After working with many clients in the product and service industry, we know how tempting it is to them to want to shout out their amazing goods and services from the rooftops. They have a few followers on social media, and they think that this would be the perfect place to ‘sell’ their products and services.
Unfortunately, this hard-selling approach doesn’t work on social media – not for one minute. And you constantly pushing a sales message and self-promoting will just push alienate your audience from your brand. Nobody likes to be pressurised into a sale – and above all nobody likes the desperate energy that comes with the hard-selling approach. The end results? Unengaged followers, or no followers at all!
The thing is – your social media audience is there predominantly to socialize, learn, be inspired, or entertained and catch up with their friends and family. You should feel honoured to be allowed onto their news feed. Your social media audience is there predominantly to socialise and see what friends and family are up to – and possibly watch the occasional video of a dog eating spaghetti. Showing up in their news feed with constant promotional posts will just tick them off and cause them to unfollow you. And shouting in their ear like a looped recording is going to ensure that you become white noise in their lives.
Hard selling is when the marketer gets straight to the sales message. They are clearly there to promote their product or service and make sure you know all about it. This type of approach is typically seen with traditional advertising and promotion such as print, display ads, flyer drops, TV advertising or billboards.
What is hard-selling?
Hard-sell refers to an advertising or sales approach that features direct and insistent language. Buy now, book today, and sign up here. Hard-sell is designed to get a consumer to purchase goods or services (now) short-term, rather than allowing the consumer to ruminate and evaluate their options and potentially decide to wait on the purchase. It is considered a high-pressure, aggressive technique that was hot in the ’80s.
What is soft-sell marketing?
Soft-sell refers to an advertising and sales approach that features a much more subtle language and a non-aggressive style. Soft-sell marketing is designed to avoid antagonising and angering potential customers and pushing them away. Because soft selling is a low-pressure, persuasive and subtle sales technique, it may not result in an immediate sale, but will encourage customer relations and ultimately encourage repeat sales. Soft-selling cultivates trust and nurtures your audience.
Reality Check
Think about it… no one would willingly sign up to receive daily ‘LOUDHAILER’ announcements about what’s important to you and your business and not what’s important to them. So whether it’s advertising straight into their DM’s or mailbox or shouty posts in their feeds – how do you expect them to want to hear what you have to say if what you always have to say is: LOOK AT ME, FOR SALE, BOOK NOW, I AM HERE – ME! ME! ME! ME!
STOP SELLING AND START BUILDING YOUR TRIBE!
Social media as the name says is meant to be social! You are meant to be building your tribe on social media – by providing them with entertainment, information, inspiration and direction on your product, industry, service and solution or gift to this world. Authenticity and ethical communication are all you need in building a relationship with your audience.
Not even the algorithms enjoy your hard-selling!
The other more important reason to avoid hard-selling on social media content is that most social algorithms are designed to give the user – your consumer – the best experience. They, therefore, give higher preference to content that they deem to be premium content, this is determined using a number of factors.
One of the measured factors is engagement – are people engaging with your content? If they aren’t then your posts are unlikely to receive much reach (if any). This, unfortunately, means that your posts could be really a big waste of your and our time because no one is actually seeing them. If you think about it clearly – you may actually also be doing your brand reach an injustice by posting too much low-value/hard-sell content because some social media channels penalise all your posts’ reach by ghosting them.
In a time where everything’s a flavor of the month, and it’s hard to have any sort of longevity, I’ve been able to sell records still. I want to be the guy that stands out there and says thank you personally to everyone. And I try after my shows and kick it because I want to genuinely say thanks.
Author: Aesop Rock
Look at implementing the following strategies as a way forward:
- OFFER VALUE
- Be generous.
- Write a blog, newsletter, white paper or article that educates, inspires and adds value.
- Make a ‘how-to’ video that you know your audience would enjoy and share it liberally on all your channels.
- Offer a free mini-workshop, podcast or webinar on a subject that your audience wrestles with.
- DEMO, DON’T SELL
- Instead of telling your customers how smart and great you are, show them in a video while teaching them something new.
- Ask your clients to share a video testimonial with your audience telling them how much you and your team helped them with their problems.
- Videos – especially live videos are a great way to encourage audience participation.
- Another way to demo and not sell? Showcase your management team in a behind the scenes relatability ‘reality show’. Facebook Live and Instagram Stories are great media channels to use for this.
- Showcase your knowledge of your customer’s pain points or typical barriers to entering by presenting them with a ‘teaching video’.
- INVOLVE YOUR AUDIENCE IN YOUR LIFE.
- Involve your audience in your social media channels
- An audience doesn’t enjoy being talked to, they would prefer to be engaged. Ask them questions that require an answer. Inspire them to greater heights. Educate them and elevate them to the next level.
- Interaction and engagement equal success on all social media channels. It makes the algorithms happy, it makes your audience happy and it will make for a healthier brand and thus a happier you.
- When you create content which is valuable to your audience you create a ‘sharable’ atmosphere on your channel – thus creating a warm and welcoming vibe on your channel, but when it’s all about you, yours, your money, what you make and what you do – it creates a blocked one-way channel that lives in lack and is basically kept in the dark by the channel masters.
- Showcasing your audience on your channels as people who support you or do good in their own right will also go a long way in building your relationship with your audience
- 80:20 RATIO
- Structure your social media content with the 80:20 rule. 80% fun, value, education, inspiration, information and entertainment and 20% sales. It’s ok to include some hard selling messages and ask for a sale – but it shouldn’t be your first go-to and it should most definitely not be all hard-assed, in your face and down grill approach. Approach your sales with a value approach – ethical, valuable, insightful and solving a problem through the gift of your product or services.
At the end of the day – your audience is free to choose. They don’t need to be on your page – they are there because they choose to be. If they are family or friends – they are there in support of you – and as for the rest of them – they were, at some stage interested in what you had to say. If you’re going to keep them there – you need to add value to their lives and the only way to do that is to honestly engage and give of yourself and your business in an honest and approachable way. NO HARD-SELL, JUST ADD VALUE.
If you’re like to carry on this conversation with us – drop us a line at robyn@wordonthestreetmedia.co.za or contact me via 064 135 7919.