How To Leverage Social Selling To Increase Your Sales

Social selling is a buzzword these days. The internet is inundated with blog posts on social selling tips to increase your sales or brand awareness. 

But even with all these how-to guides, people are unable to propel their sales using social media. 

In fact, many businesses are facing troubles tracking their return on investment (ROI) from their social media promotions. 

Do you know what the problem is? 

Unfortunately, many people still confuse social media as a platform to post their product images and share their blog posts. 

Social media, especially today, is not just a cut-and-dry platform to run ads. It’s a legitimate platform that can we utilized to sell your product or at least draw your target audience to your landing pages to make further sales.

So, let’s talk about how you can leverage social selling to increase your sales.

1. Identify Your Target Audience 

Social media is flooded with millions and billions of people from all over the world. And these people consist of a different set of demographics. 

So, it’s a given that not each and every type of audience is interested in what you are trying to sell. That’s why you have to spend your initial days of social selling on identifying your niche audience. 

Most importantly, you don’t have to leverage each and every social media channel either. 

For instance, if you go about promoting your luxury clothing brand on LinkedIn, then you are unlikely to get as many leads as you would probably get on Instagram. 

For your reference, here are the top 15 most popular social media channels in the world:

So, if are keen on social selling to increase your sales, then your first step should be to identify the correct platform for you or your product specifically. 

And once you are well tuned with your social media platform, the next step is to identify your target audience. 

Once you follow this process, you will be well on your way of gaining an upper hand in your social selling process. 

2. Engage With Your Target Audience 

Now that you have identified your target audience, what next? 

You will probably start sharing your blog posts and a few tidbits about your product, right? 

Ugh!

No wonder, you are struggling with social selling.

Drain out all these despicable notions out of your head. 

Hear me out. 

The first rule of social selling is to build a tight-knit community. And this can only be achieved by customer engagement on your part. On social media, you can’t get away with treating your prospects as strangers, you have to treat them like a friend. 

For instance, look at how well Neil Patel, one of the most popular marketers in the world, does it.

And I hope you know that Neil gets hundreds, if not thousands of such comments. But how else do you think he achieved such a huge social media following?

And people are now steadily understanding the importance of audience engagement on social media channels. 

That’s why 64% admit it as one of the most crucial parts of their social media marketing strategy. 

Not just this, you should always keep your team ready to answer your prospects’ queries and problems on social media — be it through direct messaging or through regular comment. 

Let me give you an example. 

A few days back, I was in a dilemma about ordering something from Net-a-porter. So, I simply sent them a direct message via Twitter. Surprisingly I didn’t have to wait for more than a few minutes before getting a reply. 

With this approach, they have turned me into their loyal customer now. 

You have to understand that your motto is to make your customer’s task easy. The easier their buying process is, the better will be your sales trajectory. 

And this is actually an upside of social selling. You can now help out your customers without having to go through tedious measures. 

3. Don’t be devoid of humor (dry humor will work too)

People use social media to get away from their boring, bland life. They want to hear about cool things and watch cute videos. 

Thus you have to have to align with the current trend. 

Moreover, your social media posts need to look, feel and sound different from the herd. 

No one does it better than Wendy’s. Most importantly, see how Wendy’s tracks down its audience and the mentions, and always has a witty retort in place. 

In fact, Wendy’s does it so well that people don’t even mind when they constantly post snarky remarks about their McDonalds, one of their biggest competitors.

This one had me laughing out loud!

However, it is important to know that not everyone is as cool. So, I’d say, don’t do something drastic like badmouthing your competitors.

However, this doesn’t mean that you can’t post witty stuff on social media. 

Just try visiting their Twitter page, and you will witness tons of people engaging with their social media posts, trying to get a humorous answer out of them. So, don’t follow the herd, do something different and build an audience base that remains loyal to your brand.

4. Don’t Shy Away From A Bit Of Humble Brag – Share Your Testimonials

With social media, you have got a platform, so why aren’t you using it to its full potential? 

Also, if you are just starting out with your social selling strategy, then you already have a lot of catching up to do. 

One of the easiest ways to do it by sharing your success stories with your prospects. 

And it even makes sense. 

If you want people to believe your claim that you are good at what you do or sell, then you have to demonstrate it by showing real-life examples. 

For instance, I cannot just say that my product is great and expect people to believe it. I have to demonstrate it somehow by telling how a particular number of people have liked it too. Right? 

Similarly, if you have to show your audience how your products have helped people in the past. And what they have to say about it. 

In fact, statistics prove that 92% of consumers read online testimonials and reviews when considering a purchase.

And you can share all sorts of social proof — be it word-of-mouth referral, a testimonial, a case study, and so forth. 

Have a look at some of the most effective types of social proofs:

If you come to think of it, sharing social proof doesn’t take a dime juxtaposed to paid ads. And it is by far one of the most effective ways of social selling that help you increase your sales. 

 5. Keep Spying On Your Prospects’ Activities 

Deny all you want but I know every sales professional wished for a platform where they can easily track down what their prospects are doing. 

And what better way than social media? 

Your social selling process depends a lot on your sleuthing skills. 

From who they are interacting with and what types of things they are liking, you can get to know a lot of private things about your audience. 

*Insert an evil laugh* 

Just kidding! There’s nothing tricky or evil about it. After all, your prospects are feeding you all the information themselves. Now, if you pay attention or not, it depends on you. 

So, if you do your social media monitoring right, you can garner a huge amount of profit using your social selling process. 

For example, if you see your target audience complaining about a product they bought from your competitor, you can sneakily offer them to try out yours. 

Similarly, if a prospect or customer says something bad about your product, you can offer alternatives and other solutions to repent your shortcomings. 

Summing it all up:

Can’t wait to reap all the profits that you are about to garner from social selling?

But hang on a minute.

Before envisioning the dollar signs, you have to focus on honing your social selling skills. a

Also, it is worthy to know that you won’t be seeing results instantly. Remember, Rome was not built in a day … or even a month for that matter.

So, show some patience, perseverance and yes wit to build up a loyal customer base and then compel them to make the final purchase.

Are you using social selling to increase your sales? What aspect of social selling do you like the most?