Social Media Selling
Social media selling is an important skill to have when it comes to sales. Customers don’t want to be flooded with more impersonal sales pitches and social media sites hate spam. So how does social selling continue to generate leads in a saturated environment?
Well, whatever platform it’s done on, social media selling is all about building relationships.
Returning customers want to feel engaged with the brands they invest in. Curious strangers are more likely to stick around when they feel welcomed and engaged. Building these kinds of relationships is how you develop warm leads, and every social media platform has unique tools to help.
Facebook is a powerful tool for e-commerce businesses specifically for its online selling and engagement tools. Let’s take a look at how you can make the most of them.
Boost company content
Social media sites stopped using linear timelines as the standard a few years ago. This meant that a post’s total reach wasn’t determined by the time it’s published, anymore. Digital marketing had to adapt in order to optimize engagement – enter boosted posts.
Content boosting is a paid marketing tool on Facebook, but you don’t have to break the bank to make it work. Not all posts should be boosted – that can either cost too much depending on how often your business page posts, or it can lead to audience fatigue.
But 2-4 posts a month should be targeted for boosting. They should be high-engagement posts, meaning they have a combination of a pitch, a product link, visual media and a call to action.
Engage with potential customers on your platforms
Facebook business pages have comments section under every post as well as direct messaging features. If you want to engage with customers and form new bonds, then put out posts that encourage comments. These can come in the form of a question at the end, where your business asks for feedback or a statement that encourages sharing.
It’s important to reply to these comments and foster conversation. When brands engage their customers, they signal interest and attention. Social selling is about valuing customers and investing in the connections that can be formed on social media sites like Facebook.
Participate in industry-related Facebook Groups
One of the best tools Facebook has for social selling is Facebook Groups. These are either private or public spaces on Facebook where people can gather around a shared interest. It shouldn’t be hard to find groups that align with your product, service or expertise.
Note that these aren’t groups to pitch your business in or make cold calls through. You’ll generate a lot more warm leads by joining existing conversations, being helpful to others and raising your brand awareness by just being an active member.
Being interesting and avoiding hard selling in the beginning can make it easier to seal a transaction at the back end of the sales process.
Research leads, prospects and competitors
This is another advantage of Facebook Groups. While your audience might frequent these groups, a lot of the active members are usually other similar businesses. Use that time to learn about competitors, industry trends and prospective opportunities. This helps in networking horizontally, but it also updates your market knowledge for when it’s time to showcase it to customers.
Avoid the hard sell
This point bears repeating, because social selling is not about the hard pitch. It’s about generating leads and forming relationships with them. It’s a personal approach to marketing that removes the inefficiency of cold calling and spam advertising.
It’s no longer enough for brands and businesses to just post standard copy on social media. Posts need to be engaging so that customers feel their voices are valued. This is what encourages people to buy your products, invest in your brand and recommend it to others willingly.
Fostering word of mouth and customer loyalty is far more efficient and sustainable than hard selling.
Build customer behavior models using data analytics
As your business interacts with customers online, new data will open up for you. Facebook Analytics and Google Analytics are great tools for gathering and organizing important information about the ways your customers engage.
Analytics can track click-through rate (CTR), post impressions, engagement metrics, your audience’s most active times for interaction, platform growth and marketing success.
This information is vital for building customer behavior models, which will give you a clearer idea of where your audience spends their time, what they respond to best, and how to reach them.
Social selling is much easier when you know a little about the customers you’re going to engage with.
Relationships make sales
That’s really what social selling comes down to – investing in relationships that will lead to sales in the short term and a loyal customer base in the long term. Platforms like Facebook can make that easier if you know how to use them. So make the most of social media to create a network of customers who are ready to invest in your brand.
