If you are a sales professional are you or your company using social marketing to help meet your goals? Are you representing a product or a brand and trying to reach a broader audience with shareable content?
I came across a post on LinkedIn asking for suggestions on how to incorporate social media and online marketing into a sales forecast.The answers were varied, from wondering about the product life cycle to making sure it’s not redundant in the marketing forecast. My answer is incorporate social media and online marketing early and often.
Using the platform
One thing I want to clear up is that direct sales uses social media as a platform through what I call social marketing. Social media allows a person to create, share and interact with people and content. Social Marketing occurs when social media is used to generate direct revenue. As an example, a blog is an element of social media. This post is social education. And, if you watch our demo, it is also social marketing.
Direct sales people can use tools such as LinkedIn, Twitter or YouTube to generate leads, share information or identify new markets. Posting links in blog comments, responding to other people’s tweets or responding to questions on LinkedIn are all examples of social marketing.
Social Forecasting?
Can you convert your social media usage into actual responses? And, if you can, how do you measure those responses and interface them with your sales forecast? The other thing to consider is what is your threshold for a response? Is an exchange of contact information a response?
The main thing to remember is that sales communications through social media tend to fall in the “marketing” portion of a forecast. Those responses and the shift from opportunity to lead is a marketing action. And, from a marketing perspective, the job is done when the pipeline is filled. Then it is up to sales to close the deal.
Forecasting for social marketing depends upon the activities planned for it. URL shorteners and other metrics tools help you measure the effectiveness of a particular social marketing activity. As you progress, you can begin to forecast the effect of a tweet or a blog post.
The effects social marketing can have on a sales forecast are radically varied. Since social marketing is a recursive technology, you can only get out what you put in. By focusing intently on growing a quality and engaged community, you will see a higher conversion rate. If your exposure to social marketing is simply spamming a link to hundreds of people, you will see a lower conversion rate.
In addition, if you are doing research on a new product, using social media tools can help you filter a potential market demand and even help you discover new opportunities. Using Twitter search or RSS feeds, you can bring the conversations other people are having right to your monitor.
Closing the deal
Some good answers were given to the LinkedIn question. And the use of social marketing is an effective way to help meet a sales forecast. But I think there’s room for more than simply helping. I think proper interactions via social media can help sales people actually close a sale. The trick is to avoid high-pressure. Social marketing turns into social spamming very quickly. The key is avoiding that line.
The other important benefit of social marketing is that it can help you start conversations. The majority of your job as a sales person is education. If you can syndicate your lesson plan, you can cut down the time to close.
Are you using social marketing as part of your sales strategy? How do you account for that time and potential successes in your forecast?