Social this, social that, social everything; a need for society lies in the very nature of human beings. As a species, we rely on cooperation with each other to survive and thrive. Naturally, businesses capitalise on this; social media is the fastest-growing market ever.
54% of B2B marketers said they thank social media for the generation of leads. (Source: digitalmarketinginstitute.com)
There are hundreds of different social media-related strategies that businesses employ to better their positions on the market. The question is: which one is the best for generating profit?
The two most popular concepts today are social media marketing and social selling. At first glance, the two are closely related to each other as they are both based on social media interactions. However, it turns out there are some major differences. To find out what those are exactly, how they can be implemented successfully, and what impact they have on the effectiveness of the aforementioned strategies, let’s look into both!
How Does Social Selling Work?
Social selling is the practice of generating sales by establishing meaningful relationships with your prospects.
The belief that having strong bonds with a broad network of potential customers being the key to making more sales lies at the core of social selling. The logic behind this concept is simple: when it comes to making a purchase decision, people instinctively turn to the brand they have previously interacted with. The sense of familiarity creates a positive association with the given brand and, subsequently, convinces your target audience to purchase your products.
A great parallel to illustrate this idea is the similarities between social selling and human friendships. In its essence, any friendship is a mutually beneficial arrangement. For it to work out, both sides need to be ready to give, but at the same time can also expect to receive.
Say, your best mate Jim who you’ve known since high school is a financial advisor. He’s always been great at giving advice and overall has been extremely helpful. Unfortunately, this year wasn’t the best one for you, and you are currently going through some money-related shambles. Who’s going to be the person you consult? Jim is the first one on the list! Even though he’s never directly forced you to become his client or advertised himself in any way, you’re confident he’s a professional.
It’s the same with social selling. When your prospects are in a desperate need of the products or services you offer, your business can be a Jim, ready to offer help. Thanks to the fact that you’ve always been there for them providing value at all times, they won’t think twice about turning to you when a need arises.
It’s the same with social selling. When your prospects are in a desperate need of the products or services you offer, your business can be a Jim, ready to offer help. Thanks to the fact that you’ve always been there for them providing value at all times, they won’t think twice about turning to you when a need arises.
Social selling doesn’t necessarily generate immediate sales, but it works wonders in the long-run. Your business becomes a part of your prospects’ ecosystem, so them coming to you is a natural occurrence.
In the era of complete digitalisation, there’s only one way to sell socially: through social media! There’s an abundance of social media platforms and, subsequently, a whole lot of different ways to establish a strong connection with your audience. You just need to know the right technique to do that successfully; here they are.
Personal branding. Personal branding refers to the art of crafting an online persona and popularising your business among potential clients by increasing your online presence. To do it, you need to assemble a coherent image across different platforms and continuously share content associated with your name on the web.
- Social listening. Successful social selling implies a conversation between two sides - you and your prospects. While creating content and being a trendsetter are wonderful attributes to have, two-way communication involves active listening. You need to track your mentions and be prompt to react to them.
- Automation. One way to facilitate social selling is by automating the process. For instance, you can employ software that integrates with the social media platforms to match the information obtained from there with your CRM system. That way, in just one click you can enable bulk outreach and further lead nurturing, Making the life of your sales team easier!
- Prospect monitoring. The social media user base is continuously expanding, and so should your business network of prospects. You need to ensure you are monitoring possible leads and get relevant alerts about industry changes.
Advantages of Social Selling
At first glance, social selling might seem like a lot of hustle. However, once you learn the benefits of it, you understand why this selling strategy has become indispensable for many B2B organisations. Here are the top advantages of practising social selling:
- It reduces the sales cycle. According to stats, salespeople who implement social selling into their routine close their deals on average 20 days quicker than those who don’t. The reason for this is the fact that social selling allows you to show your expertise and give your brand tangible value before you even speak to your prospects. They’re more willing to work with you, so it takes less persuading to convince them that your product is what they need.
- It gives a competitive advantage. If your business operates within a competitive market and products somewhat homogenous goods or services, eventually it all boils down to who offers more value. If your brand is well-known, it can help you stand out among competitors and ‘steal’ their prospects.
- It’s great for managing your reputation on the internet. 72% of all B2B buyers conduct intensive research on social media before making any purchase decisions. Therefore, showcasing your competence by interacting with your prospects online can build your profile and persuade your leads that you’re a trustworthy business partner.
- It increases customer loyalty. Practising social selling can facilitate more robust bonds with your target audience and, subsequently, turn them into loyal customers. Consistent engagement that involves continuous social media activity such as writing, sharing and commenting keeps you in contact with 45% of former customers in the longer term. They will be in touch with your page as they’ll be getting notifications, hence will know about your business updates.
- It generates sales. There is a higher by 51% chance of social sellers to hit sales quotas with 78% of salespeople engaged in social selling making higher sales than those who aren’t. (Source: OptinMonster)
- It’s cost-effective. Social selling doesn’t require you to invest lots of money into it and can be seamlessly incorporated into the list of your business’ daily routine activities.
Disadvantages of Social Selling
Social selling is a fantastic opportunity for businesses to multiply their sales. However, granted the nature of this strategy, there are also some specific disadvantages that you need to consider:
- It takes time. Social selling focuses on establishing long-term relationships with your prospects. It’s a strategic approach so it cannot provide you with a momentarily closed deal. You need to understand that before your prospects turn into your loyal customers, you need to spare them some time and give them value.
- It involves a lot of discipline and persistence. Not only is social selling a long process but it is also a continuous one. You need to be consistent with your online presence and interact with your leads regularly.
- Little room for error. Everything you post on the internet stays there. Therefore, if you happen to be in the midst of a dirty scandal, your career is basically over. Although social listening is an important part of social selling, you need to be meticulous about what and how you publish online.
The Secrets of Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is the process of creating and sharing content on social media platforms to promote your products and engage with your target audience directly.
Social media marketing is one of the most popular and widespread digital marketing strategies. It’s used by businesses of all calibres and specialisations worldwide starting from small family-owned businesses to large multinational corporations.
One of the main reasons it receives so much recognition is its versatility. Social media marketing can help you with a variety of goals and doesn’t necessarily have to be focused just on generating more sales. Some other examples of what social media marketing can be used for include improved brand awareness, a better brand image and customer loyalty.
The basics of how to become a successful social media marketer include:
- Unique content. Social media marketing is extremely competitive, so to capture the minds of your target audience, you need to stand out. The only way to do that is by crafting unique, valuable content that will be interesting to your followers.
- Platform-tailored content. Today, there are many different social media platforms. The concept of bringing people together unites all of them. At the same time, however, they differ a lot in terms of who their primary users are and the features they provide to content creators. Before you commence your social media marketing efforts, you need to learn who your target audience is, which social media platforms they use and what type of content they are most likely to engage with.
- Make your content interactive. The main advantage of social media is that it facilitates two-way communication between the business and its target audience without any intermediaries. Make sure you get the most out of it and get your followers to spend more time on your page. The tools that would bring the most engagement differ from one platform to another and change quickly as new features get added. At the moment, the hottest trends for interactive content creation include LinkedIn polls; Instagram stories, with its vast arsenal of tools such as masks, question stickers, and quiz stickers; and Facebook native pictures. All of those will help to attract your target audience’s attention and boost engagement rate.
Entertain - don’t market! We get it, your prime goal is to market your brand, but people are sick and tired of businesses trying to sell. Initially, social media platforms were created for regular people to entertain yourself. So, essentially, business-related activities are deemed invasive. To avoid that label, make sure you wow your followers instead of boring them. An average user of social media spends roughly 1.7 seconds on each post when they are scrolling through their feed, whilst you need at least 3 seconds to truly grab someone’s attention. Make sure your content is intricate and multilayered. Make people want to stay focused on your latest upload. If it’s a text-post, go straight to the point - surprise, shock, inspire your readers straight away! If that’s a picture you want to share, make sure it’s clean and vibrant, and if you’re a video type of guy, slap some big captions on it. It’s a proven fact that adding subtitles to your video can boost view time by 12%.
Advantages of Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing has many advantages that justify the popularity of this concept. Social media marketing...
- Allows you to tell a story. Social media marketing is a great way to enable storytelling. By being active on social media, you assemble a credible and lively online persona that contributes towards your brand identity. Customers are always more willing to buy from a ‘human’ brand they can relate to.
- Yields an excellent source of analytical data. Almost all popular social media platforms allow you to access your account insights and take a look at the statistics. On top of that, there are also third-party tools that help you to gather analytical data and project your further marketing efforts based on your target audience’ reaction to your social media marketing activity. Learn what attracts your potential customer’s attention!
- Offers a boost in brand awareness. Social media marketing drives social engagement, such as comments, posts, reposts, likes. All of those, either by word-of-mouth or by the platform’s algorithms, help expose your brand to a broader audience.
- Provides better search engine rankings. Social media presence allows you to get more backlinks and tie all your content nicely together. It has a positive effect on your search engine rankings and therefore, can generate more organic traffic.
- Delivers cost-effective promotion for B2C businesses. Facebook and Instagram both allow business accounts to launch targeted ad campaigns. Those are much more affordable than above the line promotion and usually drives more leads as it’s well-targeted. (PSA: B2B businesses are less lucky, often, promotion is more expensive for them)
Disadvantages of Social Media Marketing
Even with all those fantastic advantages, there’s always the other side of the medal. Social media marketing, too, has its drawbacks:
- Negative feedback. Unfortunately, social media is brimming with trolls and bots that love to stir drama. If you happen to be attacked by them and don’t manage to handle it well, you can fall victim to negative feedback and get your reputation dirty.
- It relies heavily on ads. Advertisements are the prime way to generate leads for those practising social media marketing. While it’s an excellent channel for money making, it’s also very annoying. If you get carried away with ads, you can end up being a frustration to your followers and actually start losing them. It’s challenging to grow organically.
- Low ROI. Social media marketing is superb for raising brand awareness but, unfortunately, has one of the lowest ROI among online marketing strategies.
The Bottom Line
It’s safe to say that social media marketing and social selling are very different concepts. The former focuses on calling for immediate action and can fulfil a range of different goals while the latter is more of a long-term strategy that concentrates on increasing sales through establishing trusting relationships with prospects. Social media marketing is a concept beneficial for the business, while social selling creates mutual satisfaction for both parties, the company and the prospects.
At the same time, it’s unfair to claim that the two concepts don’t overlap. Both are incredibly effective in building a brand’s credibility and promoting brand awareness. The truth is that the best way to implement these would be in a combination of two. By combining social selling and social media marketing, you can tackle several problems at once and effectively utilise the resources available to you to ensure your business’ growth.