Russell, this is consistent with what I've been hearing from marketers recently. Making the sale cannot be the simple target any more. It has to be about ongoing engagement with customers as individuals. Of course, sales are the destination, but the map has changed.
Nice article Russell. Meeting individuals needs and desires is a corner stone of Social Marketing. Particularly, in a ever changing world where instant consumer gratification is now the norm the marketing strategies need to be flexible and nimble to respond to consumer needs. Given that nature of social networking the hybrid marketing approach makes alot of sense. What's been some of the biggest challenges you've seen companies face using this hybrid marketing model?
Yes, have you seen a lot of reorganization of sales and marketing roles since brands began heavily using social media, Russell? You'd think so, given the crossover responsibilities that could occur.
What activities of marketing on social media do you think will support sales ? Do you mean deal with prospective customer initially and when the customer starts going into details and the price, send him to sales ?
In my experience sales in general is a poor user of social media for lead generation. That's best done by marketing. Key is for marketing to focus its social media efforts on activities that support sales. Not just social media for social media's sake!
No matter how you slice and dice it, word of mouth is still one of the best marketing tools.
It also depends what type of customers you have. Are they active on social networks or are they mostly found in social in-person get togethers or at golf courses. If it is the latter case, then word of mouth has its own magic.
The challenges lie in how to most effectively use these new tools.
The whole problem lies in ownership. Is it the marketing department's role to maintain good relations on social networks or is it sales team's role ? A joint effort is required as building the case for a b2b trade and then the actual execution requires the involvement of both the functions.
A marketer cannot easily influence feedback from peer experiences. The only way to improve that is by improving product and service quality. But a marketer can definitely influence reviews on social networks and other product-review websites by answering to users concerns and noting them down for sharing it with both the sales and production team and, if possible, give an instantaneous response to user that his concern will be rectified. If people find that your company cares, they will definitely have a soft corner for it when making buying or continuing decisions.
Good point hounhosp. Traditional word of mouth doesn't usually reach a wide audience in a B2B market. Social media and online review sites are the new "word of mouth", which have the potential to reach a wide and targeted audience.
The challenges lie in how to most effectively use these new tools.
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