Time to read: 4 Minutes. “Jeff, where do most marketers go wrong with social media marketing… how do they lose track of the goal—sales?” As the economy tightens up even more my response is becoming more focused and sharp: “They market on it rather than sell with it.” Want to know how to avoid common mistakes? There are 3 surprisingly simple mistakes that most small business and big corporate marketers can avoid with ease.
The biggest reasons marketers are not selling with social media marketing often enough is because they:
- Have a very weak expectation of social media to begin with… they don’t expect it to produce leads nor sales
- Focus energy on finding effective ways to measure social’s effectiveness rather than finding ways to sell with it
- Make mistakes 1 and 2 because they’re looking to relatively in-experienced, unqualified people to decide what it is they should be doing with social media.
Expect Social Marketing to Sell
Your thoughts manifest reality. It’s a metaphysical fact. Maybe you follow the new age gurus or the Bible. Who or whatever philosophical belief system you turn to is aimed at creating emotional, spiritual and financial wealth. What you think becomes reality and if you’re thinking about marketing outcomes (engagement, clicks, visitors, customer sentiment, etc.) that’s what you’ll get—by law!
Finding ways to make social media sell for you requires not only a change in expectation but a process mentality that generates tangible outcomes. Marketing usually involves a creative process with fungible, intangible outcomes like “good branding” that somehow results in sales. What I’m saying is marketing is faith based.
If marketers could have anything they want when it comes to social media they want “better engagement” and better ways to measure it. The result is a world where marketers continue to put today’s interactive version of branding before revenue.
Get Off of Social Media and on to a List
What if we cast aside aspiring for “better engagement” (whatever that means!) and replaced it with a dream of creating leads? For instance, changing the goal from engagement to leads means changing what we do all day long—and how we do it. What if the goal was to get prospects OFF of social media?!
I’m noticing how social marketers who create revenue (and think about it all day long) think this way. They don’t care to spend 5 years wondering, “what’s the value of a Facebook fan?” only to find out that the question is as pointless as the half-baked answers self-appointed experts cook up.
Businesses that are discovering the best way to sell with Facebook or use LinkedIn for business leads ask different questions like, “Can we use what we already know works to start generating leads sales with social marketing techniques?”
For these companies the answer is, “yes, sometimes” but only when the social platform can be used in a way that moves sales prospects off of it and onto a lead nurturing program. In the end they rely more on traditional, process-driven database marketing—telemarketing, direct mail, email—and not johnny-come-lately metrics like “return on engagement.”
Believe in Yourself, Ignore Self-appointed “Experts”
In many cases the reason why marketers are making mistakes 1 and 2 is because they fall victim to the uncertainty created by self-appointed experts.
In a moment of remarkable candor, former Apple brand evangelist, Guy Kawasaki announced his secret to social media success: Do not have any plan whatsoever for it. Since you can’t understand these oh-so-new technologies he says the smartest way to approach them is to just do it.
You can understand Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs if your context remains founded in business principles that are not revolutionizing—no matter what the experts say.
Resist the urge to hire who you know are ambitious, bright yet in-experienced, unqualified people to decide what it is they should be doing with social media (and how to do it). The truth is most social media experts have one main qualification: “I use it more than you do” and (my favorite) “I ‘get it’ because I study other companies that ‘get it’” (when “it” is largely hot air).
So if you want to avoid the 3 most common mistakes, expect social media to sell sign up for this free social media sales training (consider programs a systematic way to make social platforms serve your business), stop trying to measure social’s effectiveness in intangible terms and trust your business instincts more than young social media experts.
Photo credit: alanberning
