Your online store is a direct way for people to
buy your products. Not only will you
maintain high profit margins since you’re
minimizing middlemen taking a cut, but
you’ll collect customer data so you can
deepen the relationship and set the
foundation for future personalization. Know
exactly who’s buying what when the order
comes through your online store.
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ONLINE MARKETPLACES
Consumers spend $357.26 billion per year
through online marketplaces like Amazon or
Etsy. Reach those shoppers by listing your
products for sale there. Just bear in mind that
each site takes a cut when you make a sale.
Mitigate risk by adding an online marketplace
as a secondary sales channel—not your
primary one.
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SOCIAL COMMERCE
Social media isn’t just a place for people
to browse photos from friends. Social
media users rely on their favorite
platforms to buy products, engage with
brands, and share product
recommendations. Get active on your
customer’s favorite platforms to drive
sales for your ecommerce business.
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Social selling
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Social selling uses the trust built through
friendly connections to sell products or
services. In recent years, the industry
has pivoted to the digital realm, and
most social selling now relies on social
media platforms to create that trusting,
organic connection with potential
customers.
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WHAT IS SOCIAL SELLING?
Social selling is a sales and marketing strategy
that prioritizes building relationships with
potential buyers and partners on social media.
Social selling emphasizes a relationship
between merchants and their customers via
various social platforms.
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What’s involved in a
social selling
strategy?
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GETTING ON THE RIGHT SOCIAL SELLING
PLATFORMS
Social selling takes place via online social network
platforms. Facebook and Twitter are big for
salespeople, given their emphasis on discussion.
Instagram, TikTok, and Snap reach younger
audiences, while LinkedIn is great for networking in
the professional world
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LISTENING FIRST, SELLING LATER
Whether you are promoting a professional brand or your
own personal brand, it helps to begin your interactions
with social listening.
This means paying attention to online conversations to
hear what people are saying about your product,
noting customer pain points or things they love about
your company, and building your messaging around
that.
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You engage in these conversations and answer
people’s questions, but you do not launch into
salesperson mode. The goal is to have
authentic discussions; it is not to put on a
hard sell
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3 BENEFITS OF SOCIAL SELLING
Social selling offers three key benefits to sellers
promoting a professional brand or their own
personal brand.
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IT BUILDS TRUST
The work of communicating with your
customers and building a personal
relationship with them translates into
establishing a baseline of trust so that
they feel comfortable with you, and by
extension with buying your product or
service
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IT YIELDS LONG-TERM REWARDS
Social selling doesn’t aim for impulse purchases.
It steadily and progressively builds
relationships with potential clients, and it
maintains those relationships after they
become paying customers
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IT GIVES YOU INSIGHTS INTO YOUR CUSTOMER
BASE
When a company commits to social listening and
robust dialogue with customers, it learns a lot
about what motivates those customers. In this
regard, social selling is not only a sales
technique but also a market research
technique
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HOW TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT
SOCIAL SELLING PLATFORM FOR
YOUR BRAND
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LINKEDIN
is great for business-to-business interactions.
LinkedIn is a B2B platform, where people
refine their personal brands to pitch
themselves as employees or business
partners. It features a proprietary tool called
the LinkedIn Sales Navigator that helps you
target business customers, much like Google
and Facebook can help you target retail
customers.
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INSTAGRAM: HAS AN EXTREMELY DEDICATED
USER BASE
Instagram has over 200 million users who use
the service every single day. The company also
reports that 70 percent of present-day
shoppers would consider researching a
product or buying it via Instagram. Instagram’s
user base skews younger than that of many
other platforms, which means an active
Instagram presence can help companies that
market to younger demographics
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TIKTOK: OFFERS QUICK VIRILITY AND A
YOUNGER AUDIENCE
TikTok’s unique algorithm offers social sellers
the opportunity to go viral, quickly. It’s not just
videos and memes that go viral on TikTok—
products go viral too, and often sell out in a
matter of days. While TikTok’s own e-
commerce strategy isn’t as advanced as other
social media platforms’, like Instagram’s, it’s
quickly becoming more refined
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FACEBOOK: PROMOTES BOTH DISCUSSION AND
SALES
Facebook is also known for lengthy discussions
in its comment threads, including those by
product enthusiasts sharing their experiences
on a brand’s official Facebook page. Lengthy,
substantive discussions naturally foster social
engagement and are a key facet of social
selling.
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TWITTER: IS IMPORTANT FOR CUSTOMER
SERVICE
Twitter is a highly influential discussion forum,
especially for customer service. Many social
sellers use Twitter marketing to monitor
mentions and take extra care to take action on
negative feedback. Twitter has not invested in
e-commerce to the same degree as Meta
Platforms (owner of Facebook and Instagram),
so brands use it more for product discussions
and fielding feedback
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YOUTUBE: KEEPS YOUR AUDIENCE INFORMED
AND CONNECTED
Many major brands operate a YouTube channel
where they showcase their products and
provide useful content that might interest their
customer base. The secret to social selling on
YouTube is to not make long-form television
commercials. Authentically engaging with your
audience, give general-purpose information,
and over time the sales will come organically.
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