Evan Carmichael and Stephen Kelly tackle selling an anti-aging cream that's flopped despite ads and trade shows. Start with a small community of early testers, collect video testimonials, and use storytelling over spam. Build trust through expertise and passion, then let word-of-mouth do the work.
Gail is writing in, we have an anti-aging cream business that we tried several years ago to advertise. She's basically doing a whole bunch of stuff. She tried advertising, trade shows, she's trying to do it in social media, but she's not getting any luck. How can she promote this business of hers to start getting some results in social?
Yeah, I think, I don't know the specifics of the product, but let me take a stab. I think with an anti-aging cream, you know, obviously what it would offer is what's the benefit? And it's all about well-being. It's all about, I guess, self-confidence and self-esteem. You know, Evan, I look at you and I'm an old guy. You're a young guy. You got it all ahead of you. So if this product for people like me, all the guys and gals around the world said, actually, it looks after my well-being, it looks after my skin, it reduces eczema, allergies, all those sort of things. Then yeah, I like that. And I think the way to do it is with all these things, kind of start small, build a community of fans, and then kind of go. And through social, you can go awesome. And with products like anti-aging creams, you know, the website is your shop window on the world. But how you do it, I think, is it's all about kind of social referrals. And these things do go by recommendation. And, you know, things like aging creams, beauty products, It's a fantastic market where recommendations and referrals create viral success. And that's— so start small, maybe go out to a community of friends in your village, get them to test drive the product, come up with a few references, do a few video clips of how it's made a difference in their life, put it online, open up a kind of web store. And I think you'll build up tremendous momentum.
Yeah, I think in terms of social, because you're just trying to get it on Twitter and it's not having luck, I think if we were to look at your Twitter feed, it would probably just super promotional and spammy, right? There's no value there, there's no story, there's no core, you know, stand up for something around aging that's important to you. I think, how do you sell in social? Most people do the wrong thing, they're just broadcasting all the time, pushing out coupon codes or whatever, and nobody pays any attention. Where, how you should do it is, look at this, this is an example right now. We are social selling right now, through our values, even though I'm not talking about any products, Stephen's not coming on and saying, "Hey, you guys need to go buy Sage Software, it's the best thing for your business, and wait, there's more, if you do it right now on this Hangout, you're going to get 10% off your first month," right? You know, if he were doing that, you guys would all take off, right? And I would probably hang up too. He's coming on and giving value, right? He's talking about what he's doing with the library in Davos and trying to help you. He's got 15,000 employees to worry about, and he's on here chatting with you, trying to help you grow your business. Because he cares. Because this is something that's meaningful to him, right? And something that's meaningful to me too. Why am I spending my time? Because I want to help you guys out too. And so if you think about it though, the next time that you need accounting software, right? You're all entrepreneurs, or you're going to start your business. When you need accounting software, who's the first company that you're going to go to, right? It's Sage's— business to lose because of all the value that Stephen has given you to help your business. And that's how it works. And you see the results as companies are exploding, leading the stock market back to the black. And I think that's how you do it. You wanna sell on social, that's the key, right? Start sharing your passion, start providing value, start being the expert. Don't just talk about your anti-aging cream, 'cause that's a commodity that I can buy in a lot of places. Make me have a reason to wanna buy from you. 'cause I know you, like you, trust you, and you're the first person I'm gonna go to. You have to then lose my business because I love you so much with everything that you're putting out. That's how you win social, and that's how you make sales too, not just spamming out links.
