Jola Cloud Solutions' Blog

What are the main differences between social selling and social marketing? What strategies can we adopt to win more business?

Social marketing

There are various definitions, but in my mind, social marketing is part of the marketing strategy. Its purpose is to help us, as a company, build up brand awareness online and to let our partners and prospects know who we are and what problems we can uniquely solve. The objective of social marketing is to build up connections with prospects and educate them, so when they have a need, they know who to come to for a solution. It is about building up trust and putting out regular and accurate content that your partners and prospects value. It goes hand in hand with PR, helping you to drip-feed information to build your company’s reputation as a thought leader and a ‘go-to’ company for specific expertise.

The problem that most marketers have with social marketing is that it is difficult to measure success as the endgame is not direct leads and orders but a well-known and trusted brand name. This also takes years to build and can be destroyed in seconds online.

Social selling

Social selling focusses on prospecting online. You need to maintain visibility of your brand, but the endgame is leads and orders. The challenge that most people have with this is that it is a slow game that takes months of identifying the next ideal prospect, researching the company and all major contacts, connecting with them, and sending them relevant and useful information that will result in a successful sale.

It is not advisable to go straight in with who you work for and what you are selling. You need to think about what you can send them that will make them think of you as an expert in your field and someone they can go to with a problem that you can uniquely solve.

It takes lots of activity and time, which most salespeople do not have when there are much more direct routes to hitting their targets. Many people invest in software to help shortcut the process and identify key posts to comment on or like and set up alerts to respond to; others are fed by their marketing departments.

Each approach needs to be targeted; for example, when you are trying to sell something to me, you need to understand what my challenges may be right now. To do this, you may start with our website, blogs, and social posts and then look at what my colleagues and peers are posting and sharing. You need to put yourself in my position and send me something that I would find interesting and relevant, which may provoke a question, leading to a conversation, a demo, and maybe even a sale. You also need to time your approach right.

The endgame is always to get the right messaging to the right person at the right time.

With the current COVID restrictions still in place, many organisations have turned to online recruitment with varied results. What can employers do to ensure successful recruitment processes online?

Defining a strategy is a good place to start. What are your objectives? What is your strategy to achieve them, and how can this be measured? Preparation is key, and adapting your strategy to the new technology is essential.

Initial contact with candidates is often done over the phone, so this first step is easy to conduct over Teams. Second interviews are often more in-depth and so may be more challenging but not impossible if you adapt your tasks to work in a Team’s environment. Using case studies and role plays can help both behavioural and capability testing. Consistent and clear scoring is key to reduce the risk of unconscious bias influencing your decision.

Clear communication plan

Having a clearly defined candidate communication plan helps all parties gain a more consistent experience of the employer brand, encouraging more people to accept roles plus building a positive employer brand. Designing and shaping assessment messages not only offers reassurance and clarity but also mitigates business risks. 

Consistent measurement

Having the right measurements in place is key to ensure accurate assessment of candidates. It’s wise to trial and validate, just as in a traditional face-to-face assessment process.

Recording the process

The great benefit of online recruitment is the ability to easily record interviews to help compare candidates and involve additional parties for an independent view or second opinion.

Feedback

Sending feedback to candidates is an important part of the recruitment process. Successful candidates know exactly where they are in the process, and unsuccessful candidates can gain valuable feedback.

According to the United Nations, 55% of the world’s population live in cities and they predict this will grow to 68% by 2050. County councils are investing in technology to help reduce pollution, reduce the cost of street lighting and increase traffic throughput. 5G is an enabling technology for IoT.

5G

5G is designed to be high data-rate and low-latency, which allows for the fast real-time transfer of data between two or more points.

Internet of Things (IoT) refers to smart, web-enabled devices that have more of a fixed functionality, than general purpose smartphones, tablets or computers. Examples of IoT devices include ANPR cameras, IP-CCTV cameras.

Connectivity will enable maintenance of the infrastructure and manufacturing systems, as well as flow control. Adjustment and fine tuning of operating parameters will respond to real time fluctuations in the environment and processes.

MSPs are turning to Jola for their 5G requirements when rolling out solutions for smart cities. Jola provides a wide range of cost-effective 5G and 4G data SIM packages which are managed and monitored in Mobile Manager to avoid bill shock from monthly data overage charges.

Smart transport networks offer significant benefits to passengers, operators and local authorities, enabling urban services to become more efficient, effective and safe. Cities from London to Singapore are already building them. Madrid is leading the way, with a central control room that receives and integrates data from 40 urban control rooms. They cover over 100 bus routes, 300 railway lines and 200,000 cameras, delivering end-to-end surveillance and security solutions.

There are many experienced providers offering end-to-end solutions to the transport industry, involving 4G routers and cameras. Trams, buses and trains are tracked, and arrival times accurately estimated and advertised, factoring in potential delays. These devices need 4G data SIMs, often with a fixed IP or delivered via a secure Private APN. On average there are seven SIMs per bus, for logging into the cameras to download relevant footage, Wi-Fi, secure card payments, passenger trackers, applications tracking hours worked, engine telemetry and miles travelled.

Challenges

Service providers face a few challenges with 4G. Some networks are stronger than others in specific locations requiring relationships with multiple network providers. Secondly, they have no way of tracking data usage and if devices use more than their allocated monthly allowance, they get high data overage charges. Thirdly, they need a secure channel for transmitting financial data.

Unlimited data SIM cards have been available for a while. They are great for users who don’t want to worry about how much data they are consuming each month. MSPs prefer to buy wholesale packages fit for purpose, they can control.

Jola supplies unlimited data packages, fit for purpose on 30-day, 12-month and 24-month contracts that will work on 5G, where available. They are keenly priced and designed to work in routers and M2M devices.

Jola also offers a range of intelligent 4G routers which provide high speed connectivity for M2M and IoT applications. They are all IoT gateways, with built-in intelligence. Our models are competitively priced and available to order via Mobile Manager. They are delivered to site pre-configured with a Jola SIM and are suitable for mobile broadband and large scale IoT roll outs.

In Demand

Demand for unlimited data SIMs is high, as is demand for intelligent 4G routers. MSPs partnering with Jola and selling unlimited data packages enjoy an uplift in revenue and margin.

Layer 2 tunnelling protocol (L2TP) mobile solutions are not widely available. Few suppliers offer a 4G L2TP solution, and even fewer offer reliable roaming.

Internet service providers (ISPs) use mobile data for primary internet connectivity until a leased line circuit can be made live and also as a backup for when primary circuits fail. The challenge they face is finding the strongest signal in each location. To do this effectively, they send engineers to run site surveys, which is expensive and time consuming. Once they have installed the best 4G network at the required location, it can be very costly to operate. If used as a backup solution, most of the time the service is unused, and when it is used during an outage on a primary circuit, it may consume a lot of data, generating overage charges. A cost-effective monthly L2TP mobile data package that can add large bolt-ons when required may be the solution ISPs are looking for.

The Jola management team used to run Griffin Internet. We understand the challenges ISPs face when managing traffic and MPLS networks. We offer multinetwork data SIM packages that roam across UK mobile networks and across hundreds globally. We can scale solutions easily and offer diverse routing.

ISPs have built their services for decades by consuming L2TP connections from wholesale suppliers. Jola delivers mobile broadband via L2TP. We have designed the service to be easily consumed by any ISP with the infrastructure in place to terminate L2TP wholesale broadband.

The channel is well-placed to help customers adopt new technologies such as 5G. Resellers will know which of their customers are in an area with 5G coverage and also what their requirements are. Many resellers may already be using 4G to address their customers’ Internet access issues in areas with poorly performing fixed-line services, so 5G is a great opportunity to upsell to new 5G hardware and SIMs.

Now is the time to build offerings that use 5G, as they present the opportunity to provide 5G-ready solutions. 5G routers also support LTE Advanced, which is already available in more areas in the country than 5G. So by selling a 5G-ready SIM and router, the customer could get a big performance boost even before 5G actually arrives. 

In the mobile voice space, the latest handsets from all the main manufacturers are already 5G-ready, so any handset replacement project would likely have 5G readiness as a requirement. In the mobile router space, though there are very few 5G options available, we expect that to change this year now that the major chipset and modem module manufacturers are now producing 5G components in volume.

Jola offers the widest range of mobile data SIMs from multiple suppliers, which are easy to order and manage via Mobile Manager.  

Mobile Manager

Mobile Manager is our online management portal for ordering and managing estates of SIMs. This white-label portal communicates in real time with mobile networks and can be used by both resellers and their end users. Mobile Manager handles SIM activations, ceases, suspensions, reports, alerts and bolt-ons.

As water management systems age and infrastructures are updated, utilities companies consider long-range remote meter systems. By connecting water meters, utility companies eliminate the need for on-site meter readings, saving time and often improving customer satisfaction.

Dispatching staff to manually read water meters is both time-consuming and a logistical challenge. Reductions in manpower, fuel and vehicle maintenance costs add up to significant savings for utility companies switching to smart water meters.

Nonconnected water meters take point-in-time readings on a periodic basis, therefore providing a fairly limited amount of data about water usage patterns. Smart water meters give companies access to a continuous stream of real-time information about water consumption.

Smart water meters also give utility companies real-time alerts regarding outages, pipeline failures and leaks. This additional information allows companies to engage in early or preventative maintenance, detecting problems before they worsen and become more costly. Water management information can be stored in the cloud, accessible via web-based dashboards, making data gathering and analysis simple and efficient.

Specialists rolling out smart meters need reliable cellular connectivity they can manage, which will continue to perform as long as the devices are deployed.

Jola offers the widest range of mobile data SIMs from multiple suppliers, including LP-WAN, which are easy to order and manage via Mobile Manager.  

ISPs have been looking for efficient and inexpensive failover for fixed line services, pre-Ethernet connectivity and primary mobile broadband connectivity.

Mobile L2TP gives ISPs full control over routing and IP addressing, facilitating the creation of fixed-line failover, pre-ethernet and stand-alone internet access services. Mobile L2TP gives ISPs access to networks in the UK and hundreds of networks around the world.

The solution is inexpensive, reliable and straightforward to set-up. With un-steered multi-network SIMs, ISPs are not tied to any particular network and no longer need to do a site survey to determine the best signal – globally.

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have built their services for decades by consuming L2TP (Layer 2 Tunnelling Protocol) connections from wholesale suppliers. Jola delivers mobile broadband via L2TP.  We have designed the service to be easily consumed by any ISP that has the infrastructure in place to terminate L2TP wholesale broadband.

Jola joins Intel’s ORI, which is a broad ecosystem of retailers, system integrators, software vendors, equipment manufacturers and solution aggregators that drive the future of retail. The goal of ORI is to enable open, accessible solutions that accelerate iteration, flexibility and innovation at scale – from the edge to the cloud.

A collaboration between leading industry vendors enables retailers to minimise up-front investment time, reduce interoperability issues and allow innovation to happen at an accelerated pace.