People don’t think about how an agency even got the first meeting: did you have a credible source, was I referred, or did someone simply call you? Well, sales and marketing people are the ones who make these calls to prospective clients or businesses. These businesses are all too busy to answer their phones and read their emails, yet they have enough time to reach for the keyboard and conduct a Google search or check Facebook. So when will people start to realize that they are conducting these business to business operations or decisions by SEO and Social media? I had a conversation with a man who told me that his company only needs word-of-mouth to sell and market his business to others. Then I read that B2B companies are looking for their business partners to take a social media presence seriously. It is becoming a more frequent occurrence that when a person refers a company by WOM that people immediately look for their online presence whether it be on social media or Google. The cold call is dead because if you do not have an online presence, people will ignore you. If someone ignores me over the phone to set a meeting, ten minutes later they will accept my invitation to be a professional connection on LinkedIn. Why would people accept me only after they have taken a look at my online persona and give me a new line of communication? The internet is a place of security for people. The phone seems to be removed from people’s idea of complete interaction and needs to be supplemented by the internet’s vast reservoir of knowledge. I say to prospective clients that having a social media and SEO plan in place will support new business in the future. This is because they just used social media to figure out if they want to conduct business with me as another business. Still, businesses don’t feel it’s a necessary tool for their company. If you are doing research on other companies online, you can bet your potential clients or partners are doing so as well.

As more people move to these social media venues for B2B needs, the big wigs, such as Coca-Cola, are digging even deeper for the attention of the world’s youth. The money pit that is TV ROI is receiving a new trainer to pull more results out of the old champion of B2C. Social TV has hit the floor and over the next year and a half, we will see if it has any legs to run the social media gambit that we all jump into everyday. Social TV will be used to break through the youth’s separation on different devices and different social media outlets. The leverage capabilities of data such as “average time spent on page” and “amount of views” are just the tip of an iceberg that could now be converted into ROI. Let us use the term we all really want to hear – PROFIT. This system will bring companies knowledge about where its gains in profit are coming from. It is a brave new world of computers and internet ready devices that keep pushing people and business into new lines of communication and entertainment.

So, who loves sales and marketing with a consistent brand message that reaches everyone? The answer is anyone who jumps on the social media and SEO bandwagon. Why? Because we all want to generate profit.