How Can Social Media Help Drive Sales?

Grow Business through Social Media Engagement

For small businesses, social media is a powerful tool to drive sales. Right from the start, small business owners use social media tools to build the reputation of their brand and to increase sales with loyal customers. . This is one of the best ideas to promote start-up businesses. In the current scenario, the business marketplace is more competitive than traditional marketing. Traditional marketing strategies such as radio, print, or television have lost their dominance because social media tools are increasingly being viewed as more valuable and helping small business owners better promote their businesses.

However, one important thing small business owners must remember is that not all social media platforms are popular or have the same audience. Some social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are more popular platforms to drive your sales. Here we list how you can use social media to promote your small business and drive sales.

1. Know most used social media platforms of your potential customers

Depending on your business, the first and foremost thing you should do is to target the audience. You should know what platform is used by your audience and start focusing on those. Once you identify the platforms that your potential customers are using, you can take a step forward to drive sales. For any type of small business, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest are some of the great platforms to promote your products.

2. Announce Flash Sale

In a couple of social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram you can announce a flash sale for a limited period. Offering a special price for a short period is the best way to drive sales as it will create urgency among the buyers. And this will ensure that you find out how many people are continuously checking your feeds to see when again flash sale will take place. Once you hold the flash sale offer, you will receive heavy traffic on your sales site.

3. Use Hashtags to drive sales

Use a variety of hashtags that business owners are using to promote their business. Before any festival, you can announce a festive sale by including #festivesale along with a particular hashtag describing the focus of your business. Never be afraid of putting a hashtag on big sales. Try to use a hashtag on all the social media platforms to find happy customers as well as to drive up your sales.

4. Use paid ads as a means of the campaign

The possibility of attracting customers for your sales will increase if you use paid ads on social media platforms. Facebook is such a tool where you can target extensive ads as a means of successful campaigning. Many social media platforms have the capacity for advertising. However, Facebook is the most popular and it is the best means to use paid ads for the campaign.

5. Offer free shipping  

During some seasons such as summer or winter season and festive season when most people rush to shop online, you can promote free shipping offers. Take social media as a means and offer free shipping only to those customers who click on the shopping link given on the Facebook or Instagram link. This will give you an idea of how many followers you are getting from this promotion by checking the ‘like’ and ‘comment’ sections on the social media page. Thus social media can support your sales drive.

6. Product description with pictures

It may sound strange but it is true. Along with the description of the particular product, fans want to see an image. To get instant responses on a product on Facebook, try to post an image with your description. You can also encourage your fans to ‘like’ and ‘share’ your product! Each ‘like’ on Facebook means people are seeing it on the news feeds of their friend. And ‘likes’ can thus gather you more followers on Facebook.

7. Conduct a contest on Pinterest

Small business owners can conduct contests on Pinterest to promote their business and to increase followers on their fan page. t. Pinterest is a good platform to pin a contest. You have to make a strategy where all those who participate in this contest will get a coupon code for fifteen percent off on one item and the winner will also receive a big prize, like a free item. This is the best strategy not only for a huge win but also a way to spread your products to others who can see the contest board of participating contestants. On Pinterest, you can also run a contest for promotion.

How Social Media Marketing has emerged over the years?

In recent times, for all the small business owners social media marketing is the first choice. You can easily promote almost all types of business brands on social media. Social media has taken the world by storm and people find it a convenient and trusted platform to verify and purchase any type of products.. Facebook is an excellent platform with over 1.65 billion active monthly users. Other social media tools like Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram are also good for promoting your business. Digital marketing is growing very fast and it is now the first choice for every small business owner. The reasons are mentioned below:-

1. Easy way to keep in touch with people

With social media, you can easily connect with people without much effort. You may even be able to find out a long-lost friend on Facebook. You can access anyone anywhere through these powerful social media platforms.

2. Easy to operate

All the social media tools like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, etc are user-friendly and easy to operate. These are easy to operate and very simple so anyone can use them.

3. Not Chargeable

One of the important reasons for the popularity of these social media platforms is that they all are free. You can enjoy all the amazing features and connectivity without paying for it.

4. Transparent

All the social media platforms are very transparent and it is risk-free to promote any business on these platforms. Customers can easily check the information everywhere.

5. Access to Smartphone

The most important reason for the growth of digital marketing is because of the Smartphone. Smartphones are an essential device that every individual carries. Buying and selling are also very convenient from the Smartphone. Customers can access any product on their Smartphone and decide whether to buy it or not.

Conclusion

All the above-mentioned factors indicate that social media platforms are really helpful to drive sales for all the small start-up businesses. These platforms will help you to gather true customers and take your business to another level in a few years.

Also read:

1) What is the Risk of Not Using Social Media for Business?
2) 11 Easy Ways for Small Businesses to promote their Business on Social Media
3) What Is Social Media Management? Benefits & more.
4) How to Learn Social Media Marketing? A Complete Guide.

FAQs

Q. How does social media help small business owners to increase sales?

Ans. Small business owners can increase sales on social media by promoting a flash sale, free shipping, offering coupons, announcing contests, etc.

Q. Does a social media platform help drive sales?

Ans. Yes, social media helps drive sales as found in a study. In some cases, small business owners deliver ROI as high as 600% through social media drive sales.

Q. Why are sales through social media valuable?

Ans. Driving sales through social media is valuable because on these platforms you can engage and add value to your customers by responding to comments, answering questions, and sharing content for buying purposes.

Q. What do you mean by media selling?

Ans. Media selling means selling advertisements to different companies across different media such as Radio, TV, magazines, and newspapers, etc.

Q. How can you attract customers?

Ans. You can attract customers by discovering your ideal customer (the type of customer you seek), based on their living location, knowing your business inside out, and building a perfect partnership with your customers, etc.

Q. Which one is the best media for marketing?

Ans. Although all social media are good for marketing, Facebook can be regarded as the best social media for marketing.