THE SOCIAL

SELLING STUDY
How brands are (not) engaging with sales prospects on social media.
CONTENTS
1. WHAT IS SOCIAL SELLING? 3

2. SOCIAL SELLING REPORT 4

2.1 Social selling vs traditional sales 5

3. SOCIAL SELLING STUDY 7

3.1 Methodology 8

3.2 Brand engagement on Twitter 9

3.3 Brand engagement on Reddit 13

3.4 Social Leads 14

4. HOW WE USE SOCIAL SELLING AT AWARIO 20

4.1 Awario social selling results 21

5. KEY TAKEAWAYS 24

6. KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL SOCIAL SELLING 25

2
WHAT IS
SOCIAL SELLING
Social selling is a strategy of leveraging your social network
to find the right prospects, build trusted relationships, and
ultimately, achieve your sales goals.

“By 2020, 85% of the

buyer-seller interaction
will be happening on
social media.”
Joisan Fregon,
CEO of Telesmart.

3
SOCIAL SELLING
REPORT
88% of consumers and 84% of C- and VP-level buyers check
social media before making a purchasing decision.

90% C-level execs

ignore cold calls

84% C-level execs research

a purchase on social media

88% customers consult the

Internet before buying

4
SOCIAL SELLING
VS TRADITIONAL
SALES
According to a survey by Sales for Life, the companies which
engage in social selling get a 119% higher ROI compared to
traditional tactics.

Social selling outperforms traditional forms of sales in leads

conversion and revenue growth.

Digital Marketing: Social Selling

vs Traditional Selling

78%

57%
46%
38%
31%
26%

Social Selling Traditional Digital Selling

ROI Conversion rate Likelihood of hitting revenue goals

5
THE BENEFITS OF SOCIAL
SELLING INCLUDE:

Increased number of leads

Faster lead conversion

Deeper relationships with clients

Improved lead conversion rate

Shorter sales cycles

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SOCIAL SELLING
STUDY
“The aim of this study is to gain insights into how brands engage
with users on social media. I focused on two platforms: Twitter
and Reddit. I used Awario to monitor brand mentions and find
leads.”
Anna Bredava,
Social Media Marketing and Community Manager

Timeframe: 1 June – 23 August

Platforms: Twitter Reddit

Number of brands: 6

Number of replies: 558

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METHODOLOGY
I’ve chosen brands which represent six different
industries:

consumer electronics,

Internet service providers,

website hosting,

digital design services (agencies and freelancers),

hospitality.

I’ve looked into their Twitter interactions — how they

communicate with Twitter users and for what reasons.

I’ve looked through all the “replying to” tweets for each
brand since June 1.

I also used Awario to monitor their brand mentions on

Reddit and see how they react to the mentions.

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BRAND ENGAGEMENT
ON TWITTER
According to my research, brands engage with Twitter users for
the following reasons:

Customer support

Response to questions about products

Relationship building

Response to positive reviews

Response to negative reviews

To make the study more comprehensive, I chose to examine

both B2B and B2C companies.

To my surprise, I’ve discovered no correlation between the

company type and the Twitter activity of the brand. However, the
number of replies does depend on the particular industry, i.e. the
graphic design agencies were relatively inactive on social
media.

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Customer support 75%

Customers’ questions 9%

Relationship building 4%

Positive reviews 9%

Negative reviews 2%

Social selling 0%

The most common reason for brand interactions on Twitter

turned out to be customer support — around 60% of brand
replies relate to this topic.

Social selling is extremely rare — it equals 0,36% from all Twitter

interactions.

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TWITTER REPLIES BY
INDUSTRY
106
21
14
Consumer electronics 3
15
1

106
0
19
Web hosting 1
3
0

189
30
Internet service 6
provider 9
2
1

14
0
Holiday apartment 2
rental 1
0
1

3
0
Graphic design 2
agency 0
0
0

2
0
9
Freelance designer 0
17
0

Customer Support Questions about products Positive Reviews

Negative reviews Relationship building Social selling

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During the research, I came across only two cases of social
selling: both were spontaneous and not a result of a consistent
social selling strategy.

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REDDIT
I’ve also looked into brand activity on Reddit. Admittedly, Reddit
marketing can be tricky due to their policies on advertising.

One of the brands has a subreddit dedicated to its products

(although it’s unclear if it was set up by the brand itself).

Other brands didn’t seem to be active on Reddit at all.

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SOCIAL LEADS
After that, I used Awario Leads and put in short descriptions of
the products and services of the chosen brands and the brand
names of their competitors.

The tool finds social leads — relevant social media posts which
express purchase intent.

All the leads are not older than 30 days (although you can set a
longer time period if you want).

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EXAMPLES OF
AWARIO LEADS FINDS

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I have deliberately chosen brands which
represent different types of businesses:
small businesses, mid-market, enterprise,
freelancers.

B2C services proved to be the most

rewarding when it comes to social selling
(i.e. they got more leads), but all in all I
found leads for every industry I chose as
an example.

Overall I have found more than 300 quality

leads collected over the last 30 days.  

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NUMBER OF LEADS
FOUND
32

Consumer electronics 17

81

Web hosting 31

135
Internet service
25
provider
26

14
Holiday apartment
17
rental
3

23
Graphic design
2
agency
1

23

Freelance designer 0

Twitter Leads Reddit Leads Leads with NO response from anyone

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BRAND INTERACTIONS
WITH LEADS

0%
None of these leads saw any interaction from a brand: if there
were any responses, they were from the user’s followers.

We can see that depending on the industry, the companies miss

out on up to 150 leads every month.

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Moreover, by not engaging, brands overlook an opportunity to
aсcess an audience with similar interests and needs.

19
HOW WE USE SOCIAL
SELLING AT AWARIO
Since May 25th we have been engaged in a consistent
social selling strategy as a part of the testing process for
Awario Leads.

I responded to sales prospects discovered by Awario

Leads’ prototype on Twitter and Reddit and promoted our
tool.

Depending on the request, I either tagged Awario’s Twitter

profile or shared a link to our landing page

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SOCIAL SELLING
RESULTS
70% of my replies got a positive response from the sale
prospects: 33% liked my tweet and 37% responded agreeing to
check out Awario.

Response: No reaction:

37% 30%

Like:

33%

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INTERACTION WITH LINKS IN
SOCIAL SELLING TWEETS:

117%
CLICK RATE
Some of my replies contained the link to Awario’s landing
page — on average, each link was clicked 1,17 times.

IMPRESSIONS FOR SOCIAL

SELLING TWEETS:

17,265
IMPRESSIONS
Since June 1 I got more than 17 000 impressions
on my social selling tweets.

22
This study proves that brands actively
miss out on the opportunity to find leads
and engage in real time.

For now, social selling remains a highly

underused strategy, which means that in
many cases you might be the only brand to
engage with a lead. That gives you an
advantage over your competitors.

According to an article by Hubspot,

35-50% of all leads go to the first
respondent, so time plays a major role in
social selling.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS
1. Social selling outperforms traditional lead gen.
It lets you interact with a prospect “on their
territory” and gives you more information about
them.

2. Social selling is easy. A consistent social selling

strategy doesn’t take much time or effort. With the
help of a tool like Awario you will need less than an
hour a day.

3. Social selling is not mainstream yet. Which

means that so far there’s not much competition for
those who engage in it. You have a chance to be
the first and only to engage with a prospect.

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KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL
SOCIAL SELLING
1. Define your target. To use Awario Leads, you
first need to understand how people would
describe your product or service.

2. Don’t rush in. Before replying to a prospect’s

social media post, check their profile and posting
history – take advantage of the platform. In some
cases, it’s better to ask a question about the
prospect’s need before you make an offer.

3. Always be on alert. The sooner you reply to the

request, the higher your probability to close a sale
is.

4. Be genuine. The nature of social media assumes

that you can’t just throw the same sales pitch at
every prospect. Be a person first and a salesperson
second.

4. Don’t give up. Sometimes you won’t be able to

make a sale right away, even if the prospect is
interested. Check up on them after some time and
see if they’re ready to purchase.

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STOP IGNORING SALES
OPPORTUNITIES
START YOUR FREE AWARIO TRIAL

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