In today’s episode, I’m going to share with you how to get more sales from social media.
If you feel like you’re putting in a lot of time but not seeing a lot of sales results, this is going to be a really helpful episode for you.
Let’s dive on in!
Before we jump into specifically talking about getting sales on social media, I want to give a little shoutout to Lisa Twohig who submitted a question over at tashcorbin.com/question that related to connection and getting sales on social media.
If you would like to check Lisa out, you can find out more about her at lisatcoaching.com.
Instead of dedicating a whole episode to Lisa’s question, I thought I would quickly answer it at the start of today’s episode, seeing as it’s something I’ve already talked about several times before.
Lisa asked for clarification on using your Facebook personal profile versus your Facebook page to get sales on social media.
My stance on this one is pretty straightforward… A profile is not a scalable channel on social media.
Unless you have a creator profile, using a profile to create a business is actually against Facebook’s terms and conditions.
Having seen dozens and dozens of people lose their entire Facebook presence because they did too many business promotions on their personal profile, means that I’m definitely someone who would advise you to be more careful and focus on using your Facebook page instead.
If you have a post on your Facebook profile that does really well and you want to put it in front of larger audiences, there’s actually no opportunity for you to do that with paid advertising (at this point in time).
That makes the profile unscalable.
Hopefully, that answers your question, Lisa.
I know that it’s currently being taught as a strategy because profiles get more reach. But actually, if you put time and energy into creating a Facebook page that gets lots of engagement and really working out what posts do best on your Facebook page, eventually you will see more reach on a page than you will on a profile.
What I recommend that you do is start as you mean to go on.
You want a presence on social media that is completely scalable and aligned with where you want to go in your business. Therefore, I recommend starting as you mean to go on… create that Facebook page and really focus on getting that to work, rather than diving into lots of different strategies because certain things are preferenced at certain times by the Facebook algorithm.
We saw this same problem happen a few years ago when everyone was teaching people to have a Facebook group rather than promoting on their Facebook page.
Whilst group posts were being preferenced at the time, that changed in early 2020.
That meant that people who had Facebook groups were getting less and less reach in their own communities and were struggling to get in front of their audience.
Again, it’s not scalable because you have no way of creating an ad that reaches more people inside that community.
Once your group gets over a certain number of members, you no longer have access to the @everyone tag that is so hot right now.
That is being given as a reason why people should still be creating and building Facebook groups. But actually, the first place to focus and really get nailed is your Facebook page. Full stop. That’s what we need to get working.
If you’re struggling to get things working on a Facebook page, then using sideways tactics or trying to beat the algorithm through using other strategies actually won’t fix the core problem.
The core problem is that your content is not creating enough engagement.
Regardless of whether you use a profile, a Facebook group or a page, ultimately, if your content is not engaging for your audience, your reach is going to go down.
What I recommend is that you focus on your Facebook page and really develop the algorithm in your favour by creating high-engagement content. Therefore, it’s almost like you’re creating an infallible plan.
If at any time, page reach goes down again, you have access to ads and other strategies to get that content in front of larger and larger audiences. It’s a very scalable place for you to be focusing your energy on Facebook.
I hope that answers your question, Lisa. As I mentioned, if you want to find out more about Lisa, you can do so here: lisatcoaching.com
Now let’s talk about actually making sales from social media…
The first thing that I want to point out is that there’s a lot of talk and training out there that would have you believe that making sales on social media is a simple matter of reaching more people and having better-converting offers.
That is the outside of the client attraction process – reaching people and getting that conversion.
In actual fact, on social media, the number one driver of sales sits in between those two things.
Yes, we want to be reaching larger and larger audiences. But we need to also nurture a relationship with that audience, generate leads out of that audience and then make sales.
That’s where a lot of people fall down.
We get caught up in this mistaken belief that we just need to reach more people and have our offers convert far more effectively.
We get very fixated on reach strategies, which can see you being on multiple platforms and spreading yourself thin. You fall for every single “if you’re not doing this, you’re leaving money on the table” fear-based strategy that is out there, and you get very caught up in watching webinars that teach you how to have reels go viral or how to get more eyes on your content.
You get very reach-orientated when it comes to your social media strategy. Then you’re really fixated on getting conversions.
You might then be convinced that you need to:
- Hire a copywriter
- Create better sales pages
- Create better messaging
- Write a better offer
- Go high ticket
- Go low ticket
- Have funnels
- And so on…
These are very conversion-orientated strategies that don’t necessarily create great sales when you’re working with a very cold audience.
If we just focus on reach and conversion, what we’re trying to do is get cold audience members to buy from us quickly.
That’s the exception, it’s not the rule.
In most cases, people don’t just see your stuff on social media and then instantly decide to buy from you. We need to develop a relationship.
That’s why reach, nurture, lead generation and conversion are the four key steps of the client attraction process… because we need to build it by the rule, not by the exception.
The only part of your client attraction process that has a direct correlation with the number of sales is lead generation.
You can absolutely 10x your reach on social media. But does that mean you’ll 10x your conversions? In most cases, no.
You can 10x the number of people who are on your mailing list or the number of people who are engaging with your content. But does that mean you’ll 10x your sales? Not necessarily.
Lead gen is the one part of your client attraction process that has a direct relationship with sales.
If you 10x your leads, you will 10x your results – especially when you start to get your business working at scale.
Rather than getting really reach-centric, you want to create a balanced client attraction process. You want to put far more energy and attention into one-to-one nurture strategies and one-to-one lead generation strategies on social media if you want to make more sales from your social media presence.
If at the moment, you are not focused on making more sales from your social media presence – you’re fully booked out and you need to leverage – this is not going to be a particularly helpful strategy for you at this stage of your journey.
But if you’re still not making consistent sales from your social media presence, and you don’t have a reliable flow of leads into your business, then the thing that I would recommend that you do is really focus on one-to-one nurture strategies, and one-to-one lead generation strategies on social media.
What do I mean by that?
It can be as simple as setting aside 30 minutes a week for one-to-one nurture, and 30 minutes a week for one-to-one lead generation.
Woman making sales on social media in business start-up
In your 30 minutes of nurture time, it can be as simple as experimenting and finding the best one-to-one nurture strategy that works effectively for you and is doing its job in your audience.
Then do a similar thing for one-to-one lead generation.
When I first started my business, I had 30 minutes a day focused on one-to-one social media nurture strategies, because I had time available to me and I was very focused on ensuring that I was getting the sales in to really prove that people saw value in what it was that I had to offer.
Every day for 30 minutes, I would find ways to help people for free on social media.
I wouldn’t give away lots and lots of free calls with me. That strategy didn’t work for me. I did experiment with that in the early days of my business, but I actually found a paid single session worked far better than a free one for me.
For 30 minutes a day, I would go and find people in Facebook groups and on my own social media channels who had problems that I could solve, and I would put time and energy into helping them solve those problems.
I would simply solve their problems!
If someone were in a Facebook group asking how to structure a blog so that it’s doing its job, I would go in the comments and write some tips on how to structure a blog so that it is doing its job.
Then I would take that information and I would also create an article or a video that I could put on my own content channels that answered that same question.
Going into Facebook communities and my own social media channels, asking people what they were stuck with and then helping them immediately, not only created lots of really strong relationships online but also gave me all the information I needed to have a content plan that lasted me for two years.
Every time I helped someone, I found another specific question that they were asking about or another thing that they needed help with that I could create some useful educational content around.
Finding ways to have access to those people who are most interested in your work, and who are asking questions about things that you can help with, is a critical part of a social media strategy.
What that generally means for a lot of people is that they end up going onto far too many social media platforms. They decide that there are not enough people who are engaging with them on Facebook, so they need to be on Instagram, TikTok, or LinkedIn.
What you end up doing is going back to being very reach-orientated.
Spreading yourself across multiple platforms is a reach strategy. It’s not actually a nurture strategy.
Rather than jumping from platform to platform, what I would recommend you do is really focus on one platform and create a one-to-one nurture and one-to-one lead generation strategy that is going to be super effective for you.
Choose a strategy that is within your wheelhouse and works for your audience, and is therefore going to create far more leads and directly correlate to creating far more sales.
We want to spend time on social media proactively nurturing one-to-one relationships, and proactively qualifying people to see if they are a good fit to work with you.
This comes from a range of different pieces of content.
It could be asking questions on social media. Maybe it’s doing an Ask Me Anything post where people can submit questions to you and you’re responding to those questions and developing a one-to-one relationship.
Something that I love to do is to look through my social media posts – whether that be on my page or in Facebook groups – and look for people who are consistently commenting and asking questions, and I’ll offer to do something or help them with something free of charge.
I’ll say something along the lines of, “Hey, you’ve been really helpful with me. I’m so grateful for all of the comments and questions that you post on socials. Is it okay if I send you a DM to offer something as a thank you?”
Most people say yes, so I then send them a DM saying, “Thank you for all your comments. I’d love to help you move forward with whatever you’re stuck with right now. Why don’t you let me know what you’re working on in your business and where you find you’re getting stuck, and I can help you work out what the next focal point should be for you?”
Lots of people take me up on that offer. A portion of them are great leads and are interested in working with me further.
That’s why they’re so engaged on my social channels.
That’s why they’re asking lots of questions… they are looking for someone to help them to grow their business.
If I help them to grow their business, then we’re creating that relationship. If they find the strategies that I share in the things that we talk about helpful, then they’re far more likely to then be interested in potentially working together in the future.
One of the things I will say about this strategy is that not everyone is going to be a lead instantly. A lot of people get caught up in these ‘get rich quick’ strategies and they flash and then crash. Rather than just doing this once-off here and there, we’re looking to create a consistent flow of leads into your business.
How can you consistently engage in one-to-one nurture strategies and one-to-one qualifying people into lead generation?
If that means setting aside a half hour a week for nurture, and a half hour a week for lead generation, that’s an hour a week of just focusing on one-to-one relationships on social media.
I have been leading some people through this in a mastermind in the Take Off program, and we’ve been experimenting with different one-to-one nurture strategies and one-to-one lead generation strategies.
It has been fascinating to see how much people actually love and adore this process when they see that people are actually really excited to hear from them. People are asking them questions, they’re having far more direct message conversations on social media than they ever have before, and they’re gaining so much insight from their audience.
They’re receiving so many requests from people wanting to continue working with them WITHOUT them having to be salesy or pushy.
Simply because they’re building a relationship and helping them with something.
Even just experimenting with having that time set aside for a few weeks and playing with different ways that you can develop those one-to-one relationships, I believe is a spectacular use of your time to really get that nailed.
If you’re doing it every single week, I believe it really results in that consistent flow of leads and those consistent sales coming in from social media.
For most people who aren’t yet having consistent $8K to $10K months, this is the activity that they could add in and swap out a bunch of other stuff that would get them to that consistent income.
Rather than being on TikTok and doing reels, if you take an hour a week out of your reach strategies and put that into one-to-one nurture and one-to-one lead gen strategies, you will make far more sales in exactly the same amount of time.
Hopefully, this has excited you to experiment with some nurture and lead-generation strategies on your social media channels.
If you are looking for more insights on how to get those leads and sales coming in from Facebook, I have a fabulous free training for you.
It’s my $0 Facebook Marketing Strategy training.
This free training will help you with a detailed plan on how to grow your Facebook presence and get those leads and sales coming.
Check it out for free at tashcorbin.com/zero.
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Heart-Centered Business Podcast.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
