Social media is often seen as a way for companies to build their brand and do outreach to existing consumers. As time has passed, social selling has become more and more prevalent for all businesses alike. Studies show that Facebook and Instagram have become a starting point for a majority of consumers looking into a product. Since we live in a day and age where many products can be purchased on a mobile phone in a couple of clicks, being able to convert those consumers is critical.
As fast as a purchase can be made, a brand needs to ensure that its social media channels can allow that purchased to be done as easy as possible. I am going to take a look at ways to improve a business social media selling tactic to match up a social presence with sales business goals.
Make it Seamless
Making your online presence seamless might be the most obvious thing, but it needs to be addressed. What I mean by making it seamless is the journey from social posts to purchase. In the example of a clothing company, the link to a potential product purchase needs to be in the same design and messaging as the social post. Below is an example from H&M:
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You can see here how a user can transition smoothly from a product that they see to the website that follows the same design. The idea here is that the user is not subjected to a hard transition from the social post to a purchase decision. The design is seamless between platforms, and the consumer does not feel like they are making a major purchase decision. You need to ensure that your website is as mobile-friendly as possible for users who are visiting your site. You can test mobile functionality here for your business!
A/B Testing is King
One of the best ways to figure out your audience is to run social posts with slight variations to see which one works better. A/B Testing is essentially an experiment where two or more variants of a page are shown to users at random, and statistical analysis is used to determine which variation performs better for a given conversion goal. No audience is the same between brands, so doing A/B testing over time allows you to identify what works and what does not. Instagram and Facebook allow you to split two ads between your audience to collect this data. Below are some features that you can A/B test to start and see what works for you:
- Call to action verbiage - Learn More vs Buy Now.
- Ad copy - This can include the wording and the length of the post.
- Video vs static image - This could be the most distinct difference based on the product that you sell. Video Ads typically perform better.
The idea here is two continuously A/B test until your brand has built the perfect structure for social selling. It is still optimal to continue to A/B test as trends and behaviours are ever-changing, but you can always find some consistencies.
Video, Video, Video
Video is king when it comes to digital marketing nowadays; every online platform is pushing video ads (especially before during or after a Youtube video) to help grow their brand and sell. Videos allow businesses to increase their traffic to their site, increase brand awareness and, even most importantly, time on site. Videos are engaging and draw the attention in feeds instead of a static image that can be easily scrolled past. The statistics do not lie when it comes to video as you can see below referenced by Biteable:
- 72% of customers would rather learn about a product or service by way of video. (HubSpot)
- Social media posts with video have 48% more views. (HubSpot)
- 62% of people said they were more interested in a product after seeing it in a Facebook Story. (Marketing Land)
- Mobile video ad spend is expected to be around 72% of the total digital ad spend this year. (eMarketer)
- Social video generates 1200% more shares than text and image content combined. (G2 Crowd)
The stats run on and on forever based on the above source. For Youtube, the statistics come directly from Google regarding instream and preroll ads on Youtube. See below for some detailed stats about the benefits of Youtube video ads:
Video has a more significant impact than a static image, and that is the way of the future. The ROI was clear in advertisements ran through Instagram stories by NUXE. Instagram Business reported that NUXE saw a 6.2x return on ad spend, at a far lower cost. The ads on Instagram Stories placement resulted in a 46% lower cost per acquisition and a 62% lower cost per click compared to other placements.
Conclusion
I could go on and on about some of the small things a company can do to make improvements. The idea behind selling social is both simple and complicated at the same time in that it is simple to set up and get going but complicated to perfect. The idea here is just to make it easy for customers to browse and convert and learn through testing. Success will not happen by accident overnight!
