The importance of the role that social media is playing in marketing, product awareness and sales has been rising up the agenda for several years but, asks Ian Hunter, is social media cutting the mustard with resellers?
When you start talking to people about social media you get a very wide range of responses. As a rule of thumb, and speaking in general terms, it would be pretty accurate as well as fair to say that social media plays a far more significant role in the lives of a younger cohort than it does in older groups.
From its humble origins as a platform for students to communicate, social media has taken the world by storm and changed almost every kind of interaction. These changes include how we do business, and there’s a huge possibility that these changes will keep coming and developing in the future. For now, there are certain core areas where the role of social media is undeniable, and any business not implementing social media could be facing a significant disadvantage compared to their competitors.
I asked several channel resellers some core questions about their use of social media in their business
Simon Lincoln, Managing Director at Fleet, Hampshire based Nomis Connections also told us, “We did have a full-time marketing person, who tried to convince me that it was essential, now he has gone and replaced with a person doing other duties as well, there has been no difference. We also outsourced our Twitter account for a year. I attended a Business Management Course in Chicago last year, in our line of business, the general consensus was, it’s a waste of time. However, it does get your name out there, what difference it makes, who knows?
Clearly social media is a difficult or even no-go area for many resellers and to me this is entirely understandable. Most resellers are neither flush with requisite skills and experience in social media nor in having adequate budgets to buy in those resources.
However, some resellers I spoke to are making a success out of getting their name out in the market via social media platforms and gaining not only sales but also attracting new recruits to their business from people who, by definition, are themselves keen on the whole social media scene. This can only add to their present momentum.
In an era of digital transformation and having a customer first strategy, a question that I will ask vendors in future follow ups is what are they doing to help and encourage their channels to become more active in this form of marketing?
From the responses we received from our straw poll it was clear that so called ‘legacy’ methods of marketing such as telesales and email campaigns are still alive and kicking.