Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing

Using Social Media to Increase Sales

Pat Mason, Simple Sales

The following three-step process will help you decide how to use social technologies to increase sales. Selling today is less about the “buyer/seller” relationship, and more about connections in your broader community such as your staff, suppliers, clients, and so on.

Before you start, ask yourself:

1. Who is in my community?

2. Can they participate online?

3. Are resources available to create and support my community over the long term?

If you can answer yes to these questions you are ready to begin. The process has three steps.

Step 1:

Define your community into two categories.

Core - members you need to survive

a. You

b. Staff

c. Customers

d. Suppliers

e. ?

New - members you need to thrive

a. New customers

b. Specialized resources/experts

c. Critics/product reviews/press

d. ?

Step 2:

Define how each member gives/gets value from each other today, and how they could give/get value once connected via the internet.

You may want to start with Core members, and add New later. To keep things simple, I have only considered Core clients for now.

My Community

Step 3:

Now think about your goals. Sales strategies support organizational goals so think about yours; new customer, new products, or what?

For this example let’s say you sell software, have 300 clients and your goal is to increase professional services fees.

Look back a the My Community table. Is it consistent with your overall goals? Have you included people that generate professional service fees? If not, add them and look at how they interact with other members of your community. How could they exchange value to make you money?

Here are some suggestions I would make

1. Connect consultants to customers - Engourage consultants to blob about projects, problems, and solutions. Client will be quick to call if they spot ideas that could work for them.

2. Connect customers to each other - Encourage cilents to share stories, guest post, and comment.

3. Connect yourself - Play a central role. Maintain the blog and make sure everyone is participating. Combe the content for ideas on how to increase professional service revenue. Is there a solution to a problem you can standardize, is a customer expanding, have you asked happy clients for referrals and so on.

Sales 2.0 can be daunting. If you don’t have time to do a comprehensive strategy, tackle it in bite size pieces. Keep it simple, use standard tools and remember that you can always adjust course along the way.

Patrick Mason is the principal and owner of Simple Sales, a venture that is all about making sales and sales consulting better. Way better. Simple Sales looks to improve our clients’ sales results quickly, effectively and in lasting and meaningful ways. We do this by drawing on our experience in sales, sales methodology, and where appropriate the focused application of technology to capture opportunities and solve problems.

Related Topics: Advertising, Business, Computers, Entrepreneurship, Internet, Marketing, Sales, Technology    No Comments    

Using Social Networking to Grow your Business

Dr. Mike Okouchi

By now you’ve probably heard of sites such as MySpace, Facebook or YouTube, but are you using these tools to grow your small business? In this article I’ll give you some tips on how you can position yourself as an expert within your business niche using social networking tools.

You know that what you offer is spectacular, but if other people don’t know that, you’re going to have a really difficult time growing your business. Social networking platforms such as Facebook.com and Twitter.com allow you to form relationships with people instantaneously. In social networking your connection with people is permission based and you establish your global presence. What other form of advertising can do that and for free? The advantage you have with social media marketing over traditional marketing is that your potential customer gets to know who you are and you begin to build trust. People buy from those they trust.

Here are some basic tips to help you get started using this type of new media:

1. Set up a Facebook profile. Go to Facebook to set up your free profile. A good tip to get you started is to make sure you upload a picture of yourself. Fill in all the basic information about yourself and try to make it as personal as you can. Let others get to know the real you. As you get used to using your account we’ll go over the different applications you add to spice up your profile.

2. Set up a Twitter Account. Go to Twitter.com and set up your free profile. Twitter is a micro-blogging platform where you can send out short messages (140 characters max) to your followers. When you first set up you’ll want to start following as many people as you can to jump into the community. You’ll also want to put out meaningful posts every now and then.

3. Set up a blog. Go to wordpress.com or blogger.com (both are free) to set up your blog. This is where your expertise will really shine. A blog allows you to write short articles on topics pertinent to your customer base. Remember to write articles that have useful content, which make you look like the expert in your industry.

In my next article, I’ll show you how to integrate these tools and begin to use it to your advantage. Till next time, start setting up your accounts and make your presence known in the social networking realm.

Dr. Mike Okouchi is a Doctor of Chiropractic who took his practice from a start up to a well established business in less than 2 years with zero paid advertisements. His office is located in Irvine, CA. At only 28 years of age, Dr. Okouchi has become an avid student of entrepreneurship and strives to help other people build their businesses. Dr. Okouchi states “I love to see good people win especially when they’ve put it all on the line by starting their own business.” You can email him at mike@akdocmike.com. Visit his health blog at www.akdocmike.com or his clinic’s website www.velocitywellnesscenter.com.

Related Topics: Advertising, Business, Entrepreneurship, Internet    No Comments