Social media marketing has undoubtedly become an incrementally prominent tool among entrepreneurs, with the HubSpot blog’s survey from 2021 highlighting the precise impact of this channel.
More specifically, some 77% of social media marketers say that social media marketing has been very effective for their company during the reporting period, while those who didn’t cite this channel as being influential blamed this on the impact of the coronavirus.
This is largely being driven by consumer behaviours, with people now spending an average of 2hr 30mins on social media every single day. Interestingly, this has increased during the pandemic, with people having spent more time at home on average.
In this post, we’ll talk about how such trends have combined to create the age of ‘social selling’ while appraising the best examples of this.
What is Social Selling?
The first point to make is that social selling isn’t the same as social media marketing, although the latter’s growth has helped to unlock revenue-generating opportunities through social platforms.
The use of SMM tools such as Facebook ads and Instagram are used to convert followers and online leads into customers, who can subsequently leverage a live app or eCommerce platform to complete a transaction.
In layman’s terms, social selling is therefore the practice of generating leads through branded SMM channels, before converting these into tangible and measurable sales.
Unsurprisingly, the innovative and market-leading social brand TikTok has recently announced affiliate plans that embody this process perfectly.
The “TikTok Shop” represents an innovative new shopping feature through which creators, merchants, and brands can showcase and sell products directly on the social media channel. How goods are showcased can vary, from in-feed videos and LIVEs to the product showcase tab.
The so-called “TikTok” shop also enables brands or individual sellers to work directly with on-site creators. Through this type of partnership, sellers and brands will pay influencers a predetermined rate of commission on subsequent sales generated, while this affiliate plan helps users to make the most of the shop’s resources.
Why You Should be Social Selling
TikTok is certainly a leading platform for social selling, primarily because it was established as the fastest-growing social app in 2022. The size and reach of the platform are also appealing to businesses, who are now including the app in their individual SMM strategies.
Because the TikTok Shop also allows for discounts, flash sales, and similar incentives, you may be able to create beneficial loyalty programs for social media selling. This is an important consideration, especially from the perspective of creating a loyal consumer base and driving repeat, sustainable sales.
Even from a statistical perspective, it’s suggested that 78% of brands and sales teams that are engaged in social selling are continuing to outperform their competition.
At the same time, some 31% of B2B professionals have revealed that social selling has enabled them to cultivate a deeper and more meaningful relationship with their clients, once again opening the way for improved retention rates and higher levels of loyalty.
So, it’s clear that social selling is a viable option across multiple types of businesses and the marketplace, and engaging with this tactic offers value in terms of optimising consumer loyalty across multiple channels.