Social media marketing is a great tool when it comes to building a brand. That’s probably because social media is often only seen as a way to build your brand and engage with customers. One of the best ways to do this is by connecting with influencers on social media. Influencer marketing is about building connections to people in your niche or industry and giving mutual exchanges of support and promotion. To get started, you can run remarketing ads on Facebook based on page or post engagement. Social media is usually seen as an easy way to build a brand and provide instant social proof. But as we’ve established here, social media marketing is actually an incredible tool to drive sales!
Social media marketing is a great tool when it comes to building a brand.
But making money from it by propelling sales is tough.
In fact, many marketers have trouble tying social media back to a return on investment (ROI).
That’s probably because social media is often only seen as a way to build your brand and engage with customers.
Or as a way to solve customer problems with personalized customer service.
Or a place to share videos of cute cats and babies.
But social media is actually a great tool to generate sales too.
It’s just not as cut-and-dry as platforms like Google AdWords or Facebook Ads.
While those platforms are directly tied to ROI and driving sales, social media isn’t.
The main goal of social media isn’t always seen as driving sales.
But it should be, and it can be. And that’s because anything and everything you do to grow your business should be focused on the end goal of producing revenue.
And thankfully, there are a few tips I’ve picked up along my career that have allowed me to generate tons of sales.
They weren’t all that hard to implement either!
Social media is a stellar platform to generate sales when you have defined goals and objectives.
In fact, I drove $332,640 in sales on just Instagram alone.
Here’s how I used social media marketing to generate $632,481 in sales in a year.
Build a close community
The first step in generating sales from social media marketing is building a close community of engaged followers.
Engaging with users on social media should be seen as a positive thing.
A way to drive trust and build personal relationships with your customer base.
For example, look at how I interact with my fans on Facebook:
I’m not only sharing valuable content. I’m also directly connecting with commenters.
It’s an excellent way to build an engaged following that likes to communicate with you.
And it only takes a few seconds to respond.
Think of it like you would if your favorite brand or actor responded to you:
You’d love them even more, right?
You’d be amazed that they took the time to respond, and you’d probably revisit their social media page after that.
That’s the real goal of this step.
Big companies like Dairy Queen perfect this approach of customer engagement:
It took them just a few seconds to respond, and now they’ve established a loyal connection with a customer who likely will have a higher lifetime value.
Beyond just responding, consider sharing user-generated content.
This is one of my favorite strategies to building a community that loves to interact with you.
I love how Slack does this with their customers:
They share awesome user-generated content that Instagram users send them every day.
Why? Because user-generated content works:
85% of users think that UGC is more influential than brand-posted photos.
On top of that, UGC nets 29% higher online conversions than campaigns or websites without it.
If you want more interactive social engagement, followers, and ultimately sales, you need to be using UGC to build a closely-engaged community.
Develop relationships with influencers
If you’re starting social media with less than 1,000 followers, it can be tough to generate sales.
You need to build an audience that is large enough to leverage for sales.
One of the best ways to do this is by connecting with influencers on social media.
Cross-promotions are extremely effective when it comes to growing your following.
And it makes sense:
When you get a shoutout or mention from a relevant brand, you can rightfully expect tons of relevant traffic too.
Let me give you an example.
Have you ever heard of the famous YouTube sensation Zoella?
Well, she has over 11 million subscribers now.
And when she released her book Girl Online, she used social media connections to sell 78,109 copies.
That’s more than J.K. Rowling’s debut of the first Harry Potter book “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.”
Convinced yet?
She essentially used social media influencers and her connections to spread hype and viral buzz about her product.
And the good news:
It’s not something that only big brands can do. You just need to begin creating some real, organic relationships with top influencers in your niche.
Influencer marketing isn’t simply a marketing buzzword.
The stats speak for themselves:
A 2016 Google study found that 60% of YouTube subscribers and watchers say they would make purchase decisions based on recommendations from their favorite content creators.
And it’s no secret that people trust online reviews and recommendations more than they do blatant advertisements.
In fact, according to Experticity, 92% of consumers trust product recommendations from personal connections.
And only 33% trust ads.
Connecting with powerful, genuine influencers can quite literally explode your growth.
So, how do you do it? My favorite way is to be sincere. Be genuine and provide value.
If you contact HubSpot and say, “You guys are awesome, can you promote my new e-book,” you might get blocked instantly.
Why? They get thousands of those messages daily.
Influencer marketing is about building connections to people in your niche or industry and giving mutual exchanges of support and promotion.
Head to Twitter (or any social network that you prefer) and start searching for popular individuals in your niche:
You can use simple searches like “marketing influencers” to get hundreds of results of popular individuals in the marketing industry.
Or head to Google and search for something like “top marketing influencers.”
You should be able to find curated lists of the best influencers.
Simply clicking on any of these will give you an entire outreach list without any research on your end.
Like this Forbes list:
Whoa, who’s that cool guy at #2?
The idea here is to find tons of people who are experts and industry leaders within your given niche.
You can then scout them on social media…
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