How to Sell on Social Media Without Overdoing the Sales Pitch

As most sales and marketing personnel can tell you, the selling of products or services on social media is never an easy prospect, and it always involves a certain amount of delicate handling. This is not surprising, given the fact that the whole rationale for social media in the first place is to be sociable, and to interact with a number of other individuals. That means it's not meant to be a forum for pitching your company's latest products and trying to increase the volume of sales for your firm.Unless you happen to be a huge celebrity or a major influencer on social media, it will take a lot more than a simple tweet to spur your followers into making purchases. For the vast majority of other people trying to make sales, it will be necessary to provide some kind of value to users, while balancing the promotion of your products.Achieving this kind of balance can be a very fine line to walk, and it generally requires some considerable experience, so that you don't overdo one or the other and turn users away. Below are some useful tips that you might want to consider for ways to generate interest in your products without being overly promotional when delivering your message.

Feature your understanding of their pain points

One great way to use social media to sell products is to show your audience that you empathize with them and that you understand their daily struggles and pain points. This means you'll have to listen to the social interaction among your followers, so as to determine some of the main issues which confront them. Once you know about the challenges they face in their daily lives, you can consider how your products may provide a solution to those challenges, and help users improve their lives.Assuming that your products really can make a difference in the lives of your target audience, you should then provide information to those individuals on just how your products can help them. This is a much better approach than simply jumping out there and pitching your products, because your message is catered to personal issues which confront your users. For the most part, they will probably be much more inclined to listen, because your message will relate directly to them.

Provide value and build trust

Whenever you have the opportunity, you should do everything possible to attempt to build trust with the community of users who comprise your target audience. You can build trust by having a regular presence on the platform where a number of your targeted users hang out, and by providing useful posts and content which can benefit them. It's not enough to simply post content which is well-written and which is thoughtful, because that may not have any interest for your users.You have to take it a step further, and make sure that your well-written content has purpose, and provides value to the people who you want to read it. If you can achieve this kind of presence on social media, it will go a long way toward providing value and building trust among your target audience. It should help you to establish yourself as an authority in your field, and one whom users look for with each new post issued.

Demonstrate potential benefits

This is an area where you have to be especially careful, because it can easily drift into the area of over-promotion, and becoming too salesy about your products. One good tactic is to draw users into your process, by showing them behind-the-scenes images and explaining how products are created and optimized for buyers.A nice touch would be to explain the story behind what inspired the creation of a specific product, and how exactly it will solve a pain point they might have, or how it will add value to their lives once they own it. One of the best ways of demonstrating the potential benefits your products might have to users is to direct them to legitimate testimonials which actually describe how those products have helped others. This can be extremely effective, because it's not you making claims about your products - it's other people just like the users you're addressing.

Include some mention of your offer

Despite the fact that you don't want to become over promotional or to adopt a salesy tone, you do have to mention your product in some way so that users are aware of what it is and how it can help them. If you have adopted some of the recommendations described above, you should already have built up a certain amount of trust with your target audience, and established yourself as a good resource for information. This should put you in a better position to provide an offer to your followers which they would not instantly reject or turn away from.If you've done everything else correctly, your target audience should at least be willing to listen to whatever offer you make to them at this point. The single most important principle to remember when trying to sell on social media is that your featured initiative should be in the area of education. What is meant by this is that you should not make selling your primary goal, but instead you should attempt to educate your users about the benefits of your product and how it can resolve issues they face in their daily lives.Your program of education should also include some informative posts which don't necessarily relate to your product, but which still have tremendous value to your target audience in some way. It's all about building trust and establishing yourself as a great resource for information. Once you've done this, your users should be much more willing to listen to what you have to say about your products, and they should be willing to consider an offer that you provide to them.When you do get around to making a subtle sales pitch, make sure to include a call to action which will direct users to your website. Above all, keep in mind that you're operating on a social media platform, and that means you will need to be social with your users, rather than salesy.