Hi! Okay, I am going to make this quick and painless. Hopefully. Here are 3 reasons you are potentially doing damage to your business and stunting your own business growth if you are selling on social media:
Selling only on social media and not being able to send your customer to a real live website hurts your appearance and professional standing. It’s like going to the mall and having one of those girls in a kiosk asking if you want to have your hair straightened or maybe have a massage. In the middle of the mall. My first thought is that if their product is so great why aren’t they investing in a real store front? Same with social media selling. If you have the good goods and you are going to be around for awhile, set up a real store front online (AKA a website). Are you a running a business or are you playing around with a hobby/sort of business? If you are running a business – get a website.
When you sell on social media and you ask your customer to leave their size, state, and email in the comments you are putting their information at risk. If (and when) a spammer, spambot, creepy hacker type automated program gets a hold of their very visible email address you just bought your customer trouble in the form of a ton of nasty spam to something worse. I am sure you value your customers so stop doing this at once if you are guilty of this.
When you post on social media the goal is to get them to your website. When you send them to your website the goal is to get something from them – whether it be a purchase, a newsletter signup, an entry to a giveaway, etc. And it’s even better when they do multiple things on your website. When I see a post on social media selling a cute t-shirt, as a consumer, I go through one of two processes (yes, I buy t-shirts online way too much. Follow me on Instagram and you will see me often giving shout outs to businesses and showing off the t-shirt I just bought from them). Stay with me. This is good insight here.
Scenario one (the almost sort of winner): I see a post on Instagram where this business is selling a t-shirt and I want it. (I almost always do because I am an easy sell). If they ask for my email address and size, I cringe because I don’t leave my email address on social media because of Reason 2. So sometimes I skip on by because it’s too much work to buy their shirt. If I really want it, I will DM them and give them my info. Not a great sell because they left money on the table. Tsk! Tsk! Where did they miss out on more money? Well, they missed selling me more. They did nothing to retain me as a customer and no relationship was formed. Read below.
Scenario Two (the real winner): I see a post on Instagram of this must have t-shirt. They give me all the info in the post and tell me to click the link in the bio to visit their website. Sweet. I skip on over to the website, see the awesome shirt I want, and add it to my cart. Am I done? Nope. I check out their other products because while I’m here I might as well scope out the store. And I might find more t-shirts I want and therefore spend more. Even better is they offered an incentive to sign up for the email list/newsletter. So now in two weeks when I have forgotten about this store because I have moved onto something else they send me a newsletter to my email inbox telling me about a sale they are having. So, I have just been reminded of this business and I remember the last time was a great shopping experience so I click on over to their website again and potentially give them more sales. Winner winner chicken dinner. I win as a customer because I have found a great little place to shop and they care enough about me to send me info on their latest happenings so they win, too.
If you are in it to win it and you want to see your business become something solid take the time to learn the best strategies for selling on social media. I know you have better things to do than to guess what works on social media. If you want to dive in further, download my free guide here. It won’t launch you into making millions overnight (I so wish!). But it will show you 5 successful things I do for my own business on Instagram.
[convertkit form=4989469]
