Deloitte is investing in advertising businesses, but why?, Tim Hughes

In this article from Business insider (sorry they enforce you to pay for a subscription).

The headline is that Deloitte is building a business to compete with Accenture and WPP to be an advertising powerhouse.

If you read the headline figures then advertising spend is growing. But let’s stop and ask the question why?

90% of what you spend on digital advertising is lost to fraud

Let’s look at the facts, if you take this Augustine Fou article here, the advertising world is full of fake. He proves that money spent on advertising is actually going to support organised crime, terrorism etc. It takes a brave marketer to go to the board to say they want to donate their marketing budget to terrorism by spending it on digital advertising.

But there again, does it matter as nobody looks at ads anyway. Who says? Oracle.

We then need to look at the research from Oracle that shows we are bombarded with at least 10,000 brand messages a day, research here. You can pay to have the best copy in the world, the best photography in the world but you are just one of those 10,000 messages.

But I'm being told by my marketing agency to invest in advertising

Then if you look at the data, in terms of the return from advertising, so none of this advertising agency nonsense, about views etc which is all pretty meaningless. What do I mean?

So while we know that $265 billion is spent annually on digital advertising, there is a 98.8% failure rate.

Facebook ads have a 1.61% success rate.

Google ads have a 1.91% success rate.

Programmatic has a 0.35% success rate ..... giving an average of 98.8% failure rate.

It takes a brave leadership team to sign off on a digital advertising campaign, where you are pushing 99% failure rate.

But we get great results according to our advertising or marketing agency

Of course they tell you this. What is a view?

Go to your LinkedIn timeline and scroll, even if you look at the time line and think all the content is boring. Which in most cases it is, then every time you scroll, and a piece of content whizzes by, that is measured as a view. You can see the measure is a total nonsense.

What is an ad impression?

Well worth reading this article, if you want to understand what an ad impression is.

So why is Deloitte falling in with Accenture and WPP, these people have clever people, they know as well as you and I do that this is all a scam. Why would you take money from your clients when you know this? Beats me.

Before I leave you, can you work out who this article is based on?

Is your business proud to be corporate spammer?

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, Brentney, 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 provided by an independent qualification body (OfQual) and 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