If you own and operate an online business — or even a business with an online presence in addition to brick and mortar stores — then it’s imperative you know what social selling is. While the term itself intuitively explains it somewhat, let’s understand the concrete meaning:
Social Selling: utilizing social networks and online mediums to connect with customers, and to utilize these connections to form leads and profit.
So what about this big mistake that’s killing your business? Business owners often confuse the true meaning of social selling which muddles their chances at profitability.
One more thing we need to get straight: social selling is NOT synonymous with social media marketing. Social selling can be an aspect of your social marketing strategy, but they aren’t the same. Specifically, social selling is about creating the potential for a sale, not just throwing out marketing strategies and hoping something sticks.
So let’s dive in! We can break down social selling success into these components: clients, opportunities and communication. Examining each one will tell you how to avoid making this big social selling mistake while also offering advice on how to succeed at making social sales.
Clients
Social selling is truly an unlimited resource — that’s what’s so great about it! You’ll never be able to say “well, I’ve pitched to every single person I could possibly pitch to.” It’s literally impossible. You’ll always have the potential to make another social sale and foster another relationship with a prospective client.
Social media marketing is very broad. Marketing campaigns are created to appeal to a wide audience, and this isn’t a bad thing.
Marketing is about catching a lot of fish in a big net. Selling, on the other hand, is about catching specific fish with a strong fishing pole.
Social selling allows a person to utilize social media to identify and rectify a pain point to a specific individual. Fedica has several features that can make this process easier:
- Targeted Direct Message Campaigns: By starting up a conversation automatically, it’s more likely that a potential client will interact with a business. This creates the opportunity for a direct line of communication, and eventually a sale
- My Followers Map: Explore who your followers are via their location
- Followers Demographics: Hone your interactions on Twitter by understanding who is actually following you and who they truly are
- Follower Analysis: Who is influential among your followers? Discover these influencers and foster a relationship with them.
Something to keep in mind is that social selling is indeed a one-on-one business. Like the above adage implies, social selling is different than marketing in that you’re focusing on one big fish, not a ton of little ones.
This also isn’t just about selling to specific people. Social selling can be a longer process than simply finding a potential client and removing the “potential” from the equation. Sometimes social selling is finding a person, fostering a relationship with them and utilizing the opportunity for your benefit in further sales.
Opportunities
Much like you’ll never run out of potential clients, you’ll also never run out of the opportunity to sell. Businesses like yours likely have a team of dedicated salespeople working round the clock to nab leads, and social selling makes this task much easier.
Why? Brick and mortar specific businesses are limited by location. If you own a clothing store in Chicago, your partnerships and business opportunities likely exist within your physical radius. Is it possible to partner with a big brand in Los Angeles? Absolutely! But that expectation is not so realistic.
Any business can exist on a site like Twitter and sell their wares to millions of people. No one is truly limited by location, product or service. Finding these opportunities does utilize some social media marketing, which Fedica has tools for:
- Know What Followers are Talking About: If you want to seize every sales opportunity possible, you have to know what’s going on around you. What are your followers focused on, and how can you use it as part of a social sales strategy
- Best Times to Tweet: Once you know of an opportunity, utilize it to the best of your ability by showcasing it to as many active and online followers as possible
- Tweet Scheduler: Make sure your followers see this aforementioned opportunity by using a tweet scheduler
- Tweet Alerts: Stay on top of a topic by setting up a notification system geared around whatever Twitter activity you want to monitor.
Opportunities, however, shouldn’t be totally confused with social media marketing. Creating an opportunity isn’t the same as posting a blog with some CTAs and hoping it gets a lot of shares.
In this context, an opportunity is creating the potential for a sale or creating the potential for a relationship that may later generate a sale.
Information
Think back to when people referred to the Internet as the “information superhighway.” While the term is certainly dated, it’s still true.
Information is the last element because it acts as a supplement to the first two components. Do you need to find a way to further a potential client relationship? How can you progress an opportunity into a truly actioned lead? Information is the answer to your problems.
This element is also reminiscent of social media in that you can utilize information you know in order to further your opportunity and client relationship goals. For instance, you’re trying to advance a relationship to the point where they fully commit to a sale, but the potential client in question still isn’t sure about the details of the service. A post written by you that offers up this information can help move the sale along.
This isn’t marketing — it’s using information to sell. The difference is there.
Relegating this idea to Twitter, Fedica also has services available that can help you out in this area:
- Hashtagmap: Learn about what’s trending and the best hashtags to use to gain credibility while information harvesting.
- Measure Tweet Impact: When you do post about your knowledge (indirectly), see how far this tweet goes and who all it reaches. Use this information to create those relationships and opportunities.
Social selling, above all, combines thought leadership, sales tactics and online marketing in order to create sales generating powerhouses. Whether you’re a salesperson yourself, or you’re in charge of a team of sellers, social selling can up your profitability by a large margin.