5 Effective Ways to Drive Sales Through Social Media Marketing

Do you know that according to Animoto, 93% of marketers say they’ve landed a new customer thanks to a video on social media? That’s a lot of new customers for a lot of businesses. There is no doubt that social media has had a huge impact on marketing and sales. That fact won’t change any time soon, but changes do occur in which social media will benefit which marketer and why. Below is a list of 5 effective ways to drive sales through social media:

1. Find where your audience is on social platforms

   In order to use social media effectively within your digital marketing strategy, you’ll need to find out which platforms your customers are using and why. Looking to the platform itself will tell you some of what you need to know. For instance, it’s very clear that business people use LinkedIn and that younger audiences use Instagram. But, then what? There are effective means to track this information, such as implementing an effective CRM to help you increase engagement and “listen” to what your customers are saying about your brand. More on that later.

2. Influencer Engagement

   According to Social Media Explorer, using the tools within the platforms themselves can be very helpful in your sales strategy. For instance, for business-to-business companies, you can use a LinkedIn tool called LinkedIn Sales Navigator to automate your work, boost your profile, get endorsements from other LinkedIn users, build a targeted mailing list and more. When you use Sales Navigator, you gain access to advanced search filters and lead recommendations, making iteasier to identify and connect with potential clients. However, this strategy changes if you are marketing towards a bunch of tech-savvy millennials, Instagram is the way to go. That being said, effective SEO is still a tried and true method for attracting your customers. By utilizing relevant keywords, you are also able to figure out the right social media channels and connect with the right people. It’s also important to mention, demographics aside, it’s not actually about your customer’s age, it is about their buying behavior.

3.  Brand Improvement

   Social engagement is very important when utilizing social media as a marketing strategy. But, if you want to take engagement to the extreme, try Influencer Engagement to really connect with your audience. This has been especially effective with a younger demographic. The gist of Influencer Engagement is to reach out to existing, relevant influencers or social celebrities on YouTube or other platforms and have them use your product, however they wish, to get the word out there. An excellent example of this was Motorola’s launch of its new Moto Z products. Knowing that their targeted young audience is constantly on YouTube, they worked with 13 influencers across numerous target audiences to reach a broad range of consumers. Each created a “partnership announcement” post, a “hero” video using the Moto Mods for unique use-cases and social media posts. The campaign was extremely successful with over 11 million views.

   Influencer marketing can have a huge impact on B2C sales. To have a relevant celebrity or other influencer touts your product for little or no cost for more than 6 months at a time, your ROI should be very high. That being said, make sure the influencers you choose are the right influencers. Kim Kardashian would be a great choice to brag about your diet drink, but don’t expect her followers to be as interested in your next big technology to help businesses implement new software. Once you do find the right influencer, you can be sure that they will help you connect with new audiences you never even imagined.

4. Create groups

   As important as social media marketing is, let’s face it, social media users are on these sites to see what their friends and family are up to and maybe catch up on some news or articles. They tend to follow companies in order to get brief updates on some of their favorite products, but that’s not actually why they are there. One of the biggest benefits that you will get with social media is brand awareness. This gives you an even bigger opportunity to improve your brand. Some ways to accomplish this are:

   Using the same Twitter handle consistently, with all of your Twitter activity. Using similar ones across all of your chosen social media platforms will also help.

   Turn customers into brand advocates. If you have a quality product or service and a social media presence, your loyal customers and followers will be more likely to retweet, share, post, etc. about your product. Encourage them to do so, turning them into your brand advocates.

   Use a content calendar, planned in advance to help with consistent engagement with customers. All the best social media strategies look like they are shot from the hip, but they are in reality planned well in advance on a content calendar and managed with social media management software.

   Utilizing a tool to help with your brand awareness campaigns on social media can be very helpful as well. Agile CRM a social listening tool to help you monitor the mentions of your brand and maintain your online reputation on the platforms where your customers are most active.

5. Product tagging

   Creating groups on LinkedIn and Facebook can help you engage with your customers and potential customers in a different way. You can also find relevant groups on these platforms to help you find potential customers. As part of your greater content marketing strategy, it is most effective to post attractive images with good content about your products and services, within these groups.

   Facebook and Instagram give you opportunities to tag your products and increase sales straight from social media platforms. It is an excellent option for an eCommerce business that is approved by these sites as a “store.” These features will allow consumers to purchase right in the social media app, which is where they are already receiving a large number of views if you’re following the above tips to drive sales effectively!

   Product tagging can make your products very easily mentioned by followers since they can be tagged very similarly to how users have been tagging other users for years, meaning they are no strangers to this type of activity. Another way to get people to share social posts is to include social sharing links. If you have a blog post that you would like people to share on their social media platforms, include the “share” icons for various platforms. Similarly, visitors to your website are not interested in copying and pasting web links in a new tab. In today’s technology terms, that takes forever. Provide clickable links to ensure your visitors will visit the links you want them to.

Conclusion

The question is, who has the time and energy to keep up with all of these social media “mentions,” and “shares,” and “tweets,” and on and on? Good news! Agile CRM has tools that can help you with many of your social media monitoring. This software has features to help you engage with your customers and includes social media automation. And, since it is group with your company’s CRM, you are empowered with an All-in-One Social CRM, allowing you to do everything right in the app and from your CRM dashboard.