Roughly three quarters of the population, 77 percent to be exact, report that they use at least one form of social media today. This accounts for approximately 2.34 billion people in total, a number that is expected to climb to around 2.95 billion by the year 2020.
That makes these types of platforms a great place for companies to find and connect with their target market, largely because many of them are already there. But how can you better leverage social media business pages to also increase online sales? Here are three options to consider.
- Learn Platform Specifics
Every social media platform is different, so what works on one might not necessarily work another. That’s why its so important to understand the platforms you’re on as in depth as possible as this will give you the information needed to leverage it best.
For instance, if you’re selling on Instagram, it helps to know that a majority of its users (59 percent) are 18 to 29 years old, with the second largest demographic being 30 to 49 years of age (33 percent). So, posts geared toward these ranges will typically get a better response than those directed to a younger or older audience.
Additionally, did you know that if you utilize location tags on this platform, you can increase engagement by as much as 79 percent? Learning this type of information up front allows you to make your sales-focused posts more effective, giving you a bigger bang for your marketing buck.
- Work with Top Influencers
There’s a relatively new form of marketing called influencer marketing, which essentially helps you sell more products by being endorsed by individuals in your field who have a lot of followers who would also likely be interested in what you have to sell. All you have to do is connect with them and get them to share your brand, giving you instant credibility because you’re being endorsed by someone the consumer already knows, likes, and trusts.
How do you find top influencers? LinkedIn is one option. Simply go to this professional networking site and do a search using keywords in your industry. Look through the results for people in top positions and then check out their number of followers on social network.
If their numbers are where you’d like, connect with them, but only after establishing a relationship first. In other words, like their posts and share their content before reaching out to see if they’d be interested in collaborating. The key is to make this a situation in which you both win, not one in which you’re trying to get something from them and they get nothing in return.
- Offer Help Versus Just Selling
If your goal is to increase sales, it would seem logical that the best way to do that is to base all of your posts around selling. However, a hard sales approach doesn’t work because it turns off your target market and actually leaves your company fighting against the social media algorithms which have been designed to enhance the user’s experience.
Selling is okay sometimes, but you’ll get more leverage out of your posts if you focus on providing value instead. For instance, if you sell kitchen equipment, post a video of people preparing their favorite dishes with the items on your site. Alternatively, you could share a blog with some tips and tricks as to how to best use the things you sell.
If you’re not sure what types of things to share, think of the questions your consumers ask most often, then come up with interesting ways to share the answer. Remember: you’re competing with a lot of other social media posts in their news feeds, so you’ll need to come up with something compelling enough to make them want to click on it.
Social media can be a great tool for increasing online sales. Do these three things—learn your platforms’ specifics, work with top influencers, and offer help versus selling—and you can utilize this tool to your advantage, giving you leverage needed to not only grow your number of followers, but increase your bottom line.