Like so many job ads today, here is the Product Marketing Manager set up to fail, Tim Hughes

Just spotted this job ad

This is just one of so many that are setting up people in marketing to fail in the modern digital world.

I should point out that this ad is not something from some legacy industry, this is a start-up, this is a disrupter ..... but let's look out where they are going wrong.

Totally get that the person needs to understand your own business and you should have a plan to help create conversations with new and existing customers.

It's worth me stopping at this point and saying that "conversations" is my word. In this job ad it says "communication plan". Conversations are two way, I get the feeling that the communication plan is one way. Like, standing on top of the building with a loud hailer and shouting, like brands did, 30 and 40 years ago.

This is where we get to the point

Create campaigns to target customer segments highlighting relevant learning content and key product benefits

Put it another way, finding people, and firing content at them. Really, the days of firing brochures (or content as they put it) at strangers and hoping somehow or other they will respond is over.

Then we move back in time to the 1990s, where we are going to email people, come on guys it's the second decade of the 21st century.

Own and optimise the effectiveness and engagement of our email channel to our existing customer segments

Even Hubspot and they sell email marketing systems so they have a vested interest to tell you email marketing works, say it does not. This research, here, which is across all of Hubspot's 70,000 clients and explains that email marketing has a 98% failure rate. The CMO of Hubspot not long after this, admitted on a webinar that Hubspot was stepping back from email marketing and stepping up content marketing. I totally get a legacy company in a legacy vertical advocating email, but a "disruptive" start-up? Really?

The next line is great, as I would assume that "users preferred channels of use" is social media.

Identify, test and build out new organic, B2C marketing channels to continuously engage with our users in their preferred channels of use

But this sounds like throwing brochures at strangers again and hoping that somebody might read one.

We were all told when we were in sales and marketing short trousers "hope isn't a strategy".

...... I could go on.

If this was 1990 I can imagine reading a job description like this, but it's 2022. We have just been through a pandemic, the world (and their dog) have migrated to social media and we know our clients are on social media.

The job description should talk about:-

1. Empowering the employees to have buyer centric profiles

2. To stop building email lists and to empower the employees and salespeople to build meaningful connections. Throwing brochures at strangers does not create sales. Conversations create sales, so let's help our sales people and employees to have conversations on social media, like LinkedIn.

3. Finally, nobody reads corporate content, apart from the people who produce it of course. we all know brochures are biased and are just adverts, "buy my product because it's great" they say. We know that, that's why we avoid them.

Prospects and clients are looking for content that, connects, that inspires, that educates, that tells them something they don't know. Better still this is authentic content that comes from the your salespeople.

Marketing should be supporting the empowerment of sales and in fact the whole of the business to create content that inspires. Your employees are your only unique selling point (USP), their experiences, their values .... and of course, with marketing's help each one is keyword optimised for Google.

Let us as leaders create an environment of success in our sales and marketing teams and not set up our teams to fail.

Now Imagine .....

Imagine, I pick you up tomorrow in my car and drive you to a place which is full of your prospects and customers. All you have to do is go up and have a conversations with them.

Remember, social media is, social media. In the past you interrupted somebody with a cold call or an email and pitched your services. As social media is being social on media, interrupting and pitching does not work.

If I walked up to you at a social event and pitched, you would make your excuses and go and talk to somebody else.

So how about tomorrow, I pick you up in my car and we go to a place where all your prospects are hanging out. You can stay as long as you want. All you have to do is have a conversation with them. It's that simple, if you are interested, read on.

What is social selling?

Here at DLA Ignite, we define social selling as

"Using your presence and behavior on Social Media to build influence,
make connections, grow relationships and trust, which leads to
conversation and commercial interaction."

It's not witchcraft, it's enabling your salespeople to work from home, (or the office) and create conversations with prospects and customers. Conversations on social media and conversations that convert.

The problem with the name "social selling" is that people think that this is selling on social. All these pitches that you get on social are not social selling, they are spam.

The other thing you need to know about social selling is that this isn't about "putting out some videos" or "putting flowers on your profile" or "going viral" this is about revenue, EBITDA, you winning business from the competition and having a competitive advantage.

With anything you do on social there are two questions you need to ask

1. How many leads / meetings / conversations will I get from this post / blog / activity?

2. How much revenue / EBITDA am I getting as a business?

So who's social selling?

In case you missed it, the Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch have banned cold calling and have moved all their people to social selling. This isn't some trendy tech company that might have decided to do this on a whim, this is a very conservative financial services company that has made a decision based on data.

But surely cold calling has a better ROI than social selling? Not according to Merrill Lynch.

"They will also be encouraged to contact prospects over LinkedIn, which has a higher hit rate than cold calling"

The CRO (chief revenue officer), Richard Eltham of Namos Solutions, of one of clients posted a comment on LinkedIn about social selling. See here.

“Social selling is not an option now it is the way of the world and you either learn and execute it or fear getting left behind”

Kevin Murray who is the Head of Sales at MacArtney Underwater Technology recently posted about his success with social selling here and wrote an article about the transformation that has happened in sales here.

Andrew Ferrier who is the CEO of Display Technology Ltd and in this article it talks about why Display Technology have adopted social selling. His team have also created a social media strategy with help from our partner, Crux.

Their social media mission statement is

“We want to position ourselves as a forward-thinking, knowledgeable team of individuals who are all experts in our own right, therefore, collectively awesome!”

Andrew also says in that post

"Adopting this (social selling) strategy has taken all of us well outside of our comfort zones but the rewards we have seen in a short period of time have created an excitement within the business development team (new term for sales team).

Because of the nature of social media, quite often you can get instant results. Even if that is just a comment left on your post, or a like, or someone taking the time to want to connect with you.

The excitement around the sales team is infectious, it’s no longer a chore to reach out to the market place because the results can be instant and are there, right in front of you."

What sort of results can you expect?

If you check out this video of Chris Mason CEO at Oracle reseller Namos, fast forward to 19 minutes 55 seconds. Chris talks about a $2.6 million win from being on social, after completing the DLA Ignite social selling and influence course.

What happened? They buyer was on social media looking for a solution to their problem, spotted one of the Namos salespeople, who had a buyer-centric profile and asked if the salesperson could help them. That turned into a $2.6 million deal.

Contact any of the DLA Ignite team, Eric, Adam, Nick, Vanessa, Lorena, Priscilla, Lenwood, Alex and they will be more than happy to help.

Go and look at their LinkedIn profiles .... look how they can have digital conversations, create insightful content. This could be your company!

We are the only social selling and influence company in the world to offer a certificate in social selling sponsored by the Institute of Sales Professionals (ISP).

Other articles you might be interested in ....

Would you buy social selling training course from somebody that doesn't use social selling?

How to create budget and build a business case for your social selling project