How to sell more on social networks: short and long term suggestions.

"How to sell more through Facebook?" and "How to sell more in my digital business?" are some of the most common questions for today's entrepreneurs. The growing trend of social media has enabled the masses to make money and increase their brand recognition. Many businesses have made social media marketing strategy an integral part of their digital marketing campaign.

Regardless of niche, businesses are using social media primarily to get quality traffic and cultivate customer engagement, but how do you sell more using social media?

If you think that social networks are only for communicating and sharing photos, and that they are useless for business, then we have the immense pleasure of telling you that you are WRONG.

Social networks are no longer just for communication, and you can certainly take your brand to the next level by making a successful strategy free of the most common errors in social networks.

Social media marketing strategies: one goal, two paths

To create a successful marketing plan, you will first have to define your marketing strategies: short term and long term. Why have two strategies? 

Certainly, you need to plan for the future success of your business, but without a short-term strategy, your business may not last long enough for your long-term strategies to bear fruit. 

On the other hand, simply focusing on short-term successes will put the company in a poor position for future growth. Both strategies must be part of a larger marketing picture.

Short-term social media goals should focus on things like selling more, driving traffic to the website and gaining brand awareness organically. This should account for no more than 20% of the content posted on social media.

The long-term goals of social media should be to build meaningful relationships with followers, increase organic recognition, improve customer satisfaction and foster an online community. Achieving these objectives should constitute at least 80% of the content published on social networks.

How to sell more on social networks ... in the short term

The answer to how to sell more is not going to come overnight. The best way to build brand awareness is to use social media to develop an online personality for your company and, at the same time, interact with the consumer.

Here are three key short-term social media tips to keep in mind.

Stimulate action (trial or purchase)

This type of short-term objective focuses on getting as many people as possible to make a trial or a purchase. It is usually a short sale or advertising campaign. It will last no more than a couple of weeks.

The purpose is to create a sense of urgency with the idea of getting as many desired actions as possible, which can range from more followers, more interaction, better positioning and of course, an increase in sales. 

Generate new leads and drive traffic to the site

These types of strategies are similar to stimulating a trial or a purchase, but there is less urgency present to take action immediately. Instead, the goal is to generate recognition and consideration and get more eyeballs on the website. The metrics that allow you to track these goals are things like click-through rate and cost per click.

For example, you can create an ad with images of a new product, not expecting purchases directly from the ad, but we will be putting the product in the consumer's mind. Such an ad can also include a link to the website so that the viewer can get more information.

With the right targeting, every time this ad is seen, it could be a new lead for the company.

Increase brand recognition

Increasing brand recognition could be considered a strategy that can work in the long term, but it can also pay off in the short term.

This type of immediate brand recognition is often generated in the form of paid advertisements or featured posts to get the brand name out to a much larger audience through social media. 

These boosted posts and ads usually last only a couple of days and are designed to meet short-term goals. This will increase the number of eyeballs and interactions with this piece of content, increasing brand awareness.

From such ads, we will be able to track and measure metrics such as the reach and impressions that posts have. 

How to sell more on social networks ... in the long term

When developing a social media strategy, there are always two main objectives: building customer loyalty and generating trust, in order to eventually generate more sales. 

It is also important to be consistent with both posts and responses to the opinions shared by others. By keeping priorities in check, any successful social media strategy will focus on the customer as the path to growth.

Below, we review four key long-term social media strategies that you need to consider if you want to answer the question of how to sell more by internet.

Building meaningful relationships

As a business, you always need to interact with your followers. We recommend any business spend at least 30 minutes a day checking social media to see what kind of conversation is happening online about their business. This is especially important for companies that do not have a physical presence and only exist online.

The opportunity to interact with followers and customers exists on every platform you choose to be active on. Each of these platforms represents a new point of contact for your followers and customers.

Interact with them. Post back their content related to your company and comment on it. Treat them as a friend.

Would someone only interact with their own friends on Facebook to try to sell them products or a service? No. So why would anyone treat a brand's fans, followers and customers any differently?

Make the follower who has taken the trouble to promote your brand in a positive way feel special.

Increase recognition organically

As we mentioned earlier, a boosted post on social media can increase brand recognition. However, arguably the most important thing is for brands to create content that is shared organically. In other words, content that can be shared and viewed by large audiences without the company having to pay for it.

A post that is shared in stories, people tagging others in comments or a high number of saved content shows that this content is resonating with followers and they are engaged at a higher level of intent and engagement.

And best of all, it's the followers who do the "heavy lifting". Essentially, they act as unpaid brand ambassadors for the company. 

In addition, it is well known that people who receive a recommendation from a friend about a business are more likely to act on it, rather than trust an advertisement they have been directed to.

Generating this type of organic recognition can take years. However, when your content starts to receive this type of feedback, it will be clear that you are reaching the right type of followers and the number of followers will grow organically day by day.

Improve customer satisfaction

Social media can be considered a double-edged sword in many different ways. One of them is related to a customer complaining publicly on social networks about a product or service failure. 

A study Recent research showed that 67% of customers turn to social networks to try to solve a problem or voice a complaint they may have.

While a company can ignore the complaint and hope it goes away, this is not advisable. The reach that a negative comment can have on the networks can be tremendous, so prioritizing customer service is a strategy that will not only keep the company's reputation intact but also increase sales. 

73% of consumers say that a brand positively resolving a customer service complaint made them "fall in love" with that brand.

Fostering an online community

Surveys on different social networks are a great tool for consumers to give honest opinions about what is related to the brand, as well as groups on Facebook or Reddit, and even in the comments of a user in a publication related to your brand. All of these are a powerful source of information and market evaluation that will make it easier to know if there is something in particular with which consumers are not satisfied. 

Now, the ideal thing to do with these online communities is to leave them alone. Let them grow organically. Interact with them from time to time. And most importantly, keep a close eye on them, you will get tremendously valuable information from each one of them. 

Any brand has the opportunity to foster an online community and conversation around its product or service. This will appear in the form of online users who will champion a brand out of pure brand loyalty and is usually built with a lot of hard work over a period of years.

Two sides of the same coin

As with any good strategy, there must be a combination of short and long term goals and objectives. Rome was not built in a day, and developing your perfect social media strategy can take years if you don't integrate the necessary tools to your strategy.

To get the best ROI on marketing strategies, it is advantageous to have a detailed marketing plan. Start by identifying your target audience (who you want your messages to reach), research your competition, create a clear message and set a budget.

Based on these factors, I defined your objectives and decided what can benefit you from short-term marketing (announcing a sale or growing your leads) or long-term marketing (promoting loyalty within an established network).

Yes, activities such as driving sales, increasing website traffic and building brand awareness are important. However, they should only make up a small percentage of the content a brand publishes on social media.

Focusing on a long-term strategy and developing aspects such as meaningful relationships with followers and improving online customer satisfaction is much more important for the long-term stability of your online business.

It is important to keep both views in mind when allocating resources to any marketing objective. If you allocate all your funds to a short-term strategy, you may not have enough to devote to future growth. On the other hand, if you only think about the distant future, you may not generate enough profit to sustain your business in the short term.

Take it easy, do your research and study everything you want to achieve before you start, only then you will know how to sell more and ensure the growth of your business.