales teams research on each potential client interests, posts and background, and then they use relevant content assets that are created by the content marketing program to share them with the contact to enable a relationship based on added value and trust. It is by demonstrating this understanding of the customer that you can start building bridges with customers and with time take them to the next stage in their buying process.
This topic has so much to say about it, but I thought I would keep it short on this occasion and I will post other points of view in the future.
One of the most important misconceptions that I find in social selling conversations is that sales people tend to think it's the new version of companies databases that they used to use. As much as this is one aspect of it, there is a lot more to social selling than just a list of names. Social media allows you to view a lot more about a person so you can plan the best way to approach them to have a relevant conversation.
The second thing that I find most shocking is when people actually think they can find a list of names from social networks and then just start sending them unsolicited promotional emails that have no personalization or relevance to each individual. This is the worse way to create a first impression in a relationship.
Another common theme when talking about social selling issues is the trend to treat it as a cold calling tool. Identifying people that are prospects and sending them cold and unsolicited messages asking for an appointment or a call is not really the best way to approach them. This only shows that you have a template message that are just sending around to lots of people and you didn't even take the time to do a bit of research in terms of what are my interests and find a topic that can add value to me in order to get a conversation.
The final most important thing in social selling is that it is very much aligned to content marketing. You can do social selling without it, but it is so much more powerful when the two things work together. When you have both things, the sales teams research on each potential client interests, posts and background, and then they use relevant content assets that are created by the content marketing program to share them with the contact to enable a relationship based on added value and trust. It is by demonstrating this understanding of the customer that you can start building bridges with customers and with time take them to the next stage in their buying process.
This topic has so much to say about it, but I thought I would keep it short on this occasion and I will post other points of view in the future.
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