Social Media Marketing and Social Selling are buzzwords in today’s marketing scenario. Many a time they are used interchangeably, which is a mistake. Often people are confused if there is a difference between social media marketing and social selling? Let us begin simply by understanding what social selling and social media marketing are: Definition of Social Selling: Social Selling is leveraging social media for sales. Social selling is a sales function where the sole purpose is revenue generation. Definition of Social Media Marketing Social media marketing, on the other hand, is a marketing function. Its objective is not revenue generation. Social media marketing efforts are focused on generating brand awareness and brand building, etc. Social Selling and social media marketing also differ in the audience they cater to. While social selling is focused on marketing, where sellers connect with specific buyers, social media marketing is broad-based marketing where generic messages are shared to a large audience. How to Implement Social Selling? There are essentially four steps for effective social selling: 1. Establish Your Brand
LinkedIn is the most powerful platform when it comes to social selling because it is on this platform that your buyers are active and you can network with. Hence, it is important to create a profile that stands out. You can create an effective profile by including a catchy headline and an engaging profile summary. Personal branding also requires that you regularly post blogs, video blogs, etc. on LinkedIn. 2. Research Your Buyers As a social seller, you need to understand your buyer before you approach him. Leverage data and research your prospects and offer them content relevant to their journey and their needs. 3. Connect With Prospects Who Matter Social selling is not about “Spray and Pray”, in other words, having a generalized sales approach for a wide audience. Instead, social selling is focused on selling where you connect with prospects who matter. Therefore, instead of focusing on simply growing your network, look for connections that can convert. 4. Nurture Your Connections It is not just enough to convert a lead, it is equally important to ensure that you retain your buyers. Social selling also works towards nurturing customers. How to Implement Social Media Marketing? • Audit your current social media score. • Establish your social media goals. • Understand your buyer. • Establish your social media mission that is aligned with your audience. • Identify the metrics to evaluate the success of your campaign. • Create, curate, and share relevant content. The content must be aligned with your mission and must be relevant to the buyers’ journey. • Monitor how effective your campaign is and optimize or tweak your social media strategy so that you can achieve the set goals. Hence, we see that there is a difference not only in the objective of social media marketing and social selling but also in the way that they are implemented. As stated earlier, social selling is a sales technique and social media marketing is a marketing technique. However, in the current business scenario, the alignment of sales and marketing has become imperative for the success of an organization. There is a need for sales and marketing to work in tandem for the success of an enterprise. Therefore, social media marketing and social selling cannot work in isolation. It is the social sellers who are in direct contact with the buyers and understand their needs. They need to provide this information to the social media marketers who can create relevant content aligned to the needs of the buyer and plan their social media campaign. They can also support the sales team by providing them content which can be shared on their LinkedIn profiles which will enable them to establish an authority in their field. Therefore, we see that social media marketing and social selling are different methods of marketing and objectives that differ. However, when they are implemented together they enable an organization to enhance its ROI, revenue, and customer base.
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You must be using social media for your business promotion but are you able to obtain desired results? Well, there are 70 million people across the world that are active on social media accounts, out of which some are using for fun while others for business activities. In such a tough competition, what is your social selling strategy to beat your competitors?
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