How can brands sell through social networks?

An iCrossing point of view

Prepared by:

Tristn Elsegui VP of Strategy Latam & Spain

This document contains confidential and proprietary information of iCrossing Inc.

Since social marketing became a core part of brand strategies weve been asking this question. Marketers are now starting to realise that we were trying to over-simplify and in many cases missing the point: We compared apples and oranges: we took social networks as a new sales channel and expected to obtain the same results. We broadcasted content and didnt care about the users reaction . We did not understand the context: users are on social networks to connect with friends and relatives. They talk about news and share pictures... They arent necessarily expecting to receive promotions and we did not understand why they werent in buying mode.

As a result of this, many brands thought that social networks did not work for them. But the fact is that we did not fully understand the value that social networks provide.

Social networks are a recommendation channel, not a direct sales channel

Does this mean that we cant sell though social networks? No, we have to understand that they play a different role in the sales process. Users have changed the way they buy. Theyre well informed, use multiple devices and receive numerous commercial messages from many different brands... Messages that they have learnt to ignore.

Social networks are the link between initial awareness and final conversion

Brands need a bridge between initial awareness (mainly generated by paid campaigns) and the moment of truth (sales interaction). Social networks provide this bridge by delivering content and useful information along the path to conversion. The scope and scale of this fluctuates according to the type of purchase being made. In general, the larger the purchase, the more inclined people are to do some in-depth research and look to their peers for crowdsourced opinion. While companies would love for this to happen on their brand pages, its much more li kely to take place within friend networks. Businesses need to be active in social listening so they're reacting to what's going on and fueling conversation, not just seeding their marketing messages. The traditional funnel (adapted to social media) describes this process:

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OCTOBER 2013 | HOW TO SELL THROUGH SOCIAL NETWORKS

Often, the most important engagement takes places at the customer service stage when you can use the directness of social platforms to make a real difference to your relationship. A positive experience at this stage in the process drives audiences to become fans, repeat purchasers and advocates, adding fuel to future marketing efforts. Once weve understood the process (awareness, consideration, action and advocacy), we can establish the:

5 steps to start selling on social media

1. Goals Brands need to translate business goals into social media goals. Ask yourself why you want to be on social platforms? Decide what defines success and how to measure it. To succeed we have to connect with the right people in the right place, at the right time, with the right content, through the right interface. What does this means for brands? They need to be always on (or at least always aware). They have to become connected brands. 2. Audience The second step is to define our audience profile. Using social monitoring tools, its possible to access detailed information regarding the sites your customers visit, their opinion of your products (and competitors products), what content they like the most and other information that can help you get to know them better, engage and define your strategy. Its important to understand the context of why users have visited the social site; theyre likely to be focused on sharing pictures or planning their weekend so direct sales messages are not appropriate. We need to be cleverer than that to grab their attention.

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OCTOBER 2013 | HOW TO SELL THROUGH SOCIAL NETWORKS

3. Conversation With all of the obtained information, we should be capable of defining the best conversation topic. The topic that allows us to establish a relationship with the user, not talking directly about the brand, but catching the attention of people potentially interested in our brand. This is how we generate the required engagement to gain awareness for the brand message. 4. Strategy We already know what our goals in social media are, we know our audience and we have found our conversation topic - how do we make this work altogether?

The process can be divided into 4 phases:

Awareness

At this point we use the best combination of paid, owned and earned media, to drive traffic to our landing pages, where we have placed a series of calls to action implying different levels of closeness to the sales interaction (whitepaper, webinar, free trial). Consideration

Depending on the product, this process can take days, weeks or months. This is the stage when we have to help the users go through to the next stage. To do so, we will provide information and services useful for them in the decision making process. This could include buyers guides, product reviews or research depending on the industry. Action

Finally the user buys and becomes a customer. Advocacy

Once the user has purchased the product we deploy our loyalty strategy to keep them as a client and offer upsells. If we make this experience positive, the customer will act as a promoter and recommend our brand/product so more people will buy, consider buying and/or be aware of our brand (effects of earned media in the purchase funnel). 5. Social analytics Lastly, we have to measure. To do this we have to choose which metrics and KPIs are representative for each stage of the funnel. Those that describe better how online campaigns are working and how many users we have in each stage.

Conclusion
Social practitioners had become know for attempting to avoid directly answering the ROI question when it came to their activity, however with social media firmly ensconced in most firm's digital strategies, it's getting harder to hide behind fluffy metrics. The return needn't be cold, hard cash, but having a positive influence on conversion rates should always be a consideration whenever campaigns or calendars are being constructed. And if you can

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OCTOBER 2013 | HOW TO SELL THROUGH SOCIAL NETWORKS

prove the effect they've had, it makes your argument easier for getting bigger budgets to take things on to the next level.

For further information, or if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact your iCrossing account manager or results@icrossing.co.uk

COPYRIGHT 2013 ICROSSING LTD

OCTOBER 2013 | HOW TO SELL THROUGH SOCIAL NETWORKS