Any modern marketing professional agrees that Social Media has its place in the modern marketing mix. As traditional methods of connecting with prospects become more difficult, this is an increasingly powerful route to your customers and potential customers.
I am sure George Orwell is spinning in his grave that so many people are willingly sharing details of all aspects of their life – often with complete strangers – and by extension, The State.
He must also despair that so much of what is posted is extreme – extreme political opinion, extremely bad pictures of food, extremely annoying (but strangely compelling) pictures of pets and extremely pretentious guff.
This behaviour has given social media a bad name and that is a key reason why so many senior managers do not see the benefit of investing in social media – especially in the B2B context. Whether this is because of ignorance or how they use social media personally we don’t know. If all you do is post pictures proving how much better your life is to everyone else (“Nothing beats the peace of mind your own private island delivers”), then I can see you will find it a stretch to work out how it can benefit your business.
The reality of modern sales prospecting is not pretty. It is harder to get through on the phone to prospects because people are increasingly overwhelmed by out of context and unwanted sales calls, as well as having a healthy scepticism caused by the more extreme scams perpetrated by offshore call centres. People are too busy to answer traditional sales calls and have created a new species of gatekeeper whose personal mission is to stop their boss communicating with anyone in the outside world.
Email was the great hope. Alas, politicians got involved (and we all know how much they really understand business) and introduced draconian, and unfortunately varying, legislation that curtails emailing. You end up with a situation where in some countries it is illegal to share email addresses but legal to share direct phone numbers. I don’t know about you but I prefer to have junk email rather than junk phone calls.
In some places, you even technically have to send a physical letter asking permission to send an email.
With these manmade restrictions and the payback of past dodgy practices curtailing email and phoning in Europe and other parts of the world, Social Media was the obvious solution. As users are so keen to share everything about their lives and seem to be engaged in a battle for the most likes, followers, connections etc., they surely must be more open to communication in this way.
It also works in the other direction. Most savvy consumers have realised that raising a customer service issue over (public) social media is more likely to get a rapid and beneficial response than using the traditional (private) phone call. Email does not work as businesses do not seem to be in a hurry to answer those – in my experience. Nothing spurs a company to action like a customer complaint or service issue shared in real time with thousands of potential customers!
As with all potentially good business initiatives, there is a temptation for the fans of social media to over- simplify it whilst simultaneously overstating its importance. Many specialist providers of social marketing services have started to believe their own hype and try to tell grizzled sales managers that followers are more important than sales – because if you create the correct supporter community the sales will follow.
It is ironic that the agencies spouting this guff are very focused on generating their own revenue - after all, genuine Italian espresso machines, beard wax, industrial lofts and ironic trousers do not come cheap. However, they simultaneously forget that revenue is also the main driver of their customers.
Of course, social media is not the magic silver bullet that will make us all rich, but it is a powerful tool that can help us generate sales both directly and indirectly by working in many different ways. You can interact with customers and prospects without any gatekeepers or interference, but you can also connect indirectly by sharing useful news & content, establishing thought leadership, raise your profile and building communities.
As such, it is a uniquely useful tool allowing companies to build relationships and familiarity before they speak to prospects – moving from cold calling to warm calling.
Used in isolation, there is no guarantee Social Media will generate any sales, but used as part of a coordinated sales strategy and approach it breathes new life into traditional calling and email activities and this will directly result in sales.
To dismiss social media as irrelevant and pointless because you don’t approve of how many people use it, is no different as refusing to get in a car because some people eat tuna sandwiches, apply make-up, sleep or deliver Indian takeaways in them.
