*6 Minute Read*

Increasing Sales Through Social Media

Social media is no doubt one of the most effective platforms to engage your audience today. But I’m guessing that’s not the only reason it’s part of your marketing plan. Generating more sales through social media is the ultimate reason you provide all that exceptional value, and engagement.

Most businesses do a pretty great job at using social media to attract new potential customers. But things get tricky when it comes to converting these same persons to paying customers. A great percentage of prospects never reach the end of the sales funnel, and that’s not what you signed up for now, is it?

This article provides some simple and effective strategies you can use to generate more sales through social media.

“Social media platforms are primarily a place to build relationships so
focus on interacting with your audience.”

Choose The Perfect Platform

You’re not going to make a lot of progress at generating more sales if you’re advertising your product in the wrong market. So, it isn’t enough to just set up a Twitter account simply because some other person is generating more sales from twitter.

Analyze Your Results

A more strategic approach is to use tools like Hootsuite to determine how your social media assets, that is your posts, are performing.

• Which type of content is the most popular?
• Which topics garner the most comments and shares?
• Which format works best for your audience? Is it video or photos?
• Are your posts in Stories resulting in more engagement or sales than those posts that are placed in the newsfeed?

Data Collection & Analysis

Go further, use Google Analytics (it’s totally free) to drill down into your reporting to see exactly which social platform is sending the most valuable traffic to your website. Locate your Traffic Channels report and review it in order to better understand which platform is helping you to generate more sales through social media. In the image below, all traffic to the website that originated from social media is in line 2.

While you are there, make a note of which platform is sending you the least amount of traffic. That will help you prioritize the platforms that bring you the most ROI and decide if it is worthwhile to try to engage your audience on the platforms that are sending the least amount of traffic.

Choosing The Wrong Platform For Engagement

If you’re a vintage clothes business, for example, you’re less likely to generate more sales on LinkedIn than on Instagram. The reason is simple, Instagram is great for B2C engagement and it offers a lot of visual assets that allow you to showcase your products. LinkedIn, on the other hand, is a niche market that is more likely to favor professionals and B2B marketing.

Engage Audience. Build Trust.

The first rule here is: Don’t. Be. Too. Salesy.

Social media platforms are primarily a place to build relationships so focus on interacting with your audience. This shows that you genuinely care and it helps you gain the trust of your prospects.

Project Positivity

Digital expert, Neil Patel, says you can earn the trust of your customers by evoking positive emotions. People typically purchase products based on emotions instead of rational judgements. So, if you focus on pushing the right buttons in your customer’s heart, your conversion rate and customer advocacy is bound to increase.

Make The Most Of Influencer Marketing

Another way to generate more sales through social media is to connect with social media influencers. Influencers are basically social media users who have a large following due to the credibility they’ve built in a specific industry. Believe it or not, their followers not only feel like they know influencers on a more personal level, but they also TRUST THEIR OPINIONS!

70% of consumers trust social influencers. With this kind of large following and implicit trust they’ve amassed, influencers are able to get you tons of attention and, eventually, sales.

Spot A Fake Account.
Find The Right Partnership

• Focus on finding influencers who’s following is made up of people in your target audience.
• Examine their follower count and the types of engagement they get on their posts. Are people commenting, liking, sharing or tagging them in posts.
• Request their “Insight Report” before signing or paying for any promotions. Within that report, pay close attention to reach and high-value engagement metrics, like comments or shares.

Building Relationships With Influencers

Getting influencers to recommend your product requires earning their trust. Like your target audience, you also need to build a pretty solid relationship with an influencer and provide some value to them before popping the question.

This post from Big Commerce gives some insight on how you can make the most of influencer marketing. Alternatively, you can pay influencers to indirectly market your product. You can also use influencers to host contests and giveaways that link to your landing page from social media networks.

User-Generated Content

Not interested in Influencers? It’s okay, user-generated content might be of interest to you. So, what is User Generated content? Any form of content, such as images, videos, text and audio, that have been posted by users on online platforms

Reviews from customers

Positive reviews from your previous and existing customers work like a charm to attract new prospects. That’s because it douses any doubts the prospects might have about your product. It builds an enormous amount of trust before the relationship even begins.

Pictures, or video testimonials

Leveraging other user-generated content has similar effects too. You can get your customers to post pictures of themselves using your product or make short videos explaining their experience with it, and then tag you in it.

According to BrightLocal, 86% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses and they read an average of 10 reviews before being able to trust a business. 89% of consumers also read business’ response to these reviews.

This takes us back to engagement and earning the trust of your audience. Highlighting user-generated content on your social networks boosts your credibility and, in turn, increases sales.

Expand Your Reach with Paid Ads

Paid ads ARE affordable when you focus on audience interest and budget.

Paid Ads have come to stay and it’s helping many marketers reach more customers. This feature is available on every major social media network and it’s affordable too. You don’t have to invest a ton of money in it. If a paid campaign is not performing as well as you’d expected, you can stop it at any time.

You Control What You Spend

Ad spend is based on your decision, so there is no such thing as going over budget. Be realistic about what you can afford. Some platforms have daily ad spends as low as $5/ day. If you are going to set your ad spend to such a low amount, you should delve deep into understanding and setting up interest for the audience you’re trying to reach.

Experimenting with paid ads allows you to identify the campaigns that have great ROI and promote them more. Alternatively, you can use the models of the successful ones for future campaigns.

Remarketing Builds Awareness

Increase Your Ad Click-Through-Rate

Ever visited a website and then once you leave, you begin to see ads for that company everywhere you go online? Well, that’s remarketing.

Remarketing or retargeting your audience all across the web will improve the likelihood that your prospects will click your ad sooner. Remarketing is a way to track, collect cookies from visitors who land on your website or interact with your brand on social platforms. Remarketing will allow you to “follow them” around the internet with the same or similar ads to help them become more familiar with your offer.

Your Ads Help To Establish Trust

People usually need time to make up their minds about a product. So, a potential customer may not hit the “Buy” button after seeing an ad for the first time. By showing the same product offer (with some ad design or copy variation, i.e., using A/B Testing) to the same persons a number of times, you increase your chances of converting that person into paying customers. Don’t expect them to bite the bullet the first time, they may have to see the ad a few times before taking action