5 Actionable Tips to Improve Your Sales & Marketing Skills

You have heard of body language and the importance it has over understanding basic cues, haven’t you?

Well, we introduce you to the body language of the Internet where everything is powered through content to attract and engage all types of audience. The Internet personas of your audience are different than what they’re in real life – they’re not vague and can tell a lot about your brand’s energy with a couple of clicks.

To lure your audience and convert them into customers, you’d not only have to think like them but also act upon their interests and affiliations. The goal is to provide your customers with a solution for their efforts – that solution has to be efficient, time-saving and of course, cost-effective.

According to a report published by Econsultancy, social media – one of the five leading marketing channels – is an ardent hub for creating generic sales, improving your brand’s ROI and engaging with users at a large scale.

Mentioned below are 5 tips that will help you to act upon your marketing skills to improve your sales.

Don’t Let Millennials Go Away

You’re perhaps not using the right bait to lure your customers in. In order to improve your sales, you have to first assess your brand’s ROI strategy and consider the demographics of your targeted audience.

The age bracket of 18 - 29 is perhaps the most lucrative for your business. Millennials are everywhere – they’re busily browsing Facebook while they’re at work and checking out events to make plans for the weekend or they’re scrolling through their Instagram feed to find out start-ups and vendors for their upcoming corporate event.

Targeting millennials might prove to be a great marketing strategy since half of them are looking for monetary expenditures to make them feel better while the other half is looking for out-of-the-box B2B strategies on LinkedIn for a better business plan.

In order to target your audience, you need to work on your content and incorporate explicit SEO strategies. Hashtags and keywords will help you to analyze your competition on Instagram, Facebook and search engines as well, and will keep you updated regarding the interests of your dynamic audience.

Target Social Media Influencers

It is a well-known fact that brand referrals, buyer testimonials and product reviews help to encourage a buyer towards a purchase which is apparently a remarkable strategy for improving sales. Social media influencers know where it’s all at – people refer to their favourite personalities to know the time of the day, and this isn’t mere exaggeration.

Influencer marketing has the capability to increase a brand’s ROI by 600% which is why it’s better not to underestimate the power of social media and the promotional personas of these personalities. Twitter is leading with its influencer marketing strategies – reports saw a 40% increase in sales after a compelling tweet from an influencer which is not only good for user engagement but for business as well.

Instagram is another hub that leverages thousands of top-tier and micro-influencers. In 2014, Instagram helped to boost at least 214% of sales from the time when it was founded in 2011 with the help of influencers alone.

This helped the brand to generate at least $220 million in revenue which wouldn’t have been possible without hiring and leveraging products to influencers on social media.

Repost User-Generated Content

Reposting user-generated content is perhaps one of the major routes to opt for while looking for incentives to offer to your leads. A study found it to be at least 70% more lucrative than forced advertising – mainly because of the portrayal of positive experiences and relatable content.

Forced advertising seems like a major turn-off nowadays, especially when the reviews and content is paid for exclusively. In order to instill trust and authenticity in your brand, you need to repost reviews from your previous customers on social media.

These reviews aren’t just endorsements – they’re your ultimate goal to retain the loyalty of your previous customers and attract those that still doubt your brand legacy and product authenticity. You can repost pictures of your users and reviews from your clients as testimonials. You can also incentivize their testimonials by issuing a user-generated contest or giveaway.

Increase Your Brand Visibility

Now that you’ve established a social media persona, there’s no need to stay behind when you can boost and put yourself out in the race. While competition can demotivate you at some point, there is no reason why you can’t boost your presence and brand’s visibility in social media with paid advertising strategies.

In order to ensure a global outreach, you need to leverage your brand so that people can find you in their feed as suggestions and consequently, contribute to your sales. Investing in video campaigns or podcasts has also helped brands to engage users and improve sales.

For instance, LoveBook, a gift publishing platform, achieved a 57% increase in sales by curating video content and advertising via Facebook.

Marketing through ephemeral content via Instagram and Snapchat also helps – people tend to keep a check on content that lingers on for only 24 hours and then disappears. YOOX, an online fashion retailer experienced a massive outreach and global return in sales by advertising ephemeral content through Instagram.

Event-Related Promotional Gimmicks

Capitalize on the year’s seasons by creating topical and event-related promotional gimmicks. Launch sales and discount codes relevant to important dates to commemorate and keep up with seasonal sensitivity.

Another marketing strategy to go by is to accept that pictures might do more justice to your brand’s visibility and outreach as compared to other content.

They meant when they said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Approximately 70% of users are more liable to adhere to visual content and therefore, find pictures worth responding to than text.

People don’t want to see images that aren’t appealing to them, even if those pictures are meant to be formal and exclusive for an event. For instance, brands can now get their Facebook event photo size tailored in order to attract a larger audience for maximum visibility and prominence.

In order to help your audience find you on various social media platforms, consider using the same ‘handle’ for maximum outreach. Consumers tend to remember your brand from your usernames, and therefore, tend to associate it as your trademark. Try to keep your username as simple as possible and adhere to your brand’s domain name, irrespective of the social media channels.