September 29, 2022 ~ 5 min.

Author of the article

Nikita, sales manager

In my work, I often come across questions from clients about sales guarantees when working on business development in social media.

This question sometimes becomes the cause of misunderstandings between the customer and the contractor.

In SMM contracts with most teams, you won't find fixed sales KPIs.

And beginning freelancers with a check for $200 can assure: "If we make 30 posts, everything will be fine, we will get a flow of customers."

To begin with, you should dive into understanding the role of social media as one of the tools in the digital marketing strategy of a business.

Depending on the scale of the project, niche, positioning and budgets, SMM can perform different tasks in the overall strategy.

Social networks and all. For example, a local clothing brand. He posts products on Instagram, advertises on it, and processes orders on Direct.

In this case, getting direct sales is the main purpose of the account. And the team should be responsible for the number of leads (but again, not sales - more on that later).

Social networks are one of the sources of sales and combine several purposes. For example, an electronics store that also has a website that successfully attracts targeted traffic from other sources.

In this case, social networks can be a platform for placing special offers; disclosure of certain categories of goods that will require a more visual demonstration (for example, used IPhones); a tool for operational feedback.

Social networks are a communication tool with a large brand audience.

If all sales take place on other platforms, then social networks are assigned the purpose of communicating with the audience.

For example, unpacking the value of the product, its features, advice on use, demonstration of cases.

If this is the goal, then why measure sales from here at all? After all, sales will come to the main landing pages, where it will be convenient for the client, even if he learned about you from social networks.

In this case, with SMM tools, we accumulate recognition and form an image. These activities may be underestimated in the sales channel report if the applications are received from branded searches. In such a strategy, it is better to evaluate the performance in terms of coverage and audience engagement.

Therefore, I can advise entrepreneurs to analyze the picture comprehensively.

First, when they are the main goal of the strategy :)

Please note that we are talking about applications. Their further conversion into a sale is directly influenced by the brand proposition and the sales force.

Of course, a strong marketing team that is not afraid to take the initiative to optimize all steps on the customer's path to payment will be able to help both with the development of a strong offer and with the integration of the accounting system and the improvement of seller scripts. Although this goes beyond the scope of usual SMM cooperation, this approach distinguishes integrated solution agencies from specialists who are tied to the number of published content units.

Therefore, forecasting is possible only under the following conditions: :

SMM contractors work not only with content, but also with advertising traffic within the required budget

There are preliminary results of working with this contractor for at least a month. Fixing sales guarantees from scratch is like pointing a finger at the sky. Do not take such a responsibility without having working connections in this particular project - it is better to protect your reputation :)

The business has the resources to efficiently process incoming requests, and the contractor has access to meaningful feedback on the quality of applications.