Social Selling

Three tips: How agencies get more out of their digital marketing campaigns thanks to social selling

The communications consultancy Evernine Group from Munich advises B2B agencies to expand their portfolio to include consulting competencies such as social selling. The Evernine Group’s social selling team has now defined three tips on how digital agencies can effectively develop their customers’ leads.

 

In the current crisis, many companies are finding it difficult to generate new business without trade fairs, events and personal sales meetings. The Munich-based communications consultancy Evernine Group therefore recommends that B2B agencies support their customers in digital lead generation and processing and offer consulting services in the area of social selling.

 

Here are the leads – and now what?

Leads are the goods that are most in demand in the environment of B2B agencies.

 

Accordingly, many agencies offer lead campaigns and are successful through channels such as LinkedIn, Google Ads and XING. But after contact generation, the job is often finished for the agency and the customer is left with loads of questions.

 

Some companies now don’t know how to generate a conversation from these contacts. Without an appropriate social selling concept, the journey ends here for most agencies and the corresponding sales potential is lost.

 

The consulting firm Evernine Group knows this situation only too well from many agencies and has therefore defined three tips on how B2B agencies can include social selling in their offer as an additional consulting service.

 

👉 1. Differentiation into different lead types

 

Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL), also known as Content Syndicated Leads, are typically generated most often by B2B agencies. For this purpose, the agencies offer a “honeypot”, for example a whitepaper or infographic on a landing page via a contact form for download. After the agencies have generated the MQL, however, the work often comes to an end. In order to position themselves in the consulting environment, however, it is essential that those responsible are familiar with the following two lead types and understand how they can be developed further.

 

Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) are contacts who have had different points of contact with the company over a longer period of time and who have, for example, downloaded several contents. In addition, the sales team has classified them as potential customers based on their position and industry.

 


SEL (Social Engagement Leads):
Contacts who have shown interest and liking for the company via social media (likes, comments, etc.).

MQL (Marketing Qualified Leads):
Marketing-ready contacts who can be contacted within the scope of marketing campaigns in compliance with GDPR.

SQL (Sales Qualified Leads):
Sales-ready contacts who have expressed a deeper interest.


 

The Evernine Group also advises to include another lead type: The Social Engaged Lead. So-called SELs have, for example, interacted and commented on postings of the campaign or have reacted to InMails. The following tips show how these can be processed.

 

👉 2. Manual processing of the leads

 

Agencies should not only generate the leads, they should either support the customers in processing them or even provide the processing for the companies. The above-mentioned social engaged leads can, for example, be targeted and further developed through a variety of social selling measures.

 

👉 3. Support through marketing automation

 

In addition to manual processing, get marketing automation tools such as HubSpot on board. Such tools help you, for example, to play automated e-mail campaigns out to marketing qualified leads, to target them, to nurture them and to set up a professional scoring model.

 

“A lot of potential is lost in social selling”

Hannes Beierlein
Hannes Beierlein, CCO & Founder Evernine Group.

Hannes Beierlein, CCO and co-founder of the Evernine Group, advises numerous clients with his social selling unit and also offers workshops for agencies to actively take the topic into their own hands. Beierlein says: “The topic of social business and especially social selling is currently still neglected in many digital agencies. But there are great opportunities waiting here, because the development of digital sales channels is more important than ever, especially in the current crisis”.

 

Interested agencies and companies can find more information about social selling on the Evernine website sales-navigator.de.

 

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