These days, you can’t deny the importance of social media for business. There’s no better platform to gather insight and feedback directly from your core audience so you can expand your market base and even boost sales. To better understand the role social media marketing plays in my business’ selling process, here are some key points to keep in mind:

1. Social media is a key touchpoint for building relationships with consumers 

Social media helps you communicate and engage with your customers. It makes you more relatable and accessible as a brand, enabling you to collect and gather valuable insight to understand consumer behavior better.

2. Social media can build better consumer awareness about our businesses

Through social media, customers can learn more about a business across multiple touchpoints. It often serves as the initial point of introduction for customers as they conduct their research regarding a brand. This is often the initial stage of the sales funnel, the first exposure.

3. Social media can help educate customers, thus helping build customer loyalty

Social media can help inform and influence customers as they share content on their platforms. Bear in mind that anything you publish on social media has to be strategic, carefully considered, and planned to achieve the best results. When you take the time to do this, you can easily educate customers about your business and develop authority in your niche. In doing so, you build trust and rapport with your audience and humanize your brand.

4. Social media empowers customers to engage with your business

As more customers begin to trust and build rapport with your business, you gain people with a positive affinity for your brand, which improves sales. Social media makes it easier for them to engage with your posts, interact with other followers and users, and even share their personal experiences with your business.

5. Social media helps you collect and gather valuable data

Gathering insight from your customers improves your ability to address their concerns and remain relevant. Learning more about what they like and don’t like; what matters to them and what doesn’t; even how to best communicate to them—all these are possible through social media. Social media has built-in mechanisms that let you track important data that can help you improve the way you communicate and sell to your target audience, ultimately helping you grow.

The bottom line is that social media is now an intrinsic part of my sales process and it will continue to be an important aspect of my funnel.

Hope my answer helps! If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment below. You can also join the conversation on Twitter or LinkedIn to discuss this further.