The article is "interesting" as it talks about digital transformation and then immediately offers analogue advice. Strange!
How Did Marketing Get Where We Are Today?
Marketing as we know it today started in the 1930s with advertising. A naive consumer was interrupted and then broadcast at. You open a newspaper (remember them) and the idea is that a brand is there in front of you and as a buyer you say "wow, I must buy one of those".
We know, it doesn't work like that anymore. Let's say it did happen. What would you do as a buyer? You cannot walk into a shop, you go online. The product that advertised is then competing with all the other brands that are present and active on social.
When I raise this with people, they usually say "oh yes, I saw an ad for product X, but couldn't find them online so purchased product y, it was cheaper anyway".
Opps!
Mark Schaefer, who has to be the number one thought leader in Marketing today recent said in his article "Is the pandemic driving a new marketing rebellion?"
"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.
Remember Cold calling
In the 1980s, cold calling was invented, I've done it myself. It was a pretty useful demand generation tool back then, but the world has overtaken it.
Again, you interrupt people and broadcast a message.
Since GDPR was introduced in 2018 and Apple and Google introduced the anti cold calling software in their mobiles. Cold calling has fallen off a cliff.
Again, unless you close the person, there and then on the call. Your interruption will drive the individual to look you up on LinkedIn and look the company up.
You have also awoken that buyer to look up your competition. Covid19 have driven the buyer to look online and compare you with the competition.
Can you see where this is going?
What About Email in A Digital World?
Email marketing came about in the 1990s where more people had emails and it replaced paper mailshots. Marketers could, again interrupt you and broadcast a message.
Let's not talk about open rates, we all know there is a $Billion industry that have manipulative means to get people to open emails. Does an opened email, (where you have manipulated me to open it) really translate into revenue? I delete them, but maybe you do buy something.
Let's say I open the email and go "wow, this is amazing, I want to buy one of these". What will I do? There are no shops open. I will go online and compare you with the competition. I'm guessing, that if you are using email marketing and your money and investment is going into that, you are probably not investing in your position on social. So, you could be losing out to your digital competition?
How Are You Going to Market and Sell in 2020 in a Covid19 World? With 20th Century Tools? Really?
Advertising, email and cold calling is all 20th Century stuff, even if we know that this is 2020, we are in the middle of the Covid19 pandemic, where there are no shops open. People can only buy online and people are very used to buying online. They are also very used to shopping around online.
BMW was explaining to us, last year that they know that as soon as a customer walks into their showroom. That person will know more about the BMW car they are looking for than a BMW salesperson. It's not possible for a BMW salesperson to know everything about their models. They have therefore changed the role of the salesperson to one of selling ... to helping to buy. The salesperson, will know more about the finance options and the resell value for example.
It's the Second Decade of the 21st Century
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?
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.
“COVID has been the catalyst for digital transformation at scale,” according to Publicis chief operating officer, Jo Coombes. The pandemic has undoubtedly forced many businesses to transform their offerings and move into a more online format to meet the changing behaviours of consumers, requiring brands and brand owners to be nimble. But what role, if any, should brands play in the pandemic and how can they remain supportive to customers during these uncertain times? The Drum executive editor, Stephen Lepitak posed this question as part of a panel discussion at The Drum’s Digital Transformation Festival.
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