Are you ready to ignite a digital transformation?
Social media has fundamentally changed
the way we live and do business.
This has been understood in the B2C sector, but often ignored for B2B. According to Digital Commerce 360, even back in 2018, 48% of companies surveyed conducted 50–74% of all corporate purchases online. Additionally, 23% completed 75% or more of their purchasing online. This growth continues to accelerate with projections ending 2020 as a $1.3 trillion marketplace.
Social media often is thought of as a marketer’s tool. But social influence is not just for marketing departments. The future of work demands that brands embrace digital transformation across their entire organization.
Social media is one of the most cost effective and immediately scalable places to start. The ubiquity of social media means no new software purchases, no monthly subscriptions. Instead, using this readily available tool, companies can leverage online efforts for sales effectiveness, revenue growth, increased share of voice and acceleration of innovation:
To win in sales, brands must empower salespeople to be a part of the buyer’s journey earlier in the process.
To gain share of voice, brands must leverage social channels to amplify thought leadership.
To promote innovation, professionals need a scalable platform for collaboration.
To attract the best and brightest, companies need to consistently present an attractive work culture.
To keep the best and brightest, brands must effectively engage employees and create avenues for advocacy.
SALES
According to HubSpot, 80% of all B2B sales will be conducted online by 2025. Traditionally, the marketing department has been responsible for lead generation. But messaging through corporate accounts are often stifled by tedious approval processes, or seen as an impersonal “mouthpiece” for corporate broadcast.
Instead, sales teams need to learn how to narrowcast and build meaningful influence to reach more of their most ideal clients. Using those same social media channels, they can switch from jargon-filled posts to building an engaged following by tapping into personal and professional authenticity.
LinkedIn conducted a study of over 5000 buyers and a staggering 92% wanted to deal with the person who is the acknowledged thought leader in the area in which they were considering a purchase. But being a thought leader and being SEEN and RECOGNIZED as a thought leader are two different things.
The interesting thing is that despite this phenomenon, very few B2B organizations have considered changing sales prospecting behavior and have, instead, kept the same activities regardless of the fact that they have seen the effectiveness of these decline.
For decades corporate marketing strategies have revolved around tried-and-true elements such as advertising, cold calling, events and networking. The internet era, supercharged with a global pandemic, is changing that marketing paradigm— and quickly. All organizations need to rethink their strategy and place more emphasis on digital techniques such as social media and content marketing. One type of sale that has been particularly affected by these changing behaviors is the complex and transformational sale.
It’s common knowledge that no one wants to be sold to. And yet, people have things they need to buy and look for key influencers to guide that decision. Didactic sales messaging is ignored, while personal connections can be nurtured at scale with better result. Being social, then, becomes **social selling** when it is first social and the selling is secondary.
As more of a sales team expand social influence, the brand realizes a great share of voice. In global partnership with DLAignite our combined competitors’ staff outnumber us by 37:1. Despite this difference, our group currently owns 63% of share of voice in our vertical.
Social selling requires building social influence first. That process begins with a mindset shift about what social is and how it scales. Then, and only then, skills can be added with a system for consistent execution and a measurable increase in lead generation.
For this journey, start with our SOCIAL INFLUENCE 12-week course.
For a recent client, this process has delivered an average of £1.1m or pipeline per salesperson and £490k in closed business per salesperson in just 9 months along with 200k views per person of their content.
MARKETING
Research shows that buyer’s are 57% of the way through the buying process before they contact a sales person.
These buyers are also 35% of the way through the buying process when they define their requirements. Your company’s most ideal client is on a self-directed journey where they research, ask questions and jump to conclusions about you, your products/services and brand all while remaining anonymous. Martech Today finds that B2B buyers consume on average, 13 pieces of content before making a buying decision. As a marketing department, the next question is, “How many of those pieces of content are directly authored by your company?”
In a world with a deluge of content, hitting an inflection point of creating, publishing and distributing enough content to be seen and heard is a monumental task. This is all the more monumental when marketing departments are left to do this on their own – in a silo away from the rest of the company. To underscore this truth, Forrester and Corporate Visions’ research shows that 74% of buyers choose the sales team that was FIRST to provide insight within their buying journey, so shaping the buyer’s journey early is critical.
To make matters worse, this empowered and educated buyer is now a part of a growing buying team. As the average size of these buying teams grow (now typically comprised of 8-10 people), each member comes with their own preferred suppliers, brand perceptions and preferences. This means that getting a consensus to move the buying decision forward has never been more difficult. In fact, now only 30% of purchases are executed – the other 70% are simply postponed. This means the biggest competition is now inaction.
Bringing marketing efforts into alignment with these realities requires organization-wide digital transformation. Individuals can take the class, or private groups of up to 10 per cohort can be taken through the social influencer program.
INSIGHTS / R & D
At Little Bird Marketing we truly believe that
collaboration is the new competition.
While social media has a role to play in almost every business function, insights and R & D teams can leverage this tool during iterative learning, sharing best practices and mitigating risks inherent in innovation.
With years of experience in the market research industry, we’ve long promoted the need for teams to tackle persona development. While most of these professionals spend ample times developing well-tuned personas for clients, they do not typically work on these for themselves. Without this foundation, even cuttingedge technology and thought leadership never reach the intended audience at scale. Social media as an effective tool for idea sharing and industry advancement requires development of an audience and consistent promotion of topic authority and expertise.
Michelle Gansle
Sr. Director, Foresight, Innovation and Growth Strategies at Mars Wrigley
“As a leader in the Insights industry, I believe it is my responsibility to provide thought leadership both internally with my company AND externally in the industry by contributing to a bigger conversation about how we can innovate, challenge our methodologies, become more inclusive, and help the next generation move beyond limitations.”
“There is no more cost-effective or immediate way to accomplish this at scale than the proper use of social media. When it comes to sharing best practices for insights I found the digital transformation and social influence training from the Little Bird Marketing team to be invaluable. Priscilla and team make it both fun and approachable to work with them to quickly learn and see results.”
HUMAN RESOURCES &
EMPLOYEE ADVOCACY
It’s not just for purchases that people seek peer validation, it’s for career choices too. Glassdoor has become the bane and the savior of the recruitment word. Candidates look to trusted advisors in their social networks to learn “the truth” about companies that are hiring.
Any effective use of social media for HR purposes reimagines how organizations can find the best candidates, educate them about the business, onboard them and even draw from experience and greatness of past employees. Current star employees can be the best resource for top-tier recruitment at no added expense.
When done correctly, the whole employee life-cycle can be cultivated, empowered and maintained through the power of social media. Ongoing brand representation and employee advocacy can reach massive scale in a short time with the proper mindset of seeing social media through the lens of comprehensive digital transformation.
What excites you?
An organization-wide transformation to accelerate performance?.
A 30% uplift in sales?
Being the “obvious choice” in a competitive pitch?
A significant reduction in
recruitment costs and an ability to
find (and retain) the best staff?
A larger share of voice with your marketing AND a reduction in cost?
Increased agility and collaborative working?
Ready to take the first step toward social influence? Let’s get started!
UPCOMING CLASSES
$3000 per person
Next start dates:
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION CONSULTING
“I’m interested, but I need to chat first.”
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WANT A TASTE OF THE GLORY?
Complete the form to download a free 25-minute training video. In this brief, yet impactful training, you’ll be introduced to key mindset shifts and important tips to digitally transform your sales strategy.
