Social Media Marketing and Successful Seminar Selling – Part 4
With social media becoming more and more popular among businesses as a way to market their company, inform others of their services and have an on-line presence; as well as a source for research, it is no wonder that the number of sites, and organising tools to manage those sites, are becoming huge in number and changing almost on a daily basis.
Philip Calvert, a Social Media ‘expert speaker’ who owns and runs a thriving Social Networking site gave business leaders at a past MD2MD meeting some valuable tips and advice on how to use these sites to build your reputation, market seminars or events and cement relationships.
Social Media is live marketing. Your message is instantaneous, unlike a written communication that has been reviewed and amended a few times before being sent. Live marketing is powerful as it gives the opportunity for others to respond immediately for clarification, which results in opening up channels of communication to really get across a unique selling point. However, a word of caution, social networking is a way of building a reputation – one wrong tweet and that reputation can be lost.
Tuppaware were one of the first to successfully implement a live marketing campaign. They sold plastic containers, much like any other, except the difference with theirs was the sealing lid.
Selling the containers on a shelf next to other plastic storage containers made it difficult to really get across the benefits of this unique feature and so they took the products to people’s houses to show and explain. Sales rocketed!
Philip advised the group social networking would only work if you were committed and consistent. Think about how you would like others to perceive you. He recommended your profile on networking sites should be 70-80% about your business and 20-30% about you personally; your hobbies, your family etc. People like to know the human side of who they are networking with. This is also relevant to which photograph you use, a relaxed and informal picture is much more appealing (but not too informal!).
Social media is not really the platform to try to sell to others. It is more about informing, communicating, sharing and cementing relationships. However, every now and then is acceptable. If you have an event or seminar coming up, let people know about it. You have built up a reputation, it is a cost-effective way of letting people know and you may get referrals.
All of the tips and advice for social media marketing of seminars will be in Philip Calvert’s updated version of his book “Successful seminar selling”.
Written by Bob Bradley, founder of MD2MD.