6 Effective Ways to Increase Sales Through Social Media

Social media has become essential to the client journey, directly influencing purchasing decisions. Consumers from the top of the sales funnel rely on social media to discover new brands, products, and services, helping you boost your brand’s reach and sales.

According to the 2023 Sprout Social Index, 68% of consumers say they first follow a brand on social media to stay informed about new products and services. The second reason is to access exclusive deals and promotions.

It’s not only about shopping becoming available through social media platforms but also about the effort of social media developers to align social media sales and marketing by creating new social commerce tools or improving existing ones.

Effective Ways to Increase Sales through Social Media

1. Direct selling on social media platforms

The surge in social media use during the pandemic wasn’t just a passing trend, with 53% of consumers saying their social media use has increased in the past two years.

Social media has become a new shopping hub where users can discover trends and interests. Social media platforms have recognized this trend and are adapting to it. These platforms focus on the client journey from A to Z, allowing consumers to move from the discovery phase to the purchase one within a single platform. With the shopping and checkout process streamlined, consumers are more likely to make purchases directly.

Marketers can use various online-supported commerce tools to generate revenue from social media. These tools include:

• Facebook Shop.
• Instagram Shopping.
• Pinterest Product Pins.
• TikTok Shop.

As social media platforms have increased their investment in e-commerce tools, businesses have followed suit. 63% of business leaders say they have adopted e-commerce tools available on their preferred social media management platform.

Linking your product catalogs to social media commerce tools allows your brand to curate a product portfolio that aligns with larger marketing campaign goals.

Sprout’s integration with Shopify, Facebook, and Instagram stores accelerates your entry into the world of social commerce. Once your product catalogs are uploaded to Sprout, your team can create new direct sales opportunities and make easy money by adding product links to social media content or including them in replies to consumers who have contacted you.

2. Leveraging the highest-converting social media content

Social media data and best practices suggest that easy-to-digest visual content, such as static images, helps marketers achieve their social media goals more than text-based posts. However, your audience may differ, so you must dig into the data and see what works best for you.

To understand how social media enhances sales, focus your analysis on content about your products or services, promotions, and links to your website. Ideally, these links should consist of UTM parameters to track the behavior and path of people who clicked on the link via Google Analytics.

Here’s a quick rundown of the KPIs you should be looking for:

• Free: Engagement rate, click-through rate, social media referrals, and on-page actions (e.g., form submissions, purchases).
• Paid: Conversion rate, return on ad spend (RoAS), cost per conversion.

Marketers who diligently tag their content can conduct granular analysis. For example, fashion company River Island relies on over 160 active tags to track qualitative insights, such as consumers’ preferences for user-generated content (UGC) versus official brand images.

Using Sprout’s Tag Performance Report, the company analyzes performance and makes accurate comparisons, helping it make strategic decisions about efficiently allocating budgets between creative assets and ad campaigns.

After identifying the type of content your audience prefers, explore ways to turn it into posts that help them shop. With new features on social media platforms, any content, from videos to user-generated content (UGC), can be turned into effective sales opportunities.

3. Using interactive commerce to engage buyers on social media

One of the clear benefits of social media is that it gives consumers and businesses a convenient and easy way to connect. Research shows that 76% of consumers value brands prioritizing client support and responding quickly to client needs.

Social commerce combines messaging with shopping, allowing consumers to use chat or a voice assistant to make purchases from a brand.

If you’ve ever received a promo code or discount via direct message, booked a haircut via Facebook Messenger, or asked a product question via WhatsApp, this practical application of social commerce allows digital marketers to strengthen client relationships.

Social commerce isn’t just about generating new sales. It’s also about providing high-quality client service, a key feature clients look for in leading brands.

Regardless of a client’s stage in the sales funnel, social media marketers should have a plan to manage incoming messages and provide fast, effective support. If this tip seems complicated for your existing team to implement, don’t worry—delivering excellent client service doesn’t mean having agents available 24/7.

For example, brands like Corelle use client service bots to manage messages on platforms like Facebook and X. If you’re worried about delegating client requests to a bot, don’t worry—chatbots have evolved a lot in recent years, giving both clients and agents more control over the support experience.

4. Using social listening to find topics that resonate with your audience

Social listening allows businesses to tap into public conversations that broaden their understanding of clients, the industry, and competitors. It provides insights about your audience’s favorite trends, analyzes brand sentiment, highlights your unique brand, and answers pressing questions your clients ask about your business.

Combining social listening findings with content analytics and client service channels helps you craft data-driven marketing messages that can convert. Social listening can also uncover sales opportunities and leads for your brand, but you must be ready to respond directly when your brand name is mentioned.

5. Leveraging employee advocacy

Increasing sales through social media isn’t limited to business-to-consumer (B2C) brands; B2B businesses across industries generate revenue through employee advocacy.

When employees promote their brand through their personal social media accounts, the company gains support from their employees, which benefits both parties. The employee proves that they are a thought leader in their field, and the company benefits from increased brand awareness while maintaining control over their marketing messages.

6. Posting on social media at the right time for your audience

Posting content at the right time often leads to more impressions, engagement, and conversions. Data suggests that Sunday is the worst time to post on Facebook, for example, but your audience is unique. So, you should analyze your social platforms to identify the optimal time that yields the best engagement. Then, create the best social media posting schedule.

One study found the following results for posting at the right time on Facebook, X, and Instagram:

• Facebook: Content posted at the right time increased impressions by 62% and engagement by 135%.
• X: Increased impressions by 59% and engagement by 97%.
• Instagram: Increased impressions by 44% and engagement by 65%.

Posting at the right time increases your brand exposure and, thus, leads to more sales opportunities.

Finally

Focusing on just one of the above methods may not increase sales, but the sum of these efforts can make a huge difference. So, combine all these methods to boost your social media sales.