You're scrolling through your favorite social media app, and you come across a thought-provoking post from a brand or maybe a recommendation from a friend about a product. Being intrigued, you click on the post, and the next thing you know, you're on a website checking out a product you're now curious about. Social selling is this method of subtly catching your interest and holding it till you make a purchase.
Among your daily social media usage, have you wondered how these platforms are moving beyond mere tools for interacting with people? Social media has become a successful marketing mechanism for brands and businesses. 85% of marketers agree social media efforts have generated more exposure.
Connecting with potential customers and directly engaging with the target audience can be achieved with an active social media presence. A social selling strategy forging a meaningful audience bond helps build strong brand loyalty. Social selling can expand your revenue streams. If you are running a brand, let us explore how social media can revolutionize your sales strategy. Read on to learn how to harness social selling to propel your brand sales.
What is Social Selling?
Social selling is an innovative method that infuses social media into your sales journey. It explores the power and reach of social media to build genuine relationships and deliver value to your audience. It's not just about selling a product or a service; it's about leveraging these platforms to locate, connect with, understand, and nurture sales prospects.
Social selling builds upon regular social media use. It's the modern way to develop meaningful relationships with potential customers. You think from the customer's perspective, identify their pain points, and address them through your social presence. It does not blatantly sell the product but forms a trustworthy connection first, so they turn to you for purchase.
"Social selling is taking out the pitching component of sales. You're creating conversations about your product and services, which organically can produce sales conversations."
This quote by Paul Sowada sums it up nicely.
What Are the Benefits of Social Selling?
With the ever-growing market of online buyers, it's time to explore the advantages of social selling.
Increase Visibility: When you try to forge bonds with your customers via interactions, it can bring others to notice you. People unfamiliar with you earlier can visit your profile and check out your offerings. In social selling, you can rely on employee advocacy to reach your employees' connections to expand visibility.
Boost Traffic: Increased visibility can boost traffic on your websites or other social media accounts if you have a well-optimized profile.
Generate High-Quality Leads: Consistent efforts to interact with your active followers can push them to learn more about your company. With networking, you can find people who will be more interested in buying your product in the future. You can generate high-quality leads and increase sales on social media.
Why Should You Have a Social Selling Strategy?
It is a fact that social media is an excellent platform for marketing products and services. But are people buying online via social media?
- 43% of consumers browse social media to find goods and services.
- LinkedIn Sales Solutions' findings reveal businesses prioritizing social selling are 51% more likely to reach their sales targets.
- Accenture predicts social commerce will triple and reach $1.2 trillion by 2025.
- 82% of consumers have purchased after messaging with a brand and are even inclined to spend more.
Many such studies have found a correlation between social selling and the rise of social commerce. While digital marketing and direct ads generate sales, social selling helps build a reputation and trust around your name. It is an indirect way to garner more audiences and convert them into loyal customers.
You can form meaningful relationships with potential customers by answering customer queries, sharing valuable insights, and gathering feedback. These are all critical aspects of social selling that should be a part of your strategy.
Best Social Selling Practices
Let's discuss significant strategies for effective social selling across all social media platforms. These tactics can help you engage more meaningfully with your audience and convert connections into customers.
1. Optimize Your Profiles
Make sure your social media profiles are professional and reflect your brand consistently. It includes a clear profile picture, a concise and attractive bio, and up-to-date contact information. Your profile should immediately convey who you are and what value you offer. Using the same pictures and language tone will add credibility to your social media presence.
Use Highperformr's AI tools like Twitter Bio Generator, Facebook Bio Generator or Headline Generator for LinkedIn to upgrade your profiles with a creative touch.
2. Make Valuable Content
Share content that adds value to your target audiences. This could be insightful articles, practical tips, or entertaining content related to your niche. Valuable content positions you as an authority in your field and helps build trust with your audience.
3. Join Groups and Communities
Actively participate in relevant groups and communities. It is a tried-and-tested way to network, share your expertise, and get to know your target audience's needs and challenges. It also enriches you with newer perspectives about what's happening in your industry.
4. Post Consistently
Display consistency with posting content. An inactive profile cannot grow organically. The type of content you share can vary across platforms, but ensure you are active, interacting and sharing content on all your profiles simultaneously.
Managing the posting schedules of multiple social media apps can be challenging. Simplify the scheduling and posting by using software like Highperformr. Once you create content, automate the uploading process and ensure consistency.
5. Avail of Social Listening
Engage in social listening to monitor conversations about your brand, competitors, and industry. Find out how receptive people are to your competitors and what works for them. It can provide priceless insights into what your audience is interested in and help you tailor your social selling strategies accordingly.
6. Engage Regularly
Social selling thrives on engagement. It is the best way to form direct connections and establish communication with prospects. Respond to comments, messages, and mentions promptly. Displaying attention to your audience can significantly boost your brand's appeal.
7. Leverage Testimonials and User-Generated Content
Share testimonials, reviews, and user-generated content (UGC) to build credibility and trust. Research finds that consumers aged 18 to 36 trust UGC 50% more than traditional media. The study also found that UGC is 20% more influential in purchase decisions. Positive word-of-mouth from satisfied customers can be your talking point to influence potential buyers.
8. Personalize Your Approach
Whenever possible, personalize your interactions with your audience. It could mean mentioning them by name or referencing past interactions. Personal touches can go a long way in forging a bond between you and your customer and building solid relationships. It shows people you remember them.
9. Experiment and Analyze
Continuously test different content forms, posting times, and methods to see what resonates best with your audience. Use analytics to gauge the effectiveness of your social selling efforts and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Best Networks to Drive Social Media Sales
A seasoned brand or a new startup must know which social media platform can drive your sales. Each social media has a slightly different approach, depending on your product, services offered, and target audiences. Using a product elevator pitch tool can help brands stand out and create a memorable first impression.
Facebook is the largest social media network and is also widely popular among advertisers, with over 10 million active advertisers reported in the third quarter of 2020. You can use the medium to reach maximum demographics, from young adults to older people.
LinkedIn is a more suitable channel for businesses that network with other businesses (B2B operations). Here, you can connect with decision-makers in your industry and exchange knowledge. Combining your LinkedIn marketing with social selling can build your reputation for thought leadership.
Instagram and Pinterest are more suited for visually captivating your customers. Entice your target audience with vibrant photos or entertaining videos. Both these mediums have a shop feature where you can sell your products directly.
X (former Twitter) is perfect for addressing queries or garnering customer feedback. The real-time nature makes it an apt medium to communicate with customers directly. You can respond to complaints and notice feedback to develop brand trust. If used wisely, Twitter can be your lead-generating machine.
To summarize, each medium can be used to target different audiences. The answer to which social media platforms can maximize your sales depends on your offerings.
How Does Social Selling Work Across Different Platforms?
Having your presence on a single platform may not bore the expected sales results. Each social media has unique features to leverage for brand promotions. Thus, the approach to social selling also differs. Let us delve into the workings of three popular platforms: Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Create a Facebook page to craft an authentic profile of your company. If you need help optimizing it, you can rely on AI tools like Facebook Page Description Generator. It will create a business description with relevant keywords that amplify your presence.
Enhance your brand awareness with consistent posts on the page. Engage with followers' queries and comments. You can also put up posts with captions that encourage comments and interactions. Include questions or ask people to share their experiences about a topic.
Facebook groups are another way to network organically. Be a part of groups related to your industry and share posts. Be mindful of sharing and contributing to relevant discussions instead of direct promotions.
Enhance your business profile on LinkedIn by offering expertise and highlighting your achievements and learnings from setbacks. If you provide a service, talk about the demands in the industry and how your brand can contribute towards the supply. You can also feature client testimonials to build credibility among other experts.
Grow your LinkedIn network to include more industry professionals, influencers, and thought leaders. Join LinkedIn groups of your niche to connect with other peers. Observe what others are talking about and give your valuable input.
Sales Navigator is one of the best features of LinkedIn for social selling. It provides you with data about accounts that can be your probable clients. You will receive real-time updates about job changes or promotions to engage with decision-makers.
With a vast reach and real-time working method, Twitter is one of the best mediums to interact with your customers. It allows people to connect directly with large brands or reach out to their founders.
Get familiar with people who may be interested in your brand and engage with them. When they follow back, your posts will appear on their timeline. Make sure you put compelling content without appearing too self-promotional. Always respond to the replies on your tweets. It shows that you acknowledge your followers and care about their opinions. You can filter out the best replies using a free AI tool by Highperformr.
Connect with Twitter influencers who can further amplify your brand. Twitter lists can keep track of specific groups of users. Conceive lists of key industry influencers, competitor brands, and customer prospects. Engage in social listening to contribute with your opinions or learnings.
Measure the Success Rate of Your Social Selling
How do you determine if your social selling strategy is working or not? Social selling has no quantifiable measurement like likes, reposts, or impressions, so calculating its effectiveness is challenging. But on LinkedIn, you can use the Social Selling Index to evaluate your strategies.
Social Selling Index (SSI)
LinkedIn has its own social selling tool to measure your efforts. How you establish your professional presence, find prospects, engage with insights, and build relationships affects your SSI. To access this, you must have LinkedIn Premium's Sales Navigator. It has a Social Selling dashboard with insights about your brand interactions. It gives a score out of 100. You will need other third-party tools to calculate your social selling efforts on different platforms.
Conclusion
Social selling emerges as a trend and a vital digital strategy, empowering businesses to connect with their audience more effectively and personally. Success on social media is primarily measured by the content's reach and the quality of interactions it fosters.
Herein lies the critical role of social media management tools like Highperformr, which offer an unparalleled advantage with AI tools for content creation, scheduling, and analysis. These tools are indispensable for businesses aiming to maintain a consistent and impactful online presence. By leveraging analytics to understand audience behavior and preferences, companies can customize their messaging, ensuring it resonates deeply with their target demographic.
Moreover, using AI tools promises efficiency in handling multiple platforms, enabling you to allocate more time to strategizing and spend less time on operational tasks. Integrating social media management tools in social selling strategies can improve the quality of connections with potential customers.
