If I learned anything last year about marketing, I learned that having a strong sales funnel is just as important as a strong marketing funnel. Being the social media director at ROI Online, I don’t often get asked how we can incorporate sales with social media. But, would it be awesome practice to actually start trying?
Now, it’s easy to think of social media as an quick selling tool for B2C businesses. With platforms like Instagram, it makes it simple for retailers of all sizes to sell products. But, what about trying to get those sales qualified leads (SQLs) through social media?
Here are some easy-to-introduce sales tactics for your social media strategy.
Learn And Understand The Sales Process
Understanding how your sales team works is a very important part of connecting the dots between marketing, social media, and sales. At ROI, we have one salesman, which happens to be bossman.
Since we are a small agency, we all possess a good knowledge of how his sales process works. Having a great CRM really helps Steve’s process and allows the whole team to see what he has in the works and the sources that they are coming from. We use the HubSpot CRM and find it so beneficial. It is FREE to use even if you don’t use HubSpot for your marketing automation.
Also, understand the sales funnel. As a social media marketer, it’s essential to craft different messages for different stages of your sales funnel or buyer's journey.
Include Premium Offers
Premium offers are a great way to capture leads and create amazing lead nurturing email series to turn them into paying customers. The content and social media departments work very closely here at ROI.
If they don’t at your company, it might be a good idea to bounce ideas off of each other weekly. We always want to make sure that an offer is going to do just as well on social media as it would on the website. Having your social department’s input will benefit you more than you think.
Use Leads Ads
Facebook and LinkedIn Lead ads are an amazing way to capture SQLs without your sales team having to do anything.
Wondering how a leads ad works? Well, it’s actually really simple. Facebook or LinkedIn allows you to create a normal ad, but instead of making users take an extra step by going to your website, they can just fill out the form right then and there.
It takes out the middleman and ultimately allows for you to capture more leads. What is the best part about a lead ad? Well, you can hook up the CRM tool that you use and it lets your sales team follow up with these leads. From there, you could turn on lead nurturing workflows or just turn leads over completely to the sales team until they turn them back to you if they are an MQL.
Pro tip: create a lookalike list from your current customer list. Facebook will find people who have similar interests but maybe haven’t interacted with your brand yet.
Connecting marketing and sales takes time and processes, but there are simple ways to incorporate social media into the sales process.
