Let’s talk about improving social media sales. There are many ways to integrate social media into your sales strategy.
Social media strategy is essential for sales in the digital era. In fact, more than 50% of sales come from it (SmallBizGenius). When deciding how to use social media in your selling strategy, there are a few things you should know. It’s an always-evolving discipline, and some business owners prefer to hire professional digital marketers with the right expertise to create social media success. We work with people who want their businesses to thrive.
Here are five tips to improve social media sales, just to get you started. After, we’ll provide insight into the relationship between social media and sales and how to move people from follower to buyer.
How to Improve Social Media Sales
Social media platforms are flexible technologies with a lot of uses. Here’s five ways to get started.
1. Know which platform(s) to use for your business
It’s important to know which platforms your customers use the most. Ask yourself: where do my customers like to hang out? Professionals in the realm of digital marketing review demographic information regularly. The demographic makeup of your customer base will provide clues to guide your decision between putting more energy into Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok or LinkedIn. Your brand will guide your social media decisions as well, and a good digital marketing professional knows how to make suggestions about that too. A best practice is to use a few platforms effectively, rather than spread a thin effort across all the platforms. When you want to utilize all platforms, it’s best to hire a professional.
2. Post consistently
People like reliable patterns. Does anyone remember Saturday morning cartoons? Or the day when your favorite sitcom showed on TV? Reliable programming keeps the attention of your customer base. It creates a sense of stability, and that’s a useful tool in any marketing strategy. Social media algorithms also tend to favor regular posting.
3. Generate high-quality content (without being pushy!)
In order to generate more sales, your posts must have high-quality content. Each post should be thoughtful, have great on-brand imagery, and encourage engagement. Audience engagement is a great tool. There’s an old sales trick: get the product in the hands of the customer right away, because if people start handling things they start to feel ownership over those things, thus increasing their odds of a purchase. We can’t do that in a digital marketing context–or not exactly. What we can do is encourage engagement–polls, questions, crowd-sourcing branding decisions. Your posts should be attention-grabbing and not pushy. However, don’t forget to occasionally mix in call to actions with the high-quality content occasionally, so your audience is directed toward a sale. There’s a balance. You don’t want to leave them in engagement-only land forever.
4. Develop and follow a social media strategy
Before beginning a social media campaign, it’s necessary to have a strategy. This is like a blueprint for success. Although it may seem dull and time-consuming, it actually saves you time in the long run, because it makes decisions easier in the future. It’s also important for attracting customers because strategy facilitates honest and consistent brand decisions. Part of your strategy should include:
a. Clear goals suitable to your business objectives
b. Learning from your audience and competitors
c. Social media audit, at the beginning of implementation and on a regular basis
d. A content schedule
e. A living library, i.e., a regularly updated library of useful keywords, hashtags, images, and videos
5. Post diverse content
Instead of posting only photos on your social media, it’s important to make use of other content. Mix up your content. Use reels, collages, graphics, stories, etc. Video is extremely powerful and algorithms tend to favor it. Varied content engages more users on more levels.
What is the Relationship between Social Media and Sales
There’s a strong relationship between social media and sales. As mentioned previously, more than 50% of revenue across fourteen large industries comes from social media (SmallBizGenius). These industries include software, advertising, and healthcare. It doesn’t matter what business you’re in: you’re doing business with people. Right now, social media provides a great tool for connecting with people.
Social media can generate sales in different ways. It can generate leads, reach new customers, retain existing ones–all sorts. Social media makes it easier to communicate with your clients and create professional relationships that can serve your brand. How professional you are on social media can vary with your brand’s needs. The interpersonal nature of social media platforms gives you and your company the chance to build trust and solid foundations for relationships. It’s a vital link between companies and customers.
What is the Importance of Social Media in Sales
High-quality social media marketing is crucial for improving sales. It’s been noted that 78% of salespeople who use social media marketing are outselling their peers who do not (OptinMonster). Using social media is an easy way to reach potential new customers in a cost-effective way. It allows you to engage with customers in meaningful ways. Stronger customer relationships improve sales and customer retention.
In addition, social media provides you with tools to help your company reach more people than traditional sales methods. Social media content, if used within the parameters of a well-calculated marketing strategy, can generate hundreds–thousands–millions of views! Millions aren’t impossible. Although hundreds and thousands are more likely. (And, let’s face it, more manageable and usually plenty.)
There are 2.9 billion active users on Facebook and 1.1 billion on Instagram every month (BusinessNewsDaily). Your audience is likely in there somewhere.
Here are some useful social media usage statistics from the Pew Research Center (Pew):
Social Media Use by Age
- 18-29: 88%
- 30-49: 78%
- 50-65: 64%
- 65+: 37%
Social media provides ample marketing and sales opportunities. Never write it off.
Converting Social Media Viewers to Customers
The most essential step in using social media as an advertising tool is converting social media engagement into customers. It’s not necessarily an intuitive step. In our personal lives, we expect to measure successful use of social media by things like follower count and likes, and how much engagement we get on a given social media platform.
In business, successful use of social media is measured by how many people get off of Facebook–or Instagram–or whichever platform you’re using most. Your social media engagement is a useful metric to help you make marketing decisions about where to invest time and energy.
Turning social media engagement into sales takes an extra step. Fortunately for business owners, marketing professionals have developed a handful of techniques and tools to help that happen.
Creating a clear call to action encourages social media engagement to turn into off-social-media engagement. Action like, “Use this fifteen percent off coupon in our shop,” and, “Come to our event on Saturday!” People taking the time to engage with you on social media are already demonstrating interest in engaging with you, so give them something fun to do and they will likely come along for the ride.
Additionally, create downloadable or gated offers where you pull engaged followers into your email list. When you have multiple touchpoints with customers or potential customers through multiple marketing channels, you’re more likely to get a sale than if they stayed on social media alone. Even simple offers like, “Sign up for our mailing list for a discount code” or “for limited-run” products can work.
Also, retargeting ads can work really well, depending on your strategy, the brand, and the customer base. If people have already done business with you, engaged with you on social media, or visited your website, you can create ad campaigns that function as reminders for them. Hey–we’re still here, and still groovy!
Social media allows you to reach an enormous amount of people. It has a huge amount of potential for your business if you incorporate it well into your marketing strategy.
Need a social media strategy?
Need a social media strategy built for your business and someone to spread your brand across platforms in an engaging way? ARC Creative Co. provides social media packages that include mixed content (yep that means video too!). Talk to one of our representatives about how we can help your brand shine.
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Sources:
BusinessNewsDaily, Kontino, OptinMonster, Pew Research Center, SmallBizGenius, SocialMediaToday, Forbes