CCO: What do marketers struggle with most in social media?
Cleary: Building an effective sales process from social media. Marketers are great at building engagement and relationships, but they're not as good at driving all that engagement into a sale or thinking about social media as part of the phone number list sales funnel. When building the sales funnel, you not only need a social strategy in place, but also access to analytics, access phone number list to email marketing, etc. There has a disconnect; those who work in social media often do not have access and influence with the right people within the organization.
CCO: What are you excited about that's new in social media?
Social selling
Cleary: To see how it works, check out Heyo Cart. A business posts a product for sale, users type “buy” in the phone number list comments, and an in-platform app opens to take care of the phone number list sale. More and more, Facebook and other social sites will expand this concept and we will see more direct sales on these channels.
Live broadcast
Just a few months ago I was off Blab and Periscope, but now I think tools like these will play a very important role in social selling for years to come. Meeting your customers face to face is the phone number list best way to build a relationship. Live streaming means you are online and on video, interacting with people one phone number list on one. Social networks are great, but it's so much more effective to see each other live.
Here's how it works: Periscope, for example, allows me to video and stream phone number list on a topic of potential interest to my clients. They can see me and interact with me. Through live streaming, your audience gets a real sense of who you are, your business, and your personality. They are much more likely to buy your products and services. Channels like Blab and Periscope are still immature, but I believe they represent the next phase phone number list of social media and those that come early have a bigger influence on the phone number list channels. It's a risk, but I believe this one will yield massive rewards.
Businesses can use influencer identification tools to keep tabs phone number list on and build relationships with the most important voices in their niche or industry. The phone number list dilemma is: do you spend time nurturing and building relationships with influencers or do you immediately seek value from them? I believe that if you invest time in building relationships, it usually results in long-term benefits. Marketers should always be careful with their initial outreach – if you mess it up at first, your actions will have a negative long-term impact. And remember, you can't outsource relationship building. Companies often employ agencies phone number list to help identify influencers and manage outreach, but I think that's a mistake. For a top influencer, you really need to make a direct connection.