How to Leverage Social Media to Increase Your Sales

In the right hands and aimed at the right people, social media can be a powerful tool for companies. From Facebook to TikTok, various social media platforms can be used to solidify your brand’s reputation, connect with your audience, drive sales, and grow your company even further.

Know your audience and their preferred platforms

Understanding your target audience is a non-negotiable step in increasing your sales. Consumers have their preferred platform and understanding their generation’s habits and preferences is one way to know which site they like.

For instance, Millennial, Gen Z, and Gen X consumers turn to YouTube the most before making purchasing decisions. However, Gen Z consumers follow brands on Instagram more, while Millennial and Gen X consumers turn to Facebook. Meanwhile, Baby Boomers spend most of their time scrolling through their Facebook feeds and browsing YouTube. Focus on increasing your online presence on the platforms your target market likes, instead of wasting effort on those they don’t tend to use.

Find ways to engage with your customers

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Social engagement matters in tracking how well your customers perceive your brand. More shares, likes, and comments can point to higher engagement and, of course, more opportunities to expand your reach and boost sales.

There are various ways to increase engagement and interacting with your audience on your platforms is one of them. Simple things such as replying to comments, sharing user-generated content, hosting contests, or asking them questions can help your brand.

That said, Dustin York, who is the director of the online communications degree program at Maryville University, states that not all forms of engagement are actually beneficial. Brands receive all sorts of negative commentary and you should carefully reconsider before confronting followers who leave such comments. York says in an article on user engagement that it’s better to ignore these comments unless they are from influential figures with large followings. A better course of action to deleting these comments (people keep receipts!) is to let people know their feedback is heard and you’re doing something about it.

Experiment with different social media marketing tactics

The number of social media marketing campaigns seems to be increasing year on year. There’s no way of guaranteeing which one works best for your brand so try to do some experimentation to figure out what is actually effective for you, and then track the results.

Influencer and affiliate marketing are two strategies that have worked really well for brands over the past few years. Both involve collaborating with influencers to promote your products and services. At the very least, you should invest in content marketing. Coming up with relevant content is one of the best ways to build an online presence, establish authority, and reach out to consumers. However, posting content should be done in a timely manner so people actually see and engage with what you put out there.

Build your brand first; sell later

One common mistake brands make on social media is hard-selling. Posts that sound too salesy don’t succeed in increasing engagement as people have learned to tune out pushy ads.

What’s more important is to sell your brand first before promoting your inventory. Again, here’s where relevant content comes in. Your posts should be designed so that they give your brand a unique voice or personality, one that consumers can actually relate with. If your posts sound too pushy, they tend to lose engagement points. What’s even worse about that is that social media algorithms work against brands that don’t get a lot of interest from users. Your account will get buried further which dictates whether people see your posts at all.

At the end of the day, social media is valuable to brands in today’s connected world. Consumers actually form opinions about brands and their products based on what they see online. So to increase your sales, manage your social media well, churn out engaging and relevant content, and strengthen relationships with your audience before giving them the social sell.

Submitted by Lea Fraley for kyteapp.com