Selling your products and services on social media is rarely a simple, straightforward process.
The key term in the title says it all - social media is about being "social" and interacting, not broadcasting your latest offer or pitching your latest deal. Most of us are not big celebrities either, with the capacity to drive a ton of traffic and sales via a single tweet, or a simple Instagram post.
For most of us, the process requires a delicate a balance between providing value to your audience and promoting your products, in order to ensure you don't come across as being too "salesy" and turning people away.
In this post I’m going over a few tips on how to generate sales traction via social media, without being too promotional in your messaging.
1. Give Value Day to Day and Build Trust
The first step to selling on social media without being too salesy is to build trust with your followers first by providing value as often as you can.
This means showing up consistently, and with purposeful posts. Publishing content willy-nilly, or just for the sake of posting, won't get you the results you need. Instead you need to set goals for each of your posts, and create a content calendar to help keep you on track.
By building trust, and showcasing your expertise, your followers come o learn that what you offer will be worth their while - and their hard-earned cash.
2. Highlight Pain Points and Understanding and Solutions
In order to sell on social media without being too pushy, you also need to demonstrate that you understand the struggles of your target audience, and can provide relevant solutions to help.
Listen to the key issues and challenges your audience faces, and consider exactly how your products and services fit. You can then better ingratiate yourself with your audience by meeting catering to their needs - as opposed to simply pitching your latest offer.
3. Show Value and Benefits
Which leads to the next point - on social media, being all about sales is usually not going to cut it.
You need to consistently show your followers the value and benefit that your product or service provides. Take them behind the scenes as you create your offer, tell them what inspired you to create it, and show them how it will improve their situation.
A great way to show value and benefits is to use testimonials which underline that your solution does what you say it will.
4. Mention Your Offer
That said, in order to sell on social media you also have to mention your offer.
If you follow the first steps above, you’ll already be moving towards promotion without being too pushy - but at the same time, people won’t know that there's an actual offer until you show it to them.
The key to selling on social media without being salesy is to continually educate your audience, and then actually ask for the sale. Remember to use calls to action to get followers to click over to your website, send you a DM or comment to get more info on your offer.
5. Use a Launch Sequence/Schedule
I've mentioned using a content schedule to keep you on track, but let’s take that a step further and plan a launch sequence to help you stay on top of selling without being salesy.
A very basic launch sequence could look like:
- Week 1: Educate and provide value based on your course topic, what your event is based on, your product or service.
- Week 2: Speak to the top pain points faced by your audience.
- Week 3: Tease your product/service offering, ask your audience questions.
- Week 4: Launch your product or service.
Again, this is a super basic plan, but it gives you an idea on how to structure your posting and content schedule in order to build buzz, so that you can sell on social media without being salesy.
If your product is already on the market, remember to continue educating, speaking to your audience’s pain points and adding value, while sprinkling in your sales messages.
To wrap things up, remember that deep connection, connectivity, and awareness of what your audience wants and needs, will humanize your brand. All these elements will enable you to better sell on social media - without feeling too overt.
A version of this post was first published on Dhariana Lozano's blog.