Social media has forever changed buying and selling processes. Social platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn provide B2B businesses an opportunity to attract new leads and convert them into customers, thus increasing their sales and improving their ROI.
Today, we’ll go over the benefits of social selling and discover why more and more B2B sellers are finding social selling more promising than conventional marketing methods.
Let’s review some stats
Before we go into the reasons why social selling is so effective, let’s take a look at some statistics that prove its effectiveness, particularly in the B2B market.
First of all, your target audience is very likely to be on social media. Research has shown that 91% of B2B consumers are active on social media and that social media has a significant influence on B2B buyers.
Eighty-four percent of senior executives use social media when making purchasing decisions. In addition, 46 percent of B2B decision makers are now in between the ages of 18 and 34 years old – a demographic that is more likely to be active on social media.
Now that we know that the audience is there, let’s see how B2B sellers on social media fare.
Social sellers, according to LinkedIn:
- Are 51 percent more likely to reach their quotas
- Attract 45 percent more opportunities
- And outsell non-social sellers a whopping 78 percent of the time
In addition, companies with a solid social selling strategy are 40 percent more likely to reach their revenue goals.
Now that we know that the data backs it up, let us explore what the benefits of social selling are.
1. Allows You to Cut Down On Inefficient or Slow Selling Methods
Conventional selling methods, such as cold calling, print mailing, and radio advertising, can sometimes be inefficient or slow.
You may find that your sales team is spending too much time trying to convert leads that are not receptive to what you have to say or that you are having a hard time achieving a satisfactory conversion rate.
Twenty-four percent of B2B sales professionals, in a survey by CSO Insights and Seismic, referred to an increased lead conversion rate as one of the top benefits of employing a social selling strategy.
Another 13 percent mentioned more wins for forecast deals.
It’s not just that social selling can help convert more leads. It also avoids drawn-out sales processes that take too much effort and consume too much time before a sale is made (think having a sales team that needs to call each lead a few times to follow up in an attempt to get a conversion).
In the same survey, 14 percent of B2B professionals said that having shorter sales cycles was one of the main benefits of selling on social media.
2. Expand Your Network
Social media allows you to reach more people and expand your network.
Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter allow you to reach people from all corners of the world at the same time, something that is not possible with conventional sales methods.
You can use Facebook’s targeting tools to target new audiences and demographics and filter out audiences that do not fit your intended target.
You can reach people who would never have any exposure to you through influencer marketing on Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, or other platforms.
You can create Facebook and LinkedIn groups to start a community of like-minded individuals.
LinkedIn is particularly useful for B2B businesses. You can expand your network, get acquainted with new people in your industry, and acquire potential leads.
It’s important to know which social media platforms you should be focusing on.
For example, if you work in the photography or modeling niche, you may want to consider placing a focus on Instagram. On the other hand, if you work in the tech or IT industry, LinkedIn may be a better choice than Instagram.
While you want to have a profile on all of the major platforms, you don’t want to spread yourself out too thin, so focus on the platforms where you will have the greatest success. Testing out different platforms and analyzing your results can help.
3. Get More Repeat Customers
Another benefit of social selling is that it makes it easier to stay in touch with your customers. This means that you can retain more customers with less effort.
Customer retention should be a major part of your marketing strategy, as it costs roughly 5x as much to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing one.
4. Sway the Undecided
We mentioned that social selling can shorten the conversion process. At the same time, it may also bring in additional sales from people who “hang around” and follow you for a long time without buying anything, only making a purchase sometime down the road.
With conventional methods, you would have given up on these leads long ago, as they are simply not worth the effort.
However, that’s the beauty of social selling – through social media, you can stay in touch with many of these people at once with minimal effort.
Any sales that result are simply a byproduct of a great social media marketing strategy, not because of any extra effort.
5. Increase Your Brand Authority and Visibility
Social media is a great way to present yourself as a leading voice of authority in your industry. You can create content and posts that bring value to your followers.
As much as the content is important, the packaging is too. Make sure to use creative titles and headers to grab more eyeballs.
Focus on providing your followers with information that matters to them, such as helpful tips or industry updates.
There are various forms of content you can post. For example, you can post links, status updates, memes, whitepapers, surveys, polls, data charts or graphs, videos, and more. You can even stream live videos or run live webinars on platforms such as Facebook Live or Periscope.
Social media also gives you the opportunity to increase your brand visibility. As we saw at the beginning of this article, a large portion of your target audience is likely to be on social media.
If you want to increase brand visibility and gain the authority that comes with increased visibility, you have to consistently show up where your target audience is.
Through retargeting tools on Facebook and other platforms, this is achievable. For example, you can create Facebook ads that target people who have already visited your website once.
6. Engage Your Audience
Social media allows you to engage your audience in a natural way. Instead of having sales representatives cold-call leads, which can feel pushy and salesy to consumers, you can start a natural dialogue on social media.
You can interact with leads and customers, asking them questions to encourage conversations and answering any questions or comments that they may have. Live videos with live commenting is another great tool to use for this purpose.
Social media allows you to create a deeper relationship with your audience, something that you can’t do with radio ads, for example. Indeed, in the survey mentioned above from CSO Insights and Seismic, 31 percent of sales professionals said that establishing deeper relationships with consumers was a top benefit of social selling.
You’ll be amazed to know that even nonprofits rely on social media to engage potential contributors and invite donations. This is purely because they know that social media is the happy hunting ground for businesses.
7. Set Yourself Aside From the Competition
Social media gives you a lot more opportunities to set yourself aside from the others in your industry. It allows you to craft the best brand image possible.
By focusing on making your social media profiles unique, you will stand out from the crowd.
The key here is consistency – focus on being consistent with the tone of voice you use, the type of content you put out, how often you update your profiles, what stance you take on certain topics, how you engage your followers, what kind of media or colors you use, and so on.
Wrapping It Up
Having a solid social selling strategy is crucial if you want to stay ahead of your competition.
With much of your target audience on social media, there’s nothing to lose and everything to gain.
About the Author: Roberto Garvin is the co-founder of Mofluid. It is absolutely amazing to see how technology continues to evolve, from email to browsers, search engines, mobile, AI and now blockchain. I am fortunate to witness it all. Really excited to see what’s next. Twitter – @mofluid / Facebook – @mofluid