What’s Social Selling?

Using social media for lead generation is an innovative approach to lead generation. In order to boost sales, you need to build relationships, develop trust, and engage your target audience.

By leveraging social networks, social sales enables customers and prospects to connect with ease. It connects companies and individuals with potential leads. Furthermore, the focus is on one-to-one relationships (either with a single person or a small group of prospects) with the goal of increasing sales over time. 

In addition, it promotes awareness and maximises interaction, enabling it to influence connections. It is simply a replacement for outdated sales tactics, such as cold calling.

What’s A Social Selling Strategy

To run a successful business, social selling needs to be planned and strategically approached. By using social selling, you can connect with and convert prospects into customers. As well as implementing sales strategies with automation technology.

Our social selling index (SSI), also known as a social media selling score, measures our ability to sell a product or brand on social media. As a result, it allows potential customers to find and connect with you.

In 2014, LinkedIn introduced the concept of SSI. This score is derived from the effectiveness of social selling and consists of four major aspects. Among them are:

• Using a social profile to establish your professional brand.
• Using social media to connect with the right people.
• Sharing content that is informative and relevant.
• Genuinely establishing relationships.

How To Start Social Selling

Start following this list to learn how effectively social selling can work for your business.

• Choose relevant social networks

To find the right leads, finding the right social media platform is crucial. While YouTube and Facebook have a wide range of users. You can use Facebook and Instagram if your target audience includes young generations. The target group should include decision-makers so make use of LinkedIn and Twitter.

• Follow users who are relevant

Provide your business with users who can be valuable to you. A pro-tip is to use tools that help list those user’s profiles based on a specific keyword or topic that would be relevant for your business.

• Publish informative content

Your social media presence will increase by contributing your ideas, knowledge, and inspiring-relevant content. Your company or brand is more visible to users when they know more about you. Your path to generating revenue and leads will open suddenly when you come on the radar of your potential customers.

Social Sell Using Automation

Getting social selling results requires knowing two factors. They include core business principles and measures of success. Make social selling unique by developing insights along with your marketing team and keep optimising.

Social media platforms allow you to filter the social prospects according to those you are interested in. Lead generation can be done by identifying potential customers and engaging them. Additionally, it will contribute to your business by bringing them to your website.

You can increase sales by following a certain set of lead stages. Among them are:

• In-profile leads: Leads based on information in a user’s profile that might be relevant to your product.
• MQLs: Leads arising from user engagement on social media posts about your product.
• SALs: Leads who are interested in purchasing your products but have not been contacted.
• SQLs: Qualified leads who are ready to buy your products.

Provide relevant and informative content. A pro-tip is to use content scheduling calendars to schedule and plan your posts automatically.

An effective CRM tool will allow you to track and filter out any prospects who may be interested in your product. Likewise, nurturing any potential sales qualified leads (QLs) and converting them to actual sales.

The most important aspect of any business is assessment. It is important that your employees receive social selling training from experts. As a result, sales results on social media will improve.

How Big Is Social Selling

• In 2020, 18.3% of American Facebook users made a purchase through Facebook.
• In B2B content marketing, 96% of marketers use LinkedIn to promote organically.
• A whopping 81% of Instagram users use the platform to explore and research products and services.
• The platform has been used by 70% of YouTube users to buy products they saw on the platform.

Does Social Selling Work

Your business will benefit greatly from social selling as businesses leading the way in social selling generate 45% more sales opportunities compared to brands with low social sales. The likelihood of reaching sales targets increases by 51% for businesses that prioritise social selling, and companies that use social selling outperform others by 78%.

Is Social Selling Important

Consider saying no to attending a conference where all potential buyers and sellers will attend. What would you expect to happen? You will miss out on a lot of opportunities to engage, sell, and build relationships. Social selling through social media follows a similar pattern. This is a large platform where everyday consumers can take part in investment decisions for the right products and solutions. Meanwhile, your competitors are providing them with products, services, and knowledge.

Being excluded from social selling will only hurt your business. A company’s growth depends on its networking capabilities and its ability to build strong relationships. Thus, social selling is worth your time, energy, and investment.