Feedback from the Social Selling Forum

Social Selling Forum Geneva 2020: Online Edition!

This year, the Webmecanik team attended some keynotes from #SocialSellingForum Geneva. Organized by Loïc Simon and featuring more than 20 speakers over two days, this 100% digital edition covered many key topics in today’s marketing, notably influencer marketing and marketing automation!

Increasingly, people are at the heart of marketing, and what better than social media to reach people? François-Xavier Magnin & Loic Simon remind us of the challenges and best practices for deploying social selling within a company. It is necessary to involve the whole team on social networks, by offering them, for example, training on the proper use of the different social networks.

Indeed, a company’s image now goes through social networks. Everyone therefore has a role in carrying their own professional image and that of their company. This image has a real commercial impact and requires particular attention.

More than ever, digital relationships are at the heart of the trend and building your network is a priority. The company’s role is also to support those who are less familiar with social networks, notably by providing relevant content. As we will see later, influencer marketing is also at the heart of concerns…

Influencer marketing

A key topic of Social Selling, influencer marketing is booming with the massive use of social networks. How can these techniques, not so new, be put to work for your B2B business?

Influencer marketing on social networks: Social networks are the core business of influencers. It is now common practice to transpose the codes of Lifestyle Instagrammers to B2B markets on LinkedIn. The key is to tell your story, based on a real and authentic experience, as Dan Noel points out, to capture attention and convey your knowledge, your opinion through stories.

How does influencer marketing translate within a company? As we mentioned earlier, what gives a brand its personality are the people who make it up. Dan Noel explains that a good way to do storytelling in a company is to shine a light on the people and culture of the company.

“Make your employees ambassadors for your brand on social media” proclaims Stéphane Couleaud, founder and president of Webmecanik.

Using external influencers for B2B companies: Just as in B2C, why not call on influencers to promote your B2B company? Endorsement (recommendation) techniques and engaging opinion leaders are interesting levers for promoting your company and can be fully transposed to a social network such as LinkedIn.

A topic hosted by Laurence Zaied with the expertise of Philippe Deliège, Jean-Christian Rivet, John Elbing and Dan Noel.

Storytelling

As we saw earlier, whether you are a company or an influencer, storytelling is at the heart of editorial strategies for engaging your audience. John Elbing highlights the fact that your prospects do not understand your business. The solution would be to take their point of view into account and tell their story.

Building your storytelling scenario in 7 steps:

The character (your customer): has a concrete aspiration, a goal
A problem: no problem, no story. Here, it is important to show that you understand your customers’ issues.
Meeting a guide: As a company, we are a guide who enables the main character to become the hero.
The keys to success: The guide gives the hero a plan so that they can achieve their potential. Offer a simple plan in a maximum of 3 steps.
Call to action: Encourage your customer to take action, engage them in the process to show that you are convinced of your usefulness.
Project success : Show your customers how much better their lives will be thanks to your collaboration.
Project failure if they do not follow your plan.

Stories are based on formulas (there are only 7 stories in the world) and you are not required to follow all the steps. The important thing is to be clear and empathetic so as not to lose your audience.

And what about marketing automation in all this ? As we have seen, H2H (Human to Human), emotion, and relationships are essential for selling today. We are no longer just looking for a product; we are interested in the people we work with and the values of the companies we collaborate with.

So how do you integrate communication automation? Stéphane Couleaud and Gabor Markus came to discuss this question. In fact, this tool serves your human relationships.

First of all, because it makes it possible to adapt to each person’s actions. With marketing automation, you no longer send the same message; instead, you adapt to the requests and actions of each prospect. Thus, gone are the incessant and impersonal emails!

Moreover, you identify the needs of your customers or prospects more easily by noticing risky behaviors. At that moment, it is important for humans to take over. And for that, it is necessary that your teams have the time to take back control. By automating certain practices, you free up time to invest in high-quality exchanges, with mature and qualified leads.

This digital edition of #SocialSellingForum Geneva is a real success! We enjoyed high-quality conferences, paced by very professional masters of ceremony and debates led by the audience. Social selling is a very broad topic, constantly evolving, and the exchanges were very enriching. Find #SocialSellingForum in Grenoble on June 26, still online.