July 15th, 2020 | Updated on August 20th, 2020
The sphere of social media has dramatically changed both the selling and buying process. Modern sales team can’t any longer endure cold callings and get shooed away by customers. The solution is staying in tune with what works.
Yes, that’s right!
The fact that millions of people are using social media makes it a go-to channel for salespeople. Leads generated from social media platforms are not something new anymore.
That’s how the term “social selling” is well-known in the eCommerce market, and quickly adopted by many brands in both B2B and B2C segment.
So, what is social selling exactly and how to master the art of social selling? To answer these questions, keep your eyes on the following article.
What Is Social Selling, And Why Is It Important?
Social selling is the process of finding prospects, building, maintaining, and leveraging relationships with them on social networks with the ultimate goal of selling products and services.
Once you interact with prospects on social media platforms, you’re social selling.
That’s a basic definition of social selling anyone can understand easily. In fact, before social selling has a lot more power, every salesperson embraces traditional selling that now is far becoming a wasteland. However, to some extends, it’s necessary to differentiate social selling with traditional selling.
The biggest difference is: while traditional selling focuses mainly on short-term results, social selling aims to build relationships in the long run.
The buying process has changed in a way more active than ever. People spend more time shopping online, and most of them are influenced by what they see on social media.
This is where the traditional sales team needs to apply other strings, mainly social media, to move with the times.
Breaking the solid wall of traditional selling or any other selling forms, what’s precisely makes social selling – a new concept in the business world – become a dreamland that every business wants to thrive on?
Here’re some reasons to look at:
- It’s easier to develop real, meaningful relationships with social selling
- You can get a large customer base cause your prospects already engaged in social buying
- Social selling generates more number of leads and uplift sales
- Reduce the number of ineffective cold calls from outdated sales tactics
- Shorten the sales cycle as buyers make purchase decisions before even talking to a sales rep (they use online networks and search engines to check through the products)
- Social selling enables you to get deep insights into customers’ need and wants, opening new revenue opportunities
- Social selling draws a way more useful to maintain a base of loyal customers
So these are some benefits achieved when implementing social selling into your sales process.
Are you convinced yet? There are many more benefits of social selling that you will ascertain when you truly tip your toe into this selling-wise. One thing undoubted is that social selling has solidified itself as a big eCommerce playground.
Social selling is not difficult, but it needs to be unique. As a newbie in this field, refrain from dwelling too deep into the final results, learn how to be an excellent social seller first.
I’ll not seed the curiousness anymore, let’s move to the next section that reveals what you need to do with social selling.
How To Leverage Social Selling For Your Business Success?
1. Choose The Right Social Networks
Among 1.8 billion people shopping online worldwide, you can easily find out which social networks and platforms they are using the most.
In fact, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, or Twitter are social networking giants where your social selling can create an incredible mark. That’s no secret.
It’s easy to go with the flow and leverage the popular social network, but the viability of your social selling strategy only comes if it’s implemented on the most suitable networks.
You can start with where your prospects are mostly on. It’s essential to do in-depth research to identify your prospects.
For example, if your audiences are Millennials and gen Z, Facebook and Instagram are particularly good to reach and interact with them. If decision-makers are your target customers, go to LinkedIn as it is the most robust platform for B2B businesses.
2. Create Relationships First Not Sales
Social selling aims at building a long-term relationship with customers, so make sure you follow the rules while getting into any conversation with your followers on social media.
It’s more likely no use trying to sell something to someone you have just interacted with via social media.
Most social sellers fail because they rush customers to purchase without building enough trust. No matter how good your products are, it’s crucial to create a relationship before making a sale.
3. Build Up Social Credibility
Forming a relationship with customers is good, but it’s come in tandem with the trust you build before. Once you get the base of your target audience, you’ll want to build credibility. That’s one of the most critical factors keeping customers to stay longer with you.
Provide relevant content to your target audience, be real human, and show the audience that you’re actually there when you post something or communicate with them. The audience will open up their story only with a genuine listener.
Also, if you already showcase social proof on your websites such as case studies, testimonials, or certifications, don’t be shy to use them for social selling.
Sharing true stories of your employees or specific customers about your brand is a great way to increase social credibility. Sometimes having a professional and beautiful profile picture make your social profile more impeccable.
4. Provide Valuable And Unique Content
You can impress people on social media with thrilling or trendy stories, but only value remains superior when it comes to building customer trust and relationships. You will have more chance to win audiences’ hearts even before they trust you if you give more than you receive.
The easiest way to shower your social network community with value is by providing useful information designed to help them effectively.
It’s more effective to talk about how your products can solve customers’ problems rather than showing what features they have.
5. Interact With Followers
To build relationships for social selling, you can’t just create social profiles and flood your audiences’ timeline with mass posts of content. It’s way more imperative to interact regularly with your audiences like you are in a real-life conversation.
To communicate successfully with your audience, be a genuine listener first. If they pose problems or have any queries about your brands, try to understand the entire situation exactly, then respond and support them to resolve any outstanding issues right away.
Pay attention to your tone of voice when communicating with your audience as well. It should be friendly and “human” as possible.
6. Think And Work Innovatively
Social media is changing and evolving day by day, and so does the way people use it. In this game, there is no room for short-sighted social sellers and outdated social selling techniques.
To keep your social selling up-to-dated and effective, be sensitive to the trend, and what really works right at present.
It would be best to have your own uniqueness and make it synchronous in the smallest detail of your entire social selling process.
7. Track Results, Adjust And Improve
Not a single business succeeds if they don’t keep an eye on what they’re doing and measure the results. It doesn’t always have to be the number of sales that tell you your business is doing good or bad.
As meaningful relationships are the core of social selling, you can start with your audiences’ feedbacks to know whether they’re satisfied with what you deliver.
Kick Start Your Social Selling
You will not want to lose new revenue opportunities for your competitors. That’s why social selling is essential for your business.
No matter what field of business you are running on, social selling has no fence to stop you from leveraging its potentials.
Now it’s no longer the time to surf social media feeds just to see what’s new. You can genuinely make people fall in love with your brand over and over again with some useful social selling techniques from this article.
Be a wise social seller and share your success story with us!
Author Bio
Jade Nguyen is a marketing specialist with over four years of experience in the industry. She is working for Avada Commerce – a dedicated eCommerce solution provider.
She consistently shares her knowledge and expertise through well-researched writing pieces to bring useful solutions for eCommerce and marketing enthusiasts.
