OUTLOOK //
With smaller marketing budgets and aggressive user adoption of Web 2.0 tools, social media will continue to make progress on the fringes of the sales process (see Figure 7). Companies will find new application of social media for increasing awareness and opportunity creation with targeted audiences and continue to deploy tools to listen, interact and support customers.
As a result, sales and marketing teams need each other more than ever: Sales needs the customer insight and connection that marketing captures to accelerate the buying process; and marketing needs sales results to be able to show measureable evidence to defend and expand social media deployment and activities.
GETTING STARTED //
Buyer behavior has shifted permanently, and a result, companies need to adapt to this change. Research shows that 70% of companies will increase their social media investments in 2010 and 61% of marketers do not know how to get started . Included below are seven recommendations to consider while responding to the latest economic and technological changes:
1. Recognize that a permanent change has occurred.
Social media and the effects of the recession are not going away any time soon. Customers are now more likely to start their buying process on a social media site than a company site, and that trend will only continue. Budgets will remain tight and customers will need to know that they are making the best decisions for their respective organization. As a result, they will continue to rely on objective third party experience with products and services.
Figure 7
2. Do not ignore the opportunity.
The value of social media is not that it fills an existing gap, or breaks new ground, as much as it is an enhancement to something that already exists—for B2B organizations social media enhances word of mouth, customer engagement, and relationship management. To determine the value of social media, business leaders have to experiment with applying social media to those three areas. According to the Marketing Leadership Council, CMO’s who advocate for and lead social media efforts are three times as likely to drive business results as those who do not.
3. Understand the difference between inbound and outbound.
Customers may share information with other customers, as well as employees in the organization that are not their Account Manager. Enabling the organization to digitally listen to customer conversations can provide the sales force with a whole new view into customer preferences and opinions.
4. Plan and coordinate the Customer Experience.
Social media offers a host of new channels for customers to interact with the organization and with other customers. Companies will need to determine how they will interpret, filter and aggregate inbound information, and if, how, and where they will respond. According to recent research, the customer experience has four times more impact on preference and intent to repurchase than does the quality of individual touch points.
5. Make it about them.
Business executives primarily use social media to stay current on news, network with other peers, and to advance their careers. As a result, organizations need to understand how to meet this need, and how facilitating this interaction can help them better understand customer’s behaviors, interests, and motivators. Sales and marketing should work together to determine how the organization’s products and services could support and enhance the customer in their role.
6. Demonstrate the value to sales.
The sales organization will want to understand how social media activities will create a tangible business impact on leads, sales, and retention. Marketing will have to translate how customer engagement can have an impact—current research will further this aim as leading work is already demonstrating a strong link between engagement levels and retention.
7. Think about Relationship Management 2.0.
Moving forward, sales,marketing, service and customer communities may all play a role in managing certain components of customer relationships. As a result, organizations should segment and map customer buying behavior and channel preferences on a regular basis, which may challenge the way organizations currently cover and manage their customers.
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