Looking for another way to boost your online sales? Find out how to increase social media sales to drive additional revenue to your business.
Businesses experience up to a 57% increase in return on their advertising costs on social media. Also, according to Shopify, sales that are derived from Pinterest posts and ads have an order value that averages $50 higher compared to other popular social media options.
Using the following information can help you boost your social media presence and sales. Here’s how you can do it…
Educate and Inform Your Social Audience
Let’s face it, you need to stand out from the crowd. And posting a simple picture of a product that your competitor has on their social media isn’t going to do much for your sales. You need to step it up and stand out among your competitors by offering information about what makes your product or service unique.
Social media platforms give you the opportunity to communicate with your audience and create a relationship. Use the available text areas to describe the product and several ways the consumer can use this product in their daily life. You can make it a bit personal by explaining how you use the product to create a personal connection with your audience and potential new customers.
Blow Your Audience’s Mind With Amazing Visual Content
Visual input is processed by the brain about 60,000 times faster than reading words and about 65% of the population learns visually. This means images and videos become highly engaging tools that capture the attention of your audience and gives you the opportunity to drive them towards your products.
Professional style images and videos are typically more trusted by consumers compared to low-quality options. However, you don’t want to overproduce the video and appear unauthentic. A great example of imagery can be found in Canva’s Instagram account.
The good news is that there are a variety of social media tools for images and videos that you can use online to produce the best videos and images to help improve your social media sales strategy. A few reputable tools to consider are Create Studio, Powtoon, or Toonly.
Creating your visual content takes careful thought and investigation. Take a look at your competitors to ensure you don’t accidentally create the same visual content they have on their social media accounts. Your goal is to stand out from the noise, which means you should make an effort to create visual content that is absolutely amazing.
How do you create such content that will blow your competition out of the water? Be creative.
This means you need to tap into your creative mind or hire someone or a team that is innovative and inventive. Think outside the box when it comes to standard content and show your product in a new light.
Teach Your Audience, Don’t Sell
Creating a sales pitch might seem like the logical thing to do since your goal is to sell your products. However, a straightforward sales pitch comes across to consumers as cold and off-putting.
For example, a simple image of your product with a caption saying “you gotta have this” creates urgency for the consumer to buy your product but it doesn’t explain why.
Instead of being straight forward with your sales pitch, show an image or video about how the consumer can use the product.
For example, if your product is a multi-use product like a LanyardBag, post a video showing how the viewer can use the product.
Or, if your product is a surfboard, post a video on how to properly care for a surfboard or how to ride a surfboard. Teaching your audience about your product provides them insight into the industry and allows them to learn something as well as boost their confidence in making the purchase.
Sell More With Influencers
Social media influencers often have a huge following and targeted audiences. Tapping into the power of an influencer or a few different ones can boost your sales fast. Hire an influencer to boost your sales and grow your audience quickly.
You need to carefully research the social media account when choosing the right influencer for your product. First, check out the number of followers they have and how many posts. Not only that, but what type of engagement do they get?
Here’s a great example from @TastingTable where they partnered with Jessica from @bigdeliciouslife on this post. Knowing that there is an overlap between their audiences, it made sense to collaborate on this initiative.
Typically, influencers know how to grow their audience and their own brand. Narrow down your options by choosing an influencer that complements your product.
For example, if you are selling makeup, hire a beauty influencer that has tutorial videos on her social media platform. Or if you have a digital product, get a well-known podcaster to review your product on their podcast channel. These types of influencers know how to engage an audience and recommend high-quality products such as yours.
Promote Your Products With Social Ads
Ads allow you to improve your brand recall and awareness. Depending on your industry, Instagram is a great platform that will allow you to demonstrate your product or service to a targeted audience.
Pinterest is a great platform that can increase social media sales for your business. The platform makes it easy by allowing you to create visually rich images and videos. You can create buyable pins that guide your audience to make their purchase within seconds. This platform also allows consumers to pin or save your post so they can make the purchase later.
Here’s a great example from Wayfair. Users can click to shop or save for later.
Other social media platforms such as Facebook also offer paid ads that give you control over the creation of the post or ad and the cost you are willing to spend. This type of advertising allows you to target a specific audience base as well as stay within your advertising budget.
Through most social ad platforms, you can also segment your audience based on their interactions with your ads or website. This allows you more opportunities to craft the right messaging for the right audience.
Respond to Your Audience, Even if They’re Hatin’
Many social media enthusiasts report they often see a product on Instagram or other platforms they would like to buy, but they get turned off when they see the comments from other viewers.
Just one negative comment can turn a customer off and even cause them to stop following your social media account. While it’s never fun to deal with someone who is speaking about your product or service in a negative way, if you don’t address them immediately and professionally, you can lose your audience quickly.
For example, if you create an awesome post that includes a video featuring someone cooking a recipe using one of your baking pans and a negative comment pops up, don’t ignore it.
Instead, address the hateful comment. This shows your audience that even if someone didn’t like your product or has a complaint, you care enough to address the issue, apologize for their inconvenience or solve the problem privately. And in some cases, it might make sense to take the conversation out of social media and into your help desk.
Responding to the negative comments lets your audience know that you stand behind your products and just because one or a few people didn’t like the baking pans, it doesn’t mean someone else can’t thoroughly enjoy it.
Take The High Road
You might be wondering how to calmly handle irate people and hateful comments in a kind yet powerful way. You need to remain calm at all times and don’t take anything personally.
Take this example with Stitch Fix.
They took the high road and offered sympathy and options to make it right with the person who left the comment.
However, sometimes the hateful comments come from someone who hasn’t even purchased your product. Unfortunately, some people enjoy spreading hate but it doesn’t mean you need to let them destroy your sales goals.
Always address any issues by offering a solution such as saying, “maybe next time you can grease the baking pan with your favorite butter or oil combination.” Remember your audience has the power to improve or destroy your reputation and it’s your responsibility to maintain a reputable and trustworthy business at all times.
Looking For The Best Times To Post?
Editor’s note: We typically don’t believe in articles that suggest the best times to post. What if your customers are in several countries and time zones?
That said, if this is something that interests you, or if your customer base is largely in your timezone, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better authority than AMA (American Marketing Association). Here is a link to their authoritative take on the subject.
Ready to Increase Social Media Sales?
Increase social media sales for your business by using any or all of the strategies I just discussed. Try to implement them into your marketing strategy in order to generate a new sales channel. And if this all seems like a bit too much to handle, there’s no shame in getting help from others. Social media sales are a great way to increase your business revenue.
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Latest posts by Chris Makara (see all)
- 6 Powerful Ways To Increase Your Social Media Sales - February 23, 2021