This is completely crazy

Not sure if you heard about this yet…

Social Media Examiner conducted its annual survey of 3,000 companies on their use and results from social media marketing and the results found are horrifying, yet not surprising.

While 86% of marketers indicate that social media is important for their business, 89% said “Increased exposure” was their number one benefit and only 37% of marketers think that their Facebook efforts are effective. (Tweet This!)

Seriously.

And, this is even worse when you realize that Social Media Examiner is all about social media so those who will engage in a survey about it are going to be your more savvy digital marketers.

How this way of thinking is dead wrong

But here’s the thing…anyone who either doesn’t know if their marketing is working and/or thinks that the focus should be awareness building and not revenue generation could make some small but significant tweaks to their efforts and drive huge results.

(The good news from my company is that there is an endless supply of possible customers who would benefit from my firm’s help.  We could work with any of these folks and in a matter of 24 hours, show them how to stop throwing their money away.)

Over the course of the next few weeks, I will share some basic direct response principles inspired by the teachings of Mr. Dan Kennedy and how to apply them to social media to put yourself in that tiny minority of successful marketers who utilize their time and money to produce results.

How to Drive Sales on Social Media Principle #1:  There will ALWAYS be an OFFER or OFFERS. (Tweet this!)

In social media, you never want to come across as the used car salesman pouncing on his next kill, but you do need to ensure that you are giving your prospects a consistent opportunity to connect and do business with you.  If you don’t, you will not realize a return of your marketing dollars and staff resources spent online.  (GM is king of this…they did nothing to give an effective call to action and then declared social media advertising to be a waste of their time and money.  They are back on now, by the way.)

Types of Offers

a. Lead generation:  An incentive for your recipient to provide contact information.  This is done through offering something of inherent value that is so good your recipient would pay for it…except they won’t because you will be giving it away for free. This can include any incentive such as…

• A report/white paper/guide
• Chapter of your book
• E-book
• Video
• Gift certificate
• Sample
• Webinar
• Video training series
• Ticket to a live event

b. Sale:  it IS possible to sell directly to cold traffic on social media. We do it every day for many of our clients using Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, but here are a few key things to remember…

There should be something special about your offer…such as….

• It is being sold there first
• It is being sold for less money
• It starts with a free trial
• It comes with bonuses

Or at least it is positioned as though it is something special.  If in contrast, you sell the exact same thing on social media as you do everywhere else for the exact same price, then you are most likely not going to realize great results.  Social media is a cocktail party, not a shopping mall, and the only way to get people to pay attention to something being sold is to make sure it is a really good deal.  Do that and EVERYONE pays attention and wants in first. (Tweet This!)

Examples of offers our clients are running effectively on social media:

1. Ron LeGrand offers his Wholesale Houses Course for $1 and includes a free trial of his Gold Club (details at tinyurl.com/wholesalehouses)

2. Gardner’s Mattress and More offers a buyer’s guide to purchasing mattresses. (Details at https://gardners.leadpages.net/gardners-book-io-fb/)

3. Staub & Associates offers one complimentary sales training class  (Details at http://www.getano.sandler.com/)

What’s your main offer or offers you are strategically positioning as the starting point for your customers? Are you testing it? Is it working?

Comment below with a link to your offer. I’d love to see what you are doing and even help get you more traffic to your page.

Best,
Kim