Based on early indicators, 2015 looks to be the year that “being social” turns into a real revenue-generating activity.
Brands selling complex products know the purchase path has changed in a big way. The massive amount of information available online means every prospect is armed with detailed product knowledge before they ever consider a purchase. In a recent survey 72% of buyers stated they used social media to research a solution before even contacting a vendor representative.
That means their buying journey is nearly complete before you even have a chance to share your marketing message and value proposition. The traditional touch points you’ve relied upon in the past to influence the sale – research, comparison, referrals and recommendations – now happen without your visibility or involvement.
A study conducted with Lithium customers revealed that an increasing number of early stage buying conversations – discussions that clearly indicate purchase consideration or intent – are occurring on social channels. Evaluating threads on both owned (branded community) and third party sites turned up nearly 1000 such conversations a month.
This tells us there is an opportunity to think about social engagement in a new way, stepping up from social marketing and social support into real social selling.
In this post I’ll outline three key steps to make the move:
Find your customers early in the sales cycle
Bring the right people
Bring the right content
Find your customers early in the sales cycle
Getting into the conversation early can influence and accelerate the path to purchase. When faced with a social ecosystem that is massive and noisy, how can you find and engage with an individual buyer? The key is to sort the valuable discussions, which show product relevance and purchase intent, from the rest.
Deploying intelligent listening allows you to filter the thousands of conversations occurring daily to capture the posts that represent real opportunities. With advanced language processing and tagging you can even pinpoint where a particular prospect is in their buying journey (have they just identified a need, specified a budget, or are they at the point of comparing specific vendors?).
This is an extremely powerful advance in social strategy because it allows you to much more efficiently leverage scarce resources and engage potential customers when and where it matters most. Rather than broadcasting a marketing message into a crowded space – where it is irrelevant to most of the receiving audience – this strategy allows you to deliver your message to prospects that have directly expressed a need and are seeking your help.
Bring your social game to lead generation by considering the following:
Where are people talking about your brand?
What are the social channels your customers and prospects rely on for help and advice?
Where do industry experts and thought leaders congregate to discuss your brand and competitors?
With those questions answered you’re ready to start listening and prepare to engage.
Bring the Right People
Identifying a “buying conversation” on the social web is a start, but you also need to decide how to engage. Of course you could just push your standard marketing materials at every opportunity – but that’s a sure way to lose credibility.
I hear again and again that prospects don’t want to be “sold to.” But that doesn’t mean the brand is blocked from participating. Every interaction from the brand need not be a pre-fabricated pitch. But as a social conversation, visible to the world, it does have to be authentic. Otherwise, it won’t connect. That means engaging in a conversation that demonstrates empathy (I understand you), provides real value (I can help you), and comes from an actual human (I’m not a robot!).
The imperative is to identify the resources – the people – that can best help answer questions and give real advice. The good news is these folks likely already exist in the organization and are active on social media today. The common trait I’ve seen is that they are passionate about their industry or product area and LOVE to talk about it.
Teeing up the best conversations at the right time gives your experts an opportunity to do what they love, while having a direct impact on lead generation.
Here are a few steps to get started in finding the right people:
Who is blogging, tweeting and engaging on your community?
Who has social currency (rank, reputation, Klout score, etc.) that demonstrates their credibility?
Recognize that they may live outside of sales or marketing – who are the “rockstar” experts in support, engineering, or product development?
Bring the Right Content
The value of engaging in online buying conversations is actually two-fold: first, you have a direct opportunity to influence an individual in an active purchasing decision. Second, the discussion left behind remains available for years to come, as valuable content that will continue to influence other prospects.
User generated content in communities has incredibly high SEO value – hosted communities typically generate over 80% of traffic directly from search engines. When the next prospect goes to Google to search for advice on the best product for their needs, these conversations will be high on the results.
What will they find when they click through? If you’ve got your best and brightest responding, then they should see a clear answer to their question occurring through an organic online discussion. Of course by itself, visibility is not always enough: you need to make the content actionable.
Actionable content provides an opportunity for the reader to interact, take a logical next step, and accelerate down the purchase path. The most obvious way to make your content actionable is through embedded links. When discussing particular products or solutions in conversation, links to your on-domain content provide a contextual signpost for prospects eager to learn more. Tip: Be sure to track these!
In one recent experience, such links – naturally embedded in community conversations – generated click-through rates (CTR) of 20-30%, 10x the rate of typical online marketing’s 2-3%!
The good news is that the destination content – the web pages, white papers, blog articles, etc. – almost certainly exist already on your domain. Digital marketers have gotten really good at producing high value content that drives further conversion (download a gated asset, sign up for a webinar, ask for a sales call, etc.). Smartly aligning your existing content marketing efforts with active social engagement amplifies the value of both.
Here are a few considerations when thinking about your actionable content:
Does it provide direction, telling the consumer how to take action, where they need to go or what to do next?
Is it motivating action by clearly articulating the benefits?
Is it measurable – are we instrumented to track the activities from conversation to content to conversion?
Putting it all together
We have resolved to make 2015 the year that social selling gets real. There’s no doubt that more companies – aka, your competitors – will get serious about putting social to work. That means demanding more real business value – measured through leads and revenue, not just likes and shares.
Doing social selling right requires a focused, programmatic strategy, which positions the right conversations in front of the right people, armed with the best content. It’s certainly not simple, but smart brands are recognizing the need – and the opportunity – to engage with their customers in new ways across the social web. With the steps outlined here, you can make 2015 the year social pays off.
Louis Peters is Director of Social Strategy Consulting at Lithium. He advises major brands on achieving tangible business results from their social initiatives, and helps implement long-term customer experience improvement programs. Louis has over fifteen years of experience in delivering and running enterprise software services at leading companies including Siebel and Oracle. You can follow him on Twitter @lpetersjr.
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