Introduction
There were over 4.55 billion social media users as of October 2021. That number of potential customers should make any sales professional pay attention.
Let’s explore why social media is so helpful for your sales strategy, and how to integrate it — improving your lead generation, follow up, and sales revenue.
Why is Social Media Important for Your Sales Strategy?
Social media is key for modern day sales strategy for several reasons:
- Brand Building – If prospects don’t know who you are, they can never buy from you. Social media allows you to expand your online brand presence.
- Efficiency – You can’t argue with the sheer scale of social media. You can create a sales or marketing message and amplify it to thousands of prospects at once.
- Reach New Customers – Bring new customers into your sales pipeline who otherwise would never be prospects. You might reach a prospect via Twitter that would never respond to a cold email.
And much more. But you won’t gain these powerful benefits without taking action. So let’s look at 7 ways to integrate social media into your sales strategy right now:
1. Identify High Volume Platforms for Your Market
No matter what industry you are in, defining your ideal customer profile is crucial. And once you have this profile — also known as a customer avatar — created, you can determine which social media platforms they use.
For example, if you are a B2C company targeting Millennials and Gen Z customers, then Tik Tok and Instagram are great platforms. However, if you sell a B2B enterprise solution, then LinkedIn is likely better.
If your market is broader, then it may be worth it to invest in a social media management tool like Hootsuite, Social Champ, or SocialBee. These tools help you create content and posts one time while distributing across several social channels at once.
Then, you can review your results after a few weeks and months and let the data tell you which platform’s users are most responsive to your marketing. Needless to say, leveraging social media platforms is set to be a key content marketing trend in 2022, as well as the following years to come.
2. Highlight Customer Wins on Social Media
Once you know the top one or two social channels to focus on, it’s time to create content that highlights customer success. These posts will explain how previous happy customers achieve their desired results with your product.
In essence, these social media posts serve to create trust. In today’s day and age, it’s easy to claim that you can help your prospect improve their situation. However, nothing works to increase trust in your company like positive success stories.
Another approach to creating content about customer wins is to set a Google Alert for mentions of your brand. Have your team select positive mentions where customers describe their results, and simply repost them while tagging that customer.
3. Increase Sales Conversions with Social Proof
Whereas highlighting customer success on your actual social channels helps warm up leads, you can also use social media in the opposite way. Within your sales materials, including videos or screenshots of customers’ social media posts.
It’s easy to say that people love your product, but when you can provide a direct source of praise, you gain more credibility. Social media is one of the most powerful tools for generating social proof in the sales process for this reason.
4. Refine Your Social Media Accounts
Social media is often one of the first touchpoints that a prospect has with your brand. And the same goes for salespeople. Optimizing your social media profile is important for making the right first impression.
A professional, well-crafted social media profile can turn cold leads into warm ones. But on the other hand, a lack of social media presence or a poorly done profile can reduce a lead’s interest. You don’t want to give potential customers any reason to refuse a phone call with your sales reps. There are many tools that can help you with most of the tasks.
5. Prospect via Social Media
Never before in history have companies been able to reach so many prospective customers so easily. Social media is now an extension of your prospecting.
In the past, you had to attend events or make cold calls for outreach. But with nothing more than a private message on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, you can get in front of people who may be interested in your product.
Also, Instagram influencers are crucial for boosting your SEO, increasing leads and sales, by raising brand awareness. However, it’s important to choose them wisely after you conduct Instagram influencer analysis and get to know them a bit.
Keep in mind that other companies also have access to this channel. So most prospects are bombarded with outreach messages. You still need to create a compelling hook that promises significant value to your prospect if you don’t want to be ignored.
6. Determine Social Conversion Metrics
As a sales rep or manager, you are already tracking key sales metrics. This may include the length of the sales cycle, number of calls, and closing ratio. Social media should be considered part of your sales pipeline as well, so if you aren’t tracking metrics it’s time to start.
First establish some baseline metrics, such as the number of overall leads that come from social media and their average response time. Secondly, it’s time to drill down into the specifics.
Which specific posts generate the most amount of inbound leads? Which social channels led to the most paying customers? You may identify channels to double down on, as well as channels or strategies that need improvement.
7. Create Parallel Sales Funnels on Social Media
A sales funnel is simply an online sales process in which you create a series of pages and messages to convert a cold lead to a paying customer.
You can mirror your existing sales funnels on social media. For instance, if your existing funnel looks like this: Google Ad > Landing Page > Email List > High Ticket Offer.
Then consider replacing the top of the funnel with a social media campaign, so that your new parallel funnel looks like this: LinkedIn Ad > Landing Page > Email List > High Ticket Offer.
This one tweak may boost your overall sales significantly by providing new leads. On the other hand, it may not work out. You won’t know unless you implement it and test it.
Make the best out of your eCommerce business by integrating with social media now! Here’s our guide on How to Connect Shopify to Facebook.
Integrate Social Media – Key Takeaways
Imagine telling a salesperson 100 years ago that they could reach thousands or millions of prospects instantly for free. They wouldn’t hesitate to integrate this new channel into their sales process, and neither should you.
With social media, you can optimize your sales process. Whether it’s making your lead generation more efficient, creating more trust, or refining your process with new metrics, it can fundamentally change your growth trajectory.