The business and sales landscape is constantly changing. As a business owner or a sales leader, keeping your sales strategy up to date can be challenging. One of the most significant opportunities for most brands is incorporating social media in sales.
Even if you understand the value of social networks, setting out to include them in your sales strategy can be overwhelming. Fortunately, creating a social media strategy is easier than you might think.
This article will cover the basics of social media and how your sales reps can use social media in sales to reach potential leads.
What is social selling?
Social selling is a sales strategy where salespeople interact with potential customers on social media networks. Along with social media marketing, it leverages the reach of social media platforms to promote and sell products or services. It’s also a great lead generation source for sales.
Social media marketers, sales managers, and business owners create and share interesting and relevant content with their target audience. The goal is to get people talking about the brand or product and ultimately spur them to take action. It’s also a great way to build loyalty and brand awareness.
With over 4.5 billion social media users worldwide, it’s no surprise it’s one of the fastest growing marketing. From Tiktok and Instagram to LinkedIn and Twitter, there is a social media platform to reach your target audience.
While successful social media marketing requires a strategic and committed approach, it offers a high ROI (return on investment). The potential impact of social networks makes them a great addition to your sales strategy.
What are the benefits of social media for sales?
Source: Social commerce trends 2022: Shopping on social | Bazaarvoice
Social media can be a potent sales tool. Here are some of the top benefits of social media marketing for sales:
- Acquire New Customers – Social media effectively acquire and market new potential customers
- Increased Visibility and Reach – Especially as social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram move to a ‘suggested for you’ content model. Social media can help you reach a larger audience than many traditional (and more expensive) marketing methods
- Increased Brand Recognition – Building a strong presence and voice on social media can help you become a recognizable brand
- User-Generated Content (UGC) – As customers buy and use your product and service, they’re likely to include it in their content – also known as UGC. UGC helps improve brand awareness and can double as marketing content
- Customer Feedback – The engaging nature of social media makes it easy to interact organically with your customers and gather feedback at any point in their customer experience
6 ways to integrate social media into your sales strategy
Social media should play an integral role in building your sales strategy. But it’s essential to use an approach that best achieves your B2B goals.
As you think about how social media fits into your sales funnel, here are six ways to use social media as part of your overall business and sales strategy.
1. Identify the best platforms for your audience
One of the essential things in social media marketing is engaging your audience on the right platforms. Social media can be time-consuming. So you want to ensure you’re putting your time and effort where you’ll see the most significant returns.
As of 2022, Facebook remains the world’s most-used social media platform.
Source: 150+ Social Media Statistics that Matter to Marketers in 2022
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right fit for your audience. All social media platforms aren’t equal. TikTok, for example, is great for a younger demographic, while LinkedIn might be a better fit if you’re hoping to target professionals.
For instance, when providing SaaS, efforts should aim at businesses inside the tech industry. Perhaps using Instagram or Facebook may not be the best choice for social selling; LinkedIn could be more beneficial for your social media in sales B2B strategy.
Once you know where to best interact with your audience, you’ll be able to create content that speaks to their needs and interests effectively.
Many brands often find that their audiences are active across several platforms. In this case, it’s essential to identify what content resonates and where and move them down the social media sales funnel.
2. Highlight your community
The great thing about social media in sales is that it gives you a new way to engage and build relationships with your customers. Interacting with and highlighting your community is one of the best ways to bring in new customers and retain existing ones.
So how can you leverage your customers in your social media sales strategy?
- Showcase loyal customers – Share customer testimonials or spotlight people using your products or services in a unique and inspiring way
- Repost content – Reposting customer content is an excellent way to bolster your social media without creating endless volumes of content
- Engage with your audience – Interact with potential customers organically. Reply to comments and questions and share valuable content. Being present and engaging will help position you and your brand as approachable and helpful and can help you build stronger relationships and show appreciation for your customers
- Community outreach – Engage on LinkedIn groups that are specific to your industry
- Deliver timely social customer service – Your customers may start reaching out with typical customer queries in comments or direct messages on social media. Treating your social profiles as a customer service channel and delivering timely responses is crucial. To make the process easier, you and your customer service team can manage all your social media in one place using a third-party social media tool
3. Collect and share social proof
You can always tell potential customers how excellent your service or product is. But it will come across as more authentic when it comes from other real customers. Social proof helps customers and potential partners trust and believe in your brand. When you incorporate social media in sales, make sure it’s not salesy.
One of the top reasons to highlight social selling for your business is that competitors are already doing it. According to LinkedIn, 78% of social sellers outsell peers who don’t use social media.
As users grow warier with ads and branded content, collecting customer testimonials, feedback, and UGC can help you stand out from the crowd. You can do this through post-purchase communications or even through social media directly. It also allows you to engage with existing users meaningfully – which can build brand loyalty.
Brands like Aerie (through their #AerieREAL campaign) and GoPro (using the hashtag #GoPro) do a great job connecting with their customers through UGC campaigns. Consider embedding these Instagram links above. Or include a screenshot.
Once you’ve gathered this content from real customers, share it with potential customers as a part of your sales strategy. You can even go beyond social by sharing it as trust signals across channels like email and your website.
When discussing your B2B sales strategy, social media channels will play a significant role in the future. According to Gartner, by 2025, 80% of B2B sales communications will happen on digital channels.
Looking for a social media sales tool to plan campaigns? Check out Freshmarketer.
4. Optimize your social media accounts
Social media is more than just posting content. You need to optimize your accounts for your business and sales goals to be considered a thought leader. One of the most important things is consistency. Ensure your branding is consistent across all platforms and that you post regularly when you incorporate social media in sales. This way, whenever a customer sees your content, they can easily associate it with your brand. Consistent visuals and being present are vital to building brand awareness. Social media templates are a simple way to create and share consistent content.
It’s also important to use features like hashtags to help get your content in front of the right audience. If you’re using vague or irrelevant hashtags, it can be challenging to grow your following (and sales) since it’s difficult for potential customers to find you.
Image Source: NP Digital / LinkedIn
A good rule of thumb is to make the experience as easy as possible for your customer. Adding a link to your Instagram or TikTok bio seamlessly moves customers through the sales funnel.
Consider tapping into social commerce if you’re selling a physical product. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram are revolutionizing ecommerce by making it possible for customers to buy right within social media. And as social commerce is growing 3x faster than traditional ecommerce, now is the time to jump on the bandwagon!
Make sure to prioritize optimizing your accounts and taking advantage of available features. It’s one of the simplest ways to make social media work for you.
5. Track performance & metrics
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to social media in sales. While you can follow best practices, reviewing metrics and taking a data-driven approach is the best way to identify what’s working and isn’t.
Most social media platforms offer native insights features, which can give you a basic understanding of your performance. You can also use third-party social media management tools that can compile data across social media platforms to provide you with an even better understanding of your overall strategy.
As you evaluate your metrics, you should ask yourself questions like:
- What type of content drives the highest engagement?
- Which platform reaches the most customers?
Integrating tools like Google Analytics with your social media can help take it a step further by understanding how social media users interact with the rest of your sales funnel. Are you attracting high-intent customers? What resources do social media users gravitate to?
Social listening can improve your social media content and the rest of your sales strategy.
There is undeniably some trial and error when it comes to social media. So don’t be afraid to try new things to find what works best for you and your brand.
6. Conduct competitor research
If you are a key decision-maker in your company and you are wondering how to increase sales through social media, then watch out for competitors and top-performing brands. Looking out for what competitors do in similar industries is a great resource for helping improve your social media strategy. What content are they offering that you aren’t, and vice versa?
While it’s essential to maintain your brand identity and personality, learning from what your competitors are doing right (and wrong) can help you fast-track your results (and boost sales.)
Doing competitor research is also a great way to draw inspiration for your sales strategy and identify social media trends early on.
Ready to integrate social media into your sales strategy?
As our lives become increasingly digital, social media marketing has become a powerful tool to help businesses reach more potential customers and drive sales. While it requires some commitment and strategic thinking, it’s clear that integrating it into your sales strategy can set your business up for success.
Boosting awareness through social media could also mean boosting sales. Here are some examples that can help you out:
- Product updates that are relevant for your partners
- Industry highlights that involve your brand or business
- Helpful information like educational content, statistics, or reviews
Looking for more ways to increase sales through social media?
