State of Social in Direct Selling

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The Community is Shopping...Are You Selling? The first social network, Six Degrees, made its debut in 1997. MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter all launched in consecutive years over a decade ago. 76% of the adult population in the US is now active on at least one social network, though Facebook still easily holds the largest market share. G/O Digital, a Gannett company, found that when asked which social channel users go to in order to find out about a local business, Facebook led the way at 62 percent. Users are not only conducting their own research about products and services, 42% of them are looking to make a purchase within the hour. The fastest growing demographic on Facebook is the very same demographic that forms the majority of those in the Direct Selling Industry. It is certainly not a question of if your sales reps and customers are using social media, the question is... has your social media strategy evolved from building a culture and a community to building a business?

Source: Statista, Leading social media websites in the United States in October 2015

We believe many (read: all) Direct Selling companies have struggled to integrate social effectively into an overall business strategy. Sales partners are looking to their companies for training in effective social media. If they don’t find it, they pursue the path of least resistance. As a consequence, we have defaulted social media into a popularity contest of building a brand and awareness by measuring our success in-terms of how many followers we have instead of how many people we follow up with. Social Media is no longer all about branding and community. According to new figures from eMarketer, advertisers worldwide will spend $23.68 billion on paid media to reach consumers on social networks this year. By 2017, social network ad spending will reach $35.98 billion, representing 16.0% of all digital Ad spending globally. If we are going to


invite you to be part of a new era in social media, let’s begin with redefining what success in social media should mean.

5 Undeniable Truths 1. Likes are Not an Accepted Currency Companies can no longer view likes as an indication of success. Five years ago, a “like” meant that you had an open channel of communication with one of your fans. Today however, it often simply means that you have a potential consumer following your company, but with no identify nor clear destination. What is needed instead are sales rep having a social approach that starts with an impression, leads to engagement and is followed with an online or offline interaction. If a direct sales rep does not impress, engage and interact, then he or she fails to harness the very power inherent in both the industry and in social media. That is, social media may begin with a blind outreach, but success still needs to be measured by our industry metrics of sales, sign-ups and referrals. One of the largest Direct Selling companies in the world, we’ll call them Company “A”, has a tremendous following on Facebook. As of right now there are over 15 million fans that follow their corporate page. Yet a small beauty supplier with fewer than 34,000 fans from Woonsocket, Rhode Island is able to engage more people on the platform and thus create a greater impact. Page Performance Likes People Talking About This Engagement Rate

Company A 15,002,012 13,319 0.09%

Mom of 11 Kids 33,868 13,649 40.18%

Source: Facebook

2. Social Selling is Direct Selling...Just on Social. Social selling is about discovering opportunities, developing relationships, nurturing, offering advice, and closing deals. The concepts are exactly the same as in-person direct selling. It has always been about the quality of the relationship and the power of trust; social media has just made networking more powerful and efficient. A successful direct seller must have a social media strategy that includes reaching out to both the people they know...and the people they don’t know. On average, every time a person you know “shares” content you have posted, more than 150 people you don’t know will see that posting. While it’s a great starting point for a direct salesperson to reach out to


the people they know, there are now equally simple “one click” strategies for people to reach out on social media to all the people who live in their community but don’t know yet! 3. If Content is King the Corporate Office Needs to be the Palace! Content is what starts the conversation. Corporate needs to provide the content and the platform to allow consultants to stimulate the engagement…without a tutorial, an all-day training or a time consuming process. Content needs to be highly curated and deliver the right message at the right time. Content needs to be balanced between lifestyle and business. It must invite a capture of critical information, not be a lost compass to web pages with no chance to engage and follow-up.

Source: Meltwater

It’s important to remember that content marketing is ultimately the foundation of social selling efforts, and connections to the backbone. The right message delivered at the right time will open up lines of communication and increase the likelihood of high tech leading to high touch and having a successful outcome in the future. 4. The Fortune is in the Follow Up, Otherwise You Are an E-commerce Site At least 80% of customers that submit a query to a brand via social media expect a response on the same day. Around half expect a brand response within two hours, with 30% of Twitter users and 25% of Facebook users expecting one in fewer than 30 minutes. The likelihood of whether a customer will recommend a product or service to friends (and we know that’s the most trusted form of advertising) is almost


entirely based on the response time. More interestingly perhaps, it appears research indicated that the fact that the brand responded is actually more important to the consumer than the response itself! Only 5% of people who go to a website the first-time will convert to a sale. 42% of people who are re-targeted, or followed up with, will eventually convert to a purchase. Which bucket does your current social media campaign reside in? 5. Numbers Don’t Lie, But They Don’t Always Tell the Whole Story Based on our analysis, there is still no Direct Selling company with comprehensive social media strategy integrated into their overall strategy. There are many companies doing many elements exceedingly well. The unique nature of this industry has lent itself to corporate being more focused on developing a strategy for sales reps to use social without destroying the brand reputation, rather than empowering the field to build their business. Sales Reps have been left on their own without the proper tools or strategy that allow them to take advantage of the vast audience that spends an average of 1.72 hours per day on social networks. In lieu of educating an entire field on this relatively new and not fully understood medium, corporate has taken on the task of establishing the brand’s presence on social media. Many companies simply hired a couple of Millennials to post to Facebook and Twitter and checked off the social media box. Social marketing however, has shifted away from company-to-buyer marketing toward peer-topeer influence marketing. Buyers simply do not trust digital push content today. Brand or product recommendations from friends and family and online reviews are the most trusted forms of advertising/promotion. Growing the page likes and blasting out generic messaging is not the formula for success. The following charts show 16 of the most influential Direct Selling Companies’ basic social metrics as of December 5, 2015. Many of the companies on this list have achieved and even exceeded their goals by generating millions of “likes” and millions more impressions, but the goals need to change. How many conversations are happening? How many of these conversations are actually turning into real sales?


The Sweet 16

Source: Meltwater

Avon is clearly the industry leader when it comes to Facebook likes, amassing more than the other 15 companies combined. With such a large audience, they have realized the challenge of keeping all of these Fans engaged. With Engagement Rates topping 3%, Nerium, It Works, Arbonne, Rodan + Fields and Princess House have all shown a solid grasp on community building and providing their Fans with content that they value. Herbalife and Mary Kay have also gained a lot of traction on social by not only surpassing 2 million likes, but also maintaining steady engagement with their fans.


Source: Meltwater

Social Media is, and always will be, a game of quality over quantity. The network effect means that just one engaged follower is more valuable than hundreds of unengaged followers. It’s about consistently posting, while finding the right balance of content and the right message to stimulate conversation. Mary Kay is the clear leader in this field, with just over 8000 Likes, Comments, or Shares per post. Their Posts per Day is below the average of 2.35, but through careful selection of content, they’ve yielded an attentive and responsive audience. Rodan + Fields numbers may not stand out on this chart, but relative to the size of their community, their Engagement per Post is tops on this list. Nu Skin, Shaklee, and Arbonne are also notable as they are all high achievers when it comes to engaging with their fans on a daily basis. A variety of high quality content, asking questions, responding to comments (quickly), and posting at optimal times are all essential for achieving top results when it comes to engagement.


Conclusions and Takeaways Social Media has evolved, but the direct selling industry has not evolved with it. We have been successful with our goals of building a following and branding ourselves, but this is the era of social selling. Every single direct seller should have a Facebook Page with E-commerce capability. This brings new meaning to the term Corporate Social Responsibility, as the Corporate office needs to take responsibility for providing the social media tools and content that reps will use to drive impressions, engagement, and ultimately, sales. The average direct seller is not a Photoshop expert, nor tech savvy enough to master the ever changing world of social media marketing. They are however experts at telling a story, networking, and building relationships, and we must empower them to do so. Multibrain has analyzed the top 200 Direct Selling companies in areas including Likes, Engagement, Brand Sentiment, Content Strategy, and quality of Follow Ups. While the Sweet 16 companies have been successful in their own right, there is a great deal of room for improvement as we shift the mindset from a branded page to a true social network. We would be happy to provide you with your company’s information and our analysis and suggestions at no cost. Contact us to find out how we can help your company succeed in this new era of Social Selling.

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