The Language Barrier: Five Ways to get Traditional Clients Onboard with Untraditional Methods

THE BOOZE BIN

By Pia Mara Finkell (@piamara)

At their core, my clients are traditional. They are quite literally rooted in tradition, be it age-old winemaking customs, or multi-generational biodynamic farming techniques.

As food and wine trade and marketing associations, many of my clients are tasked with representing the common interests of a large group of shareholders: winemakers and growers, farmers, or artisanal food producers. In addition to supporting their collective marketing efforts, a large part of their daily life is regulating strict quality controls over an entire industry to ensure the best final product for the consumer. Bottom line, it is their job to be skeptical of anything new and flashy, anything not based in science and tradition, and definitely any trend that seems fly-by-night.

Even if they see the value of social media marketing methods – if they already “get it” – they still have to convince a room full of business owners and farmers. Oh, and just to make it a little more of a Double Dare Challenge, English is often not their mother tongue, so there is quite literally a language barrier between us.

Impossible?

Like anything else, you just need to learn to speak their language. Here are five ways to translate social media, and convince conservative, traditional or just plain cautious clients it’s worth adding to their overall marketing plan.

1. Speak their Language: I’ve written in the past about explaining social media to your clients. I’ve learned the bottom line is you have to translate the gobbledygook into terms they can understand: ROI and dollars (or Euros). Explain any costs and time involved, and demonstrate that equally significant to how much it will generate is how much it will save. For more information on this topic, here’s a great white paper by Syncapse that presents social media in terms of ROI.
2. Illustrate the Value in the Real World: Take the theory out of your explanation and use real life examples of what the heck you’re talking about. There are endless case studies out there to prove social media is effective from the perspective of sales and brand awareness, but here’s a well-known recent one:
   http://vimeo.com/14029410
3. Don’t Create the Proverbial Social Media White Elephant: If your client is reticent about creating an entire budget line item,  avoid the silos and integrate social media strategy and tactics into your core program they feel comfortable with and have already approved. This will take the sticker shock factor out of the picture and allow them to see how the new kid on the block can fit in without breaking the piggy bank.
4. Think Long Term: While short-term strategies that immediately effect a brand’s bottom line are important, it is equally important to lay the tracks for the future. Social media marketing is a long-term “pull” method that should be seamlessly integrated with “push” portions of your campaign, keeping in mind the ultimate goal of building a community of brand loyal customers. According to the Syncapse study, 68% of Facebook Fans indicate they are very likely to recommend a product, and 41% of fans are more likely than non-fans to recommend a fanned product to their friends. Even for a conservative client, those numbers talk.
5. The Bottom Line: In addition to driving traffic to the website, driving brand awareness and word-of-mouth, top brands and companies are spending millions on social media campaigns because they increase sales. The Old Spice case study shows sales spiking over 107% in a month and Dell reported $3 million in sales through Twitter. For more information on leveraging social media to increase sales, check a previous post here.