The traditional sales funnel is becoming obsolete due to the masses of information, forums, blogs, discussions and ratings available online. Effective marketing now requires a solid understanding of social media. Marketers are beginning to internalize how this dynamic shift in media is affecting the sales funnel. Business owners and upper management often fail to recognize the benefits and worse, block social media use altogether.
Every person in every department has the potential to reach out to clients and prospects in their area of expertise. This is true for large and small organizations. Your people are your brand. They represent your company both online and offline. When you think about their capacity for word-of-mouth referrals, you can’t really afford to stop them from using social media.
As William Bakker puts it (in a good Dutch accent), banning social media is a 20th Century mentality. Who cares what your people spend their time on if they’re meeting deadlines and exceeding expectations.’ But don’t forget that your staff are individuals. They have friends and they talk about their jobs. This means they’re talking about your company. Why not incentivize them to say good things and perhaps increase sales.
With a comprehensive, top down strategy, you can remove your concerns and guide staff to help you pull people through every stage of the sales funnel. Execution requires patience and an ongoing commitment. It becomes easy once you accept that your staff define your client’s experience online too. You need to be able to select and use the right tools to achieve your goals. Planning must be strategic.
There’s no reason your organization can’t begin to open up in some way. Even if your employees have access to highly sensitive information or trade secrets, social media sites aren’t the only way they could steal it. Hire people you trust and, train them well and empower them through guidelines.
If you’re not prepared to do be proactive, you can always just bury your head in the sand and continue to simply block out websites… Does your employer still block Facebook, Twitter or Youtube?