GeneralHow to Sell on Social Media in 2023: An 8-Step Strategy

Sales in SMM is a type of sales using social networks. Social media is included in every step of the process, from product discovery to brand positioning. SMM gives you the opportunity to directly interact with customers – no cold calls and an uninterested audience.

If you can implement a social media sales strategy that builds relationships with your target audience, you will be successful.

Step 1. Understand who is buying

If you sell maternity clothes, the chance that 20-year-old men will not buy the product is off scale. It doesn’t matter how good the product is and how well thought out the business idea is. Sell to the wrong audience – you will be left with an empty pocket.

Do not shoot at random – study the market and draw up a portrait of the client. The goal is to understand how the ideal consumer of your product or service lives, thinks, and dreams.

Step 2. Choose the right platform for sales

When you have dealt with the target audience, the next step is to find out which social networks they prefer. It’s annoying if you spend time, money and effort on promoting on Facebook, but in the end you realize that the target audience consists of young people who spend most of their time on TikTok and Instagram.

There are several ways to start research. For example:

• Find a few people from existing clients or the ideal target audience example compiled earlier. And talk to them. Your goal is to find out which social networks they prefer. Even 10 answers will show a direction for further research.
• If you have a website or an online store, you can collect information by setting up and running blocks with surveys.
• Check out those who are already visiting the site and making purchases. You will see where they come from – from social networks, search engines or contextual advertising.

Step 3. Post interesting content for the target audience

Now you need to draw up a content plan with a schedule of publications that are really interesting to the target audience.

Don’t stop at kitten memes with ads, even if your business is selling cat food and accessories. It’s cute, but gets boring quickly.

Useful and relevant content can bring in a lot of new customers. People like to share the benefits with friends and save posts on their page so as not to lose. To do this, you need to understand the problems your customers face and offer a solution.

Step 4: Post quality content

Nothing says dilettantes more than pixelated, variegated illustrations and texts with errors and unverified facts. Use high-quality free mockups and pictures, spell check tools, etc. For example, on Instagram, users most often make their decision to follow based on the page’s visual appeal.

On the page of an expert in any social network, dubious and unsubstantiated statements cause distrust. Consider: What’s the point of signing up for a brand that doesn’t care about its image?

Step 5: Explore sales opportunities on the right social media

In order for social media sales to grow, you need to fully explore the capabilities of the desired platform. Explore all the features to advertise your product or service that the social network offers. Otherwise, competitors will skim the cream.

Step 6. Interact with the audience

Social networks are created for communication. Here are ideal conditions for developing relationships with customers – existing and potential.

Engage your audience in contests and surveys, answer questions, collect positive feedback, and be sure not to ignore the negative. A quick solution to problematic moments will show the audience that the business values its customers and increase the loyalty of the target audience. From this point of view, if there are no problems at all, they should be invented and immediately solved.

Step 7: Publish consistently

Most often, social networks for business do not work if a random post is published every 2 weeks. Then there really will be no result – it flashed in the feed and disappeared. Do you want to sell? Talk about the product, about the people behind it, about solving problems. Regular posting will not let the audience forget about you.

Step 8: Analyze your results

Without analyzing the current situation, it will not be possible to improve it in the future. If you do not understand what works and what does not, how to fix it?

• Check post stats. What caused the most heated discussions? Which collected a lot of comments and reposts? Posts that go unnoticed may not be worth your time or effort. Check and draw your own conclusions.
• Study the statistics of advertising publications. From which creatives we received the largest number of clicks, and from which – requests. If the reactions are sluggish, it is worth working with the creative or display settings in the advertising account. Test different versions.

Analysis of the effectiveness of posts will provide an opportunity to optimize the work in social networks and make it more profitable.

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