Everyone knows that you social media is one of the best tools available to market and grow your business. But if your social media campaign is going to be successful, you’re going to need more than a bunch of followers and likes. The real question that every small business owner needs to answer when it comes to allocating time and resources to social media marketing is “how do I convert my followers into paying customers?”
We curated a list of tips from our best and brightest social media account managers on how they help our clients increase conversion rates, and turn followers and fans into paying customers, using social media.
Create Awareness
Create brand awareness online by utilizing multiple marketing approaches. Increase your rank on search engines by creating quality content. Also, when it comes to getting seen on social media, pay for advertisements. Don’t forget about YouTube, it is the second largest search engines out there, and most people tend to ignore it.
Choose the Best Social Media Sites
Based on what you are trying to accomplish, you need to think about which social media sites will give you the optimal result. You don’t need to use every single social media platform. For example, let’s compare Facebook with Pinterest. Even though, Facebook has 1.2B users, compared to Pinterest’s 80M, 70% of Pinterest users use the platform “to get inspiration on what to buy” versus 17% of Facebook users (invespcro). Businesses that are “Pinterest-friendly” like bakeries, clothing, baby items, and decorators are all great for Pinterest’s platform.
Create and Distribute Your Own Content
Most business owners underestimate the value of creating fresh, new content. By continually creating quality content you will bring in leads because people will be visiting your site for more than one reason. If they know you’re creating great content that’s valuable to them, they’ll visit your site regularly just to read/view the new stuff. This helps you create brand awareness, as they share with their network. Giving people as many reasons as possible to visit your site is a good thing when trying to increase conversion rates because when it keeps them on your site and familiar with your business. They may not be ready to buy today, but when they are, they’ll come to you. Plus fresh, new content regularly gives you something valuable to share on social media.
Adapt to the Platform
As mentioned earlier, people visit certain platforms for different reasons. Just as an organization wouldn’t run the same commercial on Lifetime at 1pm as it would on Comedy Central at 1am, you shouldn’t promote your content the same way on Pinterest as you would on Twitter. The way people communicate on each platform is unique so learn the norms of each site and adjust the way you promote your content accordingly. A one-size-fits-all approach is not ideal for high conversion rates.
Identify and Amplify Top Performing Content
Your content creation should not be random and isolated. Instead, let the success (or lack thereof) of previous posts and content help you determine what you should post in the future. This will help you to speak more directly to your audience, and improve your social media strategy over time. Ultimately, if potential customers feel like you’re speaking directly to them and their problems, they’ll be more likely to purchase from you instead of your competitors.
Use Social Media to Create Trust
Lack of trust is a conversion killer, so use social media to develop it with your target audience. Or allow previous customers to do it for you by encouraging social proof with easy sharing. Social proof includes reviews, social status updates, forum conversations, and word-of-mouth marketing. People tend to trust reviews that come through social media because they are seen as unbiased and candid. If you have a quality product, let your happy customers do some of your marketing. Add a share to social media option upon check out in an attempt to get your customers to share your product to an expanded audience. Maybe even add a coupon as an incentive. Remember the entire point of your social media campaign is to get your potential customers to buy. But social media shouldn’t be used to just promote your products and services, and if it is, you’ll notice that the number of users who actually see your content is super low. This is a technique social media sites use to increase their “user experience”. But, if you focus on building your know-like-and-trust factor with potential clients, when you finally have a product that will help them solve a problem, it’ll be much easier to get people to buy.
Try Call-only Campaigns Instead of Landing Pages
A unique alternative to the traditional lead magnet campaigns is a call-only campaign. Social media experts say that call-only campaigns can dramatically increase your call-in and conversion rates. The traditional conversion funnel requires at least four steps; see the ad, click the ad, visit the landing page, and convert to become a lead. With a click-to-call campaign, you can get rid of the distracting landing page. Now potential customers see the ad, click the ad, and become a lead.
Monitor Your Analytics
There’s only one real way to know how good or not so good your social media campaigns are doing and that’s by measuring and analyzing your performance. Some of the various automation apps and software provide analytics for you, such as Buffer. But if you’re not using one of those platforms, Google Analytics is a great tool which will keep track of how many leads you’re converting through social media.
Remember that while using social media today may seem like a necessity the number one goal of all your social media efforts is to convert your fans and followers into paying customers. Hopefully you can use some of the information here convert more followers into customers using social media.
