Tag Archive for: social selling

4 Social Media Persona Criteria to Consider Targeting

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These are a few social media personas you might want to consider targeting in your next campaign.

When running a campaign on social media (or simply targeting your content), creating social media personas and leveraging their tastes and preferences for improved engagement is always a best practice.

Targeting Social Media Personas

Every brand will have its own strategy when it comes to crafting social media personas, but, just as there is the (more or less) universally coveted 18-34 demographic for advertisers, there are certain social media personas that virtually any brand can consider targeting for a number of reasons. Here are a few.

Existing Brand Advocates

Your brand advocates might be there to help you grow at every turn, but showing them a little bit of extra appreciation every once in a while does not go unnoticed.

Targeting some of your content to brand advocates that will appreciate it slightly more than the average follower/fan helps keep them around and goes one step further by strengthening their relationship with your brand.

Engaged/Active Online Spenders

This is an advertising category that is readily available on Facebook, and one of the more powerful capabilities, particularly for ecommerce or retail operations.

Centering your content around the benefits of your product or service, and targeting that messaging to users that are willing to spend online can lead to a very low cost-per-acquisition and high returns. Granted, just because they have spent in the past, it does not mean they will always be willing to spend. But when targeting by interests as well, you can increase the likelihood of conversion significantly. Speaking of which…

Interest/Preference

In what is probably the easiest form of targeting your messaging, preferences and tastes allow you to customize your message according to the themes around which your target audience is most engaged.

The ability to frame your messaging according to content or categories (e.g. the NFL or sports, in general) leads to an immediate ability to capture the attention of a particular group. The key to remember in a case like this is that as you cater your content to a given interest, your conversion increases, but your audience size decreases rather rapidly – but at least now you are focused on an audience that will be most receptive to the content. Creating multiple groups with a message around a theme is a best practice in this case.

Connections

When trying to grow your brand, your audience size or simply attract new prospects, consider creating a set of content that is a little more tame with regards to your product/service and more relatable from a personality standpoint.

Even the largest social media accounts in the world still hold only a fraction of the total social audience that exists on a given network. So for every campaign you run targeting your own fans and followers, there will be a virtually endless pool of prospects floating out there in the socialsphere that you have not targeted. The content that you create for these users should focus on the brand’s personality and appeal to their social side.

Conclusion

You’re going to craft your own social media persona as your audience, program and individual campaigns take shape. These are a few early criteria to consider when building hyper targeted content.

What other criteria have you included in your social client persona? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Thought Leader Interview with Social Selling Expert Julio Viskovich

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We took advantage of our relationship with social selling expert Julio Viskovich and decided to ask him a few questions about the field of social selling.

Not too long ago, we announced that t2 had teamed up with NexLevel Sales. Recently, we decided to reach out to the Forbes-ranked social selling expert Julio Viskovich, who heads up the NexLevel team. We wanted to get some detailed insights into a few questions around the concept of social selling. So, we decided to go to a renowned expert to get the answers.

Julio Viskovich talks about social selling with t2

How exactly would you define social selling, and what would you say are the biggest differences between social selling and conventional sales?

Social selling is interesting because it hasn’t quite been defined. The other part of it is that I see it as a separate entity from traditional selling only temporarily. What I mean by that is that I expect it to just become selling. It’s simply just the best way to sell and until it get utilized properly by the masses, we will have to continue to refer to it as social selling.

So to answer your question, social selling is utilizing social media and social to connect with prospects in the right place, with the right message, at the right time. Prospects are leaving hints about themselves and their business – be there to follow the trail.

Why do you think social selling is so much more effective than traditional sales practices?

Social selling is much more effective than traditional means because it provides salespeople with a mountain of information that they never had access to before. This means getting to know prospects better, building a relationship faster, creating instant rapport, and ultimately shortening the sales cycle.

Do you think there is one industry in particular where social selling will be more effective, or would you say it’s universal? Why?

Social selling definitely works better when you’re dealing with an industry that has adopted technology and social media. For example, technology companies like IBM, Oracle, Dell and others are encouraging most of their workforce to be on social media versus a manufacturing company who aren’t on board yet.

Have you found that there is a particular demographic that is more responsive to social selling than others?

I find that organizations that are leaders and innovators are the ones that are most responsive to social selling. This generally seems to include leadership teams that are tech savvy and concerned about improving processes. Older more traditional leadership teams, like many of us, are afraid of what they don’t know and are taking a more risk-averse approach and waiting until the entire mainstream market adopts it. In my opinion, the early bird gets the worm.

How can salespeople get started with social selling? What would you say is the most important habit to adopt?

Salespeople should get started and I recommend the following first steps:

1) Identify which social networks your prospects are one. Taking a buyer persona and mapping it back through demographics should tell you which networks they’re on.

2) The next step is to get on these networks and build out a professional and visually appealing profile.

3) Start listening. Spend two weeks observing the lingo and etiquette of each network and, if possible, access to training around these networks.

4) Share info that is valuable to your prospects and be there for them when they are asking questions. Don’t worry about creating content, there are myriads of it online. Be useful by sharing news and trusted industry info and insights.

Follow Julio on Twitter, and feel free to ask other social selling questions to t2 on Twitter!

t2 Marketing International and NexLevel Sales Partner to Offer Unique Services

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Industry experts from t2 and NexLevel Sales partner up!

Industry leading digital marketing consultancy joins forces with Forbes Top 30 Social Sales Influencer

Two internationally recognized thought leaders and industry experts combine skills to provide a unique consulting, coaching and training program in digital marketing and social selling strategies.

See the official press release here.

t2 Marketing International’s Director of Global Social Business Strategy, Corey Padveen, and NexLevel Sales Founder, Julio Viskovich, named by Forbes as one of the Top 30 Social Selling Influencers in the World, will combine their expertise by providing consulting, training and coaching to corporate clients in North America and Europe in the areas of Advanced Digital and Social Media Marketing Strategy, Social and Big Data Analysis and Social Selling.

The joint program provides businesses with a complete suite of digital marketing and sales strategies ranging from data mining and analysis techniques to social selling strategies, social care best practices, content strategies and full-scale social media program development, coaching and training.

The group provides a number of distinctive benefits and solutions including:

  • Social selling training headed by one of the world’s premier social selling experts, ranked in Forbes as one of the Top 30 Social Selling Influencers in the World
  • Data analysis and activation strategies and coaching with members of a globally-recognized team of experts, specializing in correlation-based campaign development and predictive digital analytics
  • Engagement programs intended to connect with and convert users identified on social media throughout various stages of the sales pipeline by leveraging listening and monitoring platforms and campaigns
  • ResponsiveBrandingTM strategies that leverage a brand’s social insights in order to optimize campaign targeting and social ad spends
  • Social media integration into the business as a whole, and steps to begin the process of transitioning a traditional brand’s corporate culture into that of a social enterprise
  • Sellarketing strategies whereby the barriers separating sales and marketing teams are eliminated in an effort to link the sales process directly to the marketing efforts of a brand or product

About the Consultants

Corey Padveen, t2 Marketing International

Corey Padveen Headshot 200pxCorey Padveen is the Director of Global Social Business Strategy at t2 Marketing International. Corey is Google AdWords and Analytics Certified, a Certified Inbound Marketer and a principle theorist on the notions of Social Equity and ResponsiveBrandingTM. He is also a regular contributor to leading industry publications, such as Search Engine Journal and Social Media Today, and a keynote speaker at digital marketing and social media conferences around the world. t2 Marketing International has a rich 25 year history in integrated marketing solutions working with leading brands in the United States, Canada, Europe, Latin America and Asia.

Julio Viskovich, NexLevel Sales

photoJulio Viskovich is a highly sought after social selling consultant, trainer and implementation specialist. Julio was named by Forbes as one of the Top 30 Social Selling Influencers in the World and is the author of Sellarketing – a tweetable book to help sales and marketing leaders embrace and adopt social media as part of their process. After being the internal social media trainer and the face of social selling to HootSuite’s 9 million plus users, he founded NexLevel Sales to help organizations adopt social media through carefully planned strategy and policy along with support from marketing. Julio has worked with a number of Fortune 500 brands to develop, implement, and build local social selling programs, and social communications strategies, and adopt social media strategically throughout the entire organization.

For further information or to schedule a consult, contact:

Corey Padveen
T: (1) 800-607-4550 ext. 4
Email: corey [at] t2marketinginternational.com

 

Julio Viskovich
T: (1) 604-209-3001
Email: julio [at] nexlevelsales.com

5 Biggest Social Media Concerns for Executives

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There are five notable social media concerns that executives deal with when deciding whether or not adopting the concept of social business is the right move.

social media concerns for executivesIf you ask any marketer what hurdles they face when it comes to implementing social business strategies, many will tell you that there are social media concerns faced by management that are stopping them from executing efficient programs.

Below are five of the main concerns executives have when it comes to social media. Much of the information has been adapted from the MIT Sloan and Deloitte social business survey from 2013.

There is No Strategy

This is among the biggest concerns that executives are faced with. The burden of a carefully laid out strategy weighs heavily on any executive decision. Marketers need to be aware of this and need to have a clear strategy in place when presenting options to an executive committee.

For the marketer, there can be little success found with social media without a properly laid out, goal-oriented social business strategy. Keep that in mind and having something concrete put together before presenting the idea to an executive.

There is No Time

This is a big one. Efficiency is at the root of a successful business, and knowledge is at the heart of efficiency. For an executive that does not fully understand social business, they see it as more than a campaign or a program, but a learning curve that they will need to familiarize themselves with.

Focus on scheduling in order to appeal to this social media concern. If an executive sees that there in fact is time, they will be much more receptive to the idea of adopting a program.

There is No Proof

For anyone who is familiar with social business and has been following it for long enough, this one hurts. There is a ton of proof. And there are so many numbers that show it. Show up with examples of how a campaign similar to yours or in a similar industry has performed in order to ease this concern.

There is No Security

Whether it is the physical security of the networks that concerns executives or the security of brand integrity on social networks, security is going to be an issue seen often. Help reassure executives by showcasing how branding efforts are kept intact and that social networks can be highly secure when fully understood and configured.

There is No Room

There are a lot of priorities competing for the attention of your brand’s executives. Social media – a new venture – might not meet the criteria in the executive’s eyes. You need to make the case for why social business is a must and that there needs to be room. It needs to be conveyed that social is a top priority in any industry.

How do you deal with these social media concerns? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

t2social social medis marketing strategies

4 Ways to Increase Sales on Social Media

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Social selling can be a little tricky, but these tips are sure to help you increase sales on social media.

increase sales on social mediaIt can be hard to increase sales on social media. This is especially true when you consider the fact that people are not necessarily on social media to be sold. Social selling is a delicate art form that, with much practice, can be one of the greatest tools in your sales arsenal.

There are certain Dos and Don’ts when it comes to social selling. Below are four tips that will help you  increase sales on social media. Keep in mind, like anything, social selling takes time. Nurturing your lead is going to be crucial to finding success.

Relationship First, Sales Second

If the first thing a new Twitter follower receives from you is a direct message that reads, “Buy our products at LINK!” you might be underwhelmed at the click through rate.

People engage on social media platforms in order to be social, not to be sold. At least not right away. Once a fan or follower develops a rapport with your brand, then you can casually move over to the sale. However, keep in mind that not all fans are leads, so be sure to have a set of criteria in place in order to qualify your social leads before getting to the sale. You certainly do not want to scare them off.

Listen to Conversations

What is being discussed in your industry? You don’t need an expensive, enterprise-level listening software in order to figure this out. Following hashtags or mentions with free softwares can provide you with the insights you need to position yourself for the sale.

Knowing what is being discussed by potential customers allows you to involve yourself organically in the conversation to build that relationship before selling a product or service.

Solve a Problem

Ever wonder why so many companies sell solutions? A lot of potential leads don’t know they have a problem until a solution is proposed!

When listening to conversations in your industry, learn what issue continuously arises and, once again, position yourself as having the solution for those problems. There is no better way to grab the attention of your audience than by telling them that you can make their life (and business) easier.

Don’t Sugar Coat It

Eventually, we get to a point where we know when we are being sold. It becomes painfully obvious. The only thing that consumers do not appreciate is being told that they are not being sold when they clearly are. It’s undermining and pushes them away rather than brings them closer.

When you reach that point, present your service or product and make the sale. Don’t drag a sale on longer than it needs to go. Leads don’t like it (if they’re buying, they’re buying) and it hurts your business (that’s a lot of time wasted).

Next time you try selling on social, employ some of these techniques and see how it helps!

What strategy do you use to increase sales on social media? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

t2social social medis marketing strategies

Social Media Case Study: Burt’s Bees

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Social media selling is all about engaging with your audience, and Burt’s Bees has managed to build an engaged Facebook audience of 1 million fans and convert quite a few of them into paying customers.

social media case study burt's beesFacebook was one of the first social networks that businesses sought to take advantage of. As a result, Facebook adapted and created pages. Burt’s Bees, the notable personal care product line, saw Facebook as the perfect medium in which to engage with their audience, and the result has been a growing, highly engaged audience that converts to paying customers.

How did they do it? Burt’s Bees uses Facebook as a place to not only build an audience and share great content, but promote their products in a fun, engaging way that does not turn people away from the brand, and actually converts them into customers.

Selling on social media is a tricky grey area. People do not necessarily want to be bombarded with promotional content, but at the same time, many people follow a brand because they either use it, their friends use it or they want to keep up to date with specials and promotional offers. Burt’s Bees recognized this fact and modeled their Facebook marketing and sales strategy accordingly. In this social media case study, we aim to showcase the lessons social media marketers can extract from the Burt’s Bees brand in order to build an engaged audience on Facebook and convert that audience into paying customers.

1. ‘New’ is Intriguing

People are often curious about new products. There’s a certain mysterious quality about ‘new’ that tends to intrigue people. Burt’s Bees saw this and capitalized on it when it came to Facebook. One of the most prominent features of the Burt’s Bees Facebook page is their promotion of new products in fun and engaging ways. For example, one of the main ingredients differentiating their products is Cupuaçu. Nothing special about that. But when they wanted to emphasize the benefits of the new product, they took to social media to promote it by creating a video wherein they interviewed New Yorkers, asking them to try and pronounce the word.

The video is short, funny and the word stays on your mind. And there is little more than a branded sign off at the end. However, Melissa Sowry, Social Media and Content Manager at Burt’s Bees stated, “Through Facebook, we can introduce new products more interactively than in print or banner ads…and provide a space where [our consumers] can connect with one another.” So, what is this new product? People might like the word and the video, but they were starting conversations to find out more.

Lesson: Find a creative way to introduce new products and your audience will engage with your brand to find out more.

social media selling2. Social Media Selling

Burt’s Bees has integrated “Buy Now” buttons into their content and features coupons for Facebook fans. The result? Dramatically increased sales through social media.

Unlike many brands that may feature a product and a link to a store, Burt’s Bees allows users to click through to an e-commerce site from a product post that already has the product in a shopping cart. This may take a little customization on the part of the Facebook page and app designer, but any hurdles (e.g. clicking to the store, finding the product, adding to the cart, checking out, etc.) you can eliminate from the buying process means higher conversions.

Lesson: Help facilitate the buying process for your fans and you will see your conversions skyrocket.

3. Engaging and Influential Content

In addition to fun content like the video post above, one of the cornerstones of Burt’s Bees success on Facebook has come from their ability to engage with their fans in conversations. In an interview with eMarketer, Sowry said, “We also create opportunities for consumer education around skin care, for example, and sampling offers. We ran successful sampling programs on Facebook for our relaunched body lotions and new tinted lip balm.” Furthermore, the brand also asks questions and directly responds to user comments.

An active Facebook page is one thing, but to be engaging directly with your social media audience (particularly when that audience is nearly 1.5 million people large) will mean a returning audience, and that makes the social media sales process that much simpler.

Lesson: Engage with your audience and your products will sell themselves on social media.

4. Educate Your Audience

Burt’s Bees has increased their conversions on Facebook through education. By educating their fans on products and informing them as to which product best suits their needs and why, people want to buy from Bert’s Bees, and they don’t need to do too much research on their own.

The easier it is for a lead to learn about your product, compare it to the competition and ultimately make the decision, the higher the likelihood that you will see social media conversions when it comes to sales.

Lesson: Social media selling should be more about teaching people why your product is the best as opposed to simply telling them.social media selling 2

Burt’s Bees is one of the few examples out there of brands that has mastered social selling. It is not an easy task; not by any means. People do not necessarily want to be sold, but if it is done in the right way, your fans are more than open to the idea of buying from you through social media.

With regards to social selling, Facebook has been around a long time. But people still seem to struggling when it comes to engaging with their Facebook fan base and converting those fans into dollars. Burt’s Bees is a great example of social media selling done right.

What is your Facebook strategy with regards to social selling? Have you seen positive results? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

t2social social medis marketing strategies

Tag Archive for: social selling

Case Studies: Burt’s Bees

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Social media selling is all about engaging with your audience, and Burt’s Bees has managed to build an engaged Facebook audience of 1 million fans and convert quite a few of them into paying customers.

Case Studies burt's beesFacebook was one of the first social networks that businesses sought to take advantage of. As a result, Facebook adapted and created pages. Burt’s Bees, the notable personal care product line, saw Facebook as the perfect medium in which to engage with their audience, and the result has been a growing, highly engaged audience that converts to paying customers.

How did they do it? Burt’s Bees uses Facebook as a place to not only build an audience and share great content, but promote their products in a fun, engaging way that does not turn people away from the brand, and actually converts them into customers.

Selling on social media is a tricky grey area. People do not necessarily want to be bombarded with promotional content, but at the same time, many people follow a brand because they either use it, their friends use it or they want to keep up to date with specials and promotional offers. Burt’s Bees recognized this fact and modeled their Facebook marketing and sales strategy accordingly. In this Case Studies, we aim to showcase the lessons social media marketers can extract from the Burt’s Bees brand in order to build an engaged audience on Facebook and convert that audience into paying customers.

1. ‘New’ is Intriguing

People are often curious about new products. There’s a certain mysterious quality about ‘new’ that tends to intrigue people. Burt’s Bees saw this and capitalized on it when it came to Facebook. One of the most prominent features of the Burt’s Bees Facebook page is their promotion of new products in fun and engaging ways. For example, one of the main ingredients differentiating their products is Cupuaçu. Nothing special about that. But when they wanted to emphasize the benefits of the new product, they took to social media to promote it by creating a video wherein they interviewed New Yorkers, asking them to try and pronounce the word.

The video is short, funny and the word stays on your mind. And there is little more than a branded sign off at the end. However, Melissa Sowry, Social Media and Content Manager at Burt’s Bees stated, “Through Facebook, we can introduce new products more interactively than in print or banner ads…and provide a space where [our consumers] can connect with one another.” So, what is this new product? People might like the word and the video, but they were starting conversations to find out more.

Lesson: Find a creative way to introduce new products and your audience will engage with your brand to find out more.

social media selling2. Social Media Selling

Burt’s Bees has integrated “Buy Now” buttons into their content and features coupons for Facebook fans. The result? Dramatically increased sales through social media.

Unlike many brands that may feature a product and a link to a store, Burt’s Bees allows users to click through to an e-commerce site from a product post that already has the product in a shopping cart. This may take a little customization on the part of the Facebook page and app designer, but any hurdles (e.g. clicking to the store, finding the product, adding to the cart, checking out, etc.) you can eliminate from the buying process means higher conversions.

Lesson: Help facilitate the buying process for your fans and you will see your conversions skyrocket.

3. Engaging and Influential Content

In addition to fun content like the video post above, one of the cornerstones of Burt’s Bees success on Facebook has come from their ability to engage with their fans in conversations. In an interview with eMarketer, Sowry said, “We also create opportunities for consumer education around skin care, for example, and sampling offers. We ran successful sampling programs on Facebook for our relaunched body lotions and new tinted lip balm.” Furthermore, the brand also asks questions and directly responds to user comments.

An active Facebook page is one thing, but to be engaging directly with your social media audience (particularly when that audience is nearly 1.5 million people large) will mean a returning audience, and that makes the social media sales process that much simpler.

Lesson: Engage with your audience and your products will sell themselves on social media.

4. Educate Your Audience

Burt’s Bees has increased their conversions on Facebook through education. By educating their fans on products and informing them as to which product best suits their needs and why, people want to buy from Bert’s Bees, and they don’t need to do too much research on their own.

The easier it is for a lead to learn about your product, compare it to the competition and ultimately make the decision, the higher the likelihood that you will see social media conversions when it comes to sales.

Lesson: Social media selling should be more about teaching people why your product is the best as opposed to simply telling them.social media selling 2

Burt’s Bees is one of the few examples out there of brands that has mastered social selling. It is not an easy task; not by any means. People do not necessarily want to be sold, but if it is done in the right way, your fans are more than open to the idea of buying from you through social media.

With regards to social selling, Facebook has been around a long time. But people still seem to struggling when it comes to engaging with their Facebook fan base and converting those fans into dollars. Burt’s Bees is a great example of social media selling done right.

What is your Facebook strategy with regards to social selling? Have you seen positive results? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

t2social social medis marketing strategies

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