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Interesting facts ..
"In February 2020, Facebook-owned WhatsApp surpassed 2 billion users. A global pandemic and countless stay-at-home orders later, that number has only grown.
Zoom may have been the communications startup darling of the pandemic, but WhatsApp has quietly shattered some impressive milestones. At a peak in April, the messaging service was exchanging more than 100 billion messages a day. Users spent 15 billion minutes talking between voice and video calls."
Talking with a CEO today, he described sales as
"a bunch of people, who run around taking people out for drinks" the problem with that is said was that "people are now, decentralised, they are working from home and spread all over the place" he went onto say "sales just isn't working for us right now".
I got him to describe marketing and he said "we would pay over inflated prices to go to events. Marketing would come back with a bunch of business cards, which they would put into the CRM to justify the expenditure. But let's be honest, we probably got a 1% return". Of course, there are no events now because of Covid and unlikely to be any in 2021, as no brand will want to be associated with a super-spreader event.
What Do You Need to Do?
As a business if you have to recognize that your customer is online. This isn't new, let's not forget I joined Amazon 22 years ago.
This October (2020) report by Simon Kemp outlines the extent that social media has become part of our lives.
Worldwide social media users: 4.14 billion - 53% of the world's population use social media in other words, more people use social media than don't use it.
Simon says that "two thirds of the working population in the world is now active on social media."
How much research do you need to convince you?
Mckinsey say so, Gartner say so, Hootsuite and We Are Social say so, Hubspot say so, Google say so, MIT say so, Trustradius say so Twilio say so ....
All of this research explains, that the modern customer is online, the world has gone digital and sitting with our heads in the sand in't going to make it go away.
A CEO Just said to me
In the past he would go to a seminar, hopefully look at the attendee list. Otherwise, go up to people and get business cards.
He would then go back to the office, give the business cards to his PA and hopefully a conversation would come from that and maybe work.
He now says that "there is a race on. First we need to shock people into understanding that the world has changed. Second, we need to give them the skills to work in the changing world." I couldn't put it better myself.
He went onto say "By giving my team(s) “new world” skills will gives us a competitive advantage."
Interesting that he finished by saying
"The thing is there is a “burning bridge” and we need to make sure we are over that bridge."
Something that Arcadia did do, let's hope your business gets over that bridge in good time.
What Got You Here Won't Get You There
Everytime we run our social selling programs, we always get 30% increase in revenue and a 40% reduction in the sales cycle.
There are also some softer benefits, you and your team get a new life skill and as a leader you are providing the business with a digital legacy. Supporting the transformation to digital for the business.
Here is a great example of somebody who launched his business during the pandemic, but is not laying people off but expanding.
Related: Digital Marketing: The Results Are In