A step by step guide to skyrocket your online sales using social media. Here’s how you can do it.
Let’s be honest, no one likes to be “sold” to, but everyone likes to buy. How ironic?
Here’s a short story from our experience.
Before we changed the link in our Instagram bio to our strategy session booking link, we previously had a sign up link that allowed our followers to sign up for our free business strategy newsletter.
Even without asking for signups, we got hundreds of them. Why? It’s all embedded in our “initial value delivery”. Some call it passive marketing, but I call it “irrefutable value delivery”, which only means one thing. Let’s get to it.
If ever you have genuine value to offer your audience through your products or services, just like ants are drawn to sugar, your ideal audience will seek your services at all cost.
Here are secrets to help you achieve this. I’ll spill.
-
You must give first, without expectations.
No, I’m not talking about giveaways. In fact I’m not a big fan of giveaways, unless it’s done strategically to specifically benefit your ideal audience.
Now, you might be looking at your business and wondering how?
Well, let’s use a fashion brand as an example.
Let’s assume you sell clothing items. There are lots of ways your audience can benefit from you as a fashion brand.
Imagine being the go-to fashion page for styling inspiration. Subtly using pieces from your brand collection to inspire your followers to make better wardrobe decisions. Let me tell you what would happen.
- Your brand subconsciously becomes home to fashion hunters who would eventually turn to customers. I mean, who wouldn’t trust a brand that inspires them to look their very best, to also be the one to get their fashion items from?
- You attract like minded audiences who eventually turn to customers. As you inspire your audience, your audience also inspires their peers. Thanks to the quick save and share button, your audience can quickly share your fashion inspiration with friends and loved ones. (Hopefully they don’t intend to make you their best kept secret) but even at that, the light can’t be hidden for so long, it will eventually shine through.
- Your brand becomes an industry leader as a result of your value delivery. If done consistently, you can stamp your authority within your niche and become the preferred choice among your competitors.
- Strong community. Nothing would ever trump a community that rides for your brand. Your consistent value delivery will build you an army of “die hard fans”. Think of Apple for instance. Someone once said “even if a certain brand (name withheld) should put wings on their phone to make it fly, they’ll still buy an iPhone”. Now imagine your brand creating such a massive bias in the mind of your audience. You can do it. You just have to bring immense value to the table first.
- In our case for instance, our newsletters and blogposts are some of the many ways we keep delivering remarkable value to our audience.
Now, most importantly, when your value delivery starts paying off and those sales, bookings and enquiries starts coming in organically, make sure to deliver your very best. It would be a shame to put out a mediocre service and ruin the trust of your customers.
In 2021, a prospective client (now a partner) got in touch. She scheduled a meeting for just an hour, even after we recommended a minimum of two hours for a more comprehensive strategy session.
Her reason? She wasn’t sure she could spend more than an hour talking about strategy. We agreed. Let’s just say that she ended up using approximately 3 hours, 30 minutes.
I deduced that it was probably due to fear of “genuine value delivery” that she opted for just an hour session initially.
Considering the fact that the session wasn’t cheap, I totally understand. But if the end result points towards anything, it is the fact that genuine value was delivered from start to finish.
Now, one more thing you have to do is make it seamless for your audience to access your product or service. This way, you can focus on serving them better.
In our case, we stopped taking manual strategy bookings. Instead, we allowed our customers to pick their favourite schedule, based on slot availability. This has not only accelerated productivity, but has also helped to avoid clashing schedules, enabled easy rescheduling, and seamless schedule cancellation if need be.
As you are delivering irrefutable value to your audience, make sure to streamline your service delivery process as well. It’s all part of the core idea of selling without trying to sell.
-
Use the “Reverse Perspective” – User Generated Content
In 2015, Coca-Cola launched the “Share a Coke” campaign in Nigeria (much earlier in some regions). You know what they did? They replaced their iconic logo with popular local names on all its packaging.
If you’re reading this and didn’t see, hear or feel the impact of that single campaign strategy, then you were probably living under the rocks at the time.
This simple, but not so simple idea was initiated to give their customers a unique experience.
It spurred a sense of ownership, encouraging them to share their personalised Coke bottle with the people they love. Whether physically or virtually. This made them feel like they’re part of the brand.
The result? According to Marketing Research Society, this single campaign resulted in 1.25 million more teenagers trying a Coke during the following summer. Also, sales of participating Coca-Cola packages rose by a phenomenal 11% in the US.
Till date, the “Share a Coke” campaign is the most successful UGC marketing move in terms of sales volume.
Another use case scenario closer to home is from our partner Kidz Vogue. This was done through their “KidzVogueRoyal” campaign targeted at encouraging parents to share a video of their baby using any of the ride-on toys they got from the brand.
The catch? Each baby stands a chance of being the face of the brand for that particular month, coupled with other added incentives as reward.
Not only did this strategy create widespread awareness, trust, and revenue growth, it also offered the brand more relatable and sharable contents, which corroborates their primary mission of “Creating Memorable Childhood Experiences”.
Other Incredible UGC successes recorded includes the Apple’s “ShotOniphone” campaign, Starbuck’s “WhiteCupContest”, as well as Asos “AsSeenOnMe” just to mention a few.
So why UGC?
Among the several benefits of the User Generated Content is the fact that it usually comes at zero cost once you’ve gotten the campaign rollout process out of the way.
Usually, all you have to do is encourage your customers to share their self-inspired use case scenario of your product, or a simple hack they’ve discovered using your service.
This strategy has a very high trust value as these are verified experiences, not just another regular brand content.
The only trick, which is a compulsory requirement, is that your product, service and brand in its entirety must resonate with your ideal audience to the point where they want to be voluntarily associated with your brand.
Hence, you must represent their ideal values. I mean, why not? Remember, the goal is to sell without trying to sell.
-
Influencer Marketing
You know one thing they don’t tell you about Influencer marketing? It’s the fact that the influence does not just lie on the person, but most importantly, on the creativity and brand fit of the said influencer.
A couple of years ago, I spent N250,000 (approximately $685 at the time) at the time on a popular Instagram Influencer.
The goal was to create awareness and drive sales. Let’s just say that aside a handful of followers that trickled in, it was a complete waste of money.
That single experience made me judge influencer marketing harshly in terms of effectiveness. It took a while to restore my trust.
At the time, I didn’t understand that the essence of influencer marketing is to reach a niche audience. Not just that, they must also resonate with your brand values, under the influence of a public figure with great authority.
Influencer marketing, when executed properly with attention to expected outcomes, delivery strategy, and compensation, can establish your brand as a reliable source for a specific audience that heavily depends on authority opinions to make sound purchasing decisions. This can result in increased brand visibility and loyalty, ultimately leading to higher sales and revenue
Again, for this to work even better, make sure your brand is true to its promise. This is the only guarantee for renewed trust and continuity. Remember, it’s a young relationship with this newly acquired audience, turned customers.
More than ever, it has become paramount that you carry out a comprehensive research on your prospective brand influencer.
Outline your goals and expectations to the influencer. Ensure that it is well within their capacity to deliver.
When executed correctly, your influencer marketing campaign can bring immense value to your brand. Especially in terms of sales, without looking like you’re trying to sell.
-
Social proof
In my early days of social-commerce as a Solopreneur, I handled everything from content, DM, customer service, even down to delivery.
Most times I had customers that would come to the DM, and after I’ve sent a thousand pictures, a hundred videos, my DNA sample, genotype and blood group, I’ll then get the monstrous question;
“How do I know that you’re not a scam?”
In response, I’ll go, “Here, take a look at some of the things our existing customers are saying about us (providing both pictures and videos alongside).
You would think it ends there. Some would go as far as requesting for an existing customer’s username so as to confirm. Or in some cases like I’ve witnessed, where we tag the customer, they go ahead to DM the customer just to confirm it was a genuine review.
Was this annoying? Yes! Did they have a genuine concern? Well, as a very young brand at the time, I would definitely say Yes.
Now, this brings me to the original point, which is Social Proof. This is basically your trust currency when it comes to doing any online business. If you primarily sell on a dedicated E-commerce website, make sure to include a review section. Encourage your customers to share their honest reviews there.
If your primary channel is social media, from time to time, share your customer’s review and feedback. I’d recommend you find a dedicated feature on the social app to assign your reviews, for easy access by potential customers. Instagram highlights for instance.
Your prospective customers are very observant and would subconsciously rely on key factors like social proofs to help make that final purchase decision.
Why tell it when you can show it.
Like they say “you don’t have to take my word for it, I’ll just have to show you”. This can be done even without actively trying. That’s exactly how social proof works. To help skyrocket your sales.
Now that you have all these information, you can see that you don’t have to indiscriminately invade people’s DM with annoying “salesy” pitch.
Or even attempt to weaponize self pity to manipulate people into patronising your brand. Just like Coca-Cola, Kidz Vogue, Apple, and other leading brands, you too can sell without trying to sell.