“Nobody wants to be sold to when hanging out on social media” is a popular statement in marketing and ecommerce.
When you think about it, it makes sense: social media is a place to connect with people and share opinions about topics that matter to you.
You want to be social, not look at a stream of promotional posts.
However, the data speaks differently.
When we first talked about social commerce, we mentioned the insanely fast-growing share of mobile usage in ecommerce.
But it gets even better.
Research from eMarketer shows that just over one-third of social media users have never purchased an item through social media. For those that have, Facebook seems to be the preferred platform, followed by Instagram and YouTube:
In fact, social commerce is at a point where we’re even able to assign an average order value to each of the channels. Even better, we can tailor our social media strategy based on it.
In other words—your customers don’t mind being sold to.
They mind when what’s being sold to them is irrelevant and when it takes them out of a social media experience they typically enjoy.
In this guide, we’ll go into what makes selling on social so difficult, and the way you can make it easier—and win new sales on social media consistently.
The challenges of the traditional social commerce sales funnel
When your potential customers are researching their purchase, their actions are highly intentional.
For example, they search for prices, reviews, and comparisons, and they click on relevant search results. They exchange their email address for a discount, and then they click on the button in the email they receive.
In each moment, they know exactly what to expect from the next step and the entire experience feels quite organic.
With social media, however, your audience wants to catch up with friends, join new conversations, and get inspired.
So when they come across a product they like and might want to buy… Leaving the platform they’re on in order to complete the purchase isn’t ideal.
This breaks the user experience that brought—and kept—that person on the platform in the first place. This is even more of a problem with the full-screen, immersive experience that comes with Facebook video and Instagram stories.
Furthermore, the majority of social media users access these platforms using their smartphones—for Facebook, this is 3 times more than using desktop and laptop computers.
In other words, if the mobile version of your website isn’t up to scratch, you’ll actually do yourself a disservice because:
- 1 in 3 people will abandon the purchase if they cannot find the info they need to make a decision
- 67% of shoppers are more inclined to do business with a website that is mobile ready
- Even a 1 second delay in page loading could downgrade customer satisfaction
Sending your customers elsewhere to get the product that otherwise fits so nicely into their social feeds creates too many steps in the purchase journey.
As a result, you might be leaving a lot of money on the table. Customers have listed easy payment system and the ability to buy directly through social media among the top reasons to buy from a brand through their social media channel:
Luckily, we have a solution—jumper, our social commerce platform.
The 2-step social media sales funnel that converts followers into customers
When we created jumper, we wanted to make it easy for your customers to buy from you (almost) anywhere on the internet.
More precisely, we wanted to remove the roadblocks between the moment they discover your product and when they’re ready to order it from you.
In other words, we reduced the number of steps it takes to purchase on social media down to only two:
- First, there is an action that shows purchase intent, such as a comment or clicking on a button or a link
- Then, an automated messaging sequence takes the customer through the selection of colors, amount, delivery address, and payment through direct messages
No complicated forms, going through multiple websites, or any extra effort for the customer—or you.
For this social commerce strategy to work, there are several key factors that need to be a part of it.
The depth of product variations
The only thing more annoying than not being able to easily purchase a product is purchasing a wrong version of it.
For this direct, 2-step sales funnel to work, a customer should be able to select their desired color, size, amount, or any other variation without having to jump through hoops.
By the time they’re ready to complete the purchase, there should be no confusion as to what will be in the package they receive from you.
Automated messaging
By making this process completely automated, you’ll benefit in two ways:
- You won’t have to spend any extra time in your day to sell more through social media
- Your customers will get immediate responses and purchase confirmation instead of waiting for you to be online
This also ensures that the conversation is specific to the highly intentional activity that triggered it, such as a hashtag you’ve chosen for a specific product. On top of that, the purchase can happen within just minutes from the moment your customers first saw your product.
A personalized experience
Even though this is about an automated sales funnel on social media, there’s no need to abandon your brand voice, style of communication, or language.
You have control over everything—even the way you name your colors or the emojis you use. From product images through to maximum quantity a customer can buy, this process should be about what works for you and makes the purchase easy for the customer.
Setting up your jumper account and selling on social
Here’s some awesome news: a jumper account is completely free, and your first 10 sales are on us.
Want some more good news? You can literally start selling your first in the next few minutes.
To make this happen, we’ll take you through the following steps:
- Creating your jumper account
- Configuring your account essentials
- Adding and personalizing products
- Setting up your logistics
Make sure to grab a free jumper account here so that you can work through the steps as we go.
Step 1: Creating your jumper account
To create your jumper account, simply click on the Get started button at the top right corner. Select Facebook, Google, or email for your account creation:
After you’ve entered your name, choose what you want to use jumper for, such as product sales or restaurant ordering:
Once you’ve done that and also entered your business name, there are a few more steps done. Here, it’s time to enter your product category, your business location, and your mobile number:
As you reach the final screen, you’ll be taken to your jumper dashboard.
Step 2: Configuring your account essentials
For us to be able to do the work for you and make sure your money reaches you, we’ll need some more information.
From your dashboard, first go to Fill up and complete your business details. Some information here will be filled in with what you’ve already entered, so you can now add your logo, support email, and a business address:
Back on your dashboard, click Connect payment gateways. This is where you can change your country and currency settings, as well as connect your Stripe and/or PayPal accounts. You can also add manual payment methods:
If you don’t have Stripe or PayPal account yet, they are easy to create, too.
Finally, click Connect your social media in Integrations to connect any channel you want to use for sales, such as Facebook, Messenger, and YouTube. This is as easy as clicking the button next to your desired channel.
Step 3: Adding and personalizing products and the process
This is the step that makes your products buyable.
From your dashboard, click Add your first product. This is the screen you’ll see next:
From here, you should do the following:
- Add an image (ideally in 2:1 ratio)
- Add a product name
- Select the hashtag that will trigger the sale
- Write a product description
- Add attributes like color and size, as well as add an image for each
- Enter weight, price, and stock for each variation of the product
- Decide on providing the space for customizations
- Maximum quantity a shopper can order
Try entering a few products, after which you can change your messages by clicking Personalize your chatbot messages.
This section allows you to personalize every single touchpoint and message your customer will see in the process, such as address selection, greeting messages, payment directions, and more:
Step 4: Setting up your logistics
Finally, you need to make selling with jumper possible by setting up your tax and shipping options. Click Configure your tax & shipping, then click on Add new zone:
In this section, you can start by selecting a country and then individual states (such as counties and regions of a country), after which you can click Save.
Then, set up your tax rates and shipping rates for each zone you’ve created by using the buttons on the right. You can go into detail by defining a default shipping rate or a rate that depends on the weight or price of the order.
When you’re done, all you now need to do is share your products on social media and state the hashtag that needs to be used in order to purchase the product. Then, you’re ready to rock!
How to make the most of your social media sales funnel
The final thing that’s left to do is driving meaningful conversations and engagement on your social channels.
The key word here is meaningful; this is how you’ll build a loyal audience and customers that will be happy to buy again, as well as spread the word about a great experience they’ve had shopping from you.
Put video to great use
Video is already all the hype in the marketing world, but we have a reason to mention it here: it’s proven to influence internet users to purchase products more than any other format.
Video is an incredible format because it can be used for essentially all purposes, from quick behind-the-scenes, expiring videos on Instagram stories through to engaging, scroll-stopping Facebook video ads.
Think about the unique scenes of your products and business you can showcase through video and start with a simple video made on your smartphone. Over time, you can get more advanced and creative!
Here are some ideas you can use to create videos:
- Showcase of your product in real life
- Behind-the-scenes of your business
- Showcasing your products from all angles
- Educational, demo video of getting the most out of a product
Run a social media contest
Contents on Instagram and Facebook are an amazing tool for building new audiences and warming up existing ones.
They drive hyper-specific user activity because they’re typically focused on a specific niche, and they help you spread the word among similar audiences.
On top of that, this highly engaged audience is the perfect one to later on sell to—which you can easily do with jumper and the use of specific hashtags.
So what is is that matters when you’re creating a contest? We’ve covered this for Instagram in-depth, but here are a few key points to keep in mind:
- Make sure the entry method matches your goals: for example, if you want more fresh eyes on your content, tagging friends is ideal, whereas using a branded hashtag would be perfect for brand awareness
- Make your visuals and caption clear, engaging, and attractive: your graphics should stand out in the sea of other posts, while your caption should be easy to skim while providing all the details on the rules of the contest and the tone of your brand
- Use user-generated content: UGC is proven to entice trust, relatability, and engagement, so make sure you’re using it as the opportunity to spotlight your products in real-life
Fire up your social media impact with paid ads on Facebook
Facebook’s capability to target specific audiences and behaviors is what can help you reach your potential customers with even a small advertising budget to begin with.
While Facebook advertising may seem slightly overwhelming, especially if you’re only getting started, there are a few things you can do to ease into it and see results fast:
- Use Audience Insights to analyze and understand the demographic makeup and behavior of your target audience on Facebook
- Get familiar with all the available Facebook ad campaign types so that you can choose the one that will give you the highest chance of hitting your sales goals
- Dive into the available formats for Facebook ads, such as video, images, carousels, and collection, and look for brands and examples you like while scrolling through your Facebook
- Leverage the learnings you found in Audience Insights earlier and start creating your audiences to advertise to; start with some basic targeting and try some advanced options later on
Drive social conversations that convert into sales
Remember what we mentioned earlier—people don’t come to social media with the intention to buy.
But they sure like to buy once they’re there.
This means it’s up to you to create meaningful conversations, spark engagement in comments on your social posts, and show the personality behind your brand.
To achieve this, don’t forget to go beyond just featuring your products—show the story of why you do what you do, the process of creating your products, and the happiness of your existing customers.
And to make sure these conversations turn into sales, don’t forget to create a free jumper account and start selling right away.