<em>Note: this article was first published in 2018 and last updated in 2022. The figures reflect the time of writing.</em><br/>Social media is an important and helpful tool for successfully increasing sales. But how do you use it properly to increase your sales?
More sales through social media
Social media is a successful marketing tool already used by many companies. The target groups vary depending on the platform. Below, we take a closer look at the individual social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and co. and show how you can reach the different target groups and increase your sales.
Because of its huge number of users, practically every target group is present on Facebook. Facebook was intended for staying in touch with your friends or family, but today most people use the platform rather to watch funny posts such as videos and pictures and share them with friends.
“In Germany today, more than 32 million people a month are active on Facebook, connecting with others, exchanging ideas and pursuing shared interests or ideas,” Facebook announced on its 10th anniversary. Worldwide, at the time of writing, the number of users stood at a staggering 2.34 billion and rising. That is why many companies around the world use the largest social media platform to increase their sales.
Many of you are surely thinking: “Facebook? That’s dead!” No, it isn’t. At the end of 2019, Facebook reported around 1.6 billion daily users, 288 million of them in Europe. The change most of us have noticed is the change in the target group: Facebook’s users have grown older along with it. The age groups have shifted from 18–24-year-olds to 25–44-year-olds, which is particularly interesting for companies. This means you can narrow Facebook down specifically to people who probably all have a steady job and therefore a steady income.
How can you use Facebook?
The best kind of advertising on Facebook is snack content – creative posts that catch users’ eyes. Some companies try to make people laugh with memes and funny replies to comments. This gives you more reach and more traffic on your posts. You have to decide for yourself to what extent this fits your company’s image.
Facebook supports you in spreading snack content with various tools – for example, by letting you promote posts. You can also interact with your customers and create a good company image through likeable and informative posts.
Sounds interesting, but you don’t know exactly how it all works? Don’t worry – we’ll explain it. Step by step!
Since 2014, Facebook has been helping advertisers of all kinds – large or small, beginners or professionals – with the Facebook Ads Manager tool. With this tool you can decide when and where your ads should run and track how successful your campaigns are. It makes managing ads easy and, with the separate Ads Manager app for Android and iOS, accessible on mobile too. The tool offers a wide range of functions, from selecting parameters for your campaign to designing ads. It all seems very complex at first if you haven’t really looked into it yet. But Facebook supports you with step-by-step instructions during setup.
You can also interact with your customers and create a good company image through likeable and informative posts.
On average, Instagram tends to be used by people between 18 and 34. You can post photos and videos there and “like” and comment on other users’ posts.
Facebook’s partner platform keeps growing and, at the time of writing, had around 1 billion active users worldwide, 15 million of them in Germany. Of these 15 million people, 80% follow at least one company, because many companies already use this platform to advertise with their photos and videos.
Best-practice examples here include Mercedes-Benz and organisations such as Rewe and the Bundeswehr (German armed forces), which have been using Instagram for a long time and have built up a large following.
How can you use Instagram?
On Instagram, companies promote their posts to increase their sales. To make this easier for you, Instagram supports Facebook’s advertising tool when you connect your Facebook business profile to your Instagram account. This way you reach more users and your number of followers grows. However, it is important that the images you post are of good quality and present your product or service well. In addition, the links should lead to a landing page designed purely to sell the product/service, because people who click there are already “hot” prospects.
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X (formerly Twitter)
On X (formerly Twitter), it is mainly young, educated people and journalists who are active and interact with other profiles. The platform lets you express yourself in short texts, videos and images and respond to other users’ posts.
Like Facebook and Instagram, Twitter is one of the top tools for social media marketing and the resulting increase in sales. At the time of writing, Twitter had 336 million monthly active users, 80% of whom used the mobile app.
How can you use X (formerly Twitter)?
As with Facebook and Instagram, you can promote your tweets and even your profile. The platform gives you various options for specifying your target group. This way you also explicitly reach the people who are potential customers for your company.
Increasing sales through more reach
Social media brings more reach. More reach brings more potential customers. Increasing your sales through wide reach sounds good on the whole. But what do you have to do to achieve good reach?
There are a few things you can do to increase your reach on social media. For one, you can adapt the content on your channel. With snack content, for example, you appeal to all kinds of people who then like to share this content. You can also offer snack content tailored to your target group. Nobody wants to miss these treats.
Our tip: you can also mention or even recommend other companies in the same industry in your posts, and follow them too. This gives the other companies a reason to recommend or mention you in return. That way you reach more new people who may become your own followers.
Advertising on social media is always a useful tool for making more sales. It brings potential customers straight to your website. Not only does this give you greater reach, it also increases sales directly.
Besides the social media platforms, Google has a very popular advertising campaign tool in Google Ads. But let’s take a closer look at alternatives to this increasingly expensive tool for increasing sales:
Bing Ads (now Microsoft Advertising): the counterpart to Google Ads, bringing your products and services to many different potential customers. Bing Ads is much more strongly oriented towards your target group description.
AdRoll: at the time of writing, with over 30,000 advertisers worldwide, this platform was a well-known and widely used alternative to Google Ads. It also advertises by email and can bring you new customers effectively.
Quantcast: this tool helps you get more traffic to your site and a better understanding of your customers. This way you can improve your business and do without Google Ads at the same time.
LinkedIn: a good place for small companies in B2B marketing. LinkedIn is also comparatively inexpensive and effective for achieving reach and more sales.
Combine these tools with social media, and nothing stands in the way of increasing your sales.
Checklist: which social media channel suits us? The following questions can help you decide:
Which target group do I want to reach?
How does my target group behave, and how old is it?
Can we create high-quality audio/video content (or have it created)?
Do we want to convey information or emotion?
The advertising methods listed above are always worthwhile, as they give you reach and a significant increase in sales. It is worthwhile not only for large companies – smaller, still-expanding companies can also win customers this way.
Social media advertising and the Google Ads alternatives are cheaper and sometimes also more effective than Google Ads itself.
over 30 pages of basic knowledge as a presentation-ready PDF. Instant download. 100% free.
Increasing sales through influencers
Using influencers who can increase your sales is a good idea, especially if you are already doing social media marketing.
Influencers usually have a large number of followers and can draw attention to your company. The advantage: from their experience on social media, influencers know exactly which content goes down well with their followers. The success of the campaign depends above all on the influencer’s size on the platforms. Obviously: the more followers, the greater the reach.
Even so, you shouldn’t simply book the influencer with the most followers – make sure that the influencer’s previous content matches your company. For example: you want to sell cars, so you look for an influencer who posts pictures of cars. This ensures that the followers are interested in your post at all. As a result, you can optimise your sales.
Increasing sales through discount campaigns etc.
To make more sales, you can also run discount campaigns to motivate your customers to buy.
These include simple things such as sales, vouchers and bundles. You can also make offers that customers can only buy within a certain period. Such campaigns are often planned around public holidays, so take your cue from them to find the perfect time for your campaigns.
Conclusion: increasing sales with social media
Depending on who your target group is and how old it is, you should choose one or more platforms through which you can reach this target group as effectively as possible. This can be done in various ways – through snack content, well-prepared photos or videos, or collaborations with influencers. The possibilities are huge, and a social media presence is an important tool for your success.
Yvonne Schwalowski ist Marketingberaterin und strategische Filmproduzentin bei Pathfinder Studios sowie mehrfache Belletristik-Autorin u.a. beim Piper-Verlag. Mit 18 Jahren Berufserfahrung und erfolgreichen Multimedia-Projekten für 450+ Kunden ist sie eine erfahrene Marketing-Expertin für europäische Unternehmen – vom Tech-Startup über Hidden Champion-Industrieunternehmen bis zu Konzernen wie MAN, Miele und Audi. Ihre Werbefilme und Kurzfilme haben mehrere internationale Auszeichnungen gewonnen, ihr erster internationaler Kinospielfilm ist derzeit in Fertigstellung. Wikipedia – Portfolio – LinkedIn – IMDb
Yvonne Schwalowski ist Marketingberaterin und strategische Filmproduzentin bei Pathfinder Studios sowie mehrfache Belletristik-Autorin u.a. beim Piper-Verlag. Mit 18 Jahren Berufserfahrung und erfolgreichen Multimedia-Projekten für 450+ Kunden ist sie eine erfahrene Marketing-Expertin für europäische Unternehmen – vom Tech-Startup über Hidden Champion-Industrieunternehmen bis zu Konzernen wie MAN, Miele und Audi. Ihre Werbefilme und Kurzfilme haben mehrere internationale Auszeichnungen gewonnen, ihr erster internationaler Kinospielfilm ist derzeit in Fertigstellung.
Wikipedia – Portfolio – LinkedIn – IMDb
