Every time you post a piece of content that no one engages with (e.g. product content usually gets very low engagement), the social media platform’s algorithm learns that users don’t like your content.

As a result, the algorithm will show your next post to less people, so your opportunities for engagement have now decreased.
Thus, your 2nd post will most likely get less engagement than your 1st post.

The algorithm will now show your 3rd post to even LESS people, which will further decrease your opportunities for engagement.
And this keeps going and going in vicious downward spiral, so that posts that used to get 1,000s of views, now get 100s of views (or less)!

Unfortunately, I’ve seen many companies go down this path by consistently posting product-based content. You can see their engagement dramatically decrease quickly and then you just don’t see their posts at all anymore because the algorithm has learned not to show it to you.


So, how do you avoid this? Post content that will add value to your target audience!


Solve their pain points, give free tips and content and information they can’t get elsewhere. When you do talk about your company, talk about DEI initiatives or things you are doing to help local communities.

The focus your content should be about THEM, your target audience, and what will add value to their lives.

If you do that, you will get more views and engagement, and generate more awareness and more business opportunities as a result.

Recently, LinkedIn asked me (since “you’ve been posting some great stuff on LinkedIn” – wow, pretty cool!) what trends I see for 2019.

My answer: MORE

Strategy-level:

MORE mobile, digital, social and more data-driven and customer-centric decision-making and experimentation with innovations like AI and AR.

Tactics:

MORE social selling. I get so many spam calls, I don’t budge when my phone rings now, and I get so much spam email that I only view my Focused folder in Outlook. Social media will go from a “nice to have” to a “must have” for sales + business development.

MORE creativity with advertising. TV and traditional display ads get less eyeballs by the second. Companies will get more and more creative with advertising. For example:

• “In-game” TV ads – so you can’t DVR past them – that appear during sporting events today. These will become more prevalent,
• Ads on voice technology like Alexa – or even sponsored results, which gets dicey because you wouldn’t know if it’s the “best” answer or a sponsored answer
• “Anti-beacons” like Burger King’s new Whopper campaign. I’ve never understood why mall stores don’t have anti-beacons set up for their competitors’ stores. If I’m running Gap, I’m sending someone an offer every time they walk into H&M.
• Ads inside of video games – Roblox already does this. I saw an Aquaman movie ad on the wall of a building inside my son’s Xbox game recently. Integrated video game advertising!
• As automatic cars start to take off, how long will it be before we start seeing ads on our windshields?

MORE automation, and not always in a good way. Everyone wants to automate everything in marketing and sales, but many companies lack processes to support the automation, so they end up spamming the heck out of people, or they never follow-up outside of their automated sends, and thus, miss opportunities.

MORE video. As video comprises more and more of the internet’s content, everyone will be doing video in 2019. Facebook and LinkedIn already favor video over all other content. Those that are reluctant to do video in 2018, will be forced to do it in 2019 to sustain their current reach.

This will be an exciting year with a lot of big leaps forward in marketing in sales. It will be fun to watch it all unfold!

Words matter. For example, “financial advisor” is searched for 10x more than “financial professional.”) When your team writes LinkedIn profiles, websites and sales materials, use words your prospects typically use. This will allow you to get found and be more easily understood.

Other surprising results:

• “Sales” 70x more than “business development” – no one wants to say they do sales, but you are much more likely to be found if you do
• “Innovation” 2x more than “innovative” – craft your content to use that tense instead
• “Strategy” 50% more than “strategies”
• “Online” 10x more searches than “digital” – an oldie, but a goodie
• “Digital marketing” 10x more searches than “online marketing” – but not when it comes to marketing
• “SEM” 20x more than “search engine marketing” – abbreviate this one
• “SEO” 15% more than “search engine optimization” – this one doesn’t matter at much
• “Social media” 80x more than “social networks” – it may not be grammatically correct at times, but using “social media” will get you found more
• “Facebook” 80x more than “social media” – if you are talking about Facebook, say “Facebook”

Want to run some searches on your own? Check our Google Trends (https://trends.google.com) to do comparisons between 2 or more words or phrases.

Early in my career, my boss called me into his office first thing on Monday morning. As anyone who has worked in a corporate role before knows, that’s not a good sign. As soon as I sat down, he blurted out “I looked at the numbers, and you’re messing up the online advertising campaigns, you need to fix it.”

I knew I had optimized the heck out of the display advertising campaigns, and every month, performance was increasing, so I asked to see which report he was viewing.

He showed me a report that tracked campaign results for two similar products (we’ll call them Product A and Product B).

The report tracked results down to the lead level. He said, “The Product A campaign received a lot more clicks and leads, but you are giving 5x the impressions to the Product B campaign. We need to shut the Product B campaign down, and move all our impressions to the Product A campaign immediately.”

So, I told him I’d be right back. I went to my desk to get the report that tracked results all the way down to profitability.

That report showed that at the end of the customer journey, even though the Product A campaign received far more clicks and leads, the company closed about the same number of sales from both the Product A and Product B campaigns. Furthermore, the company’s profit margin on Product B was 5x higher than Product A.

My boss looked at the report, thought for a second, and proclaimed “WE NEED TO SHUT DOWN THE PRODUCT A CAMPAIGN, AND ONLY RUN THE PRODUCT B CAMPAIGN!!”

I smiled and said, “just let me handle it.” And to his credit, he did.

So, how could this hour-long, semi-tense back and forth on a Monday morning have been prevented? To solve the problem, you have to diagnose the problem.

There were 2 problems here:

Problem #1:

My boss wasn’t looking at the full data picture. I’ve always told clients that I can get you a high click-through rate, for example, if that’s all you care about. I can get my team to design a “funny cat video” meets “shoot the zombie ad” that will get boat loads of clicks. But are those clicks going to convert to leads and ultimately to sales? Absolutely not.

Which is why having that end-to-end data picture was so incredibly important.

Now, let’s apply this thinking to social media. How do you measure the success of your social media efforts?

If you answered awareness or engagement, that’s not necessarily bad (it’s better than nothing!). However, at some point, senior management is going to ask “what is the value of our social media efforts?” If you only track to the awareness or engagement level, then how do you effectively answer that question? How do you know if social media is somewhere your marketing and sales teams should spend their time?

Well, let’s look at your non-social media sales and marketing efforts. How do you measure the success of those efforts? Leads? Revenue? Net income? WHICHEVER OF THOSE METRICS YOU USE ARE THE SAME METRICS YOU NEED TO USE TO TRACK YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA EFFORTS!

And the closer you get to the end of the journey, the better idea you’ll have as to the true success of your efforts (and the value to the organization).

Now, I know what some of you are thinking – that’s great for advertising and email, but it’s much harder to do for social, and besides we SHOULDN’T do that right? Social is different. It’s not a sales and marketing channel.

Most of us treat social like this magical purple pegasus that flies around spreading candy and rainbows everywhere – it doesn’t live by the rules of our other marketing and sales channels.

But we need to change that. We need to treat social like any other channel because:

Senior management measures social media success the same way as any other sales and marketing channel

Senior management wants to know how many sales our LinkedIn efforts are generating, or how many leads our Facebook campaign creates. That’s their job. They are running a business. A business needs to smartly spend money on things that generate profitable business.

Thus, you HAVE to measure your social media efforts in the same way you measure your other sales and marketing efforts.

This apples-to-apples measurement approach will help the two biggest problems that most social media teams face:

1. Lack of budget
2. Lack of resources

Apples-to-apples measurement solves these problems because it levels the playing field.

If you can compare display advertising campaigns to Twitter campaigns using the same metrics, you can show which is providing more value to the organization. If you can compare LinkedIn messaging to cold calls using the same metrics, you’ll know exactly with which of the two your sales team should spend their time (hint: it’s LinkedIn).

If you can prove social media is providing more value using the same metrics, then suddenly, the skies part, the sun comes out, cherubs start singing, and you will get the budget and resources you need. It may not be super-easy to track social like other channels, but it’s 100% worth it!

Problem #2:

My boss didn’t know the end-to-end results that we had. That was my fault. I wasn’t doing a good enough job socializing the data. Sure, I sent a report out every week via email, and you could argue that he should have been reading it, but VPs/SVPs are very busy people.

Sometimes, that extra step to open the document is too daunting of a task. It’s easy to say “I’ll look at it later,” and close the email.

So, proactive communication is key. If you have great numbers – tell EVERYONE, and ESPECIALLY your boss. In your 1/1s, talk about the numbers, how they are increasing, and what a great job the team is doing. How else will he/she know?

When you send out reports, include an executive summary (2-3 bulletpoints maximum) at the top of the email, so if they don’t have time to look at your incredibly detailed report, they get the high-level story. Senior leadership has zero time in the day. Make it easy for them.

This is also an effective way to influence change at an organization (it’s hard to argue with numbers). If you go to your sales managers, and say they need to spend as much time on LinkedIn as they do on the phone, you will be kindly escorted out of their office. If you show that you get 5x the meeting rate, for example, using social selling as compared to cold calling, NOW you’ve got those sales managers’ ears.

Summary

End-to-end measurement and apples-to-apples comparisons take the guesswork out of your social media efforts. They will tell you EXACTLY which channels, campaigns and content are most valuable to the business and the client alike, and it is imperative that you measure your social media efforts as close to the end of the purchase journey as possible to determine the bottom-line value.

About the author

Robert Knop is Founder and CEO of Assist You Today, helping companies GAIN + RETAIN clients using digital strategy and social media. He’s a proud member of the Wave3 network of consultants, and always happy to talk strategy, digital and social selling. To learn more about how to evolve your marketing and sales approaches for the digital age, reach out to Robert.

Photo: Kirinohana

Recently, I spoke with a friend of mine who is an insurance salesman. He predominately sells life insurance and property and casualty insurance. When we talked at a local bar, he confided in me that for the first time since the financial crisis in 2008, he is not going to hit his sales goal.

He talked about how he has a solid client base. However, every year he loses life clients to lapses and old age, or property and casualty customers that change policies based on $5/month difference.

In the past, he has always been able to replace this yearly runoff. However, this year, he’s had trouble replacing these customers. He complained about his inability to get prospects to talk with him.

“No one picks up the phone when I call, and no one ever calls me back.” He said. “When I email people, they rarely write me back – even if I’ve been referred to them by someone we both know!” He lamented.

After a couple of beers, he said “I don’t understand – I’m doing what I’ve always done.”

“That’s the problem,” I interjected “you’re doing things the way you’ve always done them.”

I’m writing this piece because my friend isn’t the only one having troubles making his sales numbers this year. I’ve been hearing this same story a lot in the past few months.

So what’s the solution? You have to modernize your sales toolbox.

Here’s how to do it:

1)     Have a strategy. Many individuals (and even some companies) don’t have a strategic plan for sales. They just target people in their territory that they get from a list they bought, a tool their company uses, or folks they get as referrals. Are these the RIGHT people to target? Maybe … maybe not. The product you’re selling may not be a fit depending on what life stage the person is in currently.

Here’s a quick way to create a strategy and go to market plan:

• First, define who your ideal customer is – who typically buys your products? Who is your product designed for?
• Next, segment your customers into different groups based on different behaviors like what type of products they typically purchase or where they are in the purchase journey.
• Then, find where they live and breathe and go there with messages that are tailored to their needs via channels where they spend their time. For example, if your target audience is recent college grads, are you going to more successful with direct mail or Snapchat? (Hint: You better start learning how to use Snapchat!)

2)     Remove cold calling and blast email from your toolbox. Notice I didn’t say remove calling and email. It’s the “cold” and “blast” adjectives that are the problem. You need to do research on your prospects before reaching out to them.

These two acquisition methods have declining in value for years, and a recent study by Baylor University showed that cold calling results in a meeting about 1% of the time. I read an article last week that touted the “success” a cold caller had by calling 1,250 people to get 18 meetings. That’s a 0.01% meeting rate!

3)     Add social media to your toolbox.  I get over a 50% meeting rate for some my clients using social media and social selling. Thus, at that rate, they have to reach out to 30 people on LinkedIn to get those same 18 meetings that the cold caller generated (and without annoying and alienating 1,232 other people to do it)!

Social media is also great for getting signals such as buying a home, birth of a child, getting married and switching jobs. These are big pivot points from a needs perspective, and you can get notified when your current and prospective customers hit one of these milestones.

4)     Personalize your outreach. In today’s world, it’s all about the customer experience. Everyone has bought from Amazon or Zappos or has used an American Express credit card or flown on Southwest Airlines. They know what great, personalized customer service looks like.

When you reach out to a customer via phone, email, social media or even by sky writing, if it’s the same generic message, you’ve lost most of them before you’ve started. Go to LinkedIn. Go to Twitter. Go to Facebook. You can find out an enormous amount information on a potential client, and it’s all free.

Use this information to tailor your message to that person. If you can’t think of a problem your prospect has that your product solves, then maybe you shouldn’t reach out to them.

5)     Tailor your message to the medium. Not only personalize the message to the individual, but to where it will be read as well. You wouldn’t use the same words in an email as you would in a face-to-face conversation. However, many business just cut and paste their direct mail pieces email into social media. Don’t be surprised when those messages don’t work! Direct mail and social media readers are different audiences, so the voice, tone and content need to be adjusted accordingly.

In addition, most emails and social media posts are now read on a mobile device, so when you are crafting your message, make sure it is in a short, easily-readable format. Tip: send emails and phone messages (and blog posts too if you are daring!) to your phone before you send them. Do you have to scroll and scroll and scroll to read it? Would a prospect actually scroll that much in an email from a stranger?

Conclusion

Add these tips to your toolbox, and you’ll be well on your way to hitting your sales goal for next year. Remember, you are not reinventing the wheel, you’re just moving the race track.

(Note: I’m happy to say that my friend has enrolled in some training that his company offers to help learn modern selling tools. He’s a great salesman so I’m confident he’ll hit his numbers next year.)

About the author

Robert Knop is Founder and CEO of Assist You Today, a company dedicated to helping organizations accelerate new customer acquisition and increase client retention using digital strategy and social media. He’s a proud member of the Wave3 network of consultants, and always happy to talk strategy, digital and social selling. To learn more about how to evolve your marketing and sales approaches for the digital age, please fill out the form below:

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Photo: Tara Hunt