Potential new buyers are awash in good, evidence-based, highly credible global and local information.
There is no lack of what to do – to solve a problem – on any subject.
Yet changes both personal and business-wide are often hard work.
The opportunity is to help decision-makers make better sense of the changes in the world at both a macro and micro level.
Gartner describes this as – “There is a lot of information – let me help you make sense of it – and I (David) would add – in a more human way.
Thought leadership in an increasingly complex and noisy world is a critical magnet for potential new buyers.
The elephant graphic is a great metaphor. Depending on your role or level of decision making – you see a different view of the problems and potential solutions.
The ability to be a wise sage, a guiding hand, in difficult and complex issues is a sought after role.
Marketing and Sales are one example of complexity.
The macro – the global view:
- significant privacy legislation now and in the future
- Apple and Google planned increases in privacy settings – both now and shortly.
- 92% of buyers now actively seek not to see any paid advertising. When did you watch a commercial, free to air TV last?
Micro-level – it costs more to find more new buyers – and the targeting is less effective.
The standard answer over the last decade has been – to increase your paid advertising – more Facebook, Instagram, Google paid will deliver more revenue?
Let’s look deeper at what the data says.
The following two slides data is first-party from USA eCommerce agency – www.within.co
They manage $500MM in media spending for fast-growing VC-backed startups and Fortune 100 companies. Their partners collectively drive over $5B in eCommerce revenue. Their clients – daily metrics: 100k sessions, 1900 transactions, $350k in revenue – just for clarity – daily results.
This slide contains the following information:
- the timeframe is one year – 28/3/2022 to 28/3/2021
- All business verticals (includes food, clothing, native and omnichannel retailers.)
What does it report –
- It doesn’t matter how much extra you spend on Google and Facebook – the spending increase barely moves revenue.
- From May to July – significant lift in Google and Facebook spending – plus 150% to 200% lifts. But no uplift in revenues.
- In the first half of the year, every business thought they could lift revenue with significant overspending. By November 2021 the market recognises overspending will no longer work.
This slide is just the food and beverage retailers. The green line is Google spend. Even a 1000% lift in Google advertising barely made any revenue change.
Let’s unpack this further.
Sales – cold calling, SMS, phone calls, messages, cold emails, 21 day-sequenced email chains – no longer have a positive ROI.
Advertising – the days of cheap digital advertising with high target accuracy have crumbled. Targeting accuracy is falling – advertising costs are rising – substantially.
Social media spamming – cold requests from salespeople on Linkedln and other platforms to connect – is cold calling. It’s not profitable. It is also not social selling.
Your customer data – it’s increasingly important to build your data bank of zero-party data.
Attribution software – there are many detailed reports on what works and what doesn’t – Google analytics and many other brands. The problem is many of these reports are inconsistent. Finding the truth is fraught. Understanding attribution allows for the optimisation of advertising spending.
Yet every business wants and needs to grow more new clients, customers, visitors, buyers. No growth eventually means – no business.
How do they achieve this now?
The takeaways –
- Accept that people’s BS detector is now red-hot.
- Critical to tell a bigger story than just your products and services. (yes, it’s called content creation) This differentiates and positions your business for more growth.
- Place your ideal buyers at the centre of the story explaining how there is an old world and new world – and your business has the keys to the new world.
- Remove vision and mission and replace the strategy development with strategic narrative and pitch – the board ( and your future clients) will love it!
- Recognise and begin your shift from paid advertising to organic on social media channels. All organic posts are free. You only pay for the number of posts per month and any content creation costs.
- Recognise that building a community around your business with thought leadership is an investment. What do you talk about? That falls from your strategic narrative.
There are a lot more on optimisation – landing pages, user experience, ad creatives – but these are tactical issues. I wanted to get your focus on the strategy first.
PS – in my experience the two highest-performing channels today are
- Mobility data – you win your competitor’s customers as they leave their offices, shops. Their physical location triggers campaign offers. It has a very high ROI.
- The Social Selling methodology is the solution. BUT like everything – there are many nuances – just spamming will not work.
We now Live in a Social Selling Economy.
Accelerate provides a subscription social media publishing + strategy service to
- lift influence and social selling
- that schedules and distributes
- the most engaging content across all top five social media platforms every day.
Increasing your share of voice and engagement – maximises influence, revenue and market dominance.
The average results are
- 2x more organic posts,
- 144x more engagement with your future buyers,
- 3x faster sales cycles,
- 2x lift in conversions for
- 1/2 the price of our competitors.
- Delivering influence, revenue and market dominance.
All for one low monthly price includes
- monthly strategy sessions
- professional content generation – video and written
Immediate results.
If you have read this far, thank you for your attention. It means a lot. I hope this helped you even a little bit in better making sense of this topic. If so, please share it with a friend who might also benefit from it.
Thanks for reading,
David
