Social media is not anything new. Every business, big or small is incorporating the social media marketing strategy to keep up with the evolving landscape.
According to DBS Interactive, “85% of consumers use social media for business.”
If you are still hesitant about incorporating social media into your sales strategy, remember that most of your competitors have already mastered some of its tricks.
Let’s focus on the key finding by the Sales For Life, “For every $1 invested in social selling, the ROI is $5”
The sooner you realize the importance of social selling, the better. The marketing team in your organization might already be using social media for promotions. It’s time for sales professionals to align with them and take social media interactions with clients to the next level.
The old sales model including cold calling has limited reach. However, the new sales strategy of educating and engaging employees through social media marketing is gaining widely accepted. Sales reps can reach out to an increasing number of prospects through social media, educate them on how your company can help their business grow, and nurture their interest further through regular content posts.
To begin with, you need to establish your presence online and engage more with your customers and prospects.
Five Ways to Get Started with Social Selling
Social media marketing is largely about building relationships by choosing the right network and providing value to the leads.
Choose the Most Relevant Social Network
The true winners of social selling are those who focus only on platforms where their potential customers are active. Take for instance, fashion websites are more active on Pinterest while B2B sales professionals choose LinkedIn. Sales reps need to identify those platforms where there are chances of connecting with a large number of potential customers.
While Facebook enjoys strong hold on people of all age groups, decisions makers in the B2B industry primarily opt for Twitter and LinkedIn. However, B2C businesses targeting teenagers need to be present themselves aggressively on platforms like Instagram and Facebook.
Create a Wish List of Companies & Follow them on LinkedIn
Do you dream about having mega brands as your business clients?
Well, it doesn’t have to be a dream forever.
Especially when successful entrepreneurs can be easily found on LinkedIn. You can search for them through company profiles and keep up to date on their achievements. Actively participate in conversation chain initiated by them, and when they ask for any product recommendation or technical advice, get back to them quickly. This way, you are likely to strike the business chord with your dream companies.
With more than 500 million users, LinkedIn provides the ideal opportunity for networking. You can join different LinkedIn groups related to your business type and area of expertise and share the relevant knowledge with potential customers. Remember not to sound like a salesperson who pushes hard to sell a product. Just share the buzz about your product to grab the interest of your prospects.
Connect with the Right Twitter Users
Social media experts use different Twitter tools to search profiles by keyword or topic and follow multiple accounts quickly. Apps like SocialOomph and Followerwonk can help you track keywords and extend your Twitter profile. Then there is this tool named as CoTweet that allows you to collaborate with multiple users and store the conversation history for the last thirty days. Further, Bit.ly allows you to share shortened links across multiple Twitter accounts. So, why visit individual user profile when you can manage all of them through a single app!
Buffer & Hootsuite are other important tools to help you schedule your tweets rather than inundating your followers with 30 tweets in an hour. These tweets will also help determine what your audience likes out of the content you share along with times of the day when you get the maximum response to your tweets.
Join The Existing Conversations About Your Brand
Have you tried the popular Twitter tool Paper.li? If you want to contribute to ongoing conversations about your brand on Twitter, this tool can totally help you.
The app will allow you to collect top tweets from your followers based on hashtags. This way, you can join in the conversation about your brand and add value to it. Further, you can play the catalyst during the buying process of customers and increase the chances of conversion. Customers often listen to those sales reps who make different steps of the buying process smoother with ready information.
The Twitter’s search function can further help you see who is talking about you and jump into the conversation right away.
So, what’s the key ingredients of success in social selling?
Adoption, retention and continuous improvement are the three key ingredients of forming customer-friendly social selling strategy. Also, sales and marketing departments need to come together and work on useful tools for the practical application of smart social selling ideas. Further, share with your team every feat or triumph in social selling. This will boost their confidence and make them aligned with bigger organizational goals.
Wrapping Up
By adopting these social selling tips, you can connect with your prospects across different social media platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter. These are the platforms where decision makers can be found easily. All you need to do is provide value to prospects and build long-lasting business relationships. Social selling is not an occasional activity. It is an ongoing process alongside traditional techniques to improve sales prospects.
If you are new to the social media, you might find social selling processes a bit challenging. But in the long run, benefits outweigh challenges making it the first choice for thriving businesses which want to ensure sustained growth.
When prospects, existing customers and competitors are using social media, why not give social selling a try?
