Social media has come a long way from just being a tool for individuals to connect with each other. 

It has also turned into a potential sales channel for many businesses. 

And it makes sense because that’s where your target audience spends most of their time. 

Research suggests that more than 25% of online consumers in the age bracket of 18 to 24 did their shopping on social channels like Facebook and Instagram. 

Building an established sales channel on social platforms is essential to growing your revenue and making it easier for customers to purchase products at the moment of discovery itself. 

This article talks about how you can leverage social channels to expand your business and enhance your sales. 

1. Choose the Right Social Channel for your Business

There’s a plethora of social media channels today. But you don’t want to make intensive efforts to build a sales channel on every one of them. You can only be successful in making sales if you choose a channel that your target customers use. 

You start with identifying your demographics. You probably already have an idea of who your target audience is because of your regular marketing activities. But how a customer behaves on a social platform is very different from how they behave on your online store or other digital platforms. Social media is a personal platform. So whatever you know about your target audience will greatly differ when it comes to selling on social media. 

Once you find the right audience, you just have to align the target audience with the social channels. The platform you choose will also depend on the type of product you sell. For example, most online fashion stores, and makeup stores use b2c media like Instagram and Pinterest whereas, B2B and SaaS companies use LinkedIn to generate new leads and revenue. 

2. Utilize all Shopping Features Available

Different social media platforms have different features that are specifically designed for businesses to enhance their sales on social platforms. Ultimately, whichever platform you choose, you’d need to conduct a detailed analysis of how the platform can best be utilized for businesses.

Example #1: Facebook

On Facebook, you need to set up a Facebook shop where you need to create an account with Facebook’s commerce manager, create a collection, customize your storefront, and publish your shop. To fully utilize your shop, you can take benefit of features like collections, advertising, insights, Messenger bots, and direct messages.

Example #2: Instagram

Similarly, on Instagram, you have regular features like Instagram stories, highlights, Instagram live, polls, direct messages, and posting. However, as a business owner, you can also leverage shops, shopping tags, collections, ads with product tags, influencer partnerships, etc. You can also include product details in the caption where you can add essential product information, delivery information, shipping information, availability of international courier services, etc. For Pinterest, you can use features like a shoppable lens, shopping list, product pins, etc.

As of now, Instagram only allows certain businesses to add in-app checkout features to their Instagram shops. So you might have to redirect them to your online store check-out page. But you can ensure that the user doesn’t have to log in and the check-out process is smooth.

3. Use high-quality Photos and Videos

This is a point to consider across all your digital channels. Poor-looking visuals just take all the fun out of a well-created social media profile. It also makes you look inexperienced and unprofessional.

Social media platforms are built on the foundation of clear visual content and aesthetics — be it pictures, videos, Gifs, and reels. Also, people are visually-oriented. To engage shoppers with visual storytelling, you need to ace the quality of your images and videos to truly resonate with your audience and potential customers.

So make efforts to use bright, well-lit images and videos that showcase your product in the best way possible. If you’re building a presence, your sales would only increase if you build a credible brand image first. In every post, also include your product pages on your posts and make sure the purchase process is as streamlined as possible.

4. Consistently Engage with your Audience 

If you want social media to work its magic in increasing your sales, you’d have to live up to its spirit of engaging with your audience on a regular basis. The first trick would be posting content like stories, posts, reels, videos, etc. consistently. Get creative with your content since you have a great environment to foster a two-way conversation with your target customers.

Remember, unlike your online store, you’re not on social media to only do business. You’re there to build brand value too. And you can only do that if you publish the kind of content your audience likes to engage with. Let the customers pose questions in comments, like, and share your content.

5. Define KPIs and Analyze them

Any new campaign or a sales channel that you start needs to be measurable for success. Same goes for building your social channel for sales.

And this won’t be too much work. You’d be surprised at how many social media analytical tools are out there that give you just a precise view into how your content is being received and how much sales your channels generate.

Apart from your sales figure, you can also check who is engaging with your content to get a better view of your target audience. Check their activity, engagement rate, and time spent on your accounts.

Analyzing these metrics enables you to design better social media advertisements in the future and drive more revenue. It also becomes easy to optimize and tweak your posts according to the available data.

Wrapping up 

Utilizing social media to increase sales isn’t a novel phenomenon anymore. Rather, it’s on every marketers’ to-do list. To reap the benefits of social channels, it's essential to understand the essence of the platform, how different it is from other sales channels, and how you can showcase your products and services.

Since social media channels have all the potential to become a source of recurring revenue and sales, you need to identify how you can add value to your presence and make a lasting impression on your customers.

Author’s Bio

Oliver Thyra is the head SaaS copywriter and content strategist at Your Marketing Digest.

His intense passion for marketing and his engineering background in software engineering has made him a guy who understands how to sell software subscriptions with words.

In his free time, Oliver enjoys quality time with his pets (he has got 4 golden retrievers!).