Selling on social media is a great way to enhance your sale volumes and your authority in your niche. You need to understand the way social media operates to be able to reap maximum benefits from it. Basically, the sales process on social media happens in four stages:
- The attention stage – At this stage, your keyword gets the attention of the buyer. The potential leads get to see everything you have on offer and generate some degree of interest for your products. As a seller this may involve someone noticing your product packaging or hearing about your product for the very first time.
- The interest stage – This is a place where you can amass a lot of followers on social media per month and get them to constantly be exposed to your products. At this stage, potential buyers will follow, subscribe and enter your mailing lists or social media pages. Anything you post will be received with much enthusiasm and genuine interest. This is where the ‘fans’ balance is tipped off. Leads who graduate to this stage are now fans.
- The desire stage – The desire stage is characterized by readers and fans that trust you in absoluteness. They know that you are an authority and anything you say is significant. Depending on your niche, you will be able to sell to them at any moment in this stage or promote other products.
- The action stage – Finally, this is the last stage and certainly the most rewarding for any seller. Followers will at this point buy product, review it very well and recommend it to their friends. The focus of a social media campaign must always be on moving anybody you encounter from stage 1 to 4 as quickly as possible. Below are 8 tips on how you can optimize your campaign efficiently:
1. Remember that social media is social
Be smart when using social media to promote anything. Remember that nobody wants commercialization in places that are supposed to be social fun for whatever reason. As much as you may want people to be excited about your product release, they simply aren’t! You are the only one excited, so deal with it. Do not spam your Facebook page with coercion for people to buy your stuff. You are likely to lose both authority and followers for this mistake.
2. Use the hash-tag moderately
It’s annoying to try the hash-tag in every statement you want about your product. Newbies think that the more the hash-tags, the better the reach will be. Nothing could be further from the truth! Excessive use of hash-tags will make your posts look spammy and irritating. Identify your target audience instead.
3. Avoid emotional blackmail
It is foolish to try emotional blackmail to get attention from people. Do not place emotional stress on your fans by forcing them to, say, share a picture by making them feel guilty. A lot of authors post things such as ‘Share this post if you love our president’, ‘like if you are areal man’ etc. These tricks work in the short-run but in the end will hurt your sales by reducing your fans and reach. Keep the messages you broadcast always positive and pleasant.
4. Have a pleasant personality
You need to maintain a pleasant personality when dealing with your fans and followers. Avoid engaging your fans in debates and crossfire arguments. As a rule of the thumb, don’t ever respond to negative review. In case one person chooses to pick on your product, try to avoid commenting in public. Instead, contact them in private to see what you can do to address their concerns. Through it all, try to be as polite as possible and be nice to everybody regardless whether they look like genuine buyers not.
5. Use one primary account for all products
Using one account to manage a group of products is the most efficient way of managing a social media campaign. Many sellers imagine that setting up many sets of social media accounts will increase the sale volumes. Not so. The fact remains that each social media account will need time to build up an audience as well as time to build authority. For example, trying a new twitter handle for each new product will cost you many sales. To be successful in a social media campaign, centralize all operations from your main profiles. Every new product should only ride on the existing profiles.
6. Avoid pop-up windows or forceful promotion
In your blogs and websites, try to avoid pop-up windows as much as possible. Pop-ups will only serve to create tension in the relations with your visitors. They are often taken as rude, hostile and distractive. If you really need people to like your page or subscribe to your mailing list, simply place the link buttons somewhere on the page. Always remember that a successful career will entail prudent interaction with your customers and followers. On the same breath, avoid auto-follower direct message apps on twitter. You will find yourself frightening genuine followers who are honestly interested in your products. Again, don’t force people in your mailing list. Do not use dirty tricks or pop-ups to make people subscribe.
7. The 80:20 Rule
One thing to note as you zealously promote your products is that not everyone will appreciate all the marketing antics. For this reason, try to apply the 80:20 rule; that is, keep 80% of your content as interesting as possible. It must be entertaining or informative to your followers. The 80% must not involve any promotion, pitching or selling. This way the followers will find your page interesting and engaging. Then wait for the 20% to do punch line sale promotions. Your followers will gladly receive your message enthusiastically, just like they receive your jokes and free information. Social media experts agree that this is one of the best ratios for managing social media content on a commercial level.
8. Use the right social media channels
Last and equally important, use the right social media channels to move the products you need to market. Depending with what your products are about, you can settle for one or two of the most efficient channels for your product. One great channel is LinkedIn. This is an awesome tool for sellers who really want to target professionals and business buyers. If you can access professional groups, they are generally very efficient in promoting ideas.
For sellers selling home related things, you may want to consider Pinterest. One aspect about this platform is that 98% of users are women. That is quite something to think about considering women are generally serial buyers. You may consider Twitter if you want to create a buzz in your town. Twitter is generally very fast in spreading news and can come in handy during a product launch.
Finally, Facebook & Google plus are great channels to move information to masses by wild-carding. One in every five Facebook hits is always interested in what you are trying to promote, so be prepared to invest extra strategy. The advantage of these last two over Twitter is that information lasts longer and stays more accessible over time. Keep trying other channels and see which one is working for you.