In this first episode of our ROI special, we give you an overview of what social selling is and how it can contribute to your marketing & sales results.
While social selling is undoubtedly a current buzzword, it’s also one that many remain skeptical about, especially when the planning process starts to include budget talk.
Be honest! Haven’t you wondered if social selling is genuinely worth investing money in? We believe it is. But let us take you on our social selling journey. This episode gives you an overview of the topic, and we'll dive more into detail of each element in the next episodes:
- A definition of social selling - The components of a social selling program - Measuring the results - KPI benchmarks from the experts: What kind of activity rate of your social sellers can you expect? How many relevant engagements from your target audience are good? - How to track relevant engagements: From CRM integration to seller surveys
If you want social selling to contribute to your success, listen in!
About our sponsor ReadyForSocial:
ReadyForSocial is a leading social selling company and sponsor of this podcast. Since 2014, ReadyForSocial has supported large companies in the DACH region, Europe, and the USA by introducing, managing, and expanding their social selling programs.
Learn more about their solution and services here.
Lisa and Monika both work for ReadyForSocial. Feel free to contact them about this podcast or about ReadyForSocial's services: Lisa Davidson and Monika Ruzicka.
Let's get straight to business. Whether you want to optimize your lead generation, make the most of your marketing budget or gain and maintain a competitive advantage in the field. Monika Ruzicka and Lisa Davidson gives you the expert insights on social selling to take your business to the next level. How to get started with social selling to increase your ROI. Whether your goal is to build trust and authority, explore new business opportunities or start new sales conversations, social selling is the way to go. While social selling is undoubtedly a current buzzword, it's also one that many remain skeptical about, especially when the planning process starts to include budget talk. Be honest, haven't you wondered if social selling is generally worth investing money in? For good reasons. After all, no one likes to waste money, whether in business or life. So when considering incorporating social selling into your marketing strategy, the first concern is setting expectations for your return on investment. Getting an adequate ROI is the motivation for any business decision. And social selling is no different. But how do you decide how to structure your social selling program to yield an ROI that is worth the effort? Before we can answer that, let's start by defining social selling. Social Selling defined. The most basic definition of social selling is utilizing social media to sell products and services. However, social selling means that salespeople are active on social media to influence their buyers decision making process. The sellers leverage their social networks to interact with prospects and share relevant content, building relationships and trust. Companies can harness the power of social selling by creating a program that mobilizes top performing salespeople and arming them with the tools needed to reach the right buyers with the right message at the right time. Building a social selling program. To build a successful social selling program at your company, you must be willing to train your sales force. There are many things you can do to get them ready. The first is to set expectations. Clearly define your target audience, and what sales reps should look for when researching prospects on social media. Next, give them the permission and the tools needed to improve their personal branding, empower them to establish themselves as industry thought leaders by sharing original and third party content with authority. Their online persona is a direct reflection of your company. So this step is critical to the success of your social selling program. Almost half of the world's population is active on social media, making the utilization of powerful sales tactics like social selling more critical than ever. Your salespeople must interact with prospects on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms to improve how they present offerings, increase outreach and grow revenue streams. In saturated markets filled with similar products and services, you want your sales reps to connect with customers on a personal level, and maintain those relationships through every stage of the sales funnel. The process takes more effort than closing a one time deal. But the time invested in an ongoing relationship can generate many leads for your company. Measuring results through analytics. Measuring the return on investment from marketing efforts is always a worthwhile practice. There are three key benefits associated with tracking your ROI. One is justifying the money spent on marketing. For most companies, marketing is a significant expense. As the leaders of your company you want to know what you're getting for it. Use your analytics to prove the impact of marketing on the profitability of the company and justify future efforts. That leads to the second benefit:. using analytics to calculate future budgets. ROI can be used to determine which efforts have a higher return and warrant for the investment. Learning from an expert. Milan Ruzicka is the co founder of the social selling company ReadyForSocial. He pays special attention to the analytical part of the business with the mission to create the best possible analytics for his clients. As an expert in the field, he provides valuable insights on how to measure results, once a team has decided on a social selling solution implemented, and started sharing content. In a Straight to Business interview, Ruzicka offers insights that can help guide the creation of your social selling program. Start by setting objectives, so you can adequately measure them. For example, let's assume that your company aims to have salespeople who project leadership, promote a brand and start conversations. Once established, you can track the outcomes of the salespeople participating in the program. That participation drives the volume of content you can push out and the number of people who see the content. Ruzicka also offers a benchmark for realistic numbers when setting expectations for your program. He says that if you have a long-term active user base of people driving your brand on social media, your numbers should be within 40 to 60% participation among your sales force. Finally, he advises adjusting your program to maximize relevant engagement. In any social selling program, you want to create content that engages the audience. Likes, comments and shares typically measure engagement. It can also be measured by clicks that lead to your website, generating new traffic and starting the customer journey on your digital property. Relevant engagement comes from your target audience. The rule of thumb Ruzicka uses
at ReadyForSocial is:
if each post has two or more relevant engagements, you're probably doing well. Four ways to track relevant engagement. Relevant engagements are from the audience you're trying to sell to. So tracking the interactions with your company is a must. Here are four ways to measure their engagement.
One:
CRM integration. The most solid, reliable and scalable solution is a CRM integration between the main social network LinkedIn, and your company. Running one of the systems LinkedIn has deemed as worthy of this integration namely Dynamics or Salesforce helps clients get the information they need. Two: human review. This approach takes some good old-fashioned elbow grease, someone on your staff or third party agency would need to review the content, look at who engaged with it and provide some overviews. Human reviews also include looking through sellers' engagements, and identifying people from the target accounts. If you review a good number of posts from various people, helpful assumptions can be extrapolatedT
Three:
surveys. Give surveys to your salespeople and ask them what reaction they see from their target accounts. The results are approximations, but they often yield good results. It can lead to follow ups and further engagement with the company. When sales reps note who has interacted with their content, surveys work well if you're just getting started, and want to prove that your social selling program is producing
some results. Four:
landing page traffic. Lastly, let's acknowledge that content typically leads to your landing page. You can capture that incoming traffic and authenticate it with some degree of precision. Setting ROI expectations. For those just starting to document ROI, you'll track some KPIs we've already discussed: eyeballs on the content. engagement and increased conversations. As you get more experienced, you will start accumulating data that you can use to determine how social selling integrates with your other marketing strategies. Like anything in life, you get out what do you put in. To run a successful program long term, you'll want an expert on your team to interpret the data. Having someone who can spend time analyzing and understanding how social selling and ROI work together is priceless, because they will be able to find new ways to improve the program for you. Have you incorporated a social selling program into your marketing strategy? When you measure your ROI, what metrics matter most to you? We at the Straight to Business podcast are always excited to hear your thoughts and input so connect with me and Monika on LinkedIn or send us an email. I'll put our contact information in the show notes. And don't miss our next episode on our ROI special.