Back in the good old days, for businesses to sell their products, they had to rely on cold calling or extensive advertising on television and the newspapers (yes, newspapers were a thing back then).
However, everything evolved until we reached the era of social media. Since then, businesses understood that social media platforms are pivotal for promoting and selling products.
Therefore, social selling was brought to the surface. Social selling is using social media to engage with customers, to promote and sell products.
Salespeople who use social selling have closed 40-50% more businesses compared to those who don’t (Hubspot,2024).
Once understand what social selling is, we bet it resonated with you as you are doing your best to sell on the different social media platforms.
But search no further. In our article, we have gathered the top ten social selling best practices to drive more sales for your e-commerce.
So, buckle up!
Grab your notebook, pens, and, most importantly, coffee to start writing down social selling best practices in 2024. Now is the time to revolutionize the performance of your e-commerce and boost your sales.
First of all, one of the social selling best practices is to improve your social media profiles. This is the first thing shoppers get to see from your e-commerce. So, make it worth watching.
Simply, you must have a compelling profile picture for your business profile. In addition, a descriptive and welcoming bio can go a long way for your e-commerce. It’s like you are greeting your customers in person.
Accordingly, while formulating your bio, always keep your customers in mind. Make sure to resonate with them to deliver the best experience and a good reputation and encourage purchases.
It’s evident how the number of social media platforms is increasing exponentially. As a result, online businesses might lose track of where their efforts should be directed to drive more sales.
Therefore, one of the primary social selling best practices is to choose the most suitable platform.
So, what is the most suitable one?
This might seem like a tough question but indeed, it’s pretty simple.
The most suitable platform is the one on which your target audience spends most of their time. Accordingly, you will have to identify your target audience and then do some research to identify their most used channel.
This way, you will ensure directing your efforts to the right place to generate more sales and higher revenues.
Check out The Best 9 Advertising Platforms To Grow Your e-commerce Business.
Want to sell on social media? Then, deliver non-sales content.
Quite confused?
Let us break things down for you. To sell through social media platforms, you must share valuable and high-quality content rather than solely focusing on promotional content.
Such content resonates more with customers, builds more engagement, and increases conversion rates.
Accordingly, you can share industry-related content, infographics, maintenance tips, etc. In addition, you can incorporate content posted from other credible sources related to recent studies, for example, or industry updates.
Whatever way you decide to follow, ensure that you deliver compelling content to grab customers’ attention and build brand credibility.
We told you what needs to be done; it’s your turn to get creative.
The time you spend on social media platforms should be monitored so as to not lose sight of your objectives.
Accordingly, one of the social selling best practices is to be consistent with posting and interacting on your channels.
Ghosting users become suspicious, and not posting for a while affects your trustworthiness and credibility. In addition, you risk losing followers and their interaction when becoming active later.
Thus, be sure to create a schedule for the number of times you will post content per week. Most importantly, your content has to be relevant and valuable.
Directing your marketing efforts to a wide customer base is not the most efficient social selling practice.
In reality, this will lead to paying too much money and time in return for low conversion rates. Accordingly, one of the social selling best practices is to connect with the right customers.
The right customers are the ones who are interested in your products or have visited your website before.
Just as you are on a continuous search for potential customers, buyers are continuously looking for products that solve their pain points. Therefore, you should capitalize on such a point by connecting with buyers who are already seeking out products like yours.
With the emergence of social media, online communities started to occur and became users’ places to share their interests, goals, and information and to engage in discussions.
We are not exaggerating when we tell you that there are online communities for almost everything that comes to your mind. People discuss everything on social media nowadays.
Therefore, you can benefit from these online communities by engaging in relevant ones. Hence, monitor the groups in which your target audience is part and become part of them too.
For example, if you are selling a B2B product or service, then go to Linkedin to find relevant communities or groups to be part of.
Reply to comments, react to customers’ interactions, and address their inquiries.
This will ensure being noticed and on top of their minds. In addition, you can always recommend your products if they are relevant to user’s pain points and truly solve their problem.
Thus, being part of the conversation will successfully generate more leads so that you can target them with product launches and updates.
A study by Hubspot (2024) mentions that 45% of sellers consider building a community and actively interacting with it as a key characteristic that a social media platform should possess for effective social selling.
Referral programs are a word-of-mouth marketing technique that rewards customers for referring your brand to others. Such a marketing tactic is pivotal in increasing conversion rates, retention rates and building brand trust.
Most importantly, referral programs are one of the social selling best practices that you can undoubtedly leverage.
You can rely on referral programs to generate more leads for your e-commerce. Instead of reaching out to potential customers, you can encourage your already existing customers to refer your products. This is more likely to succeed in increasing sales as people tend to trust recommendations from their peers rather than businesses and paid ads.
After following all of the social selling best practices, there is still a key practice you will have to follow which is tracking your results. It’s crucial to verify that you are on the right track and that your efforts are paying off.
Therefore, identify key metrics and KPIs to monitor to assess the success of your social selling practices. For example, you can focus on engagement rate through likes, shares, and comments.
Hence, if your engagement rate is high, then your content resonates with customers and you can keep going. All of the social media platforms include analytics tools to provide you with an overview of the performance of your marketing efforts.
Social listening is crucial for social selling. That’s why it’s on our list of social-selling best practices.
Social listening is the process of monitoring what is being said about your brand on different social media platforms to know how people are acting towards your brand, your competitors, and any relevant keywords.
Accordingly, you become aware of what’s being mentioned about your business and how it’s perceived by customers. In addition, it shows what customers like about your products and what points of weakness users view. Also, social listening enables your e-commerce store to assess customers’ views towards your competitors.
Buyers might criticize your products or mention how they were game-changing for them. In both cases, you have to be present in these conversations to deal with any issues promptly.
Such customers’ criticisms might be hindering the completion of purchases for your e-commerce. Hence, listening is always a key practice for social selling.
As you know more about your customers, their interests, and their preferences, you have to personalize your messages accordingly.
Generic messages are not very effective when it comes to social selling. Customers like to feel special; hence, personalization will indicate the extra effort you have made while communicating with them.
As a result, it’s more likely that users are impressed and become more inclined to place an order. Not to mention that personalization helps in building stronger connections with customers.
Simply put, genuine, personalized communication delivers more value to customers and assists in conversion. That’s why it’s on our list of social-selling best practices.
Final Thoughts
After reading our article, your time on social media will no longer be dedicated to scrolling through posts and videos. You will direct your focus toward social selling, building relationships, interacting with potential customers, and driving more sales.
With our 10 social selling best practices, you are all set to transform your presence on social media.
However, as we talk about your social media presence, we will have to talk about the importance of running ads. To boost the performance of your e-commerce, you have to create an ad strategy and launch campaigns with the best performers.
Accordingly, you will need to incorporate a marketing automation tool to automate your ads’ strategy to upscale your ROAS across the various social media channels.
We encourage you to check out Convertedin which will deliver all of this and more. It boosts sales with its automated and personalized ads across different channels. Also, it retargets customers and re-engages visitors who leave your website. In addition, you will get a complete view of your ads and customized insights through your social media platforms.
Impressed? So are we!
Now is the time to kickstart your journey with Convertedin. So, book your demo now!