Aug 23, 2018

7 of the Most Disruptive Social Selling Tools

by Digital Marketing Institute

In the digital world, how you present your brand and market your service or product makes all the difference in generating sales and brand loyalty. For the most part, traditional marketing tactics like stating the functionality of your product and showcasing all the bells and whistles just won’t cut it.

To truly stand out online, you must provide a customer-centric experience that feels personalized and true to your unique brand. This shift from traditional to modern digital content marketing can be a tough transition, but with the right tactics and social selling tools, you can positively impact your audience and increase your overall marketing return on investment (ROI).

Whether you’re part of an enterprise-level marketing team or run your own e-commerce platform, disruptive social selling is a combination of efforts from the IT and marketing departments to increase conversions and boost sales. The modern customer is what matters most in marketing practices, and are often connected to your business in some shape or form online. To level-up your social media marketing efforts, the use of disruptive social selling is basically a necessity.

Read on to find out how disruptive social selling tools are changing the world of digital marketing as we know it, and those making the biggest differences for entrepreneurs and large-scale organizations alike.

“1.66 billion people purchased goods and services online” Statista

What Is Disruptive Social Selling?

Although the term may seem pretty straightforward, disruptive social selling can be tough to understand, especially if you’re new to the world of digital marketing as a whole. However, innovative social selling can be easy to implement for businesses of all sizes with the right tools and tips.

Disruptive social selling allows businesses to interact with their target customer base across a variety of social media platforms. Most commonly used in the business-to-business (B2B) world, disruptive social marketing aims to increase engagement and cultivate successful conversions for sales and marketing teams. 

A vital part of the modern sales process, disruptive social selling is about relationship building and lead nurturing. Taking place over social platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ and LinkedIn, disruptive social selling is gaining popularity within businesses of all sizes to communicate with high-potential leads and close new deals.

Disruptive social selling is a customer-centric process that makes it easy for potential customers to gain valuable information about a product or service in a way that feels personalized to their unique needs and budget. As people are on social media for at least a portion of their day, more and more marketing and sales processes now take place on these platforms.

To stay customer-centric, disruptive social selling allows leads to reach out to companies at their convenience, and for companies to share content easily with the right audience. Some 3 billion people – almost half of the entire world population – now use some type of social media platform, and disruptive social selling is used by a variety of companies to maximize their reach over these platforms and build a brand reputation with potential customers.

What Are Disruptive Social Selling Tools?

Disruptive social selling tools are also known to some as digital disruption technologies. These tools work by allowing sales and marketing professionals to integrate social selling into their everyday routine and maximize their reach with potential customers. 

The modern market is filled with a variety of social selling tools, but there are a few that stand out amongst the competition in terms of usability and effectiveness.

To find the perfect disruptive social selling tool for your unique brand and business, it’s important to look at what your priorities are. Are you seeking an easy way to share targeted content on social media, or would you rather nurture leads through a personalized one-on-one messaging platform? 

Once you decide on your overall disruptive social selling goal, you can begin researching your options to find the tool that best fits your needs, budget and business.

The 7 Best Disruptive Social Selling Tools

1. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator helps business sales personnel and entrepreneurs alike connect with potential prospects. Using an advanced algorithm, LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a disruptive social selling tool that allows you to interact with potential leads and prospects that are recommended to you based on your business and the potential client’s needs.

For enterprise-level businesses already using customer relationship management (CRM) software like Salesforce, Sales Navigator can be seamlessly integrated. LinkedIn is a great place for sales and marketing professionals to connect with people in their ideal client profile (ICP) and nurture existing relationships to close deals without cold calling or using other traditional marketing methods. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a paid tool, but it can be extremely helpful as a go-to disruptive social selling tool.

2. Hootsuite

If you’ve previously worked in digital marketing, chances are that you’ve heard of Hootsuite in some shape or form. Hootsuite is the perfect disruptive social selling tool for brands and businesses who are looking to make a big impact with their client while avoiding the switch between various social selling platforms. Hootsuite allows you to manage a variety of social media platforms, the content that is posted, and performance measurements to see how your social tactics are impacting actual sales.

Whether you’re focused on nurturing LinkedIn prospects or want to increase your sales on Facebook, Hootsuite can help you and your marketing team monitor your disruptive social selling methods.

3. SocialPort

When it comes to disruptive social selling tools, SocialPort from rFactr can help you find the best leads and boost your overall social selling success. With access to insights and easy sharing of key content between teams and onto social media channels, you can streamline your content sharing process and better understand what type of content is yielding the best results.

4. Nimble

Nimble is a social CRM system and a great option for those looking for future-forward social selling tools, according to Convince and Convert. Nimble easily allows you to compile all social media data into specific records for each lead that you are nurturing, tracking your engagement with the person as you go. As a disruptive social selling tool, this CRM takes your disruptive social selling strategy to the next level for optimized results.

5. RingLead DMS Capture

Ringlead DMS Capture is a social selling tool that provides you with a wide array of prospects so that you can capture new leads and nurture them through your disruptive sales funnel. Any information that you have can be imported into the system, and you can engage with these prospects as you go.

Save time by having your data, contacts, and information all in one place.

6. Meltwater

For sales and digital marketing professionals looking to optimize their disruptive social selling strategy, Meltwater is the perfect solution. With a gallery of online content and social media content, Meltwater helps you easily streamline your social media strategy. By keeping your brand, data, and content in one place, you can save time trying to piece together how your leads perceive you. Meltwater measures how people are talking about your product, service, or brand so that you can level-up your social selling strategy.

7. Buffer

Buffer is a disruptive social selling tool that allows you to clearly plan your content schedule and have the software perform automatic content sharing for you. You can decide when the posts will be sent, and to what social media platforms. With direct posting available for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Google+, Buffer helps you stay on top of your disruptive social selling strategy while saving time in the content sharing process.

Buffer has both a free plan and paid plan available. The free plan only allows for limited posting, so to maximize your reach, it’s best to invest in a paid plan for this disruptive social selling tool. As an added bonus, Buffer shares some analytics with you so that you can monitor how your posts are doing and use that data to optimize your digital marketing and social selling strategy.

Conclusion

The most successful disruptive social selling strategies are those that leverage the power of new disruptive social selling tools like the ones we’ve covered above. 

The software as a service (SaaS) world is growing at unprecedented rates, so it’s vital that digital marketers keep their eye out for the latest and greatest social selling tools as they’re developed.

At the end of the day, disruptive social selling tools are a key part of a well-rounded digital marketing strategy that aims to benefit both your business and your customers’ daily lives. 

With a customer-centric outlook and future-forward sales processes, your business – no matter what size – can increase sales and your overall marketing ROI with disruptive social selling.

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