Not everyone needs it but everyone wants to know about it. I am talking about brand owners. They are the curious sailors. They don’t promise they’ll visit your land. To put it straight, brand owners who have been active with traditional advertising are now opening their marketing eyes to social media. But are they buying the idea? Not, exactly. Why? We don’t sell it well.
So, how to sell social media marketing services?
- Get down to the basics of marketing first. Don’t immediately start talking all about digital and its siblings, because quite a few would not be well-acquainted with it. Start with basic marketing and advertising talk, then educate them and make understand the logic. For example, many times, I make brand managers imagine a Facebook community as a large hall with thousands of people who want to hear and interact.
- Don’t overpromise. Like you would not do it with any kind of service, do not overpromise for social media marketing, simply because the brand might be new on the medium. It’s always nice to leave the client a bit unwanted.
- Sell it as a marketing service, not sales (lead generation). That’s a major clash because many small-sized business owners, start-ups and shoestring-budget brands measure the impact by returns on investment. Every business is entitled to do so, but if you are spending in social space, you are primarily looking at ‘marketing’, not ‘sales’. It is important to set the expectations right in the beginning.
- List the benefits. Most marketers might look at social media marketing as something that they want to consider. When making a presentation it is always great to list down the benefits such as outreach, engagement, etc
- Crunch the numbers. Digital marketing is defined by numbers. Put the numbers in the table that matters.
- Roadmap with customized strategy. Custom-make a strategy for the brand owner. Let him know what exactly you have thought for his brand. When a marketer senses the hard work in the pitch, it makes a strong emotion and psychological impact.
Happy Selling!