Using social media to increase brand awareness and sales

With hybrid work models and remote jobs here to stay, workers are spending less time at their desks in the office. As a result, contacting potential customers via cold calling isn't likely to return the same results as it once did, as the average employee quite often isn't around to answer the phone. Cold calling still has its place as a method of making sales for those of your prospects who frequent the office. However, you need to adopt a varied approach to target those who don’t, if you are to continue improving your performance as a salesperson in 2023. 

One way of doing this is through social media. Now, you might think that social media should only be reserved for personal use and in some cases you would be right. Then again, there are social media platforms like LinkedIn, which have specifically been created for professional networking purposes. 

Failing to evolve your customer outreach methods may result in you being left behind by your sales counterparts. In fact, it’s believed that 78% of social sellers outsell those who don’t make use of social media. If you have never considered social selling before, fortunately for you, we have collated a number of ways in which you can use social media to increase brand awareness and sales.

Use LinkedIn to contact prospective customers

While it's important to maintain a presence online, social media allows you to do more than raise brand awareness. If used correctly it can increase sales. The most direct way of doing this is by using social media as a means of contacting customers. With a platform like LinkedIn, you can connect and network with prospective customers. However, before you do anything, you need to ensure they make up your target demographic. They might work in a relevant industry to you, or follow your company’s page. Either way, it’s important that the product or service on offer has some kind of relevance to the person in question, for the lead to stand a chance of generating a serious level of interest.   

Then, when you have made the connection, it’s a case of delivering an enticing proposition. This is your opportunity to express how your product or service will solve a problem they might be experiencing. Remember, instead of just sending aimless spam messages, you should be providing a sense of value for your prospective customers. Through this, you can go on to develop meaningful relationships and build trust and loyalty among your customers. 

Create and post engaging content 

Instead of always relying on hard selling tactics, you should be aiming to produce engaging content. By providing valuable content on a regular basis, you will be able to show off your specialist knowledge to those in your network. If you keep this process going for an extended period, then those who were originally hesitant to purchase from you may come around.

With valuable content, you can engage and educate your network at the same time. To go one further, try to entertain your audience, as this is what will ultimately help you to stand out and make you more memorable. After all, a lot of people use social media in their free time, so don’t be scared to experiment with different styles of content to increase your engagement.

While advertising certainly has its place when you are attempting to increase brand awareness and sales, it’s important that not all of your posts are pushing your products and services. If you fall into this trap, you might find that your engagement begins to fall because people will become accustomed to scrolling straight past it. Instead, you should aim to post content which involves videos, photos and polls. Essentially, the idea is to post interactive content that encourages people to like, share and comment on your posts.

Convert loyal customers into brand ambassadors 

Of course, people will need to be aware of what you are offering before they make a purchase.  You can always rave about how good your business is. But, it’s never as powerful as hearing from your loyal customers, who make the most of your offerings on a daily basis.   

Creating posts around customer reviews is an authentic way of promoting your products and services to your target audience. As well as describing why they picked your business in the first place, your customers should include what made them keep coming back. 

Letting your customers speak for you is an essential part of marketing. It gives those in your network a true reflection of the customer experience. By making use of customers reviews on social media, you will soon realise the power of word of mouth. You never know, reviews from your loyal customers might just convince a few undecided people into taking the next steps with your business.  

Use paid ads 

The previously mentioned points are all great ways of instigating organic growth across your social media pages, while also increasing sales. But, how can you go one step further and drive your sales even further?

Well, before you can go about doing this you need to reach a larger audience. Generally speaking, the more feeds you land on, the more sales you make. So, by increasing the awareness of your business and the products and services associated with it, you will stand a far better chance of seeing growth. 

As you will be able to reach a wider audience with paid ads, your posts are likely to receive more impressions. In addition, your click-through rate should improve, from which a heightened number of your network will be taken directly to a specific page of your website. If used correctly, you will be able to bring more awareness to what you are offering and therefore increase your sales.  

Remember though, content that includes paid ads shouldn’t take up your entire feed. They should only be utilised alongside other social media methods that see you engage with prospective customers, create content and post customer reviews.   

If you want to use social media as a means to make more sales but don’t know where to start, you are in the right place. With Pareto’s social selling course, you will learn how to deliver impactful messages to support outreach in order to build rapport with connections.