by Francois Muscat | Jan 27, 2017 | Blogging, Social Selling
Research has shown sales professionals active on social media outperform those who are not. Yet as many as 69% of sellers still do not use social selling. Just as technology has irrevocably altered the way we buy, so we need to update he methods we use to sell our products or services. Think of it this way, “To not sell socially in today’s competitive environment is like leaving money on the table and walking away.”
The Value of Social Selling
- Most companies could benefit from shortening the entire sales cycle while also achieving more success, you definitely need to give social selling a go! Buyers today reach a purchasing decision before setting foot out their doors thanks to the internet. Pre-purchase research has never been quicker or easier.
By sharing valuable information and interacting with prospects on social media platforms, your brand earns trust. Potential customers will already have selected you before meeting your sales team.
- Social selling provides insights into your customers’ needs and wants. By closely monitoring what problems prospects encounter, your sales team can identify and target possible leads.
- How often do you make a decision about the purchase of a big-ticket item entirely on your own? More often than not, people tend to weigh in the opinions of those they trust. With online selling, you can inspire confidence in your brand by sharing online reviews. Another way that social media allows you to establish a positive reputation is by enabling almost instant feedback and communication.
- Because social selling is all about engaging and attending to customers and prospects in a meaningful way, relationships are built. Once a trusting connection has been made, buyers will naturally turn to your company when they are ready to buy.
- It is six to seven times more expensive to attract a new customer than to retain an existing one. To maintain the relationship you established with your buyers, you need to keep them engaged with and excited about your brand. To keep them coming back, share special offers and stimulating information on social media networks.
WSIOMS can help you find a Solution to online selling.
For more information on integrating social selling into your existing marketing strategy, please contact the team at WSI OMS today.
by Francois Muscat | Jan 20, 2017 | Blogging, LinkedIn
Just recently, LinkedIn updated its look which may have sparked you to overhaul your own LinkedIn profile.
- How often have you bumped into someone at a networking event, only to hear them say, after introductions have been made, “It is so nice to put a face to the name’. So start with a proper photograph of yourself. Make sure that you look professional in it – wearing appropriate dress, with a distraction-free background, and an approachable facial expression.
- Be thorough when completing your profile. Statistics from LinkedIn reveal that members with 100% complete profiles get 46% more profile page views than those who do not.
- Pay particular attention to your summary section as this is where you truly connect (or not) with others.
- Liberally (but naturally) use relevant keywords throughout your profile to be found by the LinkedIn search algorithm. Include them in your summary, your experience, and your title.
- To boost your credibility as an expert in your industry, publish some content on LinkedIn. Generate interest by uploading PDFs, Slideshare presentations, and videos.
- Join LinkedIn groups to connect with relevant influencers. To avoid being regarded as a stalker, visit and share on a regular basis, and always thank others for their comments.
- Strategise your connections to ensure that they are adding value to your profile and your professional network.
- On the flip side, be wary of sending invites to people that you don’t know well without showing some value as a potential connection.
- Endorsements are quick and easy, but when someone goes to the trouble to write a recommendation, it carries a lot more weight.
- Customise your URL to better identify yourself.
WSIOMS can help you master LinkedIn
If you need to leverage LinkedIn by strutting your stuff with a top notch profile, WSI OMS will write it for you. To find out more, please contact us.
by Francois Muscat | Jan 13, 2017 | Blogging, LinkedIn
If your business is not yet using LinkedIn, why not? Social media marketing has revolutionised the way we do business today. Never before has it been as easy to be a mind-reader when it comes to what your customers are thinking, what they need, what problems they have that your product or service will solve.
What Makes LinkedIn Different from other online platforms?
LinkedIn is perceived as a more conservative, professional platform. This does nothing to detract from its popularity, however. Not only does LinkedIn boast 433 million users, but over 40% of these users check the network every day. A big difference that makes LinkedIn perfect as your primary social media platform is that one in three professionals across the globe has a LinkedIn account; and 49% of key decision makers use LinkedIn for business purposes.
Why should a company have a LinkedIn Business Page
Not only do business people reap the rewards LinkedIn has to offer, but companies themselves too. A business page on LinkedIn increases the benefits on offer – from improved sales to effective recruiting. Having a company presence on LinkedIn is essential.
Promoting Your Business cost effectively with LinkedIn
Probably the most important place to start is to use LinkedIn to share your company’s industry expertise. Grow your audience by regularly posting content such as company updates or useful, thought-provoking articles. Mix it up – from in-house news to thought leadership to helpful expertise – to keep your followers engaged. We do suggest that you also to ask for content suggestions from your readers – it gives you insight into their needs, and nurtures the relationship.
Actively participating in LinkedIn Groups with interests aligned with your business goals allows you to network, exchange ideas, recruit talent, and reinforce your position as an expert in your field. If you have used LinkedIn’s search feature to find groups that area good fit, and come up lacking, consider starting your own group.
WSIOMS can help you master LinkedIn
If you would like to learn more about how to leverage LinkedIn as part of your part of your digital marketing strategy, sign up for the social selling course WSIOMS running on 8 March 2017, in Midrand, Johannesburg. Please contact us for more information.
by Marelise da Silva | Oct 27, 2016 | Blogging
There are three critical things to examine if you’re trying to grow your blog: how to get new visitors to your blog; how you can convert those visitors to subscribers; and how you can get those subscribers to share your content, to attract a new audience. Subscribers are vital to the success of a blog – pouring loads of time into creating fantastic blogs is good, but if not many people are seeing them, you’ll never get the kind of business results you need.
Obviously, you need to post new blogs frequently and consistently, but here are some fresh ideas for attracting news subscribers to your blog.
- Optimise your top performing blog for subscriptions.
Your top blog posts (use your analytics to determine your top performers) gather a lot more traffic than your average post, so optimising them for subscriptions makes a lot of sense. Add a smart CTA to the post, or try a number of tactics and see what works best with your audience.
- Offer an incentive to new subscribers
An eBook, discount or free course when subscribing is a real win – there’s not many people who don’t want something for free. You do, however, need to keep an eye on the engagement rates of your emails, to ensure your offer is bringing in quality subscribers, not just people signing up for the offer, who are not really interested in your content.
- Add an opt-in box to your landing pages
This is an easy way to capture new subscribers, since there is already interest (the person is on your landing page already). A clear subscribe box or button makes it really easy, and if you have a number of landing pages, the benefit is increased.
- Remove distractions and put your CTAs where they will be seen
Side bars on blogs can be a distraction that lessen your chances of subscriptions. Look at your website carefully to determine what could be diverting your audience attention away from the subscriber CTA. It’s a good idea to test conversion rates with and without the side bar, to track to difference. Google recently removed side bar ads to improve user experience. You can also use more than one CTA – one in your blog header which is constant, regardless of which blog or subject your reader is on; and another at the bottom of the post.
- Offer a course
The perceived value of a course is significantly higher than that of an eBook, so offering an email course can be a very effective method of increasing subscribers. Obviously, creating a course from scratch is very time consuming and could be costly, if you have to get outside help. The course needs to be high quality, which means a flawless user experience, great design and actionable content. You can recycle your old content, by cleaning it up and making it more relevant. Once you’ve got it done, you can advertise your course on social media and send an email to subscribers to let them know it’s coming. Adding a ‘limited time’ aspect is also a good way to get fast results.
Getting subscribers is not that difficult, but it does require a strategy and persistence. Sometimes, it goes back to just asking nicely – no one wants to be coerced into subscribing, so don’t bully people into it. Keeping your tone friendly and polite can be the key to gaining a steadily growing, loyal list. For more on blogs and email marketing, contact us. We might have a few more suggestions up our sleeves…
by Marianna Muscat | Sep 6, 2016 | Blogging
Writing and posting regular blogs are an essential part of online communication, something every digital marketer and any business with an online presence knows. Churning out blogs just to get noticed is not really the point though – writing a quality blog that educates and entertains is likely to have a bigger impact. So how do you determine if your blog is good quality? The real value of an article is its ability to resonate with its readers and to achieve this, you can focus on three main areas when reviewing your writing:
- Clarity
How clear is your article? Are you able to communicate your idea simply and crisply, without going off topic halfway through your blog? Unless you’re writing a guide, it’s best to focus your writing on one big idea – the point of blogs is not to drown your audience with facts and figures. Your headline should make a promise of what your article is about – how your audience can benefit from reading your blog. When reviewing your writing, you should aim to cut any text that doesn’t relate to your original idea, or deliver on your headline promise.
- Flow
The body of your blog should take your reader on a journey, from the first sentence that states your objective, to the middle that supports the idea and the ending that gives readers a payoff. If you find yourself veering off the topic, stop – save that idea for your next blog post. A good quality article should have the kind of continuity that makes reading the article effortless and leads the reader to your desired conclusion. Try and keep a logical frame of mind so your message has a steady flow to your payoff.
- Shareability
Probably one of the most important aspects of your blog writing, is to get your content shared. If your readers don’t connect with your writing, they’re unlikely to pass it on. One of the easiest ways to establish a connection, is to share something that elicits emotion – a personal story or an account of how something you did failed miserably – empathy goes a long way with audience resonance.
When writing a blog, it’s important to stay audience-focused. Create content that your readers will engage with and promote your business at the same time. Your readers will appreciate new content, one idea at a time, in an easy-to-read structure that shows them a real benefit at the end.
If you would like to find out more about our copywriting services, or ways to improve your digital marketing and communication, contact us today!
by Francois Muscat | Aug 24, 2016 | Blogging, Content Marketing
Establishing trust with your customers or potential customers is not instantaneous – it takes hard work and continued service and support to win them over. What many businesses don’t realise though, is that your website plays a big part – if visitors to your site have any doubts about your business or its integrity, they’ll bounce right out and never come back. Your content may be engaging and the CTAs compelling, but trust is earned over time and not something you want to forget about.
There are ways to maximise the impression of trustworthiness on your website, starting with the images. Authentic images, rather than stock photos, give your website visitors a closer look at you and your business. Using a professional photographer to take photos of your team, your office and your products is worth the cost (and probably cheaper than using stock photos).
Another way is to ask your customers for feedback that you can use on your website – preferably with their photo, to help drive home the authenticity. Then, look at your content. Visitors to your site probably won’t buy straight away, so try to create content that shows the benefits of your product, rather than a loud sales pitch. Use your blog to answer questions that your customers have and share case studies or feedback that demonstrates how your product helped your other customers.
Use media logos on your site to show where your company has been featured – newspapers, industry journals and radio stations, they all give credibility to your business. If you have collaborated with other companies or have partner agreements, use their logos on your site too – even unknown brands can make an impression.
Another reason visitors to your site may feel nervous, is ambiguity – use microcopy on your site’s various tabs, CTAs and links to make it very clear what’s going to happen when they click on the tab. Knowledge is power and people want to know what they’re getting into when they sign up to your email list, or make a purchase. Keeping the customer informed at every step of the visiting and converting phases of a website visit goes a long way.
If your website lacks the ‘trust’ factor, or if you’re looking to redesign or revamp it, contact us. Our team of designers can help craft a website that reflects you, your brand and what it is you do, in a way that speaks volumes to your visitors.
