Posted in Reputation Management, Social Strategy, small business, sms, social media marketing
Article details 4 comments
13/02 2009

Social Media: If I Want It I’ll Buy It. Don’t Sell Me.

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Truth be told.. I am getting immersed in Lisa Hoffman’s blog over at New Media Lisa. She has been KILLING it the past few weeks. She wrote a post recently called Social Media Isn’t About the Selling Cycle – It’s About the Buying Cycle. The post is about the concept of shifting the focus on an individual from a selling cycle to a buying cycle. From her post:

“More than ever before, people are expecting and demanding exactly what they want in every facet of their lives. What does this say about the typical hyper focus on the selling cycle? And what would happen if we turned the telescope around and considered the buying cycle instead?”

I don’t know about you but (as a sales generator) it is kind of nerve racking to shift from a selling cycle to a buying cycle. Does that mean I can’t actively sell? Good God… and no it doesn’t.

Don’t get me wrong…there is some romantic notion behind the thought of creating a meaningful relationship and allowing the buyer to find you in the process but how do you plan and measure for that? Don’t you need to balance between a selling and buying cycle when using social media marketing as part of your strategy?

There is only one problem between a relationship building sales approach when you are building a company: bringing sales in initially. There is a long and short tail approach to selling. Social media is the long tail.

It takes time to build up relationships and create the trust factor that allows people to come to you. That is the whole idea isn’t it? So work towards building the buying cycle to the point where you are the qualified destination for people searching for a solution. Work your butt off to create that special point where selling becomes secondary..

So the answer?

Building the Trust Factor: blogging, testimonials, social media, writing articles.. etc. etc. etc. communicating!

Building a Company: off-line networking, creating relationships in your community, traditional marketing

 

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  1. Jon McLeod
    13/02 2009

    This is so dead on – and sums things up tremendously well – Buying Cycle! There is more and more clarity amongst the SM blogs lately. Very nice to see. TheBrandBuilder posted P2P as opposed to B2B or B2C. Some other great thoughts right no topic (thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com)

    J

  2. Scott Cunningham
    13/02 2009

    Kyle,

    I try to look at online networking like I do with offline networking.

    For example, there are a lot of people who attend face-to-face networking events that are there to sell. They don’t get what networking is about. These are the people who try it for a few months, walk away and say that it doesn’t work.

    The same is true for online networking. They try sites like LinkedIn and Facebook and say they don’t work because they don’t make any sales.

    I could go on and on :)

    Scott

  3. buying ecommerce » Blog Archive » Social Media: If I Want It I’ll Buy It. Don’t Sell Me. | Kyle Lacy …
    13/02 2009

    [...] t­he o­rig­in­al po­st­ here: So­­c­ial­ Media: If­ I Want­ It­ I’l­l­ Buy It­… Share and [...]

  4. Cratyle
    13/02 2009

    Nice summary – an aditionnal contribution to you set of answer? Having a product community that extend itself by selling the product to new community members.

    Much easier when the product is a social media itself – I agree – but this approach tend to emerge thourgh e-commerce communities.