Hi, #FunnelAmplifiers! Today, let’s talk about how social expansion can help boost your revenue.
Introduction
This blog is for any CEO (Chief Executive Officer) or CRO (Chief Revenue Officer) who wants to leverage social media to increase revenue. Let’s discuss “How Does Social Expansion Boost Your Bottom Line?” and explore a few ways in which expanding your social footprint can contribute to business growth.
CEO’s R3 Priorities: Revenue, Relationships and Results
Let’s start from the beginning. Your C-role requires you to prioritize these three things: revenue, relationships and results.
As a CEO myself, I can relate to the demands of your daily life.
From driving revenue to building my company’s brand and raising money, I roll up my sleeves and do what you do every day, which is working hard to improve bottom line.
I really get it!
As I’m sitting here writing this article with my cup of hot coffee, I can think of at least eight things you have on your mind right now.
What CEOs Think About
- Profitability: you are accountable for revenue generation.
- Growth: you are responsible for ARR and accurate forecasting.
- Expansion: you are charged with national and global expansion.
- Brand: you are liable for positive and strong brand reputation.
- Market Share: you are predicted to increase share of voice.
- Investors: you are expected to attract and appeal to investors.
- Churn: you are required to reduce churn and increase customer loyalty.
- ROI: you are obligated to deliver return on investment.
Am I right? I only know what’s on your plate because that’s my plate too.
Profitability is always the #1 priority. You and I have to generate revenue to pay for overhead, retain workforce and to simply stay in business.
Growth is an important priority because if we don’t grow, in today’s competitive and global business environment, it means we decline.
Expansion is a top-of-mind priority because entering new geographical markets and industry verticals promotes growth and mitigates the risk of declining.
Brand is the foundation we build upon. It’s what the market knows about our businesses. It’s the trust they have in our companies. It’s what wins their dollars. Brand is your reputation, and brand awareness is the key to your revenue growth.
Market share is a priority because your rivals are out there and the competition never sleeps. To grow your market share today, your share of voice in the community is critical. The larger your share of voice, the greater your brand awareness and the more opportunities to grow revenue you create.
Investors are a priority because you want to appeal to them and persuade them that you have what it takes to deliver return on their investment. They expect a solid brand, a good team and an innovative product. Investors expect you to make things happen and you must prove to them that you can. Proving it is always a priority in order to attract sustainable funding.
Churn is a huge priority because it’s cheaper and easier to keep the customers you already attracted happy than attracting new customers and working on making them happy. Those precious customers you have already have voted for you with their dollars at least once, so you have relational bank account with them and you must keep it in the positive and not let an overdraft happen.
ROI is what all stakeholders want you to deliver. You must show the return you deliver on investments you receive. The higher the ROI, the better your opportunities.
Importance of Social Media for Revenue Growth
Imagine if there was one thing you could focus on to help take care of all eight priorities above…
Social media is that one thing! Social expansion is the key to taking your business to the next level, growing its revenue and turning customers into brand advocates.
Expanding your digital footprint can help establish your brand online, win larger market share, reduce churn, promote growth, increase profitability and attract investors.
Social media is a tool in every sophisticated CEO’s toolbox. What kind of tool? Let’s talk about it.
Four Ways Social Media Helps Revenue Growth
1. Social Media as a Thought Leadership Tool
Revenue is all about relationships, and relationships are all about content sharing and establishing your sales reps as subject matter experts. Social media is a great vehicle for that.
Let me just share a simple story with you.
Gary White started a new sales role right before he left from his honeymoon. He onboarded with the company and its FunnelAmplified platform. Prior to this, he had never posted anything on LinkedIn. He only used it as a traditional sales rep for “hunting and gathering” leads and prospecting. WithFunnelAmplified, he received posts on his mobile phone from his new company. He published to LinkedIn the content provided to him with just a few clicks. When he returned from his honeymoon, he had over 25 InMails in his LinkedIn inbox asking about his new role, new company and how he became a “social media rockstar…”
Arming your sales team with quality content that’s brand-approved and tailored to their prospects is guaranteed to position them as subject matter experts and help start conversations that lead to new revenue opportunities and business growth.
2. Social Media as a Prospecting Tool
On social media, business people share everything about their needs.
Getting involved in those conversations allows your sales reps be at the point of decision when the prospect becomes ready to purchase.
It’s a great prospecting tool, and your sales team can easily track what’s called “buyer intent” with relevant hashtags on every social channel.
Prospects are out there right now. All your sales team needs to do is to meet them where they already are and give them what they want – helpful content.
3. Social Media as a Lead-Generation Tool
Social media is all about building a community of engaged people who start by getting to know, like and trust your brand, eventually turning into leads and revenue opportunities.
Also, it’s two-fold.
Once those leads turn into customers, social media is where they can advocate for your brand attracting new leads into your pipeline.
4. Social Media as a Pipeline-Acceleration Tool
The best way to propel your prospects through pipeline to the stage of closed / won revenue is to build personal relationships fast.
Social media empowers sales reps do just that.
Sales people can identify decision-makers in the decision-making unit, engage with them on social media, add value with helpful content and reduce sales cycle while increasing the deal size. It’s all about relationships and engagement.
These are all the reasons why social media is so critical to your revenue growth.
Let me prove it to you with some thought provoking industry statistics.
Social Media ROI (Social Selling)
Social media marketing quickly transformed into a new phenomena of the modern sales force called “social selling.”
Social selling is about leveraging social networks to find the right prospects, build trusted relationships and achieve sales goals (LinkedIn Sales Solutions)
Think about every person on your sales team. How many social connections do they have and on how many platforms are they maintaining relationships?
According to a report from GlobalWebIndex, the average person has 7.6 active social media accounts.
Which accounts are those?
Glad you asked! I was also very curious because knowing the answer can help you focus your company’s social selling efforts effectively.
The latest survey from the Pew Research Center shows that:
73% of U.S. adults use YouTube
68% use Facebook
35% use Instagram
29% use Pinterest
27% use Snapchat
25% use LinkedIn
24% use Twitter
The main thing for you to know is that 80% of B2B leads come through LinkedIn.
Social selling leaders create 45% more opportunities than their peers (LinkedIn)
Of the social sellers, 78% outsell peers who don’t use social media (Forbes)
Social selling practitioners are 40% more likely to hit revenue goals (HubSpot)
Conclusion
Today, social expansion is valuable to revenue generation. Growing your brand’s social footprint and empowering your sales force to engage on social media can literally skyrocket your revenue if it’s done strategically and consistently.
FunnelAmplified is a sales-enablement software that enables you to easily build a social selling program for your team. As you give brand-approved content to your sales reps for sharing on their social media, their social connections discover and follow your brand and trust them as thought leaders. That’s how your social footprint expands and revenue grows.
Next Steps
Let me know in the comments below what one action you will take today to grow your revenue using social expansion tactics we discussed here.
