Episode Summary
Globalization and changes in behavior and trends have caused a digital transformation at an organizational level and have given the customer more control over the process of buying. Today, a large part of the purchase process is already completed before you get in contact with the supplier. Further, social media is becoming more and more important for personal branding, just as social selling is becoming increasingly important for personal brand promotion.
But while personal branding and social selling go hand in hand, there are differences between the two. Personal branding consists of creating your own brand, which can be sold and marketed, while social selling is about using the power of your personal brand to interact with your prospects on social media.
In this episode of Rep Your Brand, our host Nick Bennett welcomes Evan Patterson, a content and community marketing professional and LinkedIn influencer. Evan and Nick get into a bunch of random stuff that Evan does on his LinkedIn. They discuss influencer and sales marketing, social selling, personal branding, and the relationship between social selling and personal branding.
Guest Profile
- Name: Evan Patterson
- What he does: Evan is a content and community marketing professional and LinkedIn influencer.
- Company: Quite a few things on his LinkedIn.
- Noteworthy: Evan is a business development professional with demonstrated savviness in social selling, email prospecting, B2B affiliate, influencer marketing, and creative outreach strategies. Additionally, Evan is focusing on making work more human by promoting LGBTQ+ rights, fighting racial injustices, developing team-building activities, and encouraging professionals to prioritize their mental health.
Key Insights
- Leveraging sales influencers for personal branding. Over the past decade, influencers have become part of the core marketing strategy. They collaborate with brands to promote products or services to their audience, but there are pros and cons of leveraging sales influencers for personal branding. According to Evan, if you're working with sales influencers, you should focus on their ethics and the alignment between your personal brand and theirs and that of your brand and the companies they already work with. "People won't buy from somebody who's an a-hole; people won't buy from somebody who's supporting bad products, or they're partnering with a company that has a great product but unethical business practices; and the list goes on and on. So I have a very high bar for the type of people that I work with. And that doesn't mean followers and engagement; that means the quality of who you are."
- Influencer marketing on LinkedIn. Until recently, big brands advertised through their ambassadors, and mostly celebrities (actors, singers, athletes) promoted a certain brand. Today, influencer marketing involves brands collaborating with online influencers to market products or services. Evan explains how he does brand deals using LinkedIn. "The way that I do brand deals when I am on the receiving end of them, and the giving end is usually the same — either it'll be a product that I already use and already love, or they'll come to me and go, 'Hey, we would love to do a brand deal with you; try our product out. Let us know if this makes sense.' They know that I'm not going to say yes unless I like their product, and I'm going to use it."
- Content pillars in personal branding. Personal branding and influencer marketing are two different brand marketing strategies. And you can use influencer marketing in your personal branding efforts and build your audience. Evan notes that he has pillars of content in personal branding. "I've got Evan, the sales dev hat; I've got Evan, the marketing hat; and then I've got Evan, the DEI queer hat. So, when I do influencer marketing brands deals and stuff like that, I think about which content pillar they fall under. Most of them are like sales tech and marketing tech; I very rarely get any brand deals in the DEI queer context. […] But I focus on creating an audience as well; I focus on creating a community. I am a community marketer at the end of the day; that is my bread and butter."
Episode Highlights
LinkedIn Should Change Some Rules
“One thing I do advocate for — and I wish LinkedIn did as well — is to have sponsored tags in the post because there are laws about it; you have to make it known to people. And I do make it known to people, in the sense that I don’t pretend that it’s not. So, the laws regarding sponsored content aren’t that you have to make it explicitly known; they’re that you have to make it, you have to keep it, you’re not allowed to pretend that it’s not. So, that’s the rule there.
The other thing is that good influencer marketing shouldn’t look like influencer marketing. There’s a big difference between those TikTok ads that you see that literally say ‘Ad’ versus a TikTok going like, ‘I use this when I do X, Y, and Z.’ So, you shouldn’t be able to tell when I tag somebody and when there’s money behind it. And I think the people that do what we do for a living can tell, but the average person shouldn’t be able to.”
Social Selling vs. Personal Branding
“Social selling is when you start taking that personal brand and doing something with it at a one-to-one level. You are doing what an SDR does, or an outbound DIE does in the outbound part of their day, to generate traffic in leads and qualified meetings, whatever that means for your organization, through the means of social media, and your personal brand is fueling that higher reply rate. […]
Social selling could also be great at combining cold calling with social. When ‘he’ cold calls somebody, his hang-up rate is lower because people already know his name; they already like him. So he could go straight into the pitch without being pitched flat because he has already built this rapport with this person, even if he’s never specifically said anything to them. If Cher calls me, I don’t care what she has to say. I’m listening to her. It’s that effect.”
Incorporating Social Media Into the Sales Motion
“You have to hire people that have a natural interest in social media and aren’t afraid to put themselves out there; they’re not afraid to deal with the hate and the bullshit that comes with it.
They have really good IQ; they have a lot of self-awareness; they’re creative and the most
offensive — and I mean this intentionally to be offensive; they’re not boring. A lot of sales reps are really good at having a conversation in a demo. They’re really bad at keeping an audience’s attention for long periods of time, but that’s because they’re not hired for that; they’re not trained for that; and they’re not paid to do that. So, therefore, no one cares or looks for that in the interview process. So I don’t think salespeople are dumb or bad; there is still a place for them.”
Advice for Social Sellers
“Make sure that when you take on a job, that you love the ICP. And when I say, ‘You love the ICP,’ I don’t mean like you find what they do interesting and fascinating, but like the types of people who typically hold that job, you get along with them, and you click with them, and you enjoy talking to them. You love the product; you would either buy it yourself because you are the ICP, or if you were the ICP, you could see yourself buying it. And then you need to make sure that the culture of the company is one that empowers you and feels good.
I have this weird litmus test for the first five minutes of a conversation with a company. If I don’t get excited and start noticing myself having trouble, like not talking over them or getting too excited, I actually don’t have interest in working there because that’s how I know when I’m interested in something. You gotta ask yourself what that is for you.”
