Every time someone likes or shares your post on LinkedIn, you’re essentially getting free ad space. When someone shares your post, and they have 100 connections, that’s a lot of eyes on your brand from just one person — multiply that by hundreds or even thousands, and you can see how quickly social selling can become an invaluable tool. How do you make the most of it? Here are five strategies to consider.
Social media is a massive part of marketing now, and it’s obvious it isn’t going away. Leveraging social media to reach, engage, and build customer relationships is vital. Social media is everywhere you look, meaning companies have a big opportunity to market to a wide consumer base.
However, scale doesn’t necessarily guarantee success. A wider audience means you’ve also got more competition for attention. To get ahead of them, you need to use social selling. Social selling is when your marketers find and nurture prospects through their social media channels. It fuses traditional sales techniques and social media strategies so you can reach more potential customers and strengthen relationships with existing ones. It lets you engage with your prospects and partners more interactively and authentically.
According to LinkedIn, 45% of brands using social selling see increased sales opportunities, while 51% have a higher chance of hitting their sales goals. All told, 78% of brands that use social selling outperform brands that don’t. It’s a simple way to stand out in such a large and competitive market.
How Social Selling Works
In marketing, staying on top of the trends is important, and social selling is a hot strategy to invest in. Social selling is part audience segmentation and part outsourcing, except it happens naturally through company intermediaries. Customers who interact authentically with one of these advocates are more likely to share it with their friends. You gain a lot when your customers share a branded blog post they like or link their friends and followers to your webpage.
Social selling isn’t as simple as it sounds, however. It isn’t just about sharing and liking posts on social media — it’s a targeted and intentional strategy to increase traffic, engagement, leads, and sales.
Social Selling and Social Media Marketing Combined
The process of social selling depends largely on your marketers creating materials that resonate with your audience, engaging with customers honestly and authentically, and building trust. The idea is to nurture a relationship with your audience so they trust your product and are excited to share it with others.
To start maximizing social selling’s benefits, you need an established customer base –– that’s where social media marketing comes in. Social media marketing is a strategic campaign tailored to your target market. Social media marketing and social selling go hand in hand; one draws in prospects, and the other gives those prospects a friendly face to help them learn about your offers. Today’s smart marketers are using both strategies concurrently.
Once you’ve identified your audience, you can use social media pages to drum up personalized support and build a customer base. Furthermore, you can see how well your marketing strategies are working by keeping track of data from these campaigns. Because social media is constantly evolving, data allows you to tweak and adjust your strategy to reach as many customers as possible, no matter the current trend. Marketing and ads bring prospects and social selling swoops in to connect with those prospects and existing customers.
How to Use Social Selling on LinkedIn
Here’s the good news: Every time someone likes or shares your post on LinkedIn, you’re essentially getting free ad space. When someone shares your post, and they have 100 connections, that’s a lot of eyes on your brand from just one person. Now multiply that by hundreds or even thousands, and you can see how quickly social selling can become an invaluable tool.
So, how do you make the most of it? Here are five strategies to consider.
- Establish Your Presence
You want customers to see you in the best light possible, which means you want professional photos of your product and intermediaries. You also want to ensure your website is updated, not only with your products or services but with your values and goals as a brand. People like to make emotional connections, and by sharing your goals, you show a bit of vulnerability and personality that can go a long way in establishing a lifelong relationship with a customer.
- Reach Out
You can’t expect people to come to you. Eventually, you’ll have enough reach to gain new customers through word of mouth, but in the early days of your business or brand, you need to be reaching out to potential customers. When you reach out, do so with the intent of building long-term relationships. Ask questions. Offer advice when appropriate. Show an interest in the work of the people you are reaching out to. Most importantly, use your content to add value to their lives wherever you can.
- Engage
Use your website and your social media platforms. The more active you are, the more likely you are to get eyes on your brand. Start by getting active in comment threads. Respond to people who post comments on your content, even if they’re negative comments from a customer. Not only that, but comment on similar posts from other people or brands. This shows clients you’re serious about building relationships and are invested in their network.
- Showcase Your Expertise
You’re good at what you do and should be proud of it. Better yet, share it. Customers and clients want to see that you’re confident in your products or services, and you can use LinkedIn to demonstrate that expertise. For example, you could post educational content on your industry or share valuable blog posts from other brands with your thoughts. Providing your expertise through your social networks shows that you’re passionate, always improving on your craft, and have lots of value to share with your customers.
- Measure Success
Don’t forget about the data you gather through your marketing campaigns. Analyzing customer data will guide you to more effective marketing and save you money in the long run, as you won’t waste effort on untargeted ad spend. Find out what works and doesn’t by trying new things and tracking the key performance indicators (KPIs) that matter to your company. By fully using available data, you optimize your success and ensure a bright future for your company.
If used correctly, these strategies and the power of social selling can help you leverage an incredible tool like LinkedIn to target existing and potential customers. Once your customers get to know your brand directly and authentically through social selling, you can expect more engagement and conversions than traditional marketing techniques provide. Don’t wait to get started.
Written by Scott Scully.
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