If you're a business owner or marketing executive who wants insightful, jargon-free tips on making social media work for your business—FAST—you're in the right place. Jeff Molander is the authority on making social media sell. He's an international speaker, publisher, adjunct digital marketing faculty at Loyola University and an entrepreneur who co-founded the Google Affiliate Network. His book, "Off the Hook Marketing: How to Make Social Media Sell for You," is first to show how fans, readers and followers can be converted to leads, subscribers and sales. Make Social Sell is your practical resource on making social media produce leads and sales.
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Social media agencies and consultants insist that following your customers into social spaces is a smart idea. Yet it's actually an incomplete idea, unless you have a clear means to capture demand and convert it to sales. So, it pays to make sure you have a list of specific interview questions in hand when choosing a social media agency or consultant. That's why I'm giving you some gems that really work.
Remember, the answer to selling more with social media is this: Starting conversations that are worth having and conversing in ways that generate questions that you have answers to. The rest is occasionally (when relevant) connecting those answers to your products/services. This is how to generate customer inquiries using social media. Your agency, freelance provider (or employee) must grasp and practice this. Let's find out how to make sure they do.
Question Your Consultants
Overzealous “digital rock star gurus” say the social Web has revolutionized everything. We’re told to listen to and engage with customers. But what do we do with what we hear ... and when does engaging connect to sales? Does it at all? As David Ogilvy himself reminded marketers decades ago “we sell or else!”
The nature of your relationship with social media agencies and consultants should be to question. Why? Because so many are questionable in terms of the results (or lack there of) they deliver!
Be Sure They're Producing Behavior
“You don’t sell someone something by engagement, conversation and relationship. You create engagement, conversation and relationships by selling them something,” says Bob Hoffman, (“The Ad Contrarian”) CEO, Hoffman Lewis.
Read that again and notice how it flies in the face of what we're being told to do by most social media agencies and consultants. Notice how logical this simple truth is.
Agencies and consultants that are moving the needle are reaching beyond attracting customers for clients. They’re generating leads using three practical success principles. They're aligning social marketing with sales by:
It's important to consider the current social media marketing activities of the agency or freelancer you'll hire. Everything they're doing to “join the conversation” (tweeting, blogging, posting updates on Facebook) must be talking with customers, not at them. They must be truly interacting. Making social marketing produce behavior is the first step. Your agency needs to understand what a call to action is and practice this approach.
Ask Tough Questions
Most importantly, press your marketing consultants, ad agency reps and employees to answer business questions first. Ask them to do it without using words like traffic, engagement or buzz. Make them squirm.
In the end you should be getting answers to the following questions:
Social media marketing is a necessary component of being online. But merely "being on Facebook and Twitter" won’t generate leads and convert sales unless you hire people who are focused on purpose-drive social media campaigns. Be sure to ask the tough questions when interviewing them. Good luck!
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