Online MarketingYou surf through Facebook and find the ad of a really good looking T-shirt. You go to the website, add the product to the cart and then let it be there. You decide to get back to it when your salary comes in. Soon enough, you see pop-ups on your Facebook walls, Instagram feed, maybe in your Email.
By the end of the next day, you have paid for the T-shirt. On an average for making any sales, brands require to make seven touch points.
As technology evolves, so do the consumers. Which means the marketers need to keep evolving as well. But in this tech-centric approach, a lot of marketers forget one thing:
The people using these technologies are humans.
I have worked with a lot of clients for getting their Social Media Sales and this is the one factor that differentiates a successful campaign from a failed one. Treating the end customer as human.
What do I mean when I say that?
Let me explain:
1. Social Media Makes Sales Easy
When advertising boomed in the 1940’s, it was revolutionary. Catering to mass markets, reaching millions at once.
Why was that?
Because of the dialogue between brands and consumers increased, communication increased.
Social Media just removes this friction. The idea is simple, the more you talk to your customers, the more sales you get. Running an ad once won’t help you get anything. For a proper Social Media Sales Plan, you need Ads, Re-Targeting Ads, Email Sequences and Messenger Bots.
The more you communicate, the more you sell.
2. Keep It Simple
Social Media Sales is all about Data.
The pros of this are you get accurate information about who to target with your ads and who to sell to. But the cons are, over-reliance on data reduces humans to just data points. And this shows in your targeting as well as your ad copy.
I always make a customer avatar in my head and think – ‘Why would he buy from me ?’ rather than ‘How can I sell to him?’.
3. People Hate Being Sold To
Imagine a stranger coming up to you, talking to you nicely for ten minutes, and then pitches his product before you. It is a fact that people hate being sold to.
That is the very reason successful selling is one of the most difficult and in-demand skills of the 21st century. Same sales approach, when done on Social Media Ads, irritates me. Out of the blue, you see an ad, without context or any Brand Building saying “Buy From Us”.
Why should I?
I recommend, try to make you ads feel like they are coming from a friend.
I once worked personally on a campaign regarding a SAAS product. Rather than just saying ‘This will solve all problems’, we sat with the Founder, talked to him, we read and read about the problems user face and how the SAAS solves it, I even went to Quora to research the customer language. The end result were ads with a copy so creatively appealing, so specific with the problem they try to solve. The audience was assured that we aren’t selling. We are actually solving a problem!
(PS: This was one of the most fun and creatively involving campaigns I had ever been a part of!)
4. Know How Customers Surf
This is important for Brand Building.
You see an ad on Instagram,
What do you do? Do you just buy?
I doubt it. I think you go to their page, look at the products they have, how many followers, what kind of content they put. Then, you probably send some of the posts to your friends as a DM, asking for their opinion. And only when you are convinced of their brand quality, do you think of purchasing.
These might feel like small things, but when you look at the mass market rather than focusing on just data, you will realize, how customers behave online, plays a big part in Social Media Sales.
This would be my perspective on why one needs to be very aware of the human elements of sales. They are only going to accentuate as time passes by.
