Social media marketing has become incredibly important for businesses both large and small in recent years. It’s a great way to build buzz around your business, generate new leads, share content and grow your customer base.
But there’s a problem that many businesses face:
How can you turn your new followers into customers?
Some businesses only use social media for customer service or to increase brand recognition, and that’s fine. But if your strategy is to make more sales, you need to focus on converting leads into customers.
After all, it’s all well and good having thousands of followers, but what if they never buy from you? Here we take a look at some ideas for converting more of your followers into customers.
1. Know Your Audience
It all starts by knowing your audience, and this means creating a detailed buyer persona. You should know exactly who your typical customer is, but you need to go beyond their basic demographics (age, gender, etc).
Instead, you need to understand their wants and needs.
Only then you can start providing them with what they actually want, connecting with them more effectively and encouraging more followers to become customers.
Talk to your existing customers to get some ideas. Carry out surveys and find out more about them. Ask them in emails and on the phone.
Once you know more about them, you can reach them more effectively in the content you publish to social media, including special offers and ads. By targeting their pain points, you will be more likely to make a connection with them and entice them to visit your website or store.
2. Interact with Your Leads
Once you get people to follow you on social media, you need to interact with them and nurture them to turn your leads into customers. People expect brands to communicate with them on social media, so don’t disappoint them.
When you interact with them, put the focus on them. What do they need? What are they looking for? Show them that you care about their needs and find out more about them.
When they ask a question, be quick to reply and make it personal rather than using a cookie-cutter response.
Stay active. Post often to your social accounts, daily if possible, and respond to comments. Show that you are there and listening, which is much more authentic.
All of this makes people more likely to buy from you because you are building a relationship with them and they will trust you more as a result.
3. Ask for Feedback
Following on from the point above, if you don’t know what your customers want and need, ask them.
Reach out to them on Facebook Messenger or send an email and ask them for their opinion. If they have visited your website and downloaded a guide from you, ask them why they wanted it. If they did not buy a product, ask them what stopped them.
These insights can be priceless when you are using social media and can provide you with the knowledge you need to make changes in your approach.
4. Develop Lead Magnets
Once people are following you on social media, you want to start nudging them to become customers. You need to create a funnel, and the way to encourage people to take the first steps is to create a lead magnet.
This could take the form of:
- Ebooks
- White papers
- Video series
- Courses
Essentially, a lead magnet could be anything that provides your customers with value and helps them to solve a problem.
Highlight this in your social posts and social ads to make it a compelling proposition. You could then send them to an optimised landing page that is focused entirely on getting their email address.
Or get them to leave a comment or send a message via Facebook Messenger, then provide them with the link to your lead magnet. You could try both, and you may find that one channel is more effective than the other.
Once you have their permission to send messages or emails, you can keep on targeting them. Send them more lead magnets, target them with content and get them further down the funnel.
5. Retarget Leads Using Ads
If you are on Facebook, ads can be a powerful way to connect with your followers. One option to consider is retargeting ads.
When someone downloads your lead magnet, you can then set up an ad providing them with the next steps.
Many people will download your guide but then fail to do anything else. It does not mean they are not interested: they might simply forget or be distracted. A quick reminder can make all the difference, and an ad makes it easy.
Create a custom audience in Facebook Ads Manager based on people who have downloaded your guide (i.e. people who have visited the thank-you page).
You can also exclude people who have already bought something to ensure you are only targeting non-customers.
Then set up your campaign and start getting those leads to convert on auto.
6. Always Focus on Providing Value
To get more leads to become customers, you need to provide value in everything you do on your social networks.
This means providing them with useful information, something that helps them and answers their problems. But there are other ways.
For example, you could provide them with an exclusive promotion. Promotions provide a lot of value and make following your social channels more worthwhile.
By sending people to your website with a promotion, you can encourage them to become customers, growing your customer base.
Contests are great too. These have the added benefit of generating buzz and getting people more involved in your brand.
Encourage your followers to share the details of the contest with their friends, which can generate more followers. Again, this provides value and helps you to build your relationship, making people more likely to buy from you in the future.
7. Keep on Testing and Improving
Finally, you will need to keep on improving. That means finding out what is working by testing, measuring and optimising what you are doing.
Monitor your activity and find out which channels are working best for you and converting the most leads into customers.
Which ads and posts are converting the most? Which contests attract the most entrants? Track everything using tools like Facebook Insights and Google Analytics, then focus more energy on what’s working.
Convert More Social Leads
Building your social followers is a good practice, but you should be doing more than just getting leads. Instead, you should focus on converting more leads into customers.
Follow these tips by trying a few of them or use them all. If you require additional support in curating a social media marketing strategy that works for your business then why not get in touch with our team who will be more than happy to discuss your options.
