5 Tips for Making More Sales via Social Media
Guest blog by Erin Steiner
Even if you’ve just started your sales and marketing training, you know that having a social media presence is essential to the survival and profitability of your company. A lot of entrepreneurs and marketers stop at simply creating the presence itself. If you really want your business to take off, though, you need to turn those “likes” and “favorites” into sales. Here are four tips to help you do just that.
The key to more sales is right in here!
1. Have Your Own Shopping Cart
With every click your social media follower has to make, the chances of your making the sale goes down. This is why you need to build shopping cart plugins directly into your blog or website pages. That way, people can buy from you right then and there.
2. Remember the Golden Ratio
Most of your posts on social media should be about serving your audience, not selling your wares. Yes, you want to make sales, but if you only post promotional items, you’ll alienate people and lose your following. Always remember the golden ratio and make sure that at most, your feed is 10% promotional messages.
3. Use Social Media for the Warm Call
Before social media and the Internet, most marketers had to resort to “cold calling” to tell people about their products and services and, hopefully, make sales. Today, you can use social media to learn about potential leads and to make initial contact with them. By introducing yourself in the pressure-free medium of social media, you significantly increase your chances of someone taking your call or responding to your email. It worked for Hoot Suite’s CEO Ryan Holmes; it can work for you!
The more likes you get, the more sales you’ll get!
4. The All-Important Call to Action
You can promote your products and services via social media until your fingers fall off, but without a call to action such as, “click here to get your exclusive Twitter coupon code for 20% off your next purchase,” you aren’t going to make that many sales. You have to tell people what you want them to do – otherwise you risk people seeing your promotions, thinking “that’s interesting,” and simply moving on.
These are just four of the things that will help you increase your sales through social media channels.
NOTE for Job-Seekers: Social media likewise empowers job seekers by attracting the right recruiters with job owening that better match your capabilities.
Erin Steiner is a freelance writer and blogger from Portland, Oregon. She writes about marketing, current events and culture for a variety of websites.
the Smooth Sale!
Read Addtional Strategies and Techniques:
Nice Girls DO Get the Sale: Relationship Building That Gets Results, Sourcebooks
HIRED! How to Use Sales Techniques to Sell Yourself On Interviews, Career Press
