Your sales and marketing strategy will be driven by where your customers ! and your strategy should be based on:
Who your customers are?
Where your customers are?
How many potential customers?
Why they will buy from you ? (your unique benefit or problem you solve)
Networking both online offline and Online :
- you need to be constantly engaging in conversations with new and existing customer
- Offline :nothing is more powerful than a friendly smile, handshake and face to face interaction> for example there are numerous conferences and exhibitions. If you’re in sales and marketing you can kill two birds with one stone at the http://3xedigital.com conference run by the Digital Marketing Institute https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/ . You can meet potential customers face to face and listen to presentations for the movers and shakers in the Digital Marketing world.
- Online :there are the social media channels
Mobile Marketing:
At the moment mobile has overtaken desktop as the main medium of communication, in 2 years time it is estimated to represent 70% of customer engagement. Content is king and customers will only engage with your content if it is entertaining, educational or of some health benefit etc
Traditional sales :
Cold calling is dead but you can turn your prospects into hot leads with good content, video etc
Phone your hot leads
Meet your main prospects and communicate listen to the needs both rational and emotional. Ask open questions, read the body language as well an the words , present a tailored solution to match their needs and if you’ve done your marketing research and are in front of the right person you’ll get lots of sales.
Remember it’s the emotive needs that dive the sale:
- Sharpen your sales skills
- Open the sale with a clear message/ benefit statement
- Establish rapport
- Ask open Questions, who, what, why, where, when and how
- Listen to understand and read the body language
- Summarise the customers needs / requirements
- Present your solution, this is where technology may help
- If you’re in front of the right people the sale will close automatically
- Negotiate on price etc
Social Media:
- Social media is about conversations, community, connecting with the audience and building relationships. It is not just a broadcast channel or a sales and marketing tool.
- Authenticity, honesty and open dialogue are key.
- Social media not only allows you to hear what people say about you, but enables you to respond. Listen first, speak second.
- Be compelling, useful, relevant and engaging. Don’t be afraid to try new things, but think through your efforts before kicking them off.
Social media channels:
- Blogs: A platform for casual dialogue and discussions on a specific topic or opinion.
- Facebook: The world’s largest social network, Worldwide, there are over 1.86 billion monthly active Facebook users (Facebook MAUs) which is a 17 percent increase year over year. Users create a personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including status updates. Brands create pages and Facebook users can “like” brands’ pages.
- Twitter: A social networking/micro-blogging platform that allows groups and individuals to stay connected through the exchange of short status messages (140 character limit).
- YouTube & Vimeo: Video hosting and watching websites.
- Flickr: An image and video hosting website and online community. Photos can be shared on Facebook and Twitter and other social networking sites.
- Instagram: A free photo and video sharing app that allows users to apply digital filters, frames and special effects to their photos and then share them on a variety of social networking sites.
- Snapchat: A mobile app that lets users send photos and videos to friends or to their “story.” Snaps disappear after viewing or after 24 hours. Currently, we are not allowing individual departments to have Snapchat accounts, but asking that they contribute to the Tufts University account.
- LinkedIn Groups: A place where groups of professionals with similar areas of interest can share information and participate in a conversations
- Whats app :the amount of monthly active WhatsApp users worldwide as of January 2017. As of that month, the mobile messaging app announced more than 1.2 billion monthly active users, up from over 1 billion MAU in February 2016. The service is one of the most popular mobile apps worldwide.
https://zephoria.com/top-15-valuable-facebook-statistics/
Linkedin is a good B2B social media channel
Video marketing :
1/3 of all online time is spent watching video !
59% of executives would rather watch video than read text -Hubspot
Video in an email leads to over 200 % increase in click through rate (CTR)
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/video-marketing-statistics#sm.00001dexxregqse9ju9vpwvtcd058
Email Marketing:
An effective email marketing list can be a very effective way of communicating with your customers and effective customers . Try to collect personalised email address as info@ often goes into the customers spam folder. It has to be permission based marketing as there are new data protection laws in place and some companies have got fined for sending too many emails.
https://www.dataprotection.ie/docs/FAQ_-_mailing_lists/929.htm
A good email database for emailing is :
Artificial intelligence :
let the robots do the number crunching in marketing and free up your time to listen, converse, delight and exceed your customers expectations.
A company based out of Belfast and managed by mainly Irish guys is making strides in this area and changing the way we live and work:
Virtual Reality:
Google and all the big companies are behind this and it has so many applications to enhance your customer journey. You can engage your customers in new ways:
Pay per Click advertising (PPC) :
As more and more companies increase their spend on digital advertising and marketing the price per click will increase.
Will Apps take over from websites as the main marketing tool ?
Content :
Telly your story, be personable. Remember your customers are humans not numbers.
Who knows what else will emerge as customers become more curious and educated and drive sellers to become even more creative and innovative. Watch this space…
Hi-Sales.com Blog 