Up until the start of Covid19, we often had conversations with companies, which went along the lines of:-
1. Advertising does not work ... the average person gets 1,000 messages a day, how on earth can yours stand out?
2. Email marketing does not work .... the open rates are so low and how much of this, really, really, really, and let's be honest here, convert in sales?
3. Cold calling does not work ..... unless you are selling a low price, tactical product or service that can be signed off, low down in an organisation, then cold calling does not work.
In fact, anything that is based on interruption and broadcast (advertising, cold calling and email marketing) does not work.
But of course, life before Covid19 was good. We did our numbers, we paid for this stuff and we got our bonuses.
Now leaders (quite rightly) are questioning "why are we spending money on all this stuff that does not work?".
Let's Look at the Cash Outgoings in Sales and Marketing - How Are People Innovating?
Turn off The Salestech and Martech
There has to be apps, martech and salestech that people are not using that you can turn off. We are forever being called into companies and being told "we have purchased this app and it doesn't work". It does work, it is just that your team have not been trained as to how to be social.
Many sales tech and martech companies, if you cancel are giving you 3 months for free. This will save you money. You can then tell the people that are "using" it that either they get a return in three months or you will turn it off.
Innovation in Advertising
It's clear to all of us that the days of advertising are over. It was invented in the 1930s and it's amazing that people are still seeing as a necessary part of the marketing mix.
When Procter & Gamble Cut $200 Million in Digital Ad Spend, It Increased Its Reach 10%
began limiting its display ads to pre approved websites to avoid proximity to content like fake news and offensive videos. Chase Had Ads on 400,000 Sites. Then on Just 5,000. Same Results.
was paying an agency $10 for each app install, they did an 80% reduction in this spend and it made no difference. Why? Because of the fraud in the system.
If you want to know more about ad fraud then watch my interview Dr. Augustine Fou
So while people are arguing that you shouldn't switch off advertising because you will be invisible. There is a clear argument that you were never visible in the first place.
We know that ad spend is collapsing report after report is showing, this. To quote the marketingprofs report, which is a stalwart of the marketing market.
"Engagement with social media advertising has also declined ... because audiences are turning to more organic content than paid."
"The researchers found the average global CTR (click through rate) across the 18 industries examined was down 17.2% in mid-March compared with the start of the year."
If you think about the way we all live and work, we all ignore adverts. The average person in the western world gets hit with 1,000 messages a day. We learn to ignore them. You may have the best copy in the world, the best photographs in the world and the best agency in the world. But your message is just another one of those 1,000 messages which we ignore.
I was talking to a marketer recently and she said they used advertising. I asked her what about ad blockers and she said "we all use them in marketing". She didn't seem to see the irony that she was paying for advertising and blocking the same adverts she had paid for.
Innovation in Email Marketing
All of my personal messages have moved to facebook messenger, I haven't used email for personal communication for years now. My 82 year old mum is the same, she complains about the "old people" wedded to email.
The same in business. The days of "spray and pray" email are over. Nobody reads the "newsletter", how do I know that? Because it's all about you and we are too busy to ready anything about you.
Who's the most important person in the world?
Your customer is. They are not interested in your news, that Gavin is Salesman of the month, your offers, they have their own issues to worry about.
Innovation in Social Media
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."
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.
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.
Social Selling Business Case
We expect each of the people we train in social selling to be able to make (if they do what we say) at least one additional meeting per week. Let’s assume that 4 of those meetings turn into proposals and you close 1 of those proposals. That means you are closing one additional deal per quarter. If your average deal size is $100,000, then each sales person is closing an additional $400,000 per year. As sales team of 10 will create $4 million additional revenue per annum. This isn’t a one off, this is every year. Forever!
Another Business Case
Let's take a large tech supplier as an example. They have 500,000 followers on Twitter, it does make you wonder how many people actually "follow" what they say as they say the same as all of their competitors. "We are the best", "We are market leader" and nobody believes them.
They have 300,000 employees, even if you only empowered 10% of the work force and that workforce only had 100 followers, you would still be influencing more people (3m) than the corporate account.
Increase the number of people you empower and increase their networks and you increase further the influence.
Another Business Case
In a recent blog, Alex Low from DLA Ignite, described the social business case a different, but still compelling way.
"Assume you have 1000 employees in your business and 100 salespeople. Everyone knows someone or is connected to someone.
If each one of those employees were able to make 1 meaningful business introduction to your sales team.
10 Introductions per Sales Person or 1 new introduction per month, to each salesperson for 10 months.
Your average contract value/order value/sales value is £$€10,000
1000 unique & relevant introductions made, worth a potential of 10,000 each.
1000 x 10,000 = 10 million pounds, dollars, euros etc of potential business opportunity."
This is the power of the network and the power of your people activated through social media.
The Low Risk Approach
Here at DLA Ignite, we are not pivoting, we have been transforming companies to 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.
It's interesting to see, which companies are now taking up social and which ones refuse to come into the modern world.
If you want to get out of this mess, it’s time to talk to us.
For as long as I can remember, marketing was always the first department hit by budget cuts. Though I hated it, I understood. Twenty years ago, marketing’s job was brand development and filling the top of the funnel. In most cases, it ended there. Back then tools didn’t exist to measure the success of individual programs or the part they played in driving the overall customer journey. Metrics were simply cost per lead (tradeshows delivered the highest CPL), response rates (anything over 1% was good for a direct mail piece), and media mentions (mentions, not quality).
