I've just finished a day of meetings via Zoom.

I used to have a commute, to meet people in offices, to have meetings.  Or have telephone call meetings.

Now, everybody, comes to me, to my house.  I no longer commute, I no longer have face-to-face meetings and I know longer have telephone calls.

Only 12 weeks ago, a friend of mine turned down a job because the company insisted that he HAD to be in the office during the week.  Which is a 4 hour round trip.

My mother who is 82 runs a wine group and she now runs this also on-line.  When lock down started, when I mentioned this it was laughed at.

We've Moved On-line

My last call today was with a friend of mine.  It was a nice way to end the day as I was passing onto to him a Facebook ads opportunity.  While talking to him, the doorbell rang and I asked if he needed to get that? Phil said "we order everything online".  

And that's what it's like for so many of us.

Will we go back to commuting? Going to the shops? I don't think so.

The Buying Revolution, Revolution

Over 12 months ago, Steve Rafferty, UK and Ireland County Manager wrote this article about how is family never go shopping and they get everything delivered. 

Steve had an Amazon door bell fitted and was demonstrating it to me.  12 months ago this was seen as revolutionary, now it's what we do. 

Houston, Marketing Have a Problem

But think about this. The more and more we are comfortable with being on-line, the more off-line looks, sad and old fashioned.  More importantly, it presents Marketing with a massive problem.

Advertising in a Covid19 World

Let's look at advertising.  On Saturday and Sunday we get a newspaper, let's take an advert from the paper.  I see an advert, I think, I'll buy one of those and what do you do?

I reach for my mobile and search for the product or service.  I realise that you are telling me they are the best glasses in the world, but you would say that. Your biased.

I'm going to put a search in Google and see what I get.  Now I'm one of these people that ignores all the ads on Google. Why?  Because it's just companies telling me how great they are.

So what am I looking for? Like everybody, I'm looking for comparison.  Your ad may have intrigued me, but the battle for my dollars moved immediately online.  As I don't read ads online, you won't get me by PPC (pay per click).

Online, I will immediately come across your competitors.  Your advertising as driven me straight to your competitors. 

I will read online content.  I won't read branded content as it will just tell me how great you are. I want independent reviews.  I will go on social media and read content on there.

My point being that your advertising could be losing you sales as you are driving people to buy from your online competitors.  I'm making an assumption here that for every $ you spend on advertising, you are not investing a $ in your online presence.  I'm also guessing for every $ you spend on advertising, you are not empowering your employees to create just the contact I'm looking for?  Insightful and educational content that will help me make a decision.

A year ago, that didn't matter, you would have scooped up some sales.  Not anymore, we have all moved on line. We are all good at search.  We are all good at buyer comparisons online.  We are all comfortable with buying online.  Advertising was OK 12 months ago but not anymore.

What do Today's Marketing Gurus Think of Advertising? 

Mark Schaeferarticle "Is the pandemic driving a new marketing rebellion?"

, who has to be the number one thought leader in Marketing today recent said in his

"Nobody believes ads. Nobody wants ads, ...... The world is demanding a new, more human-centered approach to marketing and this is also accelerating now."

It's true, we are hit with a thousand messages everyday, you can have the best copy, the best photography and you are just one of those thousand messages.  And .... nobody cares.

Email Marketing and Cold Calling in a Covid19 World

The same logic follows for email marketing and cold calling.

You send me an email about your product and service and I will go online and compare you.  You cold call me about your product and service and I will go online and compare you.

I'm aware of a CMO who swears by cold calling, says it's be the best lead generation tool available today.  Problem is, the sales team describe the leads as "shit" and say that there are always competition in those leads.

I put forward the hypothesis, as i don't know this for fact.  But I would suggest she is using her cold calling budget to drive sales for her competition.  She cold calls them, with an agency, the people cold called then go online and compare with the online and savvy competition. 

So What Can you Do? Time to Get with the Social Program - Fish Where The Fish Are

Social Media Has Changed The World

Social media has changed the world, it's changed society and it's change the way we do business.

In the past social media was seen as a tactic. You posted something on social, nothing happened, which just proved it didn't work.

My advice is that you should check out Simon Kemp's - Digital 2020 - Global Snapshot in he says 

"The world has changed dramatically over the first three months of 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic impacting almost every aspect of our lives. These changes have been clearly evident in the world’s digital behaviours too, especially as billions of people turn to connected devices to help them cope with life and work under lockdown."

He goes on to say.

"The latest data show that the number of internet users and social media users around the world have both increased by more than 300 million over the past twelve months, despite delays in reporting in some key countries due to the coronavirus outbreak. 

DataReportal analysis indicates that 4.57 billion people now use the internet, an increase of more than 7 percent since this time last year. Social media users are growing even faster, up by more than 8 percent since April 2019 to reach 3.81 billion today."

According to a recent article by Hootsuite and Raconteur

"During March 2020, as much of the world went into lockdown, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp calls doubled in frequency. More than a million people in the UK alone joined COVID-19 Facebook groups and numerous doctors shared health information on TikTok and Twitter. Reddit, the social news aggregator, saw almost a 50 per cent surge in traffic at times during the month."

Stéphanie Genin

, vice president of global enterprise marketing at social media management firm Hootsuite

“After weeks of adapting to Zoom parties, video appointments with doctors, online schooling, social distancing and tapping into social media for virtually everything, will people be happy to go back to their old ways of working and engaging with each other?”

she asks. 

“The answer will be no. Social media has been holding communities together and organisations will need to assess how to manage the new normal.”

Social is Where Its At

Social is where it's at.  You customers are NOT waiting for you to interrupt them and for you to broadcast at them with advertising, email and cold calling. It pisses them off, so why do it, they will only go online and compare you with your social competition?

But your customers are on social. So why don't you connect to them and build relationships with them?

Social Selling (or Modern Selling as it tends to be called nowadays) enables your at home, salesforce, in fact all your employees to prospect (sometimes called social marketing), to take employees through the sales process and for you to close them.  This does not mean you don't have phone conversations or zoom calls, but social can be used all the way through the sales process to support the sales from opening to closing. 

A Practical Social Selling Business Case

Let’s look at how they should use ‘Social Media' as a highly effective program to drive brand attribution, at the lowest cost.  Creating reach, and enabling you to be found on social, as well as being able to "sell" on social.

It’s called an internally aligned ‘Social Strategy' and its cost don't increase as your reach and engagement aspirations do on 'paid media'.

How can this be you might ask, what do you mean I don't have to pay for this?

Go with me, this is for example only.

Company has an average of 50 employees (know they have more) , includes ALL areas of the company, and I mean everyone.

Each employee has an average of 500 connections on LinkedIn.

You encourage them how to write (subject matter) content, stories & conversations that reflect your company & brand (all in their own style) including all relevant keywords that are important to ‘why’ you do what you do.

Make sure they are NOT selling - this isn't an old skool marketing campaign on social.

Get them (including you and your board) to do that (consistently) twice a week each month for 6 months.

Your bit - {leadership required}

Your reach = 600,000 (of course this does not take into account your networks network, a blog for another day)

Imagine if they then interacted with comments, conversations & made new connections which grew that network even bigger?

Finally, make sure you have enough people to answer all the pre-qualified ‘inbound sales enquiries’.

This would transform your business to digital, it would strip out a lot of the cost and waste of your current analogue marketing and give you a plan that will engage with the modern buyer.

The Low Risk Approach

Here at DLA Ignite, we are not pivoting, we have been transforming companies to do this with social for four years.  We've been telling people they are wasting their money with advertising, wasting their money building email lists and wasting their money with cold calling.  By using social you can get twice the output for half the cost of legacy sales and marketing methods.  

We have the track record, we also know what when we run our social selling programs the results are repeatable and predictable.  In fact, we have done this so many times that we are a low risk option.

It's time for your own innovation in sales and marketing. You know the old ways don't work. You know you have limited time and cash.  You know, as a leader you need to do something to stop the waste and cash burn otherwise you won't have a business.

If you want to get out of this mess, it’s time to talk to us. 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothyhughessocialselling/