“You're the average of the five people spend the most time with,” a quote attributed most often to motivational speaker Jim Rohn. There's also the “show me your friends and I'll show you your future” derivative.

The people you work with, the people you spend leisure time with all influence you, sometimes for good and sometimes for bad.

One of the things we often see on social media are people's opinions, quoted as if they are facts. One "sales expert" is always saying "it is so, because it says so in my book".

But his books, (I've read them) are based on his opinion.  Your success is based on your talent, your knowledge, it is also based on your mentors and your colleagues. 

Are you in the right room? 

When I first started cold calling, I was told to by my manager. I didn't know any different.  Back then, it was the only choice to get through to people, now there are many other ways.  But is your manager, giving you the best advice today?

I remember in one of my sales jobs, one of the salespeople was obviously annoyed with my constant prospecting.  He sat me down one day and said "you are wasting your time with this prospecting, that's marketing job".  He was serious and obviously wanted me to come down to his level.

As so often happens in sales a "day of judgement" came around and each salesperson was asked to come into the sales manager's office and share their pipeline.  I went in and presented, the vertical market I was focused on, the data for that decision and the Excel spreadsheet with all my targets, the calls I had made and where we were with each prospect and opportunity.  I left the meeting, went back to my desk and carried on.

I had no idea, what this colleague, who had tried to convince me not to prospect, presented.  He wasn't in with the sales manager very long, he came out, cleared his desk and I've never seen him again.  He was fired. 

Are you in the right room?  Are you getting the best advice? Are you aware of the best techniques in this, modern, post-covid world? Are you listening to the wrong help?

Let's look at some of the advice you can get, advice to spend money on digital advertising.  I hear all the time that people should spending on paid media, which I find strange as I don't look at ads, but let's look at fact and not opinion. 

What ROI Would You Expect From Digital Advertising?

As part of my podcast, back in October 2020, I had a fascinating conversation with a Martin Lucas and he explained the following figures are typical engagement rates for digital advertising.

1.61% Facebook

1.91% Google

0.35% Programmatic (this is where ads follow you around when you browse)

That means that digital advertising has a 98.81% failure rate

That's nearly a 99% failure rate, I can only imagine that the people that tell you to get into digital advertising, sell digital advertising.

Let's look at email marketing and this time, let's look at Hubspot, they afterall sell email marketing, so they are going to be pro email marketing? 

What ROI Would You Expect From Email Marketing?

According to Hubspot, the response rate to emails fell to a record low of 2.1% in April 2020. Said differently, email marketing has a 98% failure rate.

Diagram above, from Hubspot showing the number of emails being sent going up and the response reducing. 

Would you present to the Board of your company an activity with a 98% failure rate?

I'm not sure about you but anybody standing up at the Board and saying they are investing in digital marketing and email marketing and saying "we are investing in activities that have a 98% failure rate are going to be brave people". 

Of course, if your network tell you to do it, you will OK investing, but the facts tell a different story.  What are the options?

If digital advertising and email marketing no longer work, what should a business do?

Advertising on social media?

So what's the alternative?  How about using social media?  Now I'm not talking about using advertising on social media, that isn't social, it's, advertising.  It's like saying you are a football manager, because you advertise on the hoardings as a football match.

I'm not talking about using social media tactically!

I'm not talking about using social media tactically, where somebody in marketing might post something every two weeks, or a VP posts something and you are all asked to jump in. A CEO sent me a post the other day, he was very proud of, it had received 40 likes.  Which is great.  The problem was that 35 of the likes where from his own reports. The problem with this is that business is talking on social in an echo chamber.  

How do we get a measurable outcome with social media, in meetings, leads and revenue?

This is about using a world beating, proven methodology (ours of course) to use social media strategically as a way to get get leads and meetings, to nurture sales through the buying process and to close deals.  Good "old" selling but in a modern format.

Before we jump into a couple of case studies for selling on social (the returns will blow your mind), let's looks at the way social has "eaten" the world.

The state of the nation of social in 2021

Here are the headline stats and trends for the global ‘State of Digital’ in January 2021:

"In terms of Social media: there are now 4.20 billion social media users around the world. This figure has grown by 490 million over the past 12 months, delivering year-on-year growth of more than 13 percent. The number of social media users is now equivalent to more than 53 percent of the world’s total population."

You can get the numbers and the reports from this report here.

Research From All These Companies Back This up

Mckinsey say so, Gartner say so, Hootsuite and We Are Social say so, Hubspot say so, Google say so, MIT say so, Trustradius say so Twilio say so .... 

There seems to be a clear movement (and winners and losers) away from old fashion marketing such as advertising, email marketing and cold calling.  What are business leaders saying? 

A CEO just said to me

He believes in a "K" shaped recovery from the Covid 19 pandemic.  That is, with the companies that absorbed and invested in digital growing in this post-pandemic world and those that didn't invest, fading into obscurity.  He said to me...

 "there is a race on.  First we need to shock people into understanding that the world has changed.  Second, we need to give them the skills to work in the changing world."  

He went onto say "By giving my team(s) “new world” skills will gives us a competitive advantage."

Interesting that he finished by saying

"The thing is there is a “burning bridge” and we need to make sure we are over that bridge."  

Who's doing this?

We talk to a lot of people who say "we are all over social" when you ask them what this means, they are actually still treating social as a tactic.  Somebody in marketing might post something from time to time, a VP might post something and an email is sent around for everybody to "like" it.  All tactical.

I always ask people "so how much business, did you get out of your last post?"

I usually get blank looks.  I clarify my question "so how many leads or meeting do you get from your posts on social?"  If you want to see how companies are accelerating by using social as a strategy, read on.

Case Study 1.

This is Eric, he's one of the team at DLA Ignite here is a post that he put up.  We have all seen posts like this, we see them everyday, but people treat social tactically.  You post, because you think you have to or somebody tells you you should and walk away.  Let's talk about this post. 

 Eric's post of his 16 year old son, Austin, on his Birthday got 18,000 views and 165 likes, which is great.

But better still, he got 6 - C-Level meetings from this post?  How?

Let's stop and think about this for a second.  

This post took 10 minutes to create and it got 6 C-Level meetings, how come?

Because, all of Eric's post are strategic.  He knows exactly why he is posting it and knows how to monetise it.

He doesn't always post "humanised" content, I'm using this as an example.  

But an example of why you need to get your employees and sales team on social, just think of the $ impact to your business.  Especially if you scaled this across your business. 

How does Eric do this?  He builds relationships with prospects and customers and because they have a relationship with a human, not a brand, people are happy to engage.  Eric is also able to cut through the myrmid of noise that brands keep putting out.  If you are a buyer, where will you spend your time?  Reading an advert that says "buy my product because it's great" or look for the insight and educational content that people like Eric is putting out?

Case Study 2

In this case study, Danielle Guzman, talks about how Mercer, empower their employees to talk on social.  The ROI (return on investment)?  Danielle explains how Mercer as a brand will develop the business a certain amount of business, because they are well known in certain markets.  She also confirms in this video how empowering people on social and giving them personal brands gives Mercer 4 times more revenue than the brand. 

In a recent article, Nick Dangles, co-founder of Kinetic, was asked for his best advice on social selling and he said

“The best advice I can give about social selling is that it’s not about selling. It’s about creating meaningful and engaging content that will resonate with your audience. Approaching social selling with the intent of providing something of value will give much better results than simply pitching your company on social media,”  

Don’t let fears or misconceptions about digitizing hold you back

Going back to another recent article.

"In summary, remote selling is here to stay. Hitting revenue targets now depends on investing in ... your people. If you can execute these strategies in the face of change, the winds of 2021 will be in your favor."

Where Do We Go From Here?

Just give me, or one of the DLA Ignite team and hour of your time and we can walk you through what we are doing in the form of case studies, what we are doing for other businesses to transform them to digital.  No hard sell, just practical examples.

DLA Ignite is a global business and we understand that a "cookie cutter" approach to digital does not work, we have to take into account local language and cultural sensitivities.  Which is why we have built teams across the globe, that can support you by country and industry sector. 

For more information contact me here, visit our website, or visit our Linkedin company page and contact one of the DLA Ignite team members.