Everyone agrees that using social media is an important marketing tool to increase sales. Everyone has a social media presence now from big business to small business. What could you be doing on social media that prevents an increase in your sales? First, let me share with you briefly how the brain works to increase sales.
Your Prospect Likes People Who Are Like Themselves
People sub-consciously notice similarities & consciously notice differences. What does that mean? When you meet someone at first you may not notice anything in particular about them. Let’s say they start talking and say something you find insulting or disagree with. Your mind didn’t notice that they have 2 feet just like you, have 2 hands just like you and 2 eyes just like you. Those similarities to you are sub-conscious. The fact that they said something you did not agree with is what you notice and what you will use to decide if you like that person or not. We all have a tendency to like people who we have things “in common” with or we see as similar to us.
People sub-consciously notice similarities & consciously notice differences.
Here is a story of how this works to increase sales. Back in the 80’s Ronald Reagan was the President. There was a realtor who went on a listing appointment with a prospect to sell the prospects home. The prospect had Ronald Reagan stickers all over her car and had posters in her house. It was very clear that the prospect liked Ronald Reagan. The Realtor did not like Ronald Reagan’s politics. When the subject came up of Ronald Reagan, the realtor said “I like how he seems so sincere and communicates so well.” The Realtor said that because they knew it would create a disagreement between them and their prospect and lower their chances of increasing sales if the realtor said something bad about Ronald Reagan. They also didn’t lie to the prospect and say they liked Ronald Reagan. It just would have been unprofessional and unnecessary to make a political statement in that situation.
Do you think that the realtor would have gotten that sale if they would have had stickers all over their car saying negative things about Ronald Reagan? Probably not! Why? Because the prospect has many choices of people to do business with and if their first impression of the realtor was bad it is very unlikely the prospect would have done business with them.
Increase Sales By Watching What You Say In Your Marketing
So how does this apply to marketing on social media to increase sales? Religion, politics and sports are very emotional things for your prospect. They will respond strongly to any disagreements with you in those areas. If you want to increase sales you will want to avoid making any religious, sports or political comments on your BUSINESS social media pages. Many people have lost jobs over such statements on social media. I don’t want you to create any kind of negativity around your business. It will cost you one way to increase sales.
Avoid making ANY religious, sports or political comments on your BUSINESS social media pages
You may disagree with what I have said here. That is your right to disagree. You want to be sure you are not just disagreeing just because that is your first emotional response. Earlier I said that religion, sports & politics are very emotional. If you are disagreeing without first taking time to logically consider whether you have lost sales over this you may be proving the point of this whole article. If YOU feel so strongly about your views do you think your prospect feels just as strongly? Of Course! If your prospect disagrees with you about your personal views they are not going to tell you. They just won’t respond to your marketing efforts because they have so many other choices of other businesses to work with to solve the exact problem you solve.
What about if you are trying to work with a specific niche? The exception to the rule is if you are working with a specific niche where religion is part of community you are trying to target. For example, you might want to work with Christian Singles to help them with finding their soulmate. In that case your marketing would have a Christian tone to it. I doubt you are going to want to use politics or sports to help define the niche you will work with so I won’t comment on that here. By sports I mean that if you are a Yankees fan and you promote the Yankees all over social media Red Sox fans are not going to want to work with your business and it will cost you several million chances to increase sales.
What about expressing yourself? A lot of people I have shared this with really feel that not making religious, sports or political statements on social media would compromise them “being themselves”. YOU are still YOU no matter what you say on social media. I would suggest that if you want to express political, religious or sports related views then create a separate social media profile JUST for your personal opinions and messages and say whatever you want on those.
My role is to help you increase sales so I’m going to share with you various ways to increase sales. Some you will feel great about and others you will resist. There is a very large segment of your market that feels that mixing personal opinions in religion, politics and sports with business is inappropriate and unprofessional. If you choose to make these statements you can do that as long as you understand the cause and effect relationship. If we choose the behavior we choose the consequences.
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Kristoffer Thompson
Master Sales Coach
Increase Sales Training
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