Good news: there is nothing particularly revolutionary about social selling. The concept is actually pretty simple. Social selling is the technique by which marketing teams use social media to understand customer behavior, generate leads and engage them.
Therefore, while the medium (social media) by which a sales team engages prospect and customers may be relatively new, the work itself is similar to traditional outbound marketing approaches with a heightened emphasis on building relationships.
The trick to successful social selling is three-fold: one, to contextualize your pitch based on customer behavior and preferences; two, deliver compelling content; and three, collaborate internally to convert prospects.
The Benefits of Social Selling
If we could summarize the benefits of social selling in one pithy sentence that would simultaneously excite your sales team, it would be this: a lot less cold calls. That's because social selling draws upon a robust supply of prospect and customer information provided by the prospects and customers themselves: for example, a LinkedIn profile of a key prospect will provide valuable data to help marketers calibrate their pitch. Furthermore, social media networks make it easy for marketers to establish relationships with prospects, thereby minimizing the need for the dubious cold call.
How Social Selling Differs from Traditional Marketing Techniques
The inherent benefits of social selling also underscore what's fundamentally different about the technique. For example, social selling places an undue influence on peer networks. Think about your own experiences: you're more inclined to purchase a product if it's recommended by a friend. You're even more inclined to purchase a produce if it's recommended by 50 friends.
Secondly, social selling actually reduces the influence of the sales person. After all, your prospects are savvy. They use Kayak to book plane tickets, Airbnb for their short-term rentals, and read customer reviews on Amazon. They can inform themselves around the value of a product or service independent of a sales person. Each of these critical differences - the increased importance of peer networks and the relative diminishment of the traditional sales rep - means that companies need to make sure existing customers remain satisfied and that they roll out powerful content to intrigue prospects.
The Three C's of Social Selling: Context, Content, Collaboration.
This brings us to this useful slide deck from Hubspot that spells out the "Three C's of Social Selling: Context, Content, and Collaboration." Adhere to these principles and your organization will nail the basics of social selling. Let's take a closer look of each of these three elements:
* Context. As previously noted, marketers nowadays can learn quite a bit about prospects through social media. Therefore, organizations must make sure their pitch is contextualized based on the prospect's specific needs. This means delivering useful content and building relationships on platforms like LinkedIn.
* Content. Savvy prospects will often find you before you find them. Therefore, make sure your brand is well-articulated on social media outlets and populated with great content, including compelling web copy, a blog, and video. Share valuable insights, educate customers, and use this content to build relationships with partners and other local businesses. Publish white papers, post on social media platforms and solicit guest posts.
Most importantly, stay engaged with users: respond to comments, throw out questions to your followers. There are a lot of moving parts here, so make sure to create a content calendar to simplify and manage this process.
* Collaborate. Make sure sales and marketing work in tandem. After all, the marketing team will be providing most of the content, yet the sales team has a better pulse on what prospects are looking for. Track user engagement on social networks to see what content resonates best with followers and calibrate your approach accordingly. Using this information, your team can build more effective buyer personas and prospect marketing plans.
With that, we'd like to ask you to join the conversation. What social selling techniques have proved most successful for your team? Has it lived up to the hype? What's particularly difficult about social selling?
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