By Alicia Fiorletta, Senior Editor
For years, industry players considered “social selling” to comprise of simply adding a shopping cart widget to a Facebook page. Obviously, that strategy has failed for many retailers. But now, best-in-class retailers are realizing that the art and science of social selling is far more complex. Retail TouchPoints recently covered the trend through an in-depth feature, but the response has been so tremendous we decided to do a follow-up piece sharing more insights from other members of the retail community!
Social selling can easily be defined as “using social content and connections with your customers to drive people to a physical (or digital store), with the end result being a sale,” according to Casey Petersen, Director of Social Operations at Collective Bias, a customer advocacy firm. However, when Petersen refers to “content,” it extends far beyond static product descriptions.
“You have to recognize that social is not just a new place for ad copy,” Petersen said. “Start by understanding who your audience is and what content they enjoy that relates to your brand or product. Build relationships around that content, and use paid to target the right audience for you. At Collective Bias, our rule is 80% useful or entertaining content, and 20% self-promotional.”
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At the end of the day, a successful social selling strategy hinges on providing value to customer conversations, whether it’s providing educational details, an added level of convenience or answering any pressing questions. “In a way, social selling can be seen as an extension of successful customer service tools that a retailer offers,” said Jim Davidson, head of research, Bronto Software. “Traditionally, customer service has offered a more personable representation of a brand by helping shoppers to potentially influence the sale.”
By coupling branded content and photos with user-generated content, brands can create a cohesive strategy that engages customers at every step of the browsing and consideration journey. “Content needs to be engaging, fresh and personalized,” said Oliver Jaeger, VP of Global Marketing & Communications for e-Spirit Inc. in North America. “The shotgun approach doesn’t work anymore. Consumer’s attention span is short and you need to grab their interest and keep it, otherwise they will seek out other retailers.”
What makes social selling even more impactful than traditional service and communication channels is that retailers have the ability to leverage their most loyal customers — their advocates — to act on their behalf. After all, at the end of the day, consumers trust other consumers more than brands. And if shoppers are inspired to share brand content, images and information to their peers, then that impacts a retailer’s overall awareness and buzz — and potentially sales.
Although there are a lot of tools and solutions available to help retailers identify advocates, “few things take the place of really paying attention and personally engaging with your followers,” Petersen said. “You’ll see the ones who share your posts, comment on your threads and like your stuff regularly. At that point, it’s easy to nurture those relationships. You’ll never ‘force’ someone to act on your behalf, however, paying those who drafted content on your behalf and promoting that content (and giving them credit), are critical for relationship-building that you tap later on.”
The core four social networks — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest — also have made a series of enhancements to their advertising models, which helps retailers get more value out of their social content and extend their overall reach.
“Facebook has cracked the code on making ecommerce advertising work on its platform, and the other social networks are following suit,” said Bob Buch, CEO of Socialwire. “Retailers would be well advised to focus all their marketing efforts on paid marketing on social platforms.”
Other solutions, such as Like2Buy, can help Instagram connect with e-Commerce, a marketing and sales opportunity previously missing from the social network. “The popularity of image-based content is increasing,” Jaeger said. “Solutions like Like2Buy will utilize this and create new opportunities for retailers especially through the mobile channel.”
