Social Media is one of the most important touch-points for a business. There are over 1.5 Billion users across social media platforms according to McKinsey & Company. Brands and businesses across sectors leverage social media to create brand awareness, reach their target audiences and provide value-adding resources to the prospects. In our last post, we shared how Social Media Marketing can be fully or partially outsourced to digital agencies or freelancers. But in this post, we would share the most effective practices and ways to boost up sales for business using SMM across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn & Pinterest.
1. Lead Nurturing & Engagement – Relationship with prospects
Topmost objective for a digital marketer to conduct any paid campaign or a sponsored social media activity is to reach the target group, engage them with relevant content and nurture the leads generated organically across the platforms. It enables your business in forming an ongoing relationship with the prospects who would give you business ahead. SMM fills your sales funnel with a database of quality leads and loyal users who stay engaged throughout.
2. Traverse the Path of Brand Loyalty to Brand Advocacy
Brands on social media can run contests, publish polls in stories and feature customer generated content on their profiles. It enhances their engagement with customers; converting them from one-time buyers to loyal customers for your business. Every business should aim to form a cult community of online followers who speak as positive influencers to their peers on their profiles. These are the dream followers who in marketing parlance are known as brand advocates. Think of brand communities like Apple, Harley Davidson, Starbucks have formed.
3. S-Commerce for Social Selling
Instagram allows shoppable stories & posts which are strongly adopted by D2C lifestyle brands, personal care and apparel brands to boost social commerce. They post the latest products, designs and sale alerts with appealing CTAs (call-to-actions) thereby driving impulse purchases by followers. It works wonders as a sponsored post or story to generate buzz among the target buyer. Marketplace feature-set would soon be live on Facebook as a dedicated page for buyers and sellers.
4. Share User Generated Content
How often do we see FMCG brands like Nestle run contests like Meri Maggi? asking its followers to share their stories and in turn the best ones would be featured on their social media profile. A lot of fitness apps like Nike Run, StepSetGo feature user stories on their instagram page, industries announce competitions for article writing, painting or hobby contests on special occasions to engage with followers. The best ones when shared on their pages leads to more shares and traction from a lookalike audience. It leads to a higher brand awareness, positive PR, builds desirability and gives instant gratification to all the involved followers.
5. Content Marketing: Because Content is Still The King
Valuable & relevant content in your website’s resource center shared across social media channels establishes your brand as a credible industry expert. Followers look upto your page for advice and guidance on relevant themes. Content should be CORE: Consistent, Open-ended, Relevant & Educative as it leads to better traction from the prospects. Edutainment is a novel way to indulge your followers by educating and entertaining the followers with your posts. It should be convincing but not appear very pushy or salesy. That does the trick in our opinion.
6. Create a Social Community
A close-knit community on social media platforms like Instagram via pinning their top comments, asking them to tag friends and share our stories leads to new avenues of interaction. It translates to user loyalty, preference of your brand over competition and a higher customer lifetime value (CLV) as they’d love to transact with you because of a digital-social bond.
7. LinkedIn for Brand Awareness: Sponsored InMails, Articles, Trends
Sponsored InMails are extremely important for sales teams in a B2B space where hunters keep chasing the prospects on a personal level. InMails and premium profile on LinkedIn when coupled with LinkedIn Sales Navigator software provides valuable insights on relationship progress with the leads. LinkedIn as a channel also serves crucial for employer branding, employee engagement by means of articles from the staff, sharing trends in your relevant industry, collaborating with industry leaders and job-postings for finding best talent for your business.
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