The Power of Social Selling: Why & How It Works With C-level Clients

You must have heard the term “social selling” before.  It’s all the rage, and rightly so. We’ll get into why it’s so popular a little later, but first, let’s understand social selling vs social media marketing or advertising.  

 

What is social selling? 

 

LinkedIn defines social selling as “leveraging your social network to find the right prospects, build trusted relationships, and ultimately achieve your sales goals”.  

In other words, the foundation of social selling is building a relationship with your audience and potential buyers so that when they are ready to make a purchase, you are who they think of first. 

After all, buying and selling are inherently social activities. Back in the day, we would meet up with people in our communities to exchange reviews about different products and services. Today, we do this on the internet. Our neighborhood became a lot bigger.  

Social selling puts you, the brand, into that neighborhood so you can still connect with your clients directly and put your brand at the forefront of the minds of C-level decision makers. Social selling done well can potentially replace cold calling altogether. Wouldn’t that be great? 

   

What does social selling look like?

 

A word of caution: Social selling is not spamming. You don’t want to bombard your audience with unsolicited messages. Instead, focus on having meaningful interactions and presenting specific solutions to specific problems.  

It’s about positioning your brand as trustworthy and valuable, not annoying.  

One way to do this is by creating social media posts highlighting how one of your products solves a specific problem for a specific group of people. This can help naturally attract your target audience to your profile and brand, therefore building trust and encouraging sales. 

For a B2B company, this can look like generating content to encourage conversations and engagement with your audience. Your sales team members can and should also participate on social media to interact with the brand’s target audience. Over time, a relationship can be built. The visibility from those interactions will trickle back to your organization.  

 

Social Selling Index (SSI) 

 

Importantly, social selling can have a positive influence on certain marketing metrics like referrals, direct traffic, exposure to new audiences, and more.  A well-executed social selling strategy will create a snowball effect with your audience helping spread the word of your brand and generating more inbound leads.  

But how do you know your strategy is working? 

LinkedIn introduced the Social Selling Index (SSI) back in 2014 which measures the impact of social selling on the LinkedIn platform and Sales Navigator.  

The platform outlines four components that it uses to generate a score: 

1. Establishing a professional brand with a well-managed LinkedIn profile 

2. Finding the right people on the platform 

3. Sharing relevant, conversation-inspiring content 

4. Building and strengthening relationships.  

You can access your SSI score in Sales Navigator. It could also be helpful to keep these four components in mind when building your social selling strategies. 

   

Why should you care about Social Selling? 

 

If you’re still not convinced, let’s look at some benefits of incorporating social selling into your toolkit.  

It is effective

Think about your own experience with brands on social media and you’ll see that social selling is an effective marketing strategy.  

In fact, LinkedIn reports that businesses that excel at social selling generate 45% more sales opportunities than those with lower SSI scores. Additionally, businesses are 51% more likely to reach their sales quota when they prioritize social selling.  

Need more numbers? 78% of businesses who deploy social selling techniques outsell businesses that are not on social media. 

 

It builds real relationships

 

Real relationships ultimately translate to value. 

A 2021 Forbes article notes that 66% of business event professionals have postponed events while 87% have canceled because of the pandemic. Networking has shifted mostly online now, making this the perfect time to prioritize social selling.  

With this approach, you can create those real relationships with your customers where they are already actively engaged in conversations. Social selling targets the decision-makers who are already interested in what you are selling and who are further along in their buyer’s journey.  

By making authentic connections and offering useful information when the time is right, you develop customer loyalty and brand awareness, while still maintaining that personal touch. Do this well to set yourself apart from your competitors, since 73% of customers say that just one extraordinary experience raises their expectations of other companies. 

 

Social buying is already happening 

 

The Global State of Digital 2022 reports that there are currently 4.62 billion social media users, that’s a 10.1% increase from the previous year. Facebook remains the most-used social platform but there is an overlap and other platforms still see hundreds of millions of active users each day.  

Crucially, people are not just on social media to socialize. They are also engaged in brand research. About 28% of the oldest group surveyed (55 to 64-year-olds) do their brand research on social media. The numbers increase as we look at younger users which is at 51-56% for 16 to 24-year-olds. 

Salesforce also reports that millennials and Gen Z’ers are 4.1 times more likely to cite user-generated content such as reviews and photos as an important consideration when making a purchase. So as the younger generation’s purchasing powers rise and they become the new generation of C-suites, social selling will only create more opportunities.  

Some snapshots of other important figures: 

1. 70% of Instagram users use the platform to research services and products 

2. 70% of YouTube users say they have purchased from a brand after seeing it on the platform 

3. 18.3% of American Facebook users made a purchase on the platform in 2020 

 

You don’t want to get left behind 

 

As of 2020, Statista estimates that 25% of e-commerce enterprises worldwide were planning to sell their products on social media. As for B2B marketers, 96% use LinkedIn for organic marketing, with Facebook and Twitter come second with 82% each according to Content Marketing Institute. 

Whether you’re a B2C or B2B company, your competitors are already engaging in social selling. You’ve already seen how effective this approach is. Social selling can preserve and even improve your competitive edge the sooner you get on it.