Social selling is a modern approach to identifying, connecting with, and nurturing leads. It involves using social media networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to interact with prospects to create trust, credibility, and sales.
Are you looking to connect with prospects on a deeper level? If so, here are 10 essential elements of a strong social selling strategy across multiple platforms.
Table of Contents
1. Identify Your Target Audience
Your target audience is a group most likely to be interested in your products or services. Knowing your target audience allows you to tailor your marketing messages for faster, more authentic connections with prospects.
Target audiences can vary by product, service, location, or season. Therefore, it’s important to consistently reevaluate your target audience to ensure your social selling strategy meets their changing needs or behaviors.
When identifying your target audience, be sure to:
- Define your product or service.
- Determine your value proposition.
- Research your market and identify your ideal customer's demographics, interests, and buying behaviors.
- Create buyer personas based on your data.
- Use said buyer personas to create targeted messaging.
When implementing a strong social selling strategy, it’s important to identify where your target audience spends their time online and focus your efforts on those platforms.
2. Set Clear Goals
Goal setting can help you stay focused on what you want to achieve with your social selling efforts. Goals also provide benchmarks for measuring the success of your social selling strategy.
Like target audiences, goals can change over time and across platforms. Examples of possible goals for a social selling strategy include:
- Increase brand awareness
- Generate leads
- Increase conversion rates
- Build relationships
- Improve customer experience
- Increase website traffic
- Increase revenue
Be specific, set realistic timelines, and celebrate milestones as you progress towards the goal line.
3. Understand Your LinkedIn Social Selling Index
The LinkedIn Social Selling Index, or SSI, is a tool for measuring social selling performance.
Your SSI score is compiled according to how you engage with content, your network size, and how well-optimized your profile is.
Helping your sales team boost their SSIs can improve lead generation, deepen customer relationships, and generate higher sales.
Here are some simple ways to improve a LinkedIn SSI:
- Optimize profiles for a target audience
- Engage with relevant content
- Actively seek out relevant connections
- Use LinkedIn sales tools
- Stay active on the platform
- Prioritize building relationships over pushing pitches
Improving SSIs requires consistent effort, so plan for ongoing optimization.
4. Use Your Social Media Following to Generate Leads
Sales teams follow standard steps to find new prospects, which can be effective but time-consuming. Instead, leverage your existing social media following to generate new leads.
Think of it this way—why go fishing in far-off waters when you have a lake on your property?
Here’s how to tap into your existing social media following for a quicker and more effective way to generate new leads:
- Always respond to comments and messages
- Share valuable and relevant content
- Use social listening tools to monitor conversations related to your brand or industry
- Encourage followers to share your content or recommend your services
- Run a contest or giveaway to engage with existing followers and attract new ones
No matter your current social media following size, there’s always an opportunity to leverage it for your social selling strategy.
5. Use the Right Platforms
It may seem obvious, but using the right social media platforms for a successful social selling strategy is crucial. Remember that the ideal platform can shift based on products, target audiences, or goals.
Here’s a list of social media platforms to consider for your social selling strategy:
- YouTube
- Snapchat
- TikTok
- Quora
When choosing the right platform for your business, consider the following:
- Where your audience spends the most time
- What platforms support your highest-performing content
- Where are your competitors?
Having an online presence alone isn’t enough.
Make sure to align your online presence with your social selling goals and engage with your target audience authentically and consistently by choosing the right platforms.
6. Collaborate with Your Team
Team collaboration allows for a more coordinated and practical approach to engaging with prospects on social media. Collaboration also ensures everyone is working towards the same goals and using the available resources best.
Tips for collaborating effectively include:
- Establish clear roles and responsibilities
- Communicate regularly, especially with remote parties
- Celebrate successes to build team morale and boost motivation
- Encourage diversity, respect, and transparency
Remember to evaluate and adjust your collaboration strategy regularly to meet the needs of an evolving social sales strategy.
7. Create Compelling Content
Nearly 90% of marketers use social media as their preferred content marketing lever. Content must be catchy, creative, and captivating to stand out.
Create every piece of content with your target audience in mind. Use visual elements to capture their attention and keep them drawn in with storytelling techniques. Keep most of your content short and sweet, and don’t be afraid to mix in a little humor when appropriate.
Authentic content builds trust and connections, two building blocks of any solid social sales strategy.
8. Verify and Check Emails before Sending Campaigns
Bounced emails are more than a nuisance—they can harm your sender reputation, trigger spam filters, and make it harder for your messaging to reach its intended audience. Therefore, all email addresses must be verified first when sending social selling marketing campaigns.
Verifying email addresses can save you from wasting valuable resources while helping ensure that your social selling strategy reaches its target audience. Using a real-time email verification tool can make the process quick and straightforward.
9. Monitor and Analyze Results
Monitoring and analyzing your social selling strategy results can help you understand what’s working and what’s not. You can then make data-driven decisions and optimize your strategy to improve your results continuously.
Most social media platforms offer built-in analytics tools to help you track engagement, followers, and other vital metrics. You can also implement social media analytics tools, including Google Analytics, Hootsuite Insights, or Meta Pixel, to help track data from your social selling strategies.
Even if you feel a social sales strategy is successful, monitoring and analyzing the results is essential.
10. Adapt and Improve
Analyzing and monitoring your social selling results is important, but it’s equally crucial to adapt and improve your selling strategies based on those results. Doing so helps you stay ahead of the competition and optimize your approach for better engagement and conversions. As the social media landscape evolves, so should your social sales strategies.
An analysis is always the first step toward improvement; after identifying areas for improvement, set goals based on your research. For example, let’s say your data shows a dip in Instagram engagement rate. Next, set a goal to increase your Instagram engagement rate by 20% within two months so you’re chasing something concrete and specific.
Next, test different types of content, adjust your messaging, or try out a different social media platform. Then, again, monitor your results and make adjustments. Don’t forget to also listen to feedback from your audience to stay ahead of the curve.
Unlock the Power of Social Selling
A robust social selling strategy consists of several key elements, including knowing your target audience, setting clear goals, creating engaging content, and continuously analyzing and adapting.
By improving your social selling strategy, you can build stronger connections with your customers and increase brand awareness while driving sales.