Dogital Marketing

6 Facts About Social Media Selling That Will Grow Your Hustle faster than your competitors

In this article, we are going to talk about how to successfully sell your products on social media in South Africa. This is very important for any small business or hustler to build a reputable sales system on social media where you can get leads, convert them to clients, and grow your marketing infrastructure using free digital tools provided by social media platforms.

In South Africa, the eCommerce phenomenon has caught momentum mainly with the younger entrepreneurs, tech heads, and those businesses that have brick-and-mortar stores most of which tend to be chain retail stores.

Most small to medium businesses tend to overlook this due to its prestigious aura or simply because their clients are not necessarily looking for their products online. This on its own is a problem because until the business provides this option for its clients they will never bother looking for it online.

However, this does not mean they are not looking for similar services online as they may as well be looking for them and finding other suppliers instead of your business meaning you are being left behind by the competition.

There is a whole slang category of businesses titled “hustles” in South Africa which are run by the so-called “hustlers” and most of these have interesting stories that can produce another article on their own. This article will be talking mostly about these kinds of businesses and more.

What Is Social Selling, Exactly?

When businesses choose to share and sell their goods on a social network, this is known as social Selling or social media marketing. They then use that platform to reach out to their target audience and sell to them via social media rather than a website.

The trend of selling on social media in South Africa is gaining traction. Evolution in the Digital space moves at a breakneck pace due to the demand for faster, more convenient, and more affordable features to advance commerce and human interaction. 

Exciting Facts Of Social Media

According to the tech blog TalkWalker, “the average daily time spent on the Internet in South Africa is 9 hours and 22 minutes! Out of these, an average of 3 hours and 10 minutes are spent on social media.”

 Askafrika conducted a study that found out that business promotions have taken hold on social media with personal care products and electronics coming with the highest percentages.

Ask Afrika research found that:

A total of 82 percent of respondents are seeking special offers on grocery products, of which:

It is clear that social media is the hot ground to find your next customer and this is shown by these statistics that your future client is actually this moment on their mobile device hooked on one social network or more.

It is also important to note that more customers would likely check on social media for confirmation about a product or service before making a purchase so it is crucial for an entrepreneur or hustler to build your strategy knowing exactly where you are going and who you want to go with.

If you want to stay ahead of the competition on social media and capture your customer attention and satisfy their constantly moving preferences, you’ll need to do more. You must take your digital marketing efforts to the next level by beginning to build a strategy for your social media selling.

You want to make buying your goods as simple as possible and as excitingly inviting for your customers. How do you go about doing it? You put yourself where they spend the majority of their time – on social media sites, surfing and conversing.

Here are a few things to know and have when you want to start selling on social media

#1. Have a Niche of focus

Social media works very efficiently when you know exactly who you are talking to, you will then know why you are talking to them and what you are saying to them.

You need to understand exactly what is it that you are selling, to whom are you selling it to and what are the main problems

they face that will force them to need that product or service you are selling.

The next step is to ask yourself where are these people hanging out on social media because some might prefer this over other for particular reasons.

For example, if you want to sell lunch boxes for a monthly fee, you definitely need to be talking to young mothers who mostly will be on Facebook and WhatsApp. You might not necessarily get them to pay attention to your message on Twitter or Instagram.

If you want to sell sneakers though, you want to talk to the young people who care much about their comfortable look and you might not necessarily manage to capture those on Pinterest or LinkedIn but Instagram and Facebook might be your best channels.

All in all, you need to understand your products well so that you know where to get your audiences.

#2. Create A relevant Business Page

It is quite shocking to me the number of hustlers that are posting on different social media groups about what they are selling trying to get clients yet when you follow these posts, they actually do not have a business page, really?

Many start-up entrepreneurs or hustlers as they are known in South Africa do not bother to create a business page for their hustle.

Instead, they would post on their personal page which will be mixed up with posts from their drinking buddies, their family gatherings, and all other irrelevant personal business that has nothing to do with the hustle.

The best thing to do is to create a FREE business page no matter the size or nature of your hustle, build a page for it, and make sure you keep posting on it regularly.

Mostly all of the available social media channels have a business suite; WhatsApp business, Facebook Business Suite, Instagram for Business, Twitter for Business, Linked In Business, Pinterest for Business, etc.

#3. Connect before converting

Also, more important is to understand that Social media is a space for connecting first before it becomes a marketplace. In other words, you should always remember to connect first before you convert people into customers because nobody likes being sold to including you.

The first generation of social media platforms was more about connecting people across vast distances, some were even started as specifically to connect people sharing the same interests, space, or purpose.

Take for example Facebook, it was originally created to allow Harvard students to use their “edu” email addresses and photos to connect with other students at the school.

It evolved from there on as Mark Zuckerberg, a student then, saw an opportunity to bring the existing social experience of college onto the Internet.

Today Facebook is one of the largest advertising and e-commerce platforms but it has not shed its social connect intent and it actually is still the core feature on its algorithm.

So, for your business to quickly make its mark on social media you need to build the value of connecting to your strategy and your content must reflect this at all costs. People tend to follow what connects to them at a higher level of emotional relevance than what they need.

So, do not depend on your own assumptions that people need your services or products because even though they might need them they still won’t buy from you until you connect with them at a simple level of humanity.

And if you do not recognize this fact chances are there is a ton of other hustlers doing exactly what you doing but better than you and are able to connect.

#4. First Impressions Last

What are Customers saying

Many small businesses (startups, hustlers, home businesses, etc.)  in South Africa are now using social media as a point of contact with their customers, or they are trying.

Social media offers a ton of opportunities for small businesses to present quite a professional image that makes them look established and well-organized. Unfortunately, the opposite is true in that it also can quickly show the business off as a fake, a one-man show, and an irrelevant player in any particular niche.

That happens in various ways and is very easy to pick up from the first impressions of the business’s social media page layout even before one digs in a bit more. How you set your profile, cover page, about info, links, cover image, logo, business info and some like Facebook will include your email and website links.

The next will be the content you present on your site which is more important even than your adverts because this is where people begin to gain an understanding of your dedication and work ethic.

If your page has random posts of your specials or products that are constantly interrupted by random pictures and recitals of your weekend escapades, church sermons, or chain prayer messages, you stand a big chance of annoying the viewer and sending a message that you are not to be trusted as you obviously are not by the look of things on your page.

So, pay attention to what you put on your interface and especially what goes to your newsfeed, you need to be deliberately clear about the kind of brand you want to be and follow that with clarity and consistency.

#5. Value Proposition is more than what you say

Many small businesses are solopreneurs which means one person is running the whole operation and probably budget issues are very restricting.

This does not mean you cannot represent your business in a professional manner though because social media platforms actually have tools and features that allow anyone to present whatever image they want to present to their audiences.

The most relevant fact is that everyone on social media had to start from zero without fans, friends, and followers. They had to build a story, a brand and use the tools available at their disposal to build this story out.

This means anyone has the same equal chance as those with mega numbers of audiences following them.

It is even more interesting for those starting from scratch because social media platforms have evolved so much in trying to make their platforms more accommodating and supportive to everyone. 

As a startup or small business you can build a pretty convincing brand without spending a cent by just using consistency, simplicity, and clarity in your communication.

#6. Giving Value is the best kind of selling

By virtue of the name “social media,” it implies its social nature which means it is just a digital version of the social area of humanity.

So, do you think you can go around the whole day meeting new people and shoving your products on their faces trying to get them to buy this or that?

Obviously, there are those local hustlers who have made this their day-to-day existence but even those who know when to connect to people and when to sell.

Social media as well as a space that prioritizes connections, and value, then commerce even though commerce has ideally overtaken the other functions but people joined social media to connect and not to be sold to remember that.

You stand a better chance of growing your social media reach when you add value to others on social media than when you are selling. If you spend more time giving value by either commenting, liking, or sharing other people’s content, chances are you begin to come across as a genuine authority in whatever topic you chose to focus on.

Gradually you build resonance with people to the sense that more begin following your other digital platforms to see more of your content and that is how you begin to have long-term customers who rely on what you say and you become an authority on your niche.

Conclusion

If you have made your mind up to begin selling on social media, or you had already started, I hope you have learned a thing or two from this article or at least got an idea of where to focus your energy.

Take away the following if you remember nothing else from this article: Right now, your potential buyers are shopping on social media. If they aren’t looking at your goods, they are most likely purchasing from your rivals. Please don’t let this happen!

FourZero Digital was founded to assist small start-ups, hustlers, and local businesses in South Africa to begin building their digital marketing infrastructures and we believe understanding your social media strategy is key.  We have a couple of free services that you can benefit from if you get in touch with us today.

If you have any additional questions or tips about social media selling that we didn’t address, please leave them in the comments section or send us an email or reach out to us on our Facebook page FourZeroDigital.

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