Jackie Cooper, Vancouver Lead Generation expert and Social Media Consultant discusses 3 ways to increase sales using Social Media.
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3 Ways to Increase Sales using Social Media.
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If you’d like to use Social Media to increase your sales, here are 3 tips that will help.
1. Consistency:
The success of all marketing relies on consistency and frequency of contact. In the 80’s it required an average of 5 contacts for a prospect to become interested in doing business with you. Today it requires as many as 12 for the average prospect to become interested in taking action.
Social Media provides a fast, easy and inexpensive way to achieve the level of contacts required to break through the inertia level. It gives you an ability to get in front of more people more often in a consistent yet non threatening manner. This in itself is a big step toward increasing sales.
When you’re looking at increasing sales, Social Media can definitely help you to do so, so long as you remember a few basic parameters.
Remember that Social Media is primarily social – and therefore the bulk of your Social Media activity should also be social rather than a direct sales pitch.
A good ratio to aim for is between 80% and 90% social content with the balance supporting direct sales content. You will soon lose your friends and followers if you switch that ratio. People don’t like to be ‘sold’. A business that focuses primarily on hard sell using Social Media tools is like a guest at a party who keeps trying to hit the other guests up to join their MLM downline – they become quite unpopular and people avoid them.
In Social Media, it’s a lot easier to avoid someone than it is at a party – you simply ‘unfriend’ or ‘unfollow’ them.
2. Reviews:
Another of the ways that you can increase sales using Social Media is to include customer reviews of your products and services. These reviews can be on your own Social Media network as well as on other venues such as Google Places, Yelp and a number of other high-authority review sites.
People trust 3rd party endorsements more than they trust direct promotion. Featuring unpaid recommendations gives your audience an opportunity to see what other purchasers have experienced and it gives them an opportunity to ask questions prior to purchasing. It’s a great way of enhancing your credibility and removing the fear factor that can prevent many from purchasing online.
3. Make sure there’s a connection from your Social Media presence to your sales presence.
It sounds obvious, but it’s something many businesses starting out with Social Media tend to overlook. Your Social Media presence, wherever it may be should always point towards a sales page. For instance, your Facebook Page can incorporate it’s own sales area or a link to your sales page on your site. Your Twitter profile should include a link to your primary sales url.
After all, It’s no good consistently putting out great information and great products and enjoying great reviews without giving people a way to follow through after they become interested in purchasing. As with any traditional marketing, making it easy for them to buy is at least 50% of the task.
Offering them a number of purchasing and payment options is also always a good idea. Many of the well known Social Media tools such as WordPress and Facebook have plug-ins or apps that will quickly and easily create a shopping cart and payment system so that your prospects are able to simply pay using PayPal or a credit card.
If you don’t sell online, you should still have a sales page to which your Social Media presence connects. This can offer a phone number, email, or even live chat option that encourages the prospect to connect with you immediately to at least begin the purchasing process.
Putting these 3 elements together (Consistency, Recommendations, Asking for the Sale) will help you greatly to improve your sales.
If you’d like to know more about implementing a Social Media or internet marketing plan for your business, visit http://FocusedLeadGeneration.com where you’ll find more helpful information and you’ll be able to download a free white paper on the subject.
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