How to sell through Social Media: Six Top Tips

We conducted an online Training session with the Moda Furnishings Sales Team to share best practices; our top tips for selling through social. Six key suggestions are shared below.

Since January, we've been working closely with Head of Marketing and E-commerce at Moda Furnishings, Stuart Hames, and his Marketing Team on how to elevate the leading outdoor furniture brand on Social Media.

We've curated social-first content to inform and inspire, devised a social-friendly tone of voice in copywriting and community management and on-boarded Ambassadors to document the Moda Furnishings experience through the eyes of the (social media savvy!) consumer. The result? A rapidly growing follower base, increase in social engagements, web traffic and sales.

To keep the community keen and maximise the opportunity for Moda - Agency A hosted a Training session with Sales Team with guidance on how they could convert social engagers into happy customers.

Our Top Tips summarised below:

“The shop that never shuts”

• What with social media being an ‘always on’ shop window, it is essential to take advantage of the accessibility that allows audiences to engage at a time that works for them - this is when they will be at their ‘warmest’, so a prompt and positive response will typically drive best results.

“Social Media - platforms to inspire and inform”

• Content on social is often geared towards users feeling inspired by brand lead creative so to leave audiences wanting more - being on hand to provide key information, relevant links or guidance can help provide a frictionless transition from someone simply engaging on social to them becoming a fully fledged customer.

“Tone of Voice - own it and be the brand”

• Identifying and nailing brand TOV is a must on social; from imagery and graphics to copywriting and community management - it all has to be aligned to ensure the customer journey is consistent. Creating an environment where customers feel special and looked after is all down to how direct interactions are managed. Our top tips: Keep it personal (use names). Be friendly and informative and where possible - get to the point quickly - social is a speedy platform and for product enquiries or quick questions, you want to keep your answer short and sweet where you can.

“Each engagement on social is as important as one over the phone, or face to face”

• There are 2 types of conversions through social; Followers & Customers. Even if you don’t immediately convert a sale - there is still value in ensuring a positive experience as they may buy tomorrow, and in the meantime, they’re actively following the brand - so invest that time, and take each interaction as seriously as the last.

“Recognise the right time to jump in”

• The best response is always the one that provokes conversation ie: acknowledges a comment or asks a question. However, to accommodate for an ever growing community of engagers on the channel, we’d recommend ‘liking’ generic style comments, ie emojis or @’ing someone, and spending more time on comments that imply intent to purchase “Where can I get this”, “I need this” etc.

“Test your approach to find one that works for you”

• Try out different styles and comments/message lengths - test to see what works well for you in terms of conversions, being sure not to use the same messages/comments over and over - tailor it as to who you are speaking with.

If you found this helpful, you will LOVE our Sales x Social cheatsheet; email social@agency-a.com and we'll whizz one over to you quicksharp!

Pictured: the Team prepped and ready for the session to begin.