Case Study: Social Selling Train Wreck

Use Case: A Train Wreck in the Making

Jenna was the center of attention on this particular morning as four young ladies sat around the table at a coffee shop discussing her recent engagement.

Amidst the excitement came a lot of discussion about important details yet to be worked out. Chief among them was the all important wedding dress decision. In fact, just mention of the dress took the discussion to a crescendo…Then it happened!

A well dressed gentleman sitting near these ladies, was obviously listening in to the discussion as he abruptly…and quite awkwardly interrupted them to say, “My shop just happens to sell wedding dresses.”

At that very moment, I could have sworn I heard car tires screeching to a halt, a needle scratching a record and a woman’s blood-curdling scream simultaneously, right before the deafening silence…

With frozen smiles and half-formed words, the four women sat, not knowing what to say next. That is until one of Jenna’s friends covered for her with a, “Good to know” response. In an instant, the mood had changed.

Their perception that they could have a conversation in public and expect…not privacy…but courtesy, had certainly been called into question. The moment was over. The conversation ended. The ladies disbanded.

I immediately thought, ‘This is what it feels like when some unknown person interrupts a forum conversation and inappropriately and prematurely tries to sell something.’

This well intended business owner was at the right place at the right time, but with the wrong approach. With his target buyers sitting right in front of him, he lost sight of the importance of an appropriate interaction and instead treated them like an inappropriate transaction.

This is what poorly executed social selling looks like when done in person. What gets lost in an online social setting, however is the unforgettable reactions on the faces of the ~~recipients~~ victims. For a visible reminder, one only needs to look at the face of Taylor Swift when she was Kanye’d.

Reckless social sellers are blind to that…and that’s a shame!

Don’t Treat Social Media as Faceless

We’ve all been guilty of saying something in email that we’d typically not say in person. We are just as susceptible in our Social Media interactions.

It’s so easy to forego the courtesies and social etiquette when interacting on social media. This is especially true when it comes to social selling as I often hear social sellers shove the responsibility back onto the prospect saying in essence, “They shouldn’t have accepted my connection request or been talking in a public forum if they didn’t want me to sell to them.”

Tips for Better Social Selling Etiquette

DON’T: Confuse people’s comments with requests for advice
DON’T: Sell in places where people are learning
DON’T: Make yourself or your solution the focus
DON’T: Interrupt conversations
DO: Prioritize listening over speaking in social media
DO: Keep the Listening to Speaking ratio at 4:1
DO: Communicate respectfully as if they’re there in person
DO: Provide a unique perspective that nobody else has offered

What are some of the DOs and DON’Ts that top your list?

#SMM: Stop Talking, Start Learning

The chorus to the Lifehouse song, “Nobody Listen,” describes many marketer’s approach to Content and Social Media Marketing these days…“Everybody talk, but nobody listen.”

The amount of content produced is staggering. According to Gary Vaynerchuk, New York Times best-selling author, he cites that there is more content produced in 48 hours than what has been produced from the beginning of time to 2003.

The strategy of just ‘being present’ in content and on social media has not worked, and will not work.

Change Your Social Media Strategy

If you are finding your engagement to be low in social channels with the content you are sharing, it’s time for a different approach.

As Marketers, we are all susceptible to becoming enamored with our own point of view, and as a result, we end up doing all the talking. When people don’t listen, we talk louder. In marketing, “talking louder” takes many forms, such as email blasts, Facebook posts, Tweets. This even shows up in our retargeting efforts.

These approaches are what I refer to as Bumper-Sticker Marketing. The premise of the ‘bumper-sticker marketer’ is that it is one way communication that shouts a point of view, but fails to engage others in meaningful ways, and certainly fails to persuade.

One of the common struggles I hear relative to producing content is lack of ideas for what content to produce next. If you find yourself struggling with what to talk about, you may not be as close to your customers as you think you are.

If that’s the case, time for a change in your social media strategy, which will benefit you in your content strategy as well.

Listen to Learn

Assuming you know where your customers are spending their time on Social Media, pay attention to what they are talking about. Listen for the key words and phrases they use to describe their problems, concerns, and struggles.

We are listening and learning so that we can speak their language, rather than trying to get them to understand our own language.

One strategy I use, that may be helpful to others is to do the following. Use your favorite social monitoring tool(s) to identify the keywords your customers use to search your competitors sites.

Additionally, I look at large, non-industry sites like Reddit or Mashable, then filter down to the category in my field/industry to see what people are searching for and talking about.

For example, if I filter by Internet and Telecom, I find the top trending words in their keyword cloud are ‘web2.0,’ ‘blog,’ and ‘social networking.’ (See below).

This 60-second process gave me three different topics from which I can produce content about that will be relevant to my audience. When content is relevant and valuable, your audience is more likely to engage. What’s more is I now know the specific words to build my SEO strategies around with HREF, H1 tags, etc.

Looking for keywords is one thing, but remember, we want to understand our customer’s concerns and speak their language. Therefore, I take the keywords of interest listed above and search conversations in Twitter and Facebook to try to ascertain what their intent is behind their searches.

In searching #web2.0 this morning, for example, I quickly learn that areas of interest to multiple groups is measurement, collaboration and applicability to SMB.

Take the time to listen and learn for a better content and social media strategy. As my mom used to say…”Talk less, listen more!”

Guilty of Bumper Sticker Marketing?

I was speaking with a CFO this week about his organization’s content marketing strategies and the role of social media, as his impressions of Social Media in marketing was that it has little to no business impact.

He cited some Gallup statistics from a recent Wall Street Journal article as proof points for his belief that it’s not all that it is cracked up to be:

94% use Social Media to connect with friends and family
62% say Social Media had no influence on their buying decisions
30% say Social Media had some influence on their buying decisions
Brands reached only 6.5% of their fans with Facebook posts in March

Are the numbers wrong? I don’t think so. At a glance, many might be quick to agree with this CFO, that Social Media is ineffective with regard to having direct business impact. Perhaps there is a different explanation for the numbers.

The Problem isn’t Social Media…

Simply looking at the first statistic cited above starts to hint at the problem when we consider why 94% of people [not consumers], use social media.

Both, Marketing and Sales have been guilty of looking at these huge pools of people in social arenas as prospects, and leading with their products and/or solutions in highly intrusive and interruptive ways. This problem isn’t limited just to Social Media.

Bumper Sticker Marketing

When we look at our content marketing strategy as a whole (inclusive of print, online, mobile, social, etc.), we have a specific ‘end’ in mind – drive a profitable customer action. But too often, we start with our own end in mind…“drive a profitable customer action”…rather than starting with your target audience’s end in mind.

I call this bumper sticker marketing. Similar to the picture above, we shout our own point of view, trying to call attention to ourselves, our products, solutions, etc., irrespective of what the end-user really wants or needs.

Furthermore, similar to bumper stickers, our marketing too often is a one way “push” message, that fails to truly engage with others. As a result, Marketers fall into the trap of heeding partial advice from content strategists, by delivering content more frequently and consistently. Frequency and consistency is the easy part.

The more difficult [but responsible] purpose of content marketing, according to Joe Pulizzi, is described as follows:

A few key words to pay attention to in his description are, relevant, valuable, and changing or enhancing…behavior.

Food for Thought…

When was the last time you read a bumper sticker and subsequently changed your behaviors or beliefs as a result of reading the sticker? For example, when you see the mini-van proclaiming, “My child is an Honor Student,” do you believe your child is inferior? Of course not. Similarly, do bumper-stickers change your:

Political affiliations or votes?
Religious beliefs?
Moral convictions?

Probably not. That said, how might this apply to your own marketing approach? Are you trying to change someone’s beliefs or behaviors through one-way marketing?

We ALL are susceptible to being a bumper sticker marketer, unless we are intentional in determining who we are bringing value to in our marketing. Change your aim to change your results.

For more articles on similar topics, feel free to follow me on Twitter Follow @IntendedResults

6 Causes for Marketing Misses

Are you finding that hitting your target market is increasingly more difficult? Especially in the age where so many aspects of marketing are changing and evolving such as content management strategies, SEO and social media.

Marketing is playing an increasingly critical role in organizations these days for a variety of reasons, one of which, as Sirius Decisions describes is that “67% of the buyer’s journey is now done digitally.”

This puts even more pressure for marketers to be well-branded and ever-present in the places where prospects are looking, then the top choice when they click thru.

Now sales is even being encouraged, appropriately so, to engage in more top of funnel (ToFu) activities in the form of micro-marketing due to this very same phenomena with the buyer’s digital journey.

As if navigating these new times wasn’t difficult enough, CMOs must be also able to demonstrate tangible, positive returns on their marketing efforts. That alone is enough to send some CMOs over the edge.

While these challenges are certainly real and legitimate, there are some more basic areas of marketing that are falling short, perhaps due to the reasons aforementioned. It’s understandable for marketers with tight budgets to cut some corners while navigating new areas like Social Media…but it is certainly not acceptable. The consequences can be quite substantial.

Therefore, let’s look at six filters that marketing tends to overlook or ignore in its marketing efforts when pressures on their time and budget mount:

6 Overlooked Causes of Marketing Misses

Regardless of your marketing vehicle, whether direct mail, email, web or other, grab a recent campaign piece and evaluate according to the following six filters or litmus tests:

Clarity Test. Your marketing piece should be clearly targeted at a specific segment or customer as time pressed marketers can fall into the trap of generalizing who the marketing is aimed at versus narrowing the focus (e.g., IT versus System Administrators). Test: Can any person readily identify the intended audience of your marketing?
Resonance Test. Your marketing piece will resonate more with customers when it identifies their pain points and quantifies the risk of not solving the problem or pain points. Test: Will the customer know after reading your marketing piece, the risk or cost of their inaction?
Differentiation Test. The marketing piece should tap into the customer’s felt pain points by focusing on benefits or outcomes, not product features, and lead uniquely to your own solution. Test: If your logo were removed from the marketing, would the solution still point distinctly to your organization?
Insight Test. Engaging marketing should grab the reader’s attention with an insight about their industry, category or business. Test: Does the marketing piece provide an insight and if so, is the insight one which could only be obtained by your experience working with many other customers like the target of your marketing?
Teaching Test. Whether email, direct mail or other, the best marketing exposes or teaches the customer something about their business that they didn’t understand or had underestimated before, thus leading them to your solution. Test: Can you clearly identify the teaching point in your marketing piece? More importantly, can your customer?
Advocate Test. Finally, one overlooked area of marketing is that in an era where more buying is done by committee or consensus, the marketing piece should easily enable the advocate to share internally. Test: Does your marketing evoke a desire to share with internal influencers and decision makers without explanation?

Failing in any one of these areas will have some level of impact to your marketing effectiveness. Failing across two or more of these areas will guarantee suboptimal returns.

Time and budget constraints are real for most marketers. What many fail to realize is that the shortcuts taken to get marketing out more quickly without applying these filters and tests to the piece first, has a compounding effect on marketer’s time and budgets. The ineffectiveness of any campaign requires more to be done to make up for what the last campaign failed to produce.

Conversely, putting these six filters to every one of your marketing campaigns will take major steps towards your marketing effectiveness. Greater effectiveness leads to less pressure on time and marketing spend.

A Metaphor for The Challenger Sale

In my post, Challenger: Reframing the Reframe, I spoke of the common struggles many organizations are having with the Reframe that are implementing The Challenger Sale.

The aim of this post is to provide a picture of how the Reframe functions and the role it plays within the context of Commercial Teaching and Commercial Insight.

While I hate the negative connotations that can be associated with ‘sales’ and ‘lures,’ I saw some constructive applications that may help to make the point. So let’s all agree up front, that none of us are intending the imagery to be derogatory towards customers nor the way responsible Sales professionals behave.

The Role of the Reframe
The authors of The Challenger Sale make reference to the Reframe as being the “Headline” of the insight. The goal, of course, is to attract the customer’s attention and ‘set the hook’ with an unexpected viewpoint (insight), thus the imagery of the lure.

It is at this point where the differences between Insight and Reframe can be confused as many would define the lure as the Reframe. It may help to recognize that Reframe is a verb, not a noun, but let’s define this further in the metaphorical sense. Keep in mind that no metaphor is perfect, though I hope we can have some fun with this.

A Picture of the Challenger Sale
To help get a clearer picture of how the Challenger Choreography functions with respect to Commercial Teaching, Commercial Insight and The Reframe, following are definitions and descriptions cast within the context of a fishing metaphor.

Lure = The Warmer: It appears attractive and familiar; Operates within and relates to the customers world
Hook = Commercial Insight: A part of the lure, tailored to the customer; Creates discomfort with status quo
Setting the hook = The Reframe: The customer is hooked unexpectedly, compelled to go a different direction
Line = Rational Drowning: The fishing line, or business case, ties the insight to the customer’s story
Reel = Emotional Impact: The reel is symbolic for drawing the customer into the center of their own story
Pole = Commercial Teaching: The fishermen uses a pole to skillfully deliver insight at the right place and time
Flex = Constructive Tension: Pole flex represents tension when drawing customers to the center of their story

The Metaphor in Action
So now that we have definitions set, here is how this looks in action.

You, the skillful Sales professional cast your lure into the specific area of the lake where your customers are known to swim. It is a place where not many other people fish, as they seem to prefer where the waters narrow. The locals call it The Funnel. You prefer being upstream, at the top of the funnel where your customers aren’t use to seeing what you fish with.

You cast your insight right on target so as not to intrude, but rather to meet them where they swim together to be social (Social Media). The others fishing the Funnel, create a splash every time their lure hits the water. They refer to this as their ‘prospecting call.’ It sends the fish into hiding every time. Those fishing are not dissuaded though, as they are known to spend inordinate amounts of time just looking for any customer that is attracted to their lure.

However, the customer you are looking for is specific and is currently entertaining your lure. Upon seeing your lure, it feels immediately familiar and agreeable to them (The Warmer), looking like it belongs in their world and was made just for them (Tailoring). In fact, it looks quite appealing.

The customer likes what they hear as you describe the waters in which they currently swim and they start to nibble at the lure. Normally, after a nibble they drift off, but rather than needing a nap, they are engrossed with what you just shared (Commercial Insight). After all, what you just shared was that the waters where they currently swim are having a direct impact on their growth.

Being somewhat disoriented by what you revealed, and fearing you are correct as you give a little tug to set the hook, they find they are hooked (Reframe) and going in a different direction than they thought they were originally going to go with you.

You let out a little bit of line as you continue to make the business case (Rational Drowning), but never so much as to let the flex in your pole (Constructive Tension) go back to slack (Status Quo). Too much line can allow them to go in unproductive directions, getting tangled in the roots and rocks of the lake bed (False Positives).

This could cause harm to them, which was never your intention and is why you don’t reel them in too fast either (Destructive tension). In fact, you care so much for them that you are willing to endure some initial discomfort, because you know their future is better with you than without.

As you skillfully reel them to the center of their own story, they come to realize that fighting to remain where they are at…their status quo…is now untenable. They know the consequences of remaining are detrimental. There just has to be a different way… or even a New Way out of this mess.

With confidence and care, you compassionately share that which you couldn’t wait to talk to them about earlier. Your Solution. But you knew, bringing this up any earlier would be too soon for them. It would have sent them racing to the center of the Funnel to find comfort with their peers. That is why you patiently led them in a way they could follow.

In Summary…
As a humorous way to demonstrate the rest of the metaphor relative to the customer’s Status Quo and Our Solution, I thought this would fit with the metaphor…

It has been said that the fish can only grow to the size of its fishbowl. There’s a better way. Wouldn’t you agree?

LinkedIn Tip: Don’t waste opportunities!

With more than 200 million members now on LinkedIn, millions are wasting opportunities to be noticed…liked…shared by others, by ignoring one simple practice.

What is the Practice?
The practice, is simply doing what newspapers have known and done for years. Newspapers begin with the headline, followed by a compelling opening sentence/paragraph, with further details provided later in the story for those interested.

What is the Problem?
The problem lies in the preamble setting up what your post or update is aiming to teach. Consider this post for example. I could have opened like countless people do, which in this case would be to emphasize who LinkedIn is, what they are known for or have now become (i.e., “LinkedIn has become the largest B2B…). You know how it sounds.

If I did so, not only would that be redundant with what most already know [INSERT YAWN HERE], but worse, I would squander the opportunity to elicit reader’s interest for what they may learn by reading my post.

Target your Openers
Instead, I aimed my opening at a specific profile (i.e., Those that post updates on LinkedIn and comments in groups, but rarely get shares, responses or likes). By targeting specific people with a concise message, when my post gets placed in LinkedIn’s updates, potential readers are seeing at a glance, what I want them to see…wasting opportunities on LinkedIn, because they hadn’t thought of this way before.

This principle of targeting your opening sentence also holds true for comments in LinkedIn Groups.

For example, in a group, someone posts a provocative topic or question. You respond with your unique point of view or contribution. If you are not getting likes or responses to your contributions, the two likely scenarios are 1.) Your comment wasn’t as unique or as contributory as you thought, or 2.) Your opening comments offered no compelling reason to read further.

Remember, when you comment in a group, not only is an update posted to the homepage with your opening sentence [or two], but that same opener is put into a reduced digest that goes out to the group’s subscribers. LinkedIn is doing everything it can to get you noticed. Don’t fight them. They are aiming to help you.

Don’t just take my word…
If you take a cursory glance at the ‘Home’ tab of your LinkedIn page and scan the updates, take note of your behavior when scanning the countless updates for items of interest. What grabs your attention? If typical trends prevail, it is likely the photo or headline, followed by the description of the post.

While it is true that a good headline alone can draw eyes to the story, in a ‘warp speed’ world, content-consumers spend their clicks conservatively. Will they spend it on your post or somewhere else? Rest assured, they will spend it somewhere.

Applying I.P.R. filters to LinkedIn
Since the aim of this blog is to always look for behaviors that contribute to Intentional, Predictable and Repeatable (I.P.R.) results, lets summarize as follows:

Intentional – Make the first sentence of your update, comment or post intentionally engaging
Predictable – Evidence of a compelling description predictably results in more shares, views and likes
Repeatable – Intentional modifications to behaviors that produce predictable outcomes are repeatable

Marketing Benchmarks: Has marketing missed the mark?

What makes a great Marketer?

The best marketers are thought-leaders. Not only are they acutely aware of the drivers of their results, but they have a deep understanding of consumer behaviors and point the organization forward to be prepared for trends and shifts in their behavior.

They love [useful] metrics, as this guides their efforts to show better returns over time, not the same or worse.

Great marketers are aware of these consumer behavior shifts before they are even perceptible to most in the organization.

As a result, you see this most quickly reflected in the marketing in ways that connects deeply with consumers and resonates more so than the common marketing in the marketplace.

Good marketing takes work, but what does it take to be best-in-class? Furthermore, how do you compare against your industry?

Find out with HubSpot’s latest study, Marketing Benchmarks from 7,000 Businesses.

Download the Marketing Benchmarks Report

This brand new report dives into how you can increase your traffic and leads by improving a variety of marketing assets, including:

Get a clear idea of how much more you need to do to see the results your organization needs. Download the report to see if your marketing is hitting the mark.

LinkedIn: Are you in the Top 1%? If so, bummer!

LinkedIn recently reached out to 10 million of its members with a ‘Congratulations’ for having one of the Top 1% [or Top 5%] most viewed profiles in 2012. This was their way of ‘thanking’ those that contributed to its 200 million member milestone.

Great news, right? Not so fast. That all depends on why people are seeking you out. For many, I suspect they are down right proud of such an accomplishment…one in which they had no idea they were shooting for until LinkedIn said, “Congratulations.”

As for me, I am a bit more cynical on why people are looking at my profile that often. Is it because I am special? Can’t be. I know me. So what, then?

With social selling becoming a much more significant way to prospect, what LinkedIn may actually be calling out is that those in this elite group are getting the top 1-5% of the solicitations from hungry sales people. So my special notification from LinkedIn would have been more appropriate, had it said…

Of course, I am over-generalizing in terms of how this is used and I certainly realize the many benefits of being found where people are searching, but it is interesting seeing the different perspectives on the topic.

For instance, the other day I read a post of one SEO Consultant on his achievement of the Top 1%. I was surprised to see Mr. SEO quickly cite his top reason to how many first-level connections he had. He went on to share that he receives 15-20 connection requests from strangers per day. His subsequent reasons then pointed to Keywords and frequent Updates to his LinkedIn status.

One of his readers commented on his post that they too made the top 1%, but have less than 10% of the connections he has, and spends little to no time at all on their LinkedIn profile. He responded by saying, “I believe if you had more connections you would definitely do even better.” Hmm?!

So what gives? How do two people with completely opposite profiles and far different behaviors in their dedication to their LinkedIn profiles end up with the same result of a top viewed profile?

Turns out that keywords are pretty important, after all. Even more so than number of connections, Mr. SEO.

So, if you are looking to increase solicitations from prospectors, make sure to research trending keywords that relate to you and include them in your profile. Do this, and YOU TOO can join the ranks of 10 million other members to balance the load of solicitations you are sure to receive.