Social Selling: social networking for sales and marketing

23 May 2023Digital tools

Social Selling is the process of selling a company through social networks. It is a remarkable strategy for companies. It offers the opportunity to increase sales and promote the brand.

In this type of strategy there are no immediate results. It is necessary to dedicate time, perseverance and effort to connect with the target audience. It is a long-term strategy that requires a great deal of perseverance to achieve our sales goals.

Through social media we give visibility to our brand and reach a wider audience. To do this, we must share quality content and thus contribute to strengthening and gaining credibility for our brand among consumers.

How to use Social Selling to generate a sale

If your company does not have a Social Selling strategy in place, you are probably losing sales. That is why it is necessary to start as soon as possible.

First of all, we must choose the social network that best suits our company. Not all networks are suitable for a B2B industrial company. Currently, the one that is working best for this type of company is Linkedin.

Once we have chosen the ideal social networks, we have to follow a series of steps:

1. Get potential customers. This can be done in several ways:
   • Competitions. To prevent a flood of messages, the prize must be very well defined so that the customers are really interesting for the company.
   • Gated content. If the content is relevant to the reader, he/she will be willing to give us information in order to access the content. An example of such content could be webinars.
2. Make blog posts and share it on the networks. Sharing relevant content is essential to give consumers confidence.
3. Interacting with your followers is always positive because it creates a sense of trust towards your brand.
4. After-sales service. It is very important for the customer that the company responds quickly when they make a query through any medium, including the networks.

How to make Social Selling effective

• Stay connected to the networks and active. There are automated tools to manage social media, but it can damage the brand's image. It is important to be present and be yourself to build relationships with consumers. They will appreciate it.
• Give value to your brand with relevant content. Through writing we can establish ourselves as experts in our field. This will be of great help in building trust with consumers. It is important not to make sales pitches, but ones that lead to building relationships.

What are the benefits of Social Selling for your company

Before making a purchase, users prefer to find out about the product or service they want to buy. Apart from knowing what features they have, they also want to know the values of the companies and the benefits that their purchase will bring. To do this, companies have to generate trust so that the consumer buys the product.

Social Selling has great benefits for the company, these are some of them:

1. By publishing relevant content, you can not only attract potential customers, but also build long-lasting relationships with your brand.
2. It generates credibility. Social Selling increases the trust of potential customers.
3. Thanks to Social Selling, companies know their customers better and can thus tailor products or services to them.
4. Gain visibility.
5. Using social networks avoids being too invasive.
6. The investment is lower than in other media.

How to know if Social Selling works

There is no tool to determine the relationship between a publication and a sale with exact numbers. However, we can know about other aspects.

• Web traffic and conversions. There are analytics tools that track leads and we can find out where they come from.
• Engagement and reach. Likes are a good indicator of whether posts are relevant to the audience.
• Influence and authority. Metrics such as number of followers, shares or mentions and comments.
• Customer feedback. Ask your customers how they heard about your company, product or service. This will help us to get an idea of the influence of Social Selling.

In conclusion, it is clear that Social Selling has become a very important strategy for companies because the results prove it. Digitalization has changed the relationship between companies and consumers. At BCM Marketing we are specialists in digital marketing and we can help you when it comes to creating customised strategies in the field of social networks.