OK, Social Media works. But who’s going to implement?

Posted by Toby Marshall on December 17, 2011 at 4:15 pm

Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)

In the large boardroom of a large Corporate presenting to their senior management team. On all the ways they could transform their marketing and save a million or so by not burning their dollars on ‘Random Media’ (i.e. mass media – newspapers, radio, etc).

And one of them was looking a bit unhappy. And when I asked for questions, she said: “OK, can now see this Social Media stuff could work for us, but we just don’t have the time to implement it. To get any meaningful results will mean us giving up a chunk of our day jobs!”

And that’s what sparked this article. I realised that she was used to marketers standing up and presenting lots of ideas. “Re-position the company” “Run advertisements” “Grow ‘awareness’ using Random Media”. All the old stuff that the ‘Tell and Sell’ school still do.

But, following the boardroom presentation, she realised that Social Networking means engaging. That real people have to get involved online to talk to prospects and clients. Real people who are smart, who know the business. Particularly important in BtoB where you are talking to other business people.

We realised 3 years ago when we launched Lead Creation that marketing on Social Media was very time consuming. And that if we were going to change how companies did their marketing we had to be different. We couldn’t just tell people what to do and then send them a large bill. Or pretend that Social Networking just means putting up a profile. And building a list of fake followers as the ‘Tell and Sellers’ so often recommend.

We had to implement it. And that needed a number of things including a large team of very smart, very talented young marketers.

But Social Media is so very time consuming to do it well. So we needed to develop a new labour force: a regular supply of the smartest interns from around the globe. From the best universities, and who stay with us full time for at least 4 months, and sometimes 12 months.

Who work for free. So our clients can afford to do social media. And lots of it, and so realise how effective it is and cancel the last of the Random Media ads.

Very pleased that that was their only objection. Easy to overcome given our business model!

Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)

Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Why does Social Media work better in B2B than B2C?

Posted by Toby Marshall on December 16, 2011 at 4:56 pm

Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)

Most people who work in B2B believe the complete opposite. That Social Media/Networking works better in the consumer world. And many think it’s just for selling consumer items to young people or to housewives on Facebook.

But there are strong reasons why Social Media is so powerful for companies that sell to other businesses:

The field is empty, it is all yours! Most B2B marketers ignore it, so you don’t have a lot of competition crowding you out. So it is easier to build a high profile. And you have the opportunity to be the first to build a community of your customers.

You are not selling to a business. Even though it’s B2B, there’s always a ‘C’ on the other end, you are selling to a person. And most of these buyers of what you sell are on the big network built for business: LinkedIn. So, with the right strategy, you can gather them together. And engage them. And then sell to them.

The sales cycle is complex and longer for BtoB. So you need the ability to engage with prospects over a long period of time. Social Media/Networking gives you powerful tools for free. And your prospects update their own records: it’s your self-updating CRM

We are in the first stage of the Social Networking Age. And many of the ‘experts’ advising businesses are refugees from advertising agencies. From the world of ‘Tell and Sell’. So they migrate these techniques to Social Networks. So wrong. It is about engaging, about starting relationships. Tell and sell doesn’t work, adding to the perception that these tools won’t work in the B2B world.

So, the field is open for all of you in B2B. On your marks …

Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)

Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

For sales in B2B: Social Media or Social Networking the goods?

Posted by Toby Marshall on October 4, 2011 at 12:16 pm

Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)

The confusion about social technology largely hinges on the confusion between these two terms. And this confusion largely accounts for the slow takeup of Social Networking by business.

The two technologies are radically different. Though they both will have, and are already having, major but different impacts on the world. Now clearly the two technologies overlap. For example, there are elements of Social Networking in Twitter, given that people have followers and those followers can communicate together to some extent. And there are elements of Social Media inside Facebook and LinkedIn – e.g. status updates (tweets by another name!).

But here’s the difference:

Social Media is simply a media distribution tool or mechanism. There are numerous social media such as YouTube and Twitter and Flickr, with hundreds of others fighting the war for dominance. Typically, Social Media are the tools that are used by the old style ‘Tell and Sell’ broadcasters who have come from the old advertising industries.

Social Networking is very different and is way more powerful and significant in its impact. It is about connecting and engaging with people of value to your business, not the diffused strategy of disseminating content to a mass audience. It is about developing direct relationships with your prospects.

It achieves this because it addresses our fundamental human need to belong to ‘tribes’ — the fundamental herd instinct that drives us all. Today, we call them Professional Customer Networks.

Social Networking, using the tools of Social Media to help it, is changing the world. Forever.

Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)

Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

The Age of Leverage

Posted by Toby Marshall on April 6, 2011 at 12:34 pm

Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)

Historically, there has been little leverage in people’s lives. There was leverage within the wandering tribes of Africa and within the villages that formed later. But just simple leverage from people specializing in particular functions. And the leverage that did exist was fully exploited, and there was not much of it.

Leverage today is limitless. The only limit is our imagination.

In fact we don’t fully understand the size of our ‘levers’, and how their use can impact our lives and our businesses.

One simple example: On social network platforms like LinkedIn, as our professional customer networks grow, and most of us develop 300, 400 or 500 connections, professionals will be able to reach almost anybody in 3 to 4 degrees of separation. For many of us, it may even be 2 to 3 degrees if we have a thousand or more connections. It stuns me how many people I can quickly reach with just over 1200 first level connects on LinkedIn.

Who knows what the impact of this leverage will be on how we do our jobs, and on how we do business.

But it will have an impact.

Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)

Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

About Toby Marshall

About Toby Marshall

About Toby Marshall

About Toby Marshall