I showed up at Dreamforce this year as a marketer, social sales trainer, inside sales blogger, and entrepreneur. There was so much to absorb!
The single message I heard over and over was this: Social media is not going away anytime soon - but just having 80 Twitter followers doesn't make you a social media guru. My favorite sessions had similar messages, each delivered by the brightest and most talented minds in the industry. Here's a quick tour:
First Session: Set the Social Roadmap for Your Company
This session was a primer on the importance of social media and why it's not a good idea to ignore it or just dip your feet in. This panel was loaded with bright social media mavens, especially Gary Vaynerchuk from VaynerMedia. This guy doesn't need a PPT slide deck when he talks! His energetic and charismatic style captures his audience and makes them think and laugh.
Gary says that "we are living through the beginning of the humanization of business," and in his recent book, The Thank You Economy, he focuses on the importance of human context. In his view, social media may not be killing television - the recent VMA ratings were at an all-time high mainly because of the social influence. On the other hand, traditional outdoor media could be taking a hit mainly because people don't look at billboards while they're driving - they're too busy talking on the phone.
He also predicted that people are going to suffer from group-buying fatigue, and that search will be disrupted. Instead of paying SEO consultants to put you at the top of the Google rankings, why not build your social community to vote for you? He reminded us to not just collect followers, because that is self-serving. Instead, increase we should our responsiveness, be generous, and listen to the conversation.
The Social Media guys from Dell also presented and explained why Dell was forced to enter the social media space as a response to a bad customer experience back in 2005/2006. Jeff Jarvis's most talked about BuzzMachine on "Dell Sucks" woke everyone up. If you fast-forward to the present, Dell now has a Social Media Listening Command Center that helps them stay connected to their global customers and quickly respond.
Second Session: Death by Marketing Automation
This session was delivered by Mike Volpe with Hubspot, my big hero. Mike is absolutely brilliant and Hubspot is the company to watch. His engaging PPT deck had a sweet picture of a little kitten with a clever comment from Mike that said, "Every time you email a cold list, pretend a kitten dies." Ouch! Many people in the audience admitted that they have killed lots of kittens lately - like thousands, and even millions - in their marketing automation efforts. (Perhaps we should we call them "marketing expiration" efforts!)
Mike explained that the future is no longer about outbound efforts. Email is becomming more unreliable. About 80% of people don't read email, and many check out mentally without literally unsubscribing. With the growth of Gmail Priority Inbox, people will read emails based on their importance and how much weight a standard email introduction template holds?
Inside salespeople must realize that the customer doesn't want to hear from them early in the sales cycle. They need to learn how to "socialize and mobilize" in the middle of the sales funnel instead. This fantastic video speaks to these poor reps who are tired of outbound dialing:
Third session: 10 Strategies for Content Marketing
This session had a perfect partnership: Jon Miller, the VP of Marketo, kicked this off by explaining how salespeople can no longer try to talk with people who don't want to talk with them. Buyers have changed forever. Today's abundance of information keeps them smart, and they don't want to engage until they are 60% to 80% ready to buy. That's why Marketo makes so much sense as a tool that can help the nuture efforts. Lead scoring is the key to sales efficiency.
Ann Handley, the Chief Content Officer from Marketing Profs and the author of the newly released book Content Rules, confirmed the importance of great content that engages. I haven't been able to put her book down! It is extremely well-written and super informative. Most important is strategically aligning content to the buyers' buying cycle:
- The Early Stage Content: this includes thought leadership, best practice sharing
- Middle Stage Content: buyers guides, RFP templates, ROI calculators, industry information, 3rd party analysts
- Late Stage Content: company-specific, data sheets, etc
Sign up for Josiane's Customer 2.0 webinar for The Customer Collective @ 1pm EST on Sept. 14 as shares shares the realities of today's customers and why they're mad as hell.