How to Smash Social Sales: Social Commerce
Social selling has become the epitome of the modern-day sales process. It’s reported by Salesforce that 77% of salespeople who use social media as a selling tool outperform those who don’t.
Also, social commerce is set to become the customised shopping experience of the future. In fact, the social commerce market is estimated at $89.4 billion right now and could reach $604.5 billion by 2027. So what is it about social selling that makes it so credulous?
The traits of social selling include: sharing relevant content, being highly proactive (which can include showing that you’re a great listener, a dedicated learner), and acting on the importance of creating meaningful connections with your audience. So let’s begin with sharing relevant content.
Relatability
Relatable content is an effective way to communicate with your audience. It increases your audience’s interest by highlighting that you understand what they care about, with high-quality - rich imagery, but also relatable content. This synonymously supports Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), where you can build a strong community that engages with your content and drive brand awareness, click-throughs and ultimately product sales.
It’s important to create messaging, strategy and creative that resonates with your prime audience and draws attention, but most of the time it’s possible that high-quality content is often the conduit because aesthetics matter!
Customising and creating your own posts against your brand identity can add significant value to your content, but it’s important to keep in mind that “Turning on paid marketing too early while still discovering “the happy path” in your acquisition funnel creates a greater risk for red herrings due to keyword confusion, misaligned intent, while also burning through precious marketing budget."
Content that resonates could be:
Seasonal
Aesthetics
Needs from brands
Offer inclusive, great content that they can’t offer themselves
Posting relevant and relatable content ensures your audience that their expectations are being taken seriously and reassures them that it’s not just the content itself that communicates, but rather that there are obvious semiotics involved. For instance, seasonal content carries sentimental, humanitarian values, whereas content focused on aesthetics can prove to your audience that your brand represents quality of a high standard. With a clear display of effort for achieving content that resonates, your brand ultimately establishes a community-like connection with your audience.
Get To Know Your Audience
How about being proactive with a classic audience analysis? It’s important that this is carried out because you can discover the challenges your audience faces and pair them with how your company offers a solution. This is another way you can build a strong community between your brand and your audience, not just by relating to their needs but also by relating to their experience as an audience and the things they care about the most.
You can achieve this by reviewing how your product or service resonates from your audience’s lens. It’s also effective to pinpoint how your service fits into the lifestyle of your audience, in detail and specificity. By acknowledging their perspective and providing a second window of how your audience may navigate their journey around what your brand offers, is more helpful than other solutions on the market. It shows them that your brand proposes more than just promises and amplifies the connection of understanding of relatability; instead, your brand can exist with your audience. Creating content that addresses questions and concerns at various stages of their lifestyles process is a way to understand the demands of your audience. The content that drives social sales can help your prospects to picture how the product/service can fit into their desire and lifestyle which will help close the sale.
While creating beautiful content for your feed is ultra important, if you want to reach new audiences, writing good captions that drive engagement is a great strategy. How you speak to your audience determines how they feel about you and our brand over time. Linguistic communication is the true science of social sales. It could truly impact your sales skills on Instagram. The success of Instagram Feed Shopping often depends on the caption that follows the feed. This also applies to Instagram Stories Shopping; with the appropriate blend of text and image, your audience has insight and pre-judged opinion of your product or service. To do this effectively, you need to ask reflective questions that require critical thinking, like:
What is happening in the world right now? What is the conversation? What is the culture? What are the conversations? How are people out there feeling? That’s the context of how to truly empathise with the world of your audience. Most importantly, the spin is what you have to say about it- it sets your perspective on topics that matter to them.
The benefits of using social media are inevitably the features that come along with it. Here are 11 reasons we share with all our prospects (personalised) on the return on investment/benefits of social media content:
Shareable content
Supports brand growth
Builds trust
There are more people in the world that have smartphones over televisions, therefore everyone has access to the internet and the ability to launch a social media profile. Wordsmiths are not yet a thing of the past so your brand is competing against strangers and experts. How you differentiate yourself is by creating a consistent stream of content that is comparable to other creators in your space.
Increased name visibility and brand exposure
Increases overall engagement due to active participation: comments likes and views
Captures previous and future brand partners’ interests by demonstrating why and how prospects should work with you
Drive traffic to your YouTube channel and website, increase book purchases, event attendance and brand sponsorships
Educate your audience and add to your women's empowerment and personal development legacy
You are developing your own PR, by owning your narrative through educational, entertaining and inspiring content
Make the most out of the YouTube videos, so it has a longer shelf life
You can repurpose these clips, on different platforms such as Patreon, Facebook Groups for the rest of time because the subject matters are timeless
Instagram users can make the most use of polls and its sticker features. Poll stickers are one of the quickest and easiest stickers for your followers to get involved in, making them a great option for an instant engagement boost. You’d be surprised how underused and overlooked this quick engagement tool is. With the appropriate poll questions (bonus if it’s a topic that resonates with your audience’s interests), poll results can tell you a lot about your audience. It’s engaging and informative- a more up-to-date and exciting approach to audience research. Though a lot of value from social media doesn’t show up immediately. It’s about building familiarity, awareness and presence that encourages an eventual purchase.
Social media traffic becomes more valuable over time and circulates more often with ads and Influencer Marketing. Adding Influencer Marketing into your overall strategy for Instagram can help to increase your brand awareness, grow your follower base, and can drive major sales. However it’s recommended to use retargeting on social ads with extra care to avoid unpleasant repetition.
Another area to be aware of when posting on social media is to create Highly Shareable Branded Assets. It’s important to remember that each copy needs to be tweaked per platform of you; l miss out on valuable customer service because of this. Different platforms provide a different purpose. Audiences expect a tailored approach to their feed from using varied forms of social media, so proving that your brand understands where audiences divert their attention to, can mean that your content is therefore effectively receptive.