rules of engagement: our seven step guide to social selling

Our 7 step guide to social selling

@digirank

What is social selling?

Using social media to find the right people, gain insights into their behaviour and target them effectively.

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70% of B2B decision makers use insights from social media as part of their decision making process…

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67% of the buyer’s journey is now completed digitally

(SiriusDecisions report)

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The challenges

• Limited time• Inaccurate analytics • Measuring ROI

• Insufficient experience • No prescriptive process• Lack of strategy

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So what’s the answer...

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Step one: Understanding the buying cycle

(and where social media fits into that cycle)

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1.Change in status quo 2.Commit to

change• EDUCATION PHASE

3. Exploring the options

4. Committing to an option

• SOLUTION PHASE

5. Justifying the decision 6. Making a

selection• SELECTION PHASE

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Step Two: SMART goals@digirank

SMART goals

•Specific •Measurable •Attainable •Relevant • Timely

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Step three: Spruce up your profiles @digirank

If I was to land on your company profile what would make me hit follow?

• What are your USPs? • Are these clearly communicated?

Things I’d look at: • Your timeline • Your bio • IMAGERY

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Step Four: Finding your target audience

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How to find your known target audience (that doesn’t already follow you on social media)

• Talk to your sales team – new leads, closed leads etc…

• Newsletters • CRM• Forums• Facebook remarketing

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Let’s talk about Facebook remarketing a bit more….

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Client one

What we did: • Set up Facebook remarketing • Created a custom audience – all visitors in

180 days excluding people who already like the client on Facebook

• Promoted a post encouraging this audience to like the client on Facebook

• Spend: £20

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And the results…

• Likes on Facebook more than doubled in three days

• Over 100% increase in referred traffic to the site from Facebook

• Average time on site increased from four to nine minutes

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Amazing!@digirank

How to find unknown/new target audiences

• Track hashtags • Create audience

personas• Google Alerts • News • Company blogs • Facebook groups • Linkedin groups

• Linkedin advanced search

• Twitter advanced search

• Events and networking offline

• Leveraging influencers

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Step five: organise & listen@digirank

Organise your social media audience by…• Industry• Job role• Character • Etc..

Creating niche audiences makes it easier to share the right content with the right people.

How?• Twitter lists• Saved searches • Facebook custom audiences• Excel

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Listen to your target audience to understand exactly what interests them, what they value and what would be most useful to them in relation to your business.

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Knowledge of your audiences not only helps you sell better, it helps you create effective marketing strategies.

So make sure your insights feed into your content strategy, online marketing strategy and wider business strategy too!

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Step six: connect and nurture@digirank

Do not preside over your audience like a distant big brother type figure. Get in there and engage. Comment, ask questions, share insights and so on.

Genuine interactions build trust, and trust is great for sales.

Don’t forget to look for trigger events…

B2C:• Use Twitter advanced search to find questions• Key dates and holidays• Seasons• Events • Trends• New products

B2B:• Internal business changes • Market changes

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Step seven: analyse & improve @digirank

Tools for measuring success?

• In-platform analytics • Google Analytics • Third party analytics – we like SproutSocial• Internal feedback• Customer feedback

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By listening on Twitter we noticed three things:

• A lot more female motorcycle riders were tweeting when looking for shopping advice

• More female motorcycle riders were also tweeting about getting great shopping advice in our client’s stores

• There was an obvious gap in experience/knowledge online

Client two

@digirank

What we did….

We created a motorcycle clothing guide for women only, featuring advice on the proper fit, popular brands and the specific kit they need.

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Promoted on Facebook:• 161 likes, 35 shares, 17 comments • Referral traffic spending over 7 minutes on

site

Promoted in the newsletter:• 39% of users from the newsletter were new

users

• Links to the site• Sales• More budget for the future!And the results…

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In conclusion

• You choose how you apply social selling to help achieve your business goals

• Social selling/media is not a silo. It relies on excellent content, Online PR, a killer website etc…

• Strategy, strategy, strategy

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Useful stuff

• Ways To Improve Your Social Media Profile Hootsuite• The What, Why & How Of Social SellingDigirank• The Anatomy Of A Social Buyer Digital Doughnut• How WhatsApp

Became A Store Front For Diamond Rings Forbes • Leading With IntentGoogle

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