In today's interconnected world, social selling has emerged as a powerful tool for e-commerce businesses to expand their reach and cultivate customer relationships. This article will guide you through the essentials of social selling, highlighting its benefits.
Additionally, it will offer 10 actionable tips to help you effectively leverage social media platforms to increase sales and build customer relationships.
Social selling, as the name suggests, is a way to sell products or services via social networks like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or TikTok. However, you may be wondering what makes it different from conventional forms of selling like phone calls, emails or ads.
Very simply, since social selling is about selling via social channels, it often uses a more conversational tone of voice or style, and a more personal approach than you might use in other forms of communication. Social selling can often encourage a more personal and authentic connection compared to other conventional advertising or sales activities.
Your next question then might be “what's the difference between selling my business on social media and just promoting my business on social media?" It's a great question, and the lines indeed can be blurry. Essentially, social selling is more actionable, allowing your customers to buy directly through these platforms almost instantly.
Here are the key differences between social selling and traditional sales tactics:
Traditional selling: Traditional selling methods rely on tactics like cold calling and purchasing lead lists, meaning it creates impersonal interactions. This typically involves pushing rehearsed scripts and pitches, lacking the personalized touch to create genuine customer relationships.
Social selling helps you to achieve the following:
Building trust and credibility: Social selling fosters trust by engaging in authentic conversations and providing valuable content. By establishing yourself as a knowledgeable and reliable resource, you create a community of loyal followers. This trust and loyalty translates into increased customer confidence and a higher likelihood of conversion.
Yielding long-term customer relationships: Social selling focuses on building lasting relationships that extend beyond purchases. Nurturing these connections creates repeat business and cultivates brand advocates, leading to long term connections.
Providing valuable customer insights: Social listening and engagement provides a wealth of data about customer preferences and pain points, helping you shape your marketing strategies, product development, and customer service efforts.
Nurturing your target audience means that you should be messaging and sending content to the right people, not just firing social posts into the world and seeing what works. So, you first need to work out who you’re selling to. While there’s a good chance you already know who your customers are, finding them online is a different task. Here are three steps you can take to identify your target market:
Know your customers: Before creating a marketing strategy, it's essential to comprehensively understand your potential customers. This includes analysing their demographics, psychographics, geographics, and behaviour (more on these below). The goal is to use data and feedback to identify the type of customer most likely to buy from you.
Work out the size of your target audience: Market sizing involves determining the total number of potential buyers for your product or service. By breaking this down into your specific target market, you can estimate the potential demand within that niche and assess the worth of focusing on it.
Segment: Segmenting your target market into more granular categories allows you to gain deeper insights into your customers' needs and preferences. For example, you may wish to segment customers into age categories, as not all of them may not be interested in the same topics.
Here are four further ways to segment your audience:
Demographic: Age, gender, income.
Psychographic: Hobbies, life goals, values.
Geographic: Time zone, climate and season, and cultural preferences.
Behavioural: Brand interactions, brand loyalty, product ratings.
Selecting the right social media platforms and strategies is crucial for effective social selling, especially in the UK market, where 82.8% percent of the population uses social media1. Some platforms to consider are:
Facebook: With 37.10 million active users in the UK as of 20242, Facebook offers unparalleled reach across various demographics. Its broad appeal makes it suitable for general audiences and even some B2B interactions.
Instagram: Popular among younger adults in the UK, Instagram's visually driven nature makes it ideal for showcasing products and building brand aesthetics. In sectors like fashion and lifestyle, Instagram's strong visual presence significantly influences consumer behavior.
LinkedIn: Mostly for B2B networking, LinkedIn helps to connect professionals and businesses, facilitating lead generation and industry engagement. It’s the go-to platform for businesses looking to establish credibility and build relationships within the professional sphere.
X (formerly Twitter): X is still used for instant updates and conversations, but the landscape is shifting. It’s best for businesses to assess its relevance alongside other emerging platforms when deciding whether to use it for social selling.
Many businesses don’t have a documented content strategy, meaning they resort to ad-lib approaches, or they come up with the topics on the fly without much forward planning. However, it's essential to carefully consider what content you are putting out on social media.
Develop a content strategy that balances promotional content with valuable, informative, and entertaining posts. Additionally, make sure to also use content pillars when planning your calendar, to help improve creativity and content flow.
The UK’s online video audience is expected to grow to 53.7 million viewers by 20263, emphasizing the increasing importance of video as a key component of digital strategy for businesses. So, if you don’t have a video strategy or if you aren’t currently making video a huge part of your content output, it's time to get started!
There's a huge range of video content pieces you can create almost immediately. For example, short videos of your products or services in use might make for good short-form social content that could help your audience understand them better.
However, before you grab your smartphone and start recording, take a moment to develop a strategy that best suits your business. While there are some quick wins to be had by posting videos immediately for some businesses, for other companies, a more formal, documented video strategy and a longer video production timeline might make sense.
Posting content on social media isn’t enough — you also need to be engaging with your target audience in conversation and discussions. Actively engaging with your social media community can significantly boost your brand visibility and awareness, enabling you to reach a massive online audience and spread the word about your brand.
For example, engaging with your followers through likes, comments, shares, and shoutouts can not only help you get your name out there, but also foster a positive brand image. By consistently delivering social media content, listening to your community's feedback, and being there for your followers, you'll create a tribe of loyal customers, which ultimately cultivates loyalty and advocacy.
In today’s smartphone-dominated world, everyone has a video camera in their pocket. User-generated content (UGC) has become the norm, with research by Favoured even indicating that 92% of consumers trust UGC more than traditional forms of advertising4.
Regular use of UGC, mixed with conventionally higher-budget marketing outputs, fosters brand positivity and loyalty. However, where can this user-generated content come from? Try reaching out to influencers in your sector, ask existing customers to send you content, or even consider running a competition or special offer!
Social media is constantly changing, and it’s important to stay up to date with these changes so that you can adapt your social media strategy. Here’s a look at some of the latest ways you can sell your products on each platform:
Threads: As a newer platform, Threads focuses on text-based conversations. Businesses can leverage Threads to engage in real-time discussions, provide quick customer support, and build a conversational community around their brand.
Instagram: Instagram remains a powerhouse for visual marketing, particularly for product-focused businesses. Utilize Instagram Shopping to enable direct purchases within the app, leverage Instagram Stories for interactive promotions and ads, and collaborate with influencers to reach targeted audiences.
X (formerly Twitter): X is valuable for real-time updates, customer service, and industry monitoring. Businesses can also use X to engage in conversations, provide timely support, and share relevant news and updates.
TikTok: Businesses can leverage TikTok Shop to sell products directly within the app, create engaging short-form video posts and ads, and host live shopping events to connect with a younger audience.
Social commerce is a business strategy that involves selling products or services directly through social media platforms. It combines e-commerce with social networking to enable customers to discover, evaluate, and purchase products within the social media environment.
Social commerce leverages the inherent social aspects of these platforms, such as user reviews and recommendations to facilitate transactions. Popular social media platforms that support social commerce include Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
With more than 7.2 billion smartphones worldwide5, it’s essential to mobile optimize your business channels. Mobile-friendly websites are crucial for online visibility and competitiveness. Google also prioritizes mobile-friendly sites, leading to higher rankings in search engine results.
Mobile optimization also boosts conversion rates by improving the user experience, and is essential for supporting omni-channel marketing, which provides a seamless customer experience across multiple channels and devices.
In recent times, many brands have experienced a decrease in their organic reach on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. In July 2023, the organic reach of a Facebook post was down from 2.58% to just 1.52%6.
While largely due to the ever-changing social media algorithms implemented, one solution is to consider paid advertising. With 86% of UK consumers now engaging with ads on social media networks7, it serves as an index for businesses to precisely target their desired demographics and interests. This increases the likelihood of reaching potential customers within their target audience who are genuinely interested in their offerings.
Remember, social selling is all about building relationships, providing value, and engaging authentically with your audience. Optimize your social media strategy by learning what types of posts and content gets the most engagement (and the least engagement), and find out what makes your audience click through to either find out more or make a purchase.
To boost your social selling efforts, consider creating a DHL Express business account today. Their services will help you streamline your shipping and ensure your customers receive their orders smoothly and efficiently, improving customer satisfaction and your overall operations.
Want to know more about using social media to promote and sell your brand? Read our guide to making the most of your social strategy.
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