How To Utilize Social Media Platforms For Sales

Jul 30, 2019 8 min read

Social media has probably become an essential cog in the digital marketing mechanism. With its extensive reach and enormous user base, social media is apt for businesses and marketers who want to reach out to their audiences. With the technology advancements over the past several years, social media has exploded to its real potential, delivering every single time. This intensified people's interest in using social media marketing as their main marketing strategy, and the move is paying off.

Social Media Statistics Of Active Users

With the rise of social media platforms, it's imperative to understand their contribution to our business. Like, analyze which of these platforms are working best for us, and what strategies need to be implemented to extract the maximum results.

In our age, the ways to connect with our audiences and consumer behavior are continually changing. Business owners and marketers are always on the lookout to drive in user engagement and encourage user-generated content.

Throughout this article, we will learn how to leverage leading social media platforms to drive conversions and sales. We will focus on mainly 3 platforms:

  1. Facebook
  2. Instagram
  3. Pinterest

Facebook

There is a lot that you can do with Facebook as it's the largest social network on the planet. You can use Facebook to:

  • Increase brand awareness
  • Expand your reach
  • Drive traffic to some specific web page or application
  • Drive engagement in the form of asking people to 'like', 'share' and 'comment' or, to attend an event
  • Increase app installs
  • Get video views
  • Generate leads for your sales funnel
  • Use Messenger to share customized offerings

Here I've listed 4 ways using which the above can be achieved!

Run Sponsored Posts

Facebook sponsored posts or ads are a great way to put your products in front of millions of people. Facebook empowers business owners to run several types of such posts as per their objective.

Facebook Ads

Though there are several substantial advantages of Facebook ads but the precise interest targeting and several analytical reports it offers, stand out from the others.

The potential that Facebook Ads possess and the results they drive in make up for their popularity and huge advertiser base.

Statistics of advertisers on Facebook

Some examples of popular Facebook sponsored posts are:

  • Photo ads
  • Video ads
  • Carousel ads
  • Slideshow ads
  • Collection Ads (mobile only)
  • Lead ads

You may opt for any of these ad types depending on the objective of your campaign. Along with running sponsored posts, you can simultaneously analyze their performance and optimize accordingly. Optimization of your Facebook ads is indispensable for best results.

Create Shops

Facebook also empowers business owners to set up their shops. Sellers can create a personalized listing similar to a product page on an eCommerce website, then drive traffic to that respective page. However, this is part of a business Facebook page.

Apart from having a Facebook account and Facebook business page, here are some prerequisites of setting up your store on Facebook:

  • Have physical products for sale – You cannot sell digital or downloadable products from your Facebook shop page
  • Accept Facebook's merchant terms
  • Valid bank account linking
  • Valid tax identification number

With the above checklist, you are all set to sell on Facebook. Apart from your conventional online store, this is another addition to the platforms you sell your products on. With people spending a lot of their online time on Facebook, it's a great idea to sell on Facebook and boost your sales.

You can create a consumer journey wherein you can tag multiple products in an image organically promoted from your business' Facebook page.

Facebook Group

It is the greatest asset Facebook has offered to business owners all around the globe. Merchants can create dedicated groups wherein they can engage the group members with relevant information and also pitch products for sale.

Segmenting groups based on a user's interest makes it easier for people to choose and join in. If implemented effectively, Facebook groups can drive in a lot of revenue and sales for any business.

For example, MakeWebBetter connects all eCommerce enthusiasts and their customers in a group. This group shares all the information their users need to know, answers all product queries and, as a result, it drives leads for the business as well.

Makewebbetter Marketing Insiders

Some Pro Tips

1. Tag Facebook shops in your posts

It works excellent for apparel businesses. They can tag several products in a single photo and then drive visitors to their dedicated shop page. As a result, this provides an alternative way for your audience to browse and purchase your products. Also, you can provide the purchase details or product page links in captions.

Tag Facebook shops

2. Provide the product page links in the comments

Another smart way to drive traffic/leads from Facebook posts is to insert the product page link in the comment section.

Page link in comments

Facebook Messenger

Facebook Messenger has raised the bar as far as messaging app engagement is concerned. Being one of the leading messaging applications in the market, Facebook Messenger is people's first choice for connecting with a business.

From acquiring new customers to enabling transactions and from driving awareness to providing fantastic customer service, Facebook Messenger has it all.

Now, with chatbot integrations, almost every other business is using a Facebook Messenger bot as a useful marketing tool.

So, if you are still on the fence about using Facebook Messenger for business, you should make a decision now. The decision must be to incorporate this efficient messaging app in your digital marketing strategy.

Instagram

With nearly 1 billion monthly actives on Instagram around the globe, the platform does provide you the exposure for marketing and advertising. People nowadays consider Instagram scrolling as a daily chore and are entirely consistent in doing that.

Instagram works as a great word-of-mouth marketing channel as it empowers brands to show their human aspect. The Instagram feed mostly consists of posts from friends, who share all kinds of experiences, celebrities and their lifestyle, brands with their products and values.

Instagram Statistics

If you would notice, the average age demographic for Instagram users is quite low. So, marketers should use this to good effect according to the industry in which they are working. According to me, Instagram is the best-suited platform for the food and clothing industry where the product images and videos leave a long-lasting effect on the audience.

Hence the engagement rate of this social media platform is superior to all other social networks. Although it doesn't allow brands to add links to each of their posts except the bio and stories. An ability for brands to enable their customers to complete a purchase without having to leave the app is with the arrival of shoppable posts.

This native function has enabled thousands of businesses across continents to move their catalog to Instagram and create shoppable posts. They can be distinguished by "Tap Products to View" popup or a white shopping bag (cart) button.

The merchants can connect their catalogs through their Facebook page or can create a shop on Instagram through Bigcommerce and Shopify.

On top of this, Instagram advertising has its perks. The advantages of using Instagram ads are:-

  1. As far as the organic reach of Instagram posts is concerned, it has the most significant unpaid reach out of all social media networks. The only thing to keep in mind is the usage of proper hashtags and creating useful content.
  2. We can use up to 30 hashtags per post in the captions, 20 in the comments, and 10 in stories.
  3. Instagram's new shopping feature is outstanding. You can tag your products like you would tag a person, and the tags can redirect users to product pages.
  4. As both Facebook and Instagram are linked to each other, you can use Facebook's data to target customers. You do not have much to learn about Instagram ads once you have used the Facebook Advertising account and its features.
  5. If you are a verified account or have 10,000+ followers, then you can add a swipe up feature in your Instagram stories.

Connecting with brand influencers on Instagram and asking them to promote your products is an excellent way to up your sales game. We all are aware of the power of influencer marketing and what better platform than Instagram to take advantage of this marketing technique.

Pinterest

Though this platform has less reach and users than Facebook and Instagram but still when it comes to engagement and conversion, the app beats all other social media platforms. It has been reported that proportionately, Pinterest drives more referral traffic to shopping sites than other social media platforms do.

Pinterest compared to other platforms

An interesting thing to note about the demographics of users on Pinterest is that the majority of Pinterest users are females. Though the number of female users is more, 40% of new users are male. It sheds some light on the type of content that is being shared and liked on Pinterest.

Using Pinterest Taste Graph, you can market to 5000 different categories. With the buyable post, you can enable a customer to proceed ahead with the purchase from the post itself. Buyable Pins lets you do that. This app is also accessible to Shopify users as well as for other platforms too.

Buyable Pin

Source

Here are some Pinterest best practices:

  1. You can add two links to each of your pins. One in the description and other in the source of the pin. Thus, driving traffic back to your website.
  2. Use rich pins to display extra information directly on a pin.
  3. Embed pins on your blog posts.
  4. Create collaborative boards.
  5. Using keywords in your board title to enhance your visibility

Just like any other social media platform, Pinterest is gaining good traction and contributing to substantial referral traffic and sales.

Conclusion

If you are still reading this, we are sure you would have learned the importance of social media and the different tips and tricks for boosting sales using the different social media platforms. Now, it's time to implement the same.

The power of social media cannot be overlooked, and if we are doing so, we are surely missing out on a big chunk of sales and engagement. Social media marketing is bound to make businesses successful and profitable, sooner or later.

Conversion follows quality, Quality needs attention and Attention requires you to be selective.

Therefore, stop going after every other sales technique you just heard off. Instead, focus on the best in the business and approach it with full dedication and effort.

Which of the benefits of social media do you consider to be the most impactful? What barriers do you face while implementing social media marketing for your business?

Please have your say. I am listening.

Himanshu Rauthan

Himanshu Rauthan is an entrepreneur and co-founder at MakeWebBetter. He is a programmer, researcher, writer, and strategist. He is passionate about building and scaling eCommerce development.

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