Businesses understand that social media sites not only increase their reach to their audience; these platforms boost the sales of products and services. This technology also introduces a company’s brand to new customers. Are you searching for an effective way to integrate social media into your sales strategy? In this article, we’ll teach you eight ways to use social media to increase sales.
Step One: Define your Business Goals
Your small business should establish clear sales goals before it develops a comprehensive social media sales strategy. Ask yourself, what do you hope your plan achieves? Do you want to increase the sales of your products and services? Would you like to expand the number of prospects visiting your business site?
Whatever your goals are, write each one down on a piece of paper. Break each target into attainable, actionable steps. Space the deadline of each goal so you can complete them within a reasonable amount of time.
Are you still unsure about which sales targets your company should pursue? According to Sprout Social, common social media goals for businesses include:
- Expanded social media community
- More sales prospects for their products and services
- Introducing new customers and sales prospects to their brand.
- Boosting their community’s engagement rates
- Increasing customers’ interaction with their social media websites.
- Growing web traffic using promotional posts and paid social ads.
Step Two: Identify your Target Audience
Once you established your business goals, it’s time to identify your target audience on your social media.
Your sales and marketing team should have invaluable information about your customers. Ask them to provide demographic data that identifies your audience’s age, profession, gender, and income range. Other metrics you can include are their pain points, interests, and motivations.
Next, identify common character traits your target audience shares. You can gather analytical data from your sales and marketing team to find common qualities that your customers share. They can provide insights from your customer files to specify your audience.
After you finish, create customer personas for your social media campaign. These are fictional characters who represent your ideal client or product’s target audience. Each persona should contain a narrative about your ideal customer’s goals, desires, demographics, pain points, and needs.
Finally, use quantitative research to calculate how large your audience segment should be. If you have a Facebook Business Page, you can use their Audience Insights. This tool can estimate the size of different audience segments. It also provides data on which posts your customers engage with the most. The toll will also tell you how to structure your media campaign and how frequently to post.
Step Three: Complete an Audit of Your Brand and Select Your Social Media Platform
Once you’ve identified your core audience, it’s time for you to conduct an audit of your company’s brand and social media pages. It will allow you to figure out how well your social media sites compare to your competitors.
First, gather all licensed documentation associated with your brand. These items should include relevant stock photos, logos, and content. Does your graphics effectively communicate your branding? If not, it may be time to have them redesigned.
Keep these graphics close. You’ll need them later for your social media campaign. It also allows your company to present a cohesive branding presence on all social media sites.
Step Four: Sign up for the Social Media Channels Your Ideal Customers Use the Most
Once your audit is complete, you can sign up for your social media accounts. Your company shouldn’t sign up for every social media network. Only select sites that will apply to your primary goals.
First, use the customer personas you’ve developed to identify which social media platforms your target audience uses the most. Avoid those your clients rarely use.
For instance, Facebook has fallen out of favor with younger users ages 18 to 29. If your company sells products to younger users, target your efforts on Instagram, Snapchat, and Tik Tok. You can also use this data to trace how your core audience buys their products. Just because they use a specific social media channel does not mean they use it to purchase products.
You can sign up for a social media account for your business if you don’t have any social media account. After you register, keep track of the data insights on your social media pages and website. Post content regularly on your main social media platforms. Use secondary platforms for your supplemental strategy. These platforms can benefit from the content you posted to your main social media site.
Step Five: Investigate what Your Competitors Are Doing
Once you’ve launched your social media site, it’s time to study the competition. When you study rivals, it gives you a good idea about what they’re doing right and wrong on social media.
Analyze your competitors’ content to learn which posts get the highest engagement levels. You can also learn about their social media strategy and gain tips to develop your own.
You can use a third-party tool to get key insights about your competitors’ engagement rates. For instance, study how two competitors can take different approaches to the same marketing strategy and still be successful.
Step Six: Create Great Content, But Don’t Make it Sound Like a Sales Pitch
Remember that social media channels aren’t just for advertising your products and services. Developers created social media sites to inspire conversations between people. They weren’t created to be marketing platforms.
When composing posts, make sure they don’t sound like advertising or sales copy. Offer posts that can solve problems that your customer has. Be transparent and friendly when interacting with your customers.
You can take the following steps:
- Share images of your customers using your products
- Post behind-the-scenes pictures from your office.
- Include pictures and videos about tips and recipes using your products.
- Use quality content over a quantity.
Study how many unique visitors your site receives after each social media campaign. If you don’t receive a significant boost from your campaign, make changes until it yields results.
Step Seven: Make it Easy for People to Buy on Your Social Networks
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You post should be monetized to help customers buy your products and services on social media. Here are some ways you can use social media sites to make different sales.
- Pinterest Buyable Pins – These options were once available to only select retailers. Now, all users can take advantage of this Pinterest feature that was introduced in 2014. These pins are in related pins and on some enterprise profiles.
- Instagram’s Shoppable Posts and Tags – These features help Instagram users tag products and shop for them instantly in their organic news feed. Businesses can now tag physical products from their e-commerce platform or inventory, as well. Even brands that have less than 10,000 can increase traffic to their website.
To generate leads on Instagram, connect the bio section of your profile to your landing page to generate leads. Your profile should also contain the following information:
- Explain the purpose of your business, products, and services
- Tell customers why they should purchase from yourself
- Upload high-quality, optimized photos.
Step Eight: Include Calls to Action in Your Social Media Posts
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Although you don’t want your copy to sound like a sales pitch, you should encourage your customers to take action after finishing your post.
Each social media post should contain a call to action urging your visitors to complete some action. For instance, encourage them to click a link, share a post, or visit a website.
Step Nine: Use Paid Ads
You can also use paid ads to increase the number of followers on your social media sites? Although organic reach on social media has dwindled in recent years, paid advertising still reaches customers. They allow you to reach your target audience quickly and easily.
Do you need to develop a social media strategy that reaches your customers quickly? Dialed In Web can help. We have trained experts that can develop a plan that increases the reach of your brand. Contact us today for more information.
