The Futurist: It’s all about the #… and social selling

How are we going to engage our customers or employees? What must we do to improve brand recall? Which platform should we utilise to communicate our successful projects?

Those are just some of the many burning questions that pop up in my mind these days as I am on my way to work. And I am sure this applies to almost every one of us marketing and communication professionals. We are always on the lookout for the next big thing. We are always on the hunt for what’s around the corner, and it seems like the answer has always been right in front of us … on our phones.

I’m talking about #. Yes, that symbol at the bottom right hand corner of your smartphone. It is commonly known as the hashtag now and it amazes me at how the # phenomenon has taken over the world by storm. We now see hashtags as the first place to find information on the latest news and events on a global scale. Be it on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, WeChat, they are everywhere.

The availability and high take-up rates of mobile phones have also caused this craze to escalate. According to social media agency We Are Social, mobile social is also the hottest digital trend in Asia and the Pacific at the moment, with the number of people in the region accessing social media from mobile devices jumping an impressive 32% in the past year, to reach 900 million, which is almost three times the population size of the US. Current trends suggest that mobile social users will exceed one billion by early Q4 2015.

What does this mean for marketing and communication professionals?

Bringing in sales through social media is always a lot harder when it comes to B2B. Unlike our B2C counterparts, our customers are not going to be swayed to purchase our elevators or work with our chemical plants merely through seeing several posts about our products on social media.

Sometimes, our products have technical specifications that will require us to explain in more than 140 characters. So how do we market ourselves better and communicate our services and brand to our customers? Social selling is the key, especially in Asia and the Pacific where “Guanxi” or relationships play a huge part in securing sales.

Sometimes, all it takes is a personal touch to give our customers a little nudge in the right direction. And the hashtag can play a critical part in social selling.

Many people underestimate the power of social selling. Social selling through social media outlets is a popular way to stay connected with your customers. It is also a good way to reach out to potential ones. However, it’s hard to automate messaging in social media and most sales teams do not care about helping out in generating content.

Some companies manage to break through this tough barrier though, for example, IBM.

Assisted by consulting group Mason Zimbler, it was able to implement a social selling programme for its inside sales team resulting in a quadruple in sales.

Once it had identified its target audience, it was able to monitor social channels based on the hashtags and hot topics within the category. After training its sales team on how to join in the online conversation on these topics, the team was left to engage with potential buyers and drive prospective buyers to their personal digital profiles.

At ThyssenKrupp, we recognise the importance of building relationships with our customers, especially in Asia and the Pacific. The high penetration levels of social media and mobile phones in our 19 markets also means that social selling is one of the next few steps for our marketing and communication teams.

Today, many of our 27,000 employees in Asia and the Pacific are on social media platforms and we are encouraging them to participate in our activities online.

From internal campaigns with hashtags to producing content on our corporate blog #engineered, our employees are starting to understand how social media can be incorporated in our daily work and the importance of a personal brand.

To encourage our employees to be savvier on these platforms, we have also incorporated these functions in our social intranet and made our sites responsive so as to allow our employees to continue engaging with our content in any environment and setting.

Having all these platforms in place is not enough. It is also important to have tracking in place to ensure that at the end of the day, there are analytics and measurable results to show that the social selling and activities we are doing eventually translates into better engagement or has an impact on sales.

It is only then will you be able to get the buy-in from the management to do more.

Although it is just a start for ThyssenKrupp, all these steps have helped us with engagement levels, allowed us to showcase the future of engineering in a fun and exciting way to customers, employees and potential talents, and convince some of our seniors that social media is essential in today’s complex world.

So what are you waiting for? #WEareThyssenKrupp #BeTheFutureOfMarketing #BeASocialSeller

The writer is Tino Fritsch, head of communications for Asia Pacific at ThyssenKrupp Singapore.

Read our Futurist column here.