Social selling is quickly emerging as the leading marketing medium for all types of businesses. As such, it is no surprise that most business owners are concerned about doing some level of marketing on social media. This desire and excitement can sometimes be dulled by social media's initial results. Most persons starting out with social media advertising have expectations of an almost immediate windfall of sales. This is often not very realistic.
Understanding the selling cycle
If you are new to marketing and advertising, it is important for you to gain an appreciation of the selling cycle to help you to better understand your results and how to improve them.
Awareness
This is the 1st stage of the selling cycle. In this stage, your target market is made aware of your business and what it offers. When marketing your business, you must remember that only a very small percentage of potential customers will purchase from you the 1st time they become aware that you exist.
Common Marketing Mistake #1
One of the most common mistakes made by business owners at this stage is trying to hard-sell their potential audience on their introduction. Think about it, if you are meeting someone important for the very first time will you try to tell them everything about yourself on that initial engagement? That is not likely to be a very effective approach and similarly, it is highly ineffective when done in social media ads. Avoid trying to bombard your potential audience with too much information about your business all at once. A more effective approach will be to introduce yourself and provide bite-sized details that will pique their interest and encourage them to seek more information about your business.
Trust
Your potential market will not purchase until they feel that they have reason to trust you. How do you build trust in a social selling environment? Social selling is most effective because persons can reference other people's experiences to support their buying decision. Understanding this important step will help you to avoid common mistake #2.
Common Mistake #2
Common mistake #2 is trying to achieve your sales objective using paid ads only. Effective social selling requires more than just paid advertising to be effective. Your potential market audience will value the experiences of other individuals more than they value what you say about yourself. As such, you will need to supplement your ads with content and information that will give your potential audience confidence in your ability to deliver what you promise. Some common ways of building trust are by sharing past reviews from happy customers, sharing free content via blogs so you can showcase your expertise to the market, and hosting free webinars or seminars giving your audience a risk-free opportunity to evaluate your business.
Value
If you want to sell successfully, you must clearly articulate for your potential audience what set's you apart from your competitors. This means you must know what is your unique value and sales proposition to your target market. Always make it easy for your target audience to identify what benefits you offer them.
Common mistake #3
Common mistake #3 is assuming that your target audience understands what is unique about you. Don't make your customers do the research. Make the information easily accessible and obvious to your target audience and your results will be good.
If you are experiencing less than expected results from your social media campaigns, evaluate if you have made any of these common mistakes. Once corrected your results are guaranteed to improve. If you need support to develop a winning social media strategy for your business contact us today and one of our experts will be happy to assist. Contact us now for further assistance.