Lesson Category: Marketing

There’s no standard time for closing deals that you initiated via DMs. Classify responses into cold, warm or hot.

Hot responses are people who received your initial DM with enthusiasm, either in the way they replied or the questions they asked. For hot responses, follow up immediately by asking if they would like to make a purchase now or need more evidence to make up their minds, which you could show them if they kindly send you their private email or chat number. Note I said private email. An office email can change anytime, and some office emails block recipients not recognised on the company’s email server.

Warm responses are those that are neither cold not hot. Leave them with a simple ‘If you need more info please remember to visit our website or contact us via DM @ebereamadi. Thank you for your time.’ and move on!

Cold responses are either those who did not reply at all or who were downright hostile. Just leave them alone or apologise if you were in the wrong for some reason. A happy customer may not tell others but trust me, an unhappy customer is a heat seeking missile, looking for someone or people to tell, and you know how easy that is with a screen grab! For the boys selling romantic proposals via DM, many have had their chats screen grabbed and posted on Twitter or elsewhere by unhappy ‘customers’. While we may consider this act childish, question is how did the DM slider allow matters to get that bad in the first instance?

Once you get any reply from your target, even if it’s a ‘hello’, ‘yes’ or ‘Thank you’, you now have the first foot in the door of that relationship. Note, it is not an excuse to pour out a deluge of information or whatever it is you’re selling. There is something called PERMISSION MARKETING and it would serve you well here.

Note that a percentage of your targets would reply out of sheer politeness, not real interest in what you’re selling. Some would totally ignore you, either because they don’t even check their DMs or because they suspect every message from someone they do not already chat with (even if you follow each other).

So, keep your follow up message short, simple and straight to the point. Never ever engage in a ping-pong conversation except the recipient initiates such.

Let’s take Ebere’s message A for example. Assuming the recipient replies as follows:

‘Oh great, so how are you’

Note that this has nothing to do with cakes, but it doesn’t also mean the customer wants to hook up with Ebere, assuming he’s a guy. It could just be that Ebere’s intro was so calm, polite and friendly that he feels a sense of ‘at-one-ment’ with her.

Ebere’s reply should not be ‘‘I’m fine and you?’. It should stay on the subject of cakes, parties, events and business. Ebere could also give some time before replying any message that appears too personal. If the second message from the potential customer is not about business, it may be time to call it quits or even block such a customer. Beware of time wasters, except of course you also like what he or she is ‘selling’!

As for the boys shooting shots as the saying goes, if by sheer luck she replies your one-liner ‘hello’, which I have advised against, don’t follow up with ‘So how are you?’. If for some crazy lucky spree of yours she goes on to say ‘fine’, please don’t go one with yet another question. She will feel like you are conducting an interview. If you suck at starting or carrying on a healthy conversation ask Google for basic tips on these topics. But first put your profile in order. Make your handle, profile name, display picture, cover page and pinned post what she would find interesting enough to allow that your one leg in.

Instead of two pages of the life history of your product, have a template meant for just introducing your self or your brand. Nobody wants another landing page literature in their DM. Yes, I understand you want to say it all. But the DM is not the place and time.

The consumer decision goes through what we call the Consumer Journey. It is not instant even if it happens in a split second. Yes! It starts with Awareness of what you’re selling, then Interest in what you’re selling, Desire in what you’re selling, and finally terminates in Action in what you’re selling.  There are other aspects to this journey which we don’t need to cover here.

The DM is the place to stimulate the consumer’s interest and get your first foot inside the door of the relationship. Even if you were selling a rat killer or latest wonder medicine for poverty, focus on starting a relationship. Don’t assume the target NEEDS or WANTS your product or service, so you just fire your sales message at will!

So back to my Ebere examples:

Hi @boyeadefila, we’ve not met, but I’d like to say I read some of your posts and I find them interesting, especially your balanced views on students’ riots. But that’s not why I am sending this DM (lol). I am a passionate cake maker and would like you to tell your friends and family about my services. As a show of goodwill, I am willing to offer you a special discount on any cake of your choice on your first order. You could check my TL or request for sample pictures here or via my whatsapp line 08165285675. Thank you for your time and keep up the balanced tweets!

Now compare the above with the example below:

Hi @boyeadefila, Introducing the best cakes in Africa!!!! Call us for your parties, birthdays, festivals, weddings, any occasion for that matter. We make sponge cakes, fruit cakes, bridal ladder cakes, picture cakes, and we deliver nationwide. Call us now and claim your 45% super crazy discount! Call 000111222333 or 000111222555 or 000111222666. Remember, we are just a DM away. Our sister company Ebere candles also sells the best candles for all occasions, prayer candles, celebrity candles, whatever candles. We are waiting. Why are you still waiting? Call now or slide into our DM. Ebere cakes, cakes like no other!

Clearly, one is more personal than the other. One has done some homework about the target customer and so doing, plugged into their soft spot or area of interest. One is more sincere than the other. One is less invasive than the other. Not everybody can afford cakes even if they needed cakes, so choose your DM targets carefully. The customer’s DM was not reserved for advertising. It was reserved for private messages initiated by the owner, for getting support from handles they are already following like their GSM network, their school, NYSC or the Police or Fire Service or their Senator; for reaching out to their private network as an alternative conversation medium to phone calls, texting and face to face meetings. Treat the DM space with respect. Don’t just dive in with arrogance as if they had been waiting for you all their lives. Who are you anyway? Ha ha, okay, you’re somebody, but thread softly. J

As mentioned earlier, there are apps to help you chose your potential target customers and such apps, and in some cases such apps can customise the first name of the target into the message, like in my case that would be ‘Dear Boye…’. However, if your business is small, invest time in growing your customer base one DM at a time. Dedicate 30 minutes per day to growing potential customers not a large followership or fan base.

A large followership is fine for a comedian or an influencer, but your primary interest is not followers or likes, it’s patronage. Anybody passing buy can click like on your cute cake pictures or whatever you’re selling. It is EFFECTIVE DEMAND YOU NEED not WINDOW SHOPPERS. An influencer sells their influence and so they need proof of a large and relevant followership. So, there’s is a game of large numbers. Yours is a game of active interest in your product or service.

Trust is a major factor in persuasion. Will you live up to your end of the bargain?

Remember that regardless of what you’re selling, your church, your self as potential boyfriend or husband, a service or a product, any sale whatsoever, is a promise. A toothpaste brand promises to wash my teeth clean and prevent mouth odour for as long as possible. A boyfriend is a promise of a great time for as long as the relationship lasts. A church is a promise of whatever the church stands for, salvation, prosperity or destruction of ancestral curses, or all the above. A political party is a promise of better life for the electorate. So, people must first trust that you can deliver that promise before they invest their choice in you. Same applies to something as simple as Tom-Tom menthol sweet. Would you be happy if you bought Tom-Tom with black and white stripes and it had no menthol? I doubt! So, every time the Tom-Tom brand advertises, they are making a certain promise, whether directly or indirectly to sooth your throat with the menthol essence.

But why do you trust Tom-Tom?

It is from Cadbury, the corporate multinational giant that makes other big brands like Bournvita, Eclairs chocolate Sweet and Oreo Biscuits. The pedigree of the parent company is usually enough for such products regarding trust.

But you my brother or sister is an unknown quantity, at least, as far as your target audience on social media is concerned. So, your first job is to be seen as ‘Trust Worthy’. Unfortunately, many swindlers understand this concept of gaining trust whilst you the average seller may not.

Having a good or great product or personality is not enough. Your target customer must TRUST that you truly have a good or great product.

Till the product or service is consumed (and in the case of a boyfriend, till you show your other colour) there is no way of confirming that the product is amazing or not.

Oh well, there are ways known as ‘due diligence’. This is when your potential customer does their own research on you to confirm that you’re real or that your claims are true. On campus or secondary school these would be the girl asking her friends about you. God help you if they have something on you! But if your profile was believable and your intro short, simple, honest and straight to the point, chances are you would get an immediate reply.

Make it worthwhile to hear from you. What can you say that would make even you want to listen to you? People, girls and boys inclusive, are first human beings with different agendas. Except you’re an influencer relevant to their favourite area of interest, or a brand they love, people are on social media for various other reasons and non includes a random ‘hi’ or ‘hello’ from you. Even if you began your DM with a hello or hi, you must go straight to the point, even if your point is to get to know him or her and not to sell any particular product or service. Either way you are still selling your personal brand. Are you interesting? Are you worth my previous time? Even the most bored person on earth deserves more than that random ‘Hello’. Up your social skills and learn how to start a conversation.

This doesn’t have to be an extensive research. Except for handles on private, or where the recipient has not made any post, most handles have timelines that can give you a clue or two about the person you’re targeting. Yes, even if they are posting only the glossy lifestyle or slay version of themselves. That, in itself, is a tip about their personality.

‘Know your enemy’ is the first rule in battle strategies. ‘Know your customer’ is therefore the first rule in marketing. There are other rules, such as Know your competition. But this course is about the customer.

If you’re trying to chat up a girl and you already know, from your research, that she is a Man-U fan, how lucky you are to have a natural conversation starter! But don’t go dropping a stupid one-liner such as ‘Man-U forever!’ and then say nothing else. Chances are she would raise an eyebrow, ignore you, or check your profile and just maybe still ignore you.

Do you know how many one liner messages the average girl receives per day?

You will be lost in the sea of abandoned one-liners, and you’d have only yourself to blame.

The worst one-liners are ‘Hello.’ Closely followed by ‘How are you?’ This takes me to the next point…

One of the most important skills in the world, since beginning of life on earth) is selling. The ability to convert another person or group of persons to our position or point of view has always been a natural skill for some people and a skill to be learnt for others.
The huge irony is that we all practise the ‘selling’ habit unconsciously, but often in situations we don’t consider as sales. By separating these everyday selling occasions from the product or service sales situations, we do ourselves great injustice.