Are Sales the Same as Marketing? (Spoiler: They’re Not!)

Are Sales the Same as Marketing? (Spoiler: They’re Not!)

by | Jul 12, 2021 | SocialEyes

Two factors that determine the success and growth of your business are sales and marketing. While these two departments have some overlap, they are different. As a digital marketing company, we see time and time again the confusion around this topic, so keep reading for a full breakdown of sales and marketing, and how to excel at both.

What’s the Difference Between Sales and Marketing?

Essentially, marketing is about creating opportunities for your business while sales is about finalizing the transaction. This difference is something that we find is often blurred when clients first come to us.

Marketing is about getting exposure, creating awareness, and garnering attention for your service or product. It’s an external process that is required to make sales.

Sales is the completion of that cycle which ends in a transaction. It’s typically an internal process.

Here’s an example. A potential client sees your Facebook ads online and decides to call you for a free consultation. This is marketing at work. The call itself and the client’s decision to work with you come down to sales. The two elements need to connect and there needs to be a smooth transition with shared information between them. They each require separate strategy plans, software programs, and expertise.

How to Excel at Marketing

Digital marketing is not a one-size-fits-all way to grow your business. It is multi-faceted and requires advanced expertise to be successful. Here at SocialEyes, we take care of every facet of your marketing plan from creation to execution to monitoring:

We know that you probably don’t have time to master all the elements that make marketing effective, so we take care of them for you!

How to Excel at Sales

Once your marketing plan is in the works and you’ve started attracting leads, it’s up to you to navigate the sales process. We recommend using a reputable sales software program. For example, Salesforce’s Sales Cloud.

Programs like this allow you to track the contact you’ve had with each lead. You can track when they contacted you, if you’ve reached out to them, and where they are in your sales funnel. In addition to lead management, you can also collect your sales data and generate real-time sales forecasts.

The most important thing to remember that marketing does not close sales, you do. It is up to you to contact and nurture communication with the leads your marketing strategy brings in.

How We Can Uplevel Your Marketing Efforts

SocialEyes Communications is a digital marketing company that can help your business reach new audiences, build brand awareness, and attract your target customers. While we are experts in marketing, we do not handle sales.

If you’re interested in creating a custom marketing plan or taking your current marketing plan to the next level, contact us today.

Attention Lawyers: Overcoming the Fear of Digital Marketing

Attention Lawyers: Overcoming the Fear of Digital Marketing

by | May 6, 2021 | SocialEyes

Thanks to the global pandemic, lawyers who never operated online before were forced to pivot to accommodate social distancing restrictions. We saw firms that once relied on billboards, ranking directories and bus stops start to utilize the power of digital marketing for advertising and networking purposes.  

For your firm to continue growing and serving your clients, digital marketing is not a nice to have any more, it has become a must have. Aside from the opportunity to elevate awareness and reach new audiences, it is more important now than ever before to exist where your target market is spending their time, and where your competitors are as well.

Here, we are going to explore why it’s time to go digital, the benefits, and how to get started.  

  1. It’s Quick and Simple

There’s a common misconception that social media marketing will take up all your time and force you to spend less time on your actual business. This is false. In fact, digital marketing can be simple, easy, and take up very little of your time.

Thanks to social scheduling platforms, you can create all content in one sitting and schedule it to go live throughout the following weeks or even months. Want it to be even easier? Our team can take care of everything from content creation to presence monitoring while you focus on serving your clients.

  • It’s an Opportunity for Business Development

No matter what field your firm specializes in, your clientele spends time online. They might prefer one platform over another, but you can be certain that they use social media in some capacity. To stay relevant and keep your finger on the pulse, you need to show up where your clients and prospects do.

Through effective market research and ad targeting, you can get your firm in front of your target audience and demographic. Not only that, but social media helps you retain your client base by nurturing your relationships, keeping you top of their mind, and giving you another outlet to provide them with value.

  • It’s Like a Billboard or Print Feature – Only Better

For decades, lawyers and firms used billboards or printed ads to advertise their services. You would, and still do, see lawyers’ faces on the sides of buses, at bus stops, and in giant billboards overlooking the street.

The problem is that no one knows how effective traditional marketing methods like these truly are. There is no counter on the billboard showing how many people saw the sign and then called your firm.

With digital marketing, you have those analytics to rely on and so much more.

With one social ad, you can track who sees it, what they do when they see it, and what action they take after clicking it. This allows you to improve future ads because you have proof of what works and what doesn’t. The ROI for your marketing budget is so much larger than it is from a billboard!

Ready to Take the Plunge?

If you’re hesitant about using digital marketing for your firm, we understand. It’s a whole new world full of potential.  Our team specialize in helping lawyers and firms establish an online presence and use digital marketing to attract and retain clients. When you work with us, we take care of the marketing so you can focus on your practice. Contact us today to learn more or get started.

What the iOS 14 Update Means for Facebook Advertising

What the iOS 14 Update Means for Facebook Advertising

by | Mar 31, 2021 | SocialEyes

Apple has slowly begun to roll out its new iOS 14 update on their devices, and it is being met with apprehension from marketers and business owners. While this update is exciting for consumers, it is placing a disadvantage on Facebook advertisers.

Here, we’ll break down what you need to know about the update and how to pivot your Facebook marketing plan around it.

What is the iOS 14 Update?

The iOS 14 update’s most controversial feature is its data sharing policy. Apple wants users to have more control over their privacy and who gets access to their data. Before this update, Apple users could turn off their data sharing by going into their phone’s settings and switching it off.

With this update, whenever a user downloads an app from the Apple Store (like Facebook) they are shown a notification card which states, “Facebook would like your permission to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies. Your data will be used to deliver personalized ads to you.” The user must then choose “Allow Tracking” or “Ask App Not to Track.”

The problem? When most users are confronted with this card asking them to opt-in or out, it is suspected that most will opt-out.

How It Will Affect You

When users don’t allow Facebook to track their behaviour on other sites and apps, it is unable to collect information about them. The hyper-personalized ads you can create through Facebook will no longer be as personalized since Facebook won’t have access to the data.

Your reporting from Facebook Ads will become inaccurate because the iOS users who chose not to be tracked will not have their information collected or used in these reports.

Ads on Facebook that are used to connect users to an e-commerce website will be unable to report on the actions that the user took after clicking the ad. This significantly decreases the advertiser’s ability to understand which ads are more effective than others.

How to Plan Your Marketing Around This Update

Until the full rollout of this update is complete, we will not know its complete effects. Until then, here are some things you can do to plan your marketing around it.

  1. Target Androids Only

Since a portion of iOS users will opt-out of data sharing, any information collected from iOS users will be incomplete. This update does not affect Android users.

  • Prioritize Your Pixels

If you use Facebook pixels to monitor your ads, this update requires you to place no more than eight on any domain. You must choose the eight pixel events and custom conversions that are most important to you.

  • Use Internal Tracking

Use your website builder’s internal tracking system to monitor ads placed on your website instead of relying on Facebook.

Leave Your Facebook Marketing to the Experts

SocialEyes Communications stays up to date with all changes to platforms that affect our clients’ marketing plans. When you’re ready to grow your online presence, increase conversions, and get more customers or clients, we’re here to help. Contact us today to get started.

Everything You Need to Know About Clubhouse

Everything You Need to Know About Clubhouse

by | Mar 31, 2021 | SocialEyes

It seems like there’s a new platform on the marketing landscape every day, making it hard to know which ones are worth your time and marketing dollars. One of the newest and most intriguing social platforms is Clubhouse, where users can listen to or participate in live audio conversations with people from celebrities to experts.

How it Works

When you create an account and sign in, you will enter a “hallway” full of different rooms. The rooms you see are based on who you follow on Clubhouse and which rooms are trending at the time.

There is a search feature where you can enter people and topics that interest you. You can also start your own room.

The Benefits of Using Clubhouse for Business

Clubhouse is a unique opportunity for business owners and marketers to build a digital reputation and grow their followings. There are strategies you can implement (like joining rooms with smaller groups so that your voice stands out) that make your time investment go farther.

When you take the stage, this is a chance to provide value. You might be answering a question or offering advice or insight. The more value you add to the conversation, the more attendees will click your name and decide to follow you.

Your Clubhouse bio is where you can dive into who you are and what you do.

By hosting a room, you attract new followers and potentially new customers. One way to use Clubhouse for marketing is by sharing the stage with another expert in your industry, ideally one with a larger following than you.

In your rooms, think of it as a live panel discussion. You might want to take questions or comments from the audience, offer a break period, and even thank visitors for coming with a gift (ex. A promotional code to use in your store).

Is Clubhouse Replacing Podcasting?

No. While Clubhouse and podcasts are both audio mediums, they offer very different opportunities for the listener.

Listeners choose podcasts when they want to learn something new or be entertained hands-free. There may be advertisements and calls to action, and they can be an excellent opportunity to share your knowledge and provide listeners with value.

Clubhouse hosts live interactive discussions between members and panelists. Your profile has a follower count and bio section, making it more akin to social media platforms than podcasting.

Should You Be Using Clubhouse?

Clubhouse could be an interesting option if your target audience is interested in diving deeper (spending more than 30 seconds watching a video) into a topic that you can provide insight on. If you have the time to commit to joining rooms and hosting rooms, it could be a worthwhile investment.  

It is a great platform for thought leadership, learning more and delving into themes/topics.

Need Help With Your Online Presence?

Clubhouse is just one of the many social media platforms that can help you garner a digital presence. We specialize in using these platforms to boost your reputation and grow your business.

If you’re interested in learning how we can help transform your online presence, reach out to us today.

4 Lessons for Marketers from Tom Burrell’s Legendary Career

4 Lessons for Marketers from Tom Burrell’s Legendary Career

by | Feb 10, 2021 | SocialEyes

Written  by: Tracey Nolan, Digital Marketing Specialist and Account Manager

Picture it, Chicago in the early 1960s. Ramsey Lewis is playing “The In Crowd” at the Bohemian Caverns, Mies van der Rohe has arrived from Europe and is bringing his modernist skyscrapers to the city’s skylines and Tom Burrell has been hired as the first African American to work at a Chicago ad agency. Black representation is finally on Lexington Avenue in the form of this smart, ambitious and persuasive young man. He’s in the mailroom, but he won’t be for long.

Pretty soon, Burrell was a copywriter, creating ads for brands like Alka Seltzer and Robin Hood Flour. Within ten years he would open the doors of his own agency, now Burrell Communications, known today still for their leadership and forward thinking in the marketing and advertising field.

Burrell would have been a pioneer just by definition of who he was. But by persuading major brands like Coca Cola and McDonalds to create advertising targeted to Black audiences he changed the way we think about advertising and the way advertising thinks about us.

Here are 4 Lessons for Marketers from Tom Burrell’s Legendary Career

  1. If a door doesn’t open, take a window
Before he was the undisputed father of Black TV commercials Black consumer marketing Tom Burrell was in the mailroom. The audacity it took for him to decide to have a career in advertising in the 1960s is inspiring. Now in his 80’s Burrell speaks frequently at schools and conferences. “When you decide that you want to do something,” he has been quoted as saying “if you have any ego at all, go out and tell people, because that puts a fire under you and gives you an impetus to go out and do it. Forget about who you ARE, think and focus about who you WANT to be.”

  1. If you’re not targeting, you’re not marketing
To market a product or a brand successfully, your customer can’t be everyone. A “one-size fits all” mentality is never effective. These revolutionary ads opened the door for ethnic-micro targeting we see today by making mainstream brands understand how to reach beyond the “typical” white consumer of the mid-20th century. Today, marketing is precisely targeted. The targeting is so laser-specific that the ads you see on your Facebook or Instagram feed practically have an audience of one! Tom Burrell started that shift.

  1. Great marketers are part cultural anthropologists
During the civil rights movement brands and agencies realized that they needed to include Black faces in their advertising, but they did so simply by shooting two versions of the same commercial or ad. One with white actors, and one with Black actors, created specifically for Black media. Tom Burrell saw, of course, through his own lived experience, but also through the Black Power movement that grew out of the civil rights movement, that Black people wanted to take control over their dollars and how they spent them. Simply being seen wasn’t enough. He knew that, as he put it, “Black people are not dark skinned white people” and that to market successfully each group needed to be approached in a way that was authentic to their lived experiences and how they interacted with a brand or product. Take McDonalds. Burrell said: “The way white people and black people interacted with McDonalds was different. It wasn’t a destination for the family, it was a place where working people would go for a break, it was a place children would go, sometimes by themselves. McDonald’s wasn’t just a place to eat, it was a place to work”. His 1990s ads featuring “Calvin” embraced that idea and ran with it. They were some of the most frequently run ads in the company’s history.

  1. The Power of Positive Realism
Tom Burrell’s ads were revolutionary in their simplicity. By acknowledging Black identity and putting “regular” Black people in real life situations in his ads, Burrell has been credited with providing generations of Black people the pride that comes with seeing themselves represented truthfully in the media. This Positive Realism was also embraced by white and other non-white audiences and opened the doors for other agencies and brands to embrace more inclusive practices in their work. Representation matters.
2020 – One for the Books

2020 – One for the Books

by | Dec 31, 2020 | SocialEyes

Every year on December 31, I reflect on the year that has passed – what has been accomplished? What can we strive towards? What goals can we set for the year ahead? Last year, on this day, it was the end of a decade. 2019 was quite the year and there was a lot of reflection and a lot to be proud of. You can check out last year’s article here. At the end of the article, I mentioned that self-care, self-reflection and self-growth was a goal for 2020 – and boy was it ever.

2020 was one for the books – it almost feels like we are ending it off with a sense of relief, and though it threw us all for leaps and bounds, 2020 was a year of learning some of the most important lessons.

Here goes:

  1. The Shift

The most notable achievement this year was the obvious – March 15, 2020 –  when the global health crisis hit Toronto. I remember feeling scared – for our health and the health of our business. A flurry of what-if scenarios filled my mind. What if I have to let staff go? How will we bounce back from revenue loss? Just as my panic peaked, Dave and I sat down and gave ourselves advice that we would have given any client: reposition.

It was time to inject new meaning into our model – and from there came new opportunity. Having an online presence during this unprecedented year was not just a nice to have – it became more essential than ever. Retail needed to go online, professional service providers that were formerly reticent to embrace virtual service offerings, would now have no choice. Economic challenge of this magnitude required SocialEyes to pivot. This is when the Business Development side of SocialEyes had to take precedence. Instead of thinking only about online campaigns, we had to zero in on adaptation. Our team quickly mobilized. We came up with new business and distribution models, shifted messaging, launched nurturing and engaging campaigns, presented new proposals for reframing the narrative. Our social media specialists all became business development consultants and we found new ways to add value – and we are so fortunate that our services became even more essential as we discovered and flexed new muscles along the way.

2. Our Team and Our Talent

Over the last 12 months, we have been fortunate enough to have grown our team and recruit new and necessary talent that was missing from our internal team. We have grown quite considerably over the past 12 months and have realized what missing pieces were needed so that we can offer our clients new value-added services. We now have a team of 9 talented, dedicated and tenacious individuals at SocialEyes.

We have also realized and recognized our team member’s individual talents and interests and have gone through a bit of a re-structure.

Over the last 12 months, our team of social media strategists and content creators became very strong project managers, business developers, relationship builders and story-tellers. When Covid-19 hit, and content shifted, each and every account manager touched base with clients – we had to change the narrative, scrap our planned content and pivot. Our team has gone to the wall hustling for each other and for our clients – so that they could come out stronger!

Tatiana Rivers, initially a Freelancer, Content Creator and Account Manager has really honed her skills in client strategy and brand development. As of November 2020, Tatiana has stepped into this role almost exclusively and has built out new client strategies, optimized current client strategies and is responsible for implementing brand guides for each and every client that comes our way – as brand voice and positioning is becoming the most important foundational element necessary for any online strategy.

Ammi Parmar, started with us in January 2019. Over the last almost two years, Ammi has become a very strong project manager, task manager, an ultra-organized and detailed team member and strong process improver. As of December 2019, Ammi became our first Team Lead and Marketing Manager.

Over the last 6 to 8 months, we recognized the need for a strong email and ad strategist. A nice-looking social feed and strong branding is important for exposure and awareness; however, database building and nurture campaigns are as equally important. How do we turn contacts in to clients and customers? Adam Simmons joined our team in October 2020, and with his knack for nurture sequence emails and strong ad and targeting skills, we have been able to provide even more value to our clients.

And last but not least, in December of 2020, we brought onboard Lorinda Nepaul, our first Chief Financial Officer. This was a very exciting way to end the year for us. Lorinda will be providing us with insights and best practices for our financials, projections and will aid in strengthening our operations, profitability and effectiveness.

3. Article Contributions and Media Mentions

In 2018, I set a goal that I would seek out article contribution opportunities. Even though 2020 came with a whole set of new challenges that diverted attention to 100 different places, I still prioritized this goal as I enjoy writing, story-telling and feel that I am at a point where I am able to provide valuable information. I am even proud to say that 2020 was the year I wrote for Social Media Examiner!

The following 14 articles were published in 2020:

4. Webinars and Speaking Gigs

Speaking is something that I have never been so comfortable with but for the past couple of years, I have wanted to develop my public speaking skill set. This year, though speaking in person at events was out of the question, I was able to provide my insights via online webinar/events.

I hosted an online webinar for Financial Service Providers back in April and I was sought out to speak at the Durham Region Association of Realtors in June on hosting virtual open houses and utilizing the power of technology.

5. Content Collaboration: Video Series

At the beginning of 2020, content collaboration was on my to-do list. It was something that I had wanted to do for a while, and felt that we were perfectly situated to do so. We have an eco-system of incredibly bright, insightful and resourceful clients who have so much wisdom to share with the world.

I started 2020 off interviewing Susan Eick, CEO at Refinery on innovation, technology and leadership.  A few weeks later, I interviewed my brother Adam Stern, President of Resale at PSR Brokerage about the changing landscape of the real estate industry.

Then Covid-19 happened and these video collaborations became even more important, even more interesting and even more necessary. I sought interviews with leading experts in different industries to share some knowledge and insight on their own experiences. How were they pivoting? What opportunities came their way? What challenges came their way?

Check them out here:

6. Charity Initiative: Eli’s (Market) Place

For those of you who followed along for the ride in 2019, know that we put on a Charity Gala for Sick Kid’s Hospital. This year, due to the effect of COVID-19, we shelfed that initiative.

This year, we were proud to support Eli’s Place – which will be the first ever Canadian long-term residential treatment centre for young adults with serious mental illness. We launched Eli’s (Market) Place in November leading up to the holidays as a means to provide an online forum to “Shop for a Cause for the Holidays”.  The Marketplace had listed over 50 products from various vendors, donors and sponsors who supported us in our efforts to raise money for a much-needed resource in Canada.

The Marketplace will stay live until end of day today, so stay tuned next week when we announce the final amount raised for Eli’s Place Canada.

I would say that 2020 was different and challenging, but it was also eye-opening, revolutionary and likely one of the most meaningful years yet. It taught us to be grateful, to feel the power of community, the strength in our relationships, patience, kindness, perseverance and most of all, that at the end of the day, health trumps all.

Without health (mind, body and soul), what do we have left?

Here’s to a New Year of soul searching, goal setting and practicing gratitude!