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Selling on Social Media: The Easy Guide to Making Profits

Friday, March 6, 2020

12mins Read 

 

Selling on social media is not a new concept. It’s now the norm and expected for brick-and-mortar stores to also have an eCommerce option for customers to purchase goods online.

 

If you plan to stay ahead of your competition and keep up with changing consumer preferences. Then you need to take your digital selling a step further and start selling on social media.

 

You want to make it as convenient as possible for consumers to purchase your products. How do you do that? You position yourself where they are most of the time – browsing and conversing on social media platforms.

 

Research shows that the average American spends around 2 hours per day on social media. Think about how many more minutes they would spend on social media if they could browse your products on Facebook without ever leaving the app.

 

How are you, as a business, supposed to know where to sell your products? How often should you promote them? and whom you should promote your products to? We’re answering all of these questions for you today. Just keep reading, and you’ll learn all the tricks of the trade to selling on social media.

 

What Is Social Selling?

Selling on social media, otherwise known as social selling, is when businesses choose to upload and sell their products on a social platform. They then use that platform as a means to reach their audience and sell to them through social media versus a web page. Selling on social media is gaining steam. And it’s doing it fast! Everything in the digital marketing world grows at lightning speed. So don’t let this one pass you by.

 

The Rise of Selling on Social Media

74% of consumers say they rely on social media for information to help them in future purchases. Additionally, 43% of consumers are more likely to purchase a product after learning about it on social media.

 

With these kinds of market data, you can’t afford not to be on social media or not to advertise on social media. And you especially can’t afford to lose out on the opportunity of selling on social media.

 

Recent studies have found that businesses who practice social selling generally see a $5 return for every $1 invested.

 

As a business, you can’t just make a social media profile and wait for people to come. You are swimming with big fish in the sea, so you have to make an effort with your social media account. The best way to do that is through social selling. So let’s get started in learning how to do that.

 

Choosing the Right Platform for Selling on Social Media

When it comes to social selling, you have several platforms you can choose from. But how do you know which one is right for your business? Should you be selling on more than one platform? What about all of them? Choosing the right platform to sell on is similar to choosing the right platform to use as your social media outlet.

 

Take a look at the platforms that you have business accounts with right now. Is it just Facebook? Great! Then sell on Facebook.

 

Are you on Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram? Then take a look at your metrics from each. Which one are you receiving the most engagement on? That’s a great indication of which platform would bring you the most revenue when it comes to product sales.

 

You may also consider your audience demographics. If your target audience is comprised of mostly millennials, then you may want to sell on Facebook and Instagram rather than Twitter and LinkedIn.

 

Facebook

It probably comes as no surprise to you that Facebook is easily our top choice platform for social selling. Let’s review all the features Facebook offers you as a business when it comes to selling on social media. We’ll also discuss which industries might have the most success selling on Facebook as well as some tips that are specific to selling on Facebook’s platform.

 

Product catalog

One feature offered by Facebook that other social media platforms do not have is the Product Catalog. With the feature, you can link your inventory in your eCommerce store to your Facebook business profile and begin selling those same products directly on Facebook! Your online store and Facebook talk to each other as purchases are made, so your inventory is always correct and you have more revenue in your pocket!

 

You can link the items in your Product Catalog directly to your Facebook ads, so you can reach your customers in a highly targeted way – making them more likely to make a purchase. You can also use your catalog when remarketing to customers using Facebook’s dynamic ads.

 

If they already visited your website and looked at an item but abandoned it, just use the Product Catalog to show that item to them again in the ad form. Remind them what they are missing out on!

 

Best industries for Facebook

Facebook has a lot of features that make it a compatible platform for virtually any business in any industry. But with the previous experience from other sellers in the following industries, there has been a great number of success stories with selling on social media via Facebook:

 

Clothing & Apparel

Consumer packaged goods

Gift products

Home furnishings

Beauty products

Fitness companies

Tips for Selling on Social Media via Facebook

Less is sometimes more. When selling on Facebook, you’ll always have the most success when you boost posts or run ads for your products. However, it’s important to remember not to overwhelm users or they may be likely to unfollow/block you.

Instead, put a frequency cap on your ads so you limit the number of times a user sees your ad.

 

Get personal with it. Believe it or not, users prefer this. They rather see a specific ad for a product they would actually like than see a bunch of ads for items they don’t want cluttering up their news feed.

Facebook ads increase sales

 

Promote products that are personalized or tailored to your target customer, and your sales are sure to increase.

 

Instagram

Instagram was the first 100% visual and mobile platform. Snapchat is the second to join that category, but we will discuss that platform later. Instagram now has over 1 billion users, and over 80% of them use the app to make purchases or to look at products they plan to purchase soon.

 

But how do they make those purchases? Through a fairly new feature called shoppable posts that Instagram introduced testing in late 2016 and officially launched globally in 2018.

 

When selling on Instagram, you can also connect your product catalog like you can on Facebook since the platforms are linked together. But the user experience for the customer is different. There’s no pro to using shoppable posts on Instagram over the Facebook Product Catalog. It’s just simply a user preference. So it is really important to know your target audience when choosing which social media platform to sell on.

 

You will know when you see a shoppable post on Instagram because it will have a small shopping bag icon. When a user taps one of these posts, he/she will then see the name of the item and the price. Tap it again, and you’ll get even more info. Then if you like what you see, you can make a purchase right there in the Instagram app!

 

 

Best industries for IG

Because Instagram shares a lot of the same features that Facebook does, the industries that will see success selling on social media via Instagram are about the same.

 

However, industries that have more “Instagram worthy” products will see the most success. Retail apparel companies by far take the cake when it comes to selling on Instagram.

 

Tips for Selling on Social Media via Instagram

Professional, high-quality images. Instagram is a visual-based platform. The image of your product is what people see first. Then they see the copy, so make sure your images are top-notch.

Remember, you are trying to sell this product through a screen. The best way to do that? High-resolution imagery that shows off your product in the best way possible.

 

Make the customer think they need it. How do you do that? It’s simple. Lifestyle photography.

An image of someone using or wearing your product will generate double if not triple the sales than just a stand-alone product image with a plain background. You have to show the user how much better their life will be after they purchase your product.

 

Pinterest

If you’re active on Pinterest, or also known as an avid pinner, then you know that Pinterest has its own social media lingo. Which also means it has its way of social selling. Previously when users, or pinners, saw items on Pinterest that they wanted to purchase, they had to go on a scavenger hunt to find the product – sometimes with no such luck finding it. Pinterest solved this problem, and businesses cheered!

 

Buyable Pins

If pinners see a pin with a price in blue, then that means that the product shown in the pin can be purchased. This is known as a buyable pin.

If you have buyable pins, then pinners can also go directly to your profile to find and shop your pins that are eligible for purchase.

 

Best industries for Pinterest

Selling on Pinterest sounds cool, right? It’s easy enough and you think you can do it. But then you should ask yourself, do you run a business whose products are searched by pinners? Any business that falls into the category of approved industries can sell on Pinterest, but if you fall into any of the below categories, you will see the most success selling on Pinterest.

 

Home Decor or Renovations

Gardening or Landscaping

Clothing

Makeup

Arts and Crafts

Travel

Food and Drink

Health and Self-Improvement

 

Tips for Selling on Social Media via Pinterest

Demographics. Pinterest users are approximately 42% female and 13% male. The age range among users is fairly evenly distributed, but with the majority still being in the millennial generation.

 

It’s important to note that pins do not disappear. They stay around for quite some time after you’ve posted them because most pins are repinned from other users. An item you pinned two years ago could very much still be circulating.

Keyword targeting. Pinterest has a feature that other social media platforms do not when it comes to ad targeting. You can target keywords that your customers would search for to find your products. If you’re familiar with Google ads, it’s a similar setup.   

 

Snapchat

Snapchat is probably the most social and least selling platform of our list of platforms where you can sell on social media. However, because of that, it’s also the place where your ads can look less like ads and more like regular snaps. This can work to your advantage.

 

As a video-based platform, creating ads for selling on Snapchat can be a little more difficult, but worth the promotion it gets you. Although you cannot directly sell within the all mobile Snapchat app, you can link to your site where users can make purchases, place orders, register for events, and more!

 

Best industries for Snapchat

Selling on Snapchat is still very new, but the winners in this field are starting to shine. Any business that can give a fun “behind the scenes” look into what they do or how they make their products will do the best selling on this platform. With Typical Products like:

 

Retail apparel stores

Restaurants

Events

Tech gadgets

Travel companies

 

Tips for Selling on Social Media via Snapchat

Snapchat is a fast-paced platform where constant and prompt communication is key to keeping a consumer’s attention. Your snaps only last a few seconds, which means your communication timeline with them is short. This can make for fast conversion and speed up your sales funnel process.

But this time factor also means you can lose a customer quickly. As long as you keep constant communication through the sale of the product, then you should have no problem selling on Snapchat.

 

Create an experience: With video at your fingertips, try to show your potential customers what they could be missing out on – whether it’s a new dress, a piece of home entertainment, or tickets to the next music festival.

Give them a glimpse of their next purchase and how great it will be.

 

Keep it short and sweet: As mentioned earlier, Snapchat is a fast-paced platform. Everything is supposed to be done “in a snap”. So don’t make any of your video ads too long. Whether you’re promoting on a filtered ad or your story, keep your snaps short (just a few seconds) and your stories short as well (no more than 10 snaps). This will ensure you keep users interested and coming back for more rather than dreading seeing your long snaps – or worse, unfollowing you.

Save money. Snapchat ads can be expensive for some small business owners, so try this alternative instead!

 

Benefits to Selling on Social Media

The more exposure your brand is, the more possible sales you will have. It is that simple. Look at the websites that receive a lot of traffic. They probably have extensive menus with a lot of pages, hundreds of blog posts and products. That is because the more options you offer to consumers, the more consumers you will attract. Which brings us to benefit number one.

 

#1 More Consumers

 

When you attract more customers, you are allowing yourself to sell to that many more people than before. People don’t like to be inconvenienced by anything. Sure, they are on the internet every day, but if they don’t have to leave their Facebook app to go to your online store, then you automatically just became their first choice in online shopping, aka social selling.

 

#2 More Revenue

 

With more places to purchase comes more possible sales revenue! look at it this way: if you only had one brick and mortar store and then expanded to 5 you would make more money getting different customers from different parts of town. Selling on social media through multiple platforms gives you access to loads of potential customers.

 

#3 Increased Visibility & Awareness

 

Even if you don’t have purchases the first day you start selling on social media and running ads, you’re still growing your business. You’re building brand awareness across multiple channels and getting your business name further than it was before.

 

#4 More Engagement

 

When selling on social media, you can comfortably establish a relationship with your customers and offer a better shopping experience. Customers can ask you questions and you can answer them in real-time just as you would if they were shopping in your store. The whole reason social media was established was to help people be more social in a different medium, so why not use it for its intended purpose?

 

Selling on Social Media (The Don’ts you need to Avoid)

 

Be patient: Don’t just assume that you are going to sell out of your inventory on day 1 of promotion. Yes, social selling is a fast way for small businesses to reach customers across the nation or even the world. But it’s important to remember that social selling is still a new concept that not all users are comfortable with yet. That’s why it’s so important to have good quality images, product descriptions, and an easy check out process.

 

Don’t just sell: Your brand needs to have a personality behind it. You want people to know more about your business than just it’s products. Take note that you need to build trust with your followers first. That’s the foundation of having a credible brand that customers would love to have a deal with regularly. Show up consistently on their feeds and give them valuable posts. set a goal for each of your posts and don’t publish something just for the sake of posting. Be sure that you have consistency within your posts on your content calendar and stay engaged with your followers.

 

Don’t ignore comments: People are going to have questions about your products. Who wouldn’t? They are buying something they can’t feel, smell, etc. If they have questions, then answer them as timely as possible. The greater the engagement you have with your potential customers, the more likely they will be to purchase from you.

The more you sell, the more questions you will receive. This can be difficult to manage. Consider hiring a social media marketing company to do your daily monitoring for you so you can focus on other areas of your business.

 



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