Social Selling

How KickApps Can Put You On The Road To Revenue

Prepared by Alan Wolk & Justin Chase, KickApps Social Media StrategyJanuary 2011

What Are Brands Doing On The Social Web?

Having Conversations

Collecting Fans

Providing “Interesting, Relevant Content”

Becoming “thought leaders” in their categories

What Are Brands NOT Doing On The Social Web?

Selling

Brands are forgetting to sell product on the social web. That means giving up valuable revenue

KickApps believes in “Social Selling” - using your integrated social web presence (where your domain site and social sites are seamlessly integrated in a continuous loop) to sell product and designing your social platform accordingly

Social Selling

• “Social Selling” means several things:

• Getting existing customers to purchase more frequently

• Getting existing customers to upgrade their purchases and buy the more expensive model/package/service

• Getting new customers to make their initial purchase

• In some instances it just means capturing names and email addresses for future marketing efforts

• And of course, it means getting your biggest fans to become brand evangelists who will broadcast your message to their peer groups.

Social Selling

•“Social Selling” is not about hard-sell tactics. It’s about realizing that you ultimately want your users to take action and that action is something deeper than “liking us on Facebook.”

•Once you identify that action, planning your social strategy and building out both your domain site and social sites becomes more focused and thus more profitable

How Social Selling Works

No one believes brands are just being selfless

They know Your Brand Is Not My Friend

So they won’t be annoyed if you acknowledge that you are trying to sell them something; it’s when you pretend otherwise that irks them

So What Do You Want Them To Do? (Deciding What You’re Actually Selling)

The Road to Revenue

• Too many brands think it’s enough to use social media for “conversations” with customers.

• It’s often difficult for them to come up with a plan for how they might use their social presence to make money

• Integrating your domain site with your social and mobile sites is a good way to start- that way you are putting all your social activity in a seamless conversation loop, so you reach people at all their key social touchpoints

• The checklist on the following page is a good way to help your brand figure out the Road to Revenue

The Road to Revenue

The Road To Revenue

✓ What are your most popular products/services?

✓ Are there products you think would be more popular if people would only try them?

✓ What are your easiest products/services to sell?

✓ What are your current customers NOT doing that you wish they would do?

✓ Are there any products/services that you’d be willing to discount to drive sales via the social web?

✓ Are there peripheral items (e.g. logo wear) that you could sell via the social web?

✓ Are there promotions that work within your current marketing plan that involve customers purchasing your product?

Enabling Social Sales

• Consider these tactics to encourage users to buy:

• Announce new products on the social web and offer them for sale there first. This reinforces the notion that the social web is a place for commerce and with an integrated approach your message gets circulated everywhere.

• Use a points and level system to encourage purchase. This can be a separate program that rewards users for specific purchases or one that ties-in purchases to other social activity on the site

• Users should be rewarded for all their purchase activity. Create ways for them to get online credit during contests for purchases made off-line

Enabling Social Sales (continued)

• Offer social-media-only specials that involve the user learning more about a particular product or aspect of your business (e.g. the discount code is buried on a particular page on your site featuring a product you want to push.)

• Include a sharable smart widget on your sites that learns your customers habits and offers up products for sale based on their interests

• Make sure it’s easy for users to buy products/services that are discussed in editorial content. Provide easy-to-find/easy-to-use links to outside vendors or to the e-commerce section of your own site.

Enabling Social Sales (continued)

• Conversation and sales should be integrated on your domain site and on your social sites. The less separation there is, the less obtrusive selling feels.

• Sometimes all you want is a name and email for upcoming promotions. Users will provide this if they are instantly getting something of value in exchange (information, entertainment, utility.)

• It’s only in rare instances that they will surrender an email in exchange for future value. (e.g. advance notification of Verizon iPhone.)

“Purchasing” Defined

• Purchasing can mean anything from actually buying a physical product or service to tuning in to a specific broadcast to visiting a particular site to donating to a worthy cause to supplying an email address.

• Social Selling is about getting users to take some sort of action that works to improve your bottom line.

Benefits of Social Selling

• You’re making money, not just spending it

• Social Selling takes advantage of how easy it is for users to make purchases online and share the news with their social graphs

• Many of those users will go on to become brand evangelists who’ll be your strongest advocates both online and off

• Regardless, you now have people essentially advertising your product for free

• Social Selling allows you to be more adventurous with the type of content you’re creating and sharing since you’re doing more than just building awareness

Thank You

Contact KickApps to learn more