3 ways to sell on social media without being too ‘salesy’

There’s nothing wrong with selling your products using your social media channels. Say it out loud. Nothing wrong with it...but you have to feel comfortable with your sales processes and the words you use or you’ll stumble and fumble or worse, you’ll avoid selling.

For a lot of small business owners, particularly those just starting up or those with brand new online stores, the prospect of putting the hard word on people can be daunting. I know that a lot of people find sales hard to do or feel it won’t work with their audience and I do 'get' that. I also know it makes some of you feel a bit ‘icky’ and maybe that’s why you were drawn to this article...

So I thought I'd share three quick and easy ways to get comfortable with selling and promoting your business or online store. Here we go...

1. Make it easy for customers to buy from you

If you haven’t already set up your Facebook Catalogue, Shop and Instagram Shopping, please hop to it. Setting up a Facebook Catalogue and connecting your accounts means people can shop directly from your posts. You can have a ‘Shop’ tab on your Page and you can tag your products so that your audience can see the price and go directly to the product to check it out on your website. It’s the most effective way to drive sales from your organic posts and it’s pretty subtle too. I think of those product tags as ‘see it, like it, want it, buy it’ and your customers can do all that and still jump back into scrolling their feed.

I’ve had clients set up these functions on Instagram and see immediate results. If you need help, please get in touch.

If you’re a service-based business it can be even harder to promote yourself. You’ll like point 3 below but also you need to get comfortable with the value that you offer and talking about that, rather than talking about yourself. So instead of telling people why you’re the best, try telling people what their outcome will be and basing your messaging around what they get out of working with you. Putting your focus on your clients rather than yourself will lessen your discomfort and also be a more successful marketing strategy.

2. Use empathy in your social media and marketing

Now more than ever empathy should be central to your social media marketing strategy.

Empathy can be shown in a lot of ways and you just need to work out what works for you and your audience. A fairly simplistic explanation is to really think hard about your customers’ needs and how your products meet them. 

What are their pain points? What problem do you solve for them? Tell your story and promote your products always with the customer in mind. Put yourself in their shoes.

One of the things I teach over and over again is this little checklist for crafting social media content:

• Who am I talking to?

• What’s my objective?

• What’s my audience’s motivation?

• How am I helping or adding value to my audience?

• What action do I want them to take?

If you can’t answer these questions then your post is probably lacking relevance. Read more about empathy marketing here.

3. Be prepared with pre-written call to action text

Craft a bunch of post endings or ‘calls to action’ that you feel comfortable with and then store them in your notes, Word doc or the scheduling tool you use. That way you bypass the icky feeling you have when you do the sales part and you can just copy and paste an effective and well-crafted call to action. 

Some examples include: “We’ve got more colours and sizes online so head over and check them out at www.blahblah.com.au/shop” or “To find out more or to purchase, please head to www.blahblah.com.au/shop” or “There’s more where that came from, shop the new Spring collection at www.blahblah.com.au/shop” or “send me a message if you’d like to find out more”. Your calls to action should be appropriate to the purpose of your post.

Lastly…

Lose the sales guilt! It’s definitely okay to sell your products through your social media channels. How you do it and how often you do it is an important part of your social media strategy and you need to spend quality time thinking about it and getting yourself comfortable. Keep your audience in mind at all times and you won't go astray.

Hi I’m Erika ✌️ I’m a marketing specialist with a BA in Media and Comms, Masters of Marketing, Cert in CX (Customer Experience) and over 25 years experience. I’m well placed to help you navigate the sometimes overwhelming world of marketing and social media. I work with you one on one or create fun and action-oriented workshops and webinars for groups, organisations and businesses. Book a free discovery call with me or simply email me to get the conversation started.

For more tips, connect with me on Facebook and Instagram or just get in touch, I'm always happy to help.