We humans have not changed much in hundreds of thousands of years. Technology has disrupted us.
92% of people actively stop seeing any paid marketing. Netflix vs free to air TV.
Yet life goes on. How do we decide who best to vote for, which products and services will best suit our needs, the best place to live, and the best food to buy?
Businesses’ key question is how do we change human behaviour? – How can we influence and sell more?
What’s changing?
Old World: Facebook algorithms did all the hard work. Their targeting and cost to communicate with people with the intent to buy were world-class – and cheap.
New World: Facebook (and other large platforms) face new legislation and regulatory oversight. The results – costs have tripled in the last couple of years as targeting accuracy drops. And it’s only the start.
Globally, the EU and the US lead the way. They aim to control how the platforms deal with people.
- Boost privacy,
- Remove fake news, and
- Laws apply in the digital world as well as the real world.
Businesses choose to either interrupt ( paid advertising) or join the conversations that matter to their buyers ( organic)
The surprise for many businesses is very few paid social advertisements have any
- likes, shares,
- comments,
- zoom calls,
Result – low engagement with their ideal buyers – they sell less.
These include those with 20 and 30, million impressions and page views – no engagement.
This outcome has led to an explosion in community building, capturing first-party data, organic (as opposed to paid) social media. The best practice is a mix of 70% organic and 30% paid.
We now all live in a social selling economy.
Retail Brew reports that shoppers have increasingly higher standards. A new 1,000-person Harris Poll ( no relation) survey commissioned by Google Cloud, found 82% of consumers say they want to buy from brands with values that align with their own.
- (52%) of those surveyed said they want to support sustainable brands,
- 66% seek out eco-friendly businesses
- 55% say they would pay more to shop from them.
- 72% believe that companies and brands overstate their sustainability efforts.
Your potential new clients, buyers, visitors and patients are spending their money with businesses that share their values – their worldview.
What steps will improve how your business can influence and sell more?
- Strengthen your business’s purpose and values to align with your ideal buyers and customers. We call this telling a bigger story than just your products and services.
- Tell your story (strategic narrative) everywhere your buyers are on social – organic social media posts are free.
- Balance the need to sell – product and price campaigns with telling a bigger story.
- Social selling is not carpet-bombing people with your latest campaign.
- WHY – should I only buy from your business rather than your competitors? Perhaps the most difficult sentence – It is critical to nail this.
Hollow businesses – void of empathy, values, and purpose, limited to only talking about their products and services face more difficult futures – every industry in every country is changing.
- Finding the best employees,
- Improving organisational rhythm,
- Building high-performance cultures,
- Finding partnerships, new suppliers, and providers will increasingly reduce your future growth opportunities.
Recently I was in discussions with a US-based business whose capabilities were 10x that of a client. Sharing their capabilities made strategic sense.
As I reached the midpoint, the US-based business said – they would not work with the Australian business.
The reason –
- they did not align with their values.
- There was no budging them.
- The door was firmly shut.
ACCELERATE provides a monthly subscription social media publishing + strategy service for the implementation, optimisation and reporting ensuring success for businesses to launch and manage their social influence and selling – as either outsourced or support service provider.
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
