What is Social Selling and How Does It Work?

15th March, 2024

What is Social Selling on Social Media?

The importance social media is paramount in this digital landscape where marketing plays a vital role in the growth of every business. If you own a business where you sell things online and target audiences who spend more time on social media, social selling is an art that you need to get an account with. Social selling allows finding the right prospects for your business through social media which helps to create a greater bond with the customers. Let’s find out more about Social Selling and how it works.

What is Social Selling?

Social selling is a strategy for lead generation where you identify and connect with new business prospects based on social media platforms. It includes social listening and understanding the topics that are important as business prospects and helps to build stronger bonds with potential customers and other persons from the niche industry. Social selling focuses more on lead generation and conversion rate which helps to build trustworthy connections in the market. This allows you to create and nurture 1:1 relationships that improve in-person networking for your business.

Social Selling vs. Traditional Selling 

There are some fundamental differences between social selling and traditional selling that make it more relevant in this highly competitive digital landscape for businesses.

  • Social selling takes place on social media platforms and traditional selling usually takes place in person or via cold calls.
  • Through social selling, you can directly target the decision-makers or the product users. Traditional selling starts engaging with a gatekeeper, before approaching to real person or purchaser.
  • Social selling includes a more planned approach warm introductions and personalized messages in order to connect with the targeted prospects but traditional selling is more dependent on shotgun outreach and generic scripts.

Who Social Selling is for?

Social selling is ideal for companies that sell products to online users who spend more time on social media on a daily basis. Since more than 63% of the global population is active on social media, almost every other business organization from every industry utilizes social selling. More than 90% of the US population is active on social media platforms. Social selling can be utilized by businesses of any size. For example, a tech giant company might hire a chief technology officer to help them make million-dollar purchasing decisions; but a physical therapist can simply use a local network to share health tips which might help them connect with athletes in the region. 

What are the Benefits of Social Selling?

There are a handful of benefits of social selling, the reason why it is widely used in every other industry. It is fun, relevant, and trendy in the market which makes it even more worthy to integrate into your marketing aspects. Here are some of the benefits that you can get,

  • Social selling allows connecting with people when they are comfortable with it, without imposing anything. An average person can spend up to 2.5 hours every day on social media and you should utilize this window to approach them.
  • Social selling allows building trust through conversion however it requires ample time and consistency to strengthen the bonds. 
  • Success on social media is very much dependent on how punctual you are. Making timely posts and generating buzz at the right time can help to boost your business prospects. 
  • Social selling is a proven technique as according to a report, social sellers are able to close 48% larger deals than their nonsocial sellers. 
  • It offers the best ROI in the industry.

Utilize platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, X, Instagram, etc to improve your social selling skills.

Tags: What is Social Selling on Social Media, What does Social Media Sell, Social Media Selling Platforms, How to Sell through Social Media