Having lots of followers on social media is great. But you need to find ways to convert these followers into customers. If you follow these tips, you’ll have more than just lots of followers. You’ll end up with an increase in sales revenue and cash in the bank.
Work on Engagement First
Many small businesses start their social media strategy focused on converting their social audience into a lead and eventually a sale. This is a common mistake. While conversion is the end game, it is important to remember that people are browsing social media for entertainment, not looking to make a purchase. For this reason, it is important to catch their attention and gain their trust before trying to convert them into a customer. Start with some great images related to your industry. Attach some insightful, fun content then boost these posts to reach your targeted audience. Start with as low as $5 per post and scale it for the high performing content. Be sure and take the steps to invite everyone who engages with your post to like your page. You can learn how to do that here. Before long, you’ll have a healthy base of followers who are waiting to read your posts.
Stay active
As you grow your social media audience, you want to do everything in your power to keep them as engaged as possible. This means staying active on all your platforms. Managing your social media pages once a week isn’t going to cut it if you want to turn your followers into customers. You need to post regularly everywhere that you have a presence. Create a posting schedule and stick to it by blocking off time in your calendar at least once a week to create your posts. The best way to do this is by using a social media creation and scheduling tool such as Hootsuite, Social Report, or Buffer. There are many of these tools available and they all have slightly different strengths and price points. Take the time to do some research and choose what works best for you.
Add Some Sales Conversion Tactics
Now that you’ve established a presence on multiple social media platforms, engaged with your audience and automated your posts, it’s time to take the next step. Creating the right content to turn your audience into customers is important. You don’t want to spam your followers. Make sure each post adds value to them as well as helps you achieve your broad sales and marketing goals. Offering exclusive social media promotions, things that can’t be found on your website, can be a great way to encourage your followers to make their first purchase. This can be done using a promo code only given to followers or by creating a post that needs to be “mentioned” in store. Tailor the offer for either online purchases or to drive traffic to your physical store, whatever your goal is. Contests are another popular and effective sales tool. For example, ask your followers to post a picture with your products. Have them tag the post with a specific hashtag to enter the contest.After a predetermined deadline, pick the most creative picture or the one with the most likes, and give them a prize. Just make sure the prize is something valued by your audience and a product that you want to promote. Contests help you grow your audience while also promoting a featured product or service. No matter how long you have been using social media and a marketing tool, it is good to reflect back to the basics and continue growing your audience. If you lack the resources to manage your own social media marketing, reach out to a professional. The worst thing you can do is drop the ball once you have momentum.
How are you engaging with your followers on social media to convert them into customers?