Using Social Media to Sell Products

Why haven’t the rules of using social media to sell products online been defined?

From what I’ve heard, social media doesn’t sell products – PEOPLE do.  But I do believe that leveraging the many social media platforms and their useful functions can certainly push products much quicker and inexpensively than traditional online marketing techniques can.

I believe there are three key ways one can use social media to sell a product, outlined below.  These are some assumptions, understanding the concepts of social media and its interactive nature and using them to sell a product, so please comment if you have any ideas.

Personality

Social Media is a highly personal platform.  While many companies choose to simply represent their brands online as a different marketing channel, some choose to add personality to the company by allowing employees and high-level executives to actually communicate and interact with customers.  This, in turn, allows the customers to have a more personal aspect in their interaction with the company.

• Applying this to selling a product is simple: form a relationship in a similar way a salesperson might when meeting a person for the first time in real life.  Do not go for that “hard-sell” – leverage the relationship, push for communication, stress the qualities of the product, and encourage feedback.
• Work in relatable stories or a history to bond with customers.  Many salespeople use this technique to appeal to a wide variety of customers, and just because you’re hidden behind a computer screen doesn’t mean you shouldn’t either.  Prove you’re human – try blogging or giving them a link to your personal Twitter.
• Incorporate images of the person who is actually interacting with the customer.  This might include a simple employee profile, or integrating with personal social media platforms. The customer will feel like you are authentic, more comforting than feeling like an entire conglomerate of a company is behind the sale of the product.
• Try to leverage the “halo-effect” – when people have a good opinion about someone or something, it translates to other aspects of them, including the product they may be offering.  Using a personality online with great appeal (which is up to you who you could choose) may translate into better buyer sentiments toward your product.

Authority

In most cultures, people respond to and trust authority.  The sense of authority gives people stronger faith in the product and service they are receiving.  Hearing about a product from a high-level executive, celebrity endorser, or simply a person with some authoritative power will give the customer the sense trust needed to build a relationship and bond with the product.

• In selling a product, the source of the message carries a high value.  Emphasize credibility.  Credible sources can serve as peripheral cues for making a simplified judgement.
• No snake-oil salesman tricks do the job online these days, people are too skeptical.  Use personalities that a person can trust to sell your product, those who seem to want to form a true bond with the customer.  This should be your main goal in using social media, anyway.
• Link to credible sites to backup your product to use as reinforcements from other well-established online sources.  Studies show that consumers are less likely to trust a blogger’s or website’s opinion over their friend’s – which isn’t shocking – but what if the website links to other credible websites or other bloggers that either backup their product or link to information about problems the product solves?  Hearing it from more than one source will make the opinion more popular.

Social Proof

People want what their friends want.  People listen to their friends and other people to make judgements: the trendier the item, the more people want it.  It’s a no-brainer to offer social proof to emphasize your previous customers and hype the responses you’ve gotten in the past (of course, highlighting the positive reactions).

• Allow reviews.  While you may receive negative responses in reaction to some of your products, reviews allow customers to make a judgement based off of others.  Offer incentives to get customers to come back and leave reviews.
• Answer questions and offer solutions in the public space.  Interact with your customers.
• Tie-in to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts – but go beyond simply offering a link.  Get users to login to your site with a commenting application like Disqus – this will prove that users visiting your site are real people, and will offer people more ways to connect than ever before.

I have used some of these strategies in campaigns to sell very unique products that have wide appeal, and modifying as time goes on to see which strategies have the best effect in selling the product online.  There is always a way!

Luxury

I just read a post over at the Web-Strategist titled, “Five Ways Luxury Brands Can Overcome the Conundrum of Social Marketing.”  I found it a particularly interesting topic, as I have personally always had a keen interest in the luxury industry, more so after studying in Monaco and getting a glimpse into the world of the high-flying (and yacht-sailing) elite.

A few comments on the five key points, briefly noted here:

1. Monitor and Listen to understand customer needs
2. Start by using sharing tools
3. Create “on-brand” contests
4. Highlight consumer created content from “preferred” segment
5. Develop or sponsor lifestyle communities

Each of these brings up an interesting aspect of approaching the use of social media to market luxury brands and I wanted to expand.  In the traditional sense, luxury brands are meant to be elite, exclusive, and highly-sought after.  It is an inherent trait of human nature to lust after things we couldn’t normally attain, whether for the personal satisfaction of public display, or fulfilling the desire to have “the best.”  Some consider this concept of luxury to be outrageous, narcissistic, and greedy – but I, along with the rest of the $270 billion luxury market, think it’s pretty great.

The obvious factor preventing luxury brands from venturing into social media seems quite obvious, as Jeremiah points out, “Luxury products are for the elite, yet social technologies are for everyone. Luxury brands face a unique conundrum of marrying these two worlds.”  This is true, and many luxury companies tend to tip-toe around social media marketing for this reason, refraining from opening up the brand to unregulated mouths and the wildly different echelons of society.  However, I think there are a few ways these companies can best use social media to further build up brand loyalties and reach a wider market, while refraining from diminishing existing brand equity.

• Make the brand more accessible

Objective #1 of Company ABC: Make as much money as humanly possible

Rather silly to say, but this is the main objective of any for-profit business: maximize profit.  With the luxury industry in a hold-pattern recently, often defined as “recession proof” for the reasoning that its buyers typically tend to be un-phased by systematic downturns, we have seen over the years these brands can struggle with growth.

High-fashion and high-quality elite brands have difficulty growing their brands because they are not typically marketing to the “masses.” Luxury companies are, however, producing products that are marketed towards a wider audience of consumers in an attempt to increase profits, while maintaining the traditional concepts of the brand.  By producing lower cost high-margin, highly-attainable products such as perfumes, sunglasses, makeup, and lower-end models (like the Mercedes C-class and BMW 1-series), luxury companies share a piece of its brand with those that could not otherwise own a piece of it – and in turn produce a decent profit in the process. Anyone can buy a Gucci or Dolce & Gabbana perfume (priced moderately around $60) and take home a part of the experience the brand conveys, complete with packaging and bottle, but not everyone can afford a $2000 handbag.  Take what you get.

How can social media be used to the advantage in this case?  Since everyone wants a piece of the luxury brand, these “accessible” products can be marketed like any other product using social media, reaching an even wider audience than traditional advertising can.  For example a large-scale Dolce & Gabbana Timepiece social media campaign would have the effect of reaching all classes that possess the buying power to own one of their watches (~$200).  This can

all happen without diminishing any aspect of the elite-ness of the brand as the tradition of its higher-priced product lines remain intact.

• Leverage existing relationships and social media platforms

The fashion blogging industry is quite a fantastic thing.  Fashion, being as subjective as any other art form, carries with it a large opportunity to host discussions and opinions as the trends continuously evolve.  Luxury companies should leverage these relationships with fashion bloggers and take queues from what their readers are saying.  A fashion house that is talked about more will undeniably be on the mind more, and this presents a great opportunity to make the brand more accessible to those that might not be able to participate in a discussion with other fashionistas, say from just reading Vogue.

Other relationships, like endorsed celebrities and models, can be used along with social media to make the brand more relatable.  By tying in a celebrity’s personal social media accounts like Twitter and Facebook Fan Pages, companies can make them true spokespersons for the luxury brand.  Celebrities can convey how they truly live the lifestyle of the brand on a daily basis, surely impacting the way brand is represented in the world.

• Luxury Communities

As Jeremiah noted, creating luxury communities can be difficult, but I believe there is a place for them for luxury brands.   Feeling part of the “club” would create a strong bond between the purchaser and the brand, along with other purchasers.  The Gucci group on Facebook is an example of an open community, but the community Mini has for its drivers is something other higher-tiered brands can use.  The exclusivity of it alone would fuel the community and reinforce the brand.

I think it will be interesting to see how social media marketing in the luxury industry evolves.