Social Media Marketing for Selling Online

As most digital gurus will tell you, social media isn’t the place to do the hard sell. And they’d be right.

Relentlessly posting product and price information can be counter-productive. Unless your offers are incredible and / or you’re giving stuff away (Facebook competitions are a great way to build fan page numbers!), you’ll be annoying your audience, who are relaxing and being social with family and friends. They’re not there to buy!

Or are they? It’s not so straightforward.

Until now, it’s been difficult to track sales delivered by social media, particularly because people don’t buy on the platform. They’re redirected to your eCommerce site.

But there are opportunities to make a soft sell – keeping your brand active on social media can bring benefits to your bottom line. Keep it social, keep it relevant, keep it fun and keep it helpful and see how that all impacts on your numbers – try out top 3 tips to convert socialites into shoppers!

1. Build trust – invest in engaging, entertaining and educational content. Reply to messages and be seen to reply, giving helpful, useful information. Share the love (the likes) and you’ll soon find your audience growing. Then it’s only a matter of time until a bigger percentage convert to shoppers.

2. Point them towards your products – gently! A great way to do this is to blog - write an engaging, fun post about your product or service, make it as topical and relevant as you can to encourage virality. Share it on social media and you’ll be driving traffic back to your site... where the sales can happen!

3. Monitor engagement – it’s easy to see if people like your posts on Facebook! Simply count the likes. If your posts aren’t getting the thumbs up, you need to ask why and tailor them accordingly. If they are, you’re building a profile, an audience and growing your business. Sales will surely follow.

If you’d like to find out more about driving sales through social media, we'd be happy to hear from you  – we can create the content that builds trust and keeps you on your customers’ radar.