You could have billions of followers on your social media platforms, but if those leads are converting into sales, your bottom line isn’t going to move.
It’s a surprisingly common problem for businesses. They focus so much on getting social media followers that they miss the fact that followers alone won’t help.
Social media conversion isn’t something that happens by accident. To the contrary, there are various strategies that you should be putting into place that will help you do just that.
This guide will help you start taking those followers and turning them into loyal customers.
What is Social Media Conversion?
Before we dive in, let’s take a moment to define social media conversion. What we mean by that is using social media platforms to convert strangers into customers. There are a few steps in between, however.
Most people will follow this path to becoming customers:
- Strangers. These are people that have never heard of you or your product.
- Prospects. They have discovered you on social media and read your posts because they are interested in your business.
- Leads. Now, they have connected with you in some way, whether they’ve given you their email address or reached out to you by phone.
- Customers. You were able to close the sale and they bought something from you.
- Promoters. A satisfied customer will take this extra step and promote your business to other people, helping you quickly drive even more conversions.
Once you’ve implemented social media practices that help you reach a large audience, you can start converting those prospects and leads into customers.
Lead Magnets
If you’re not already using lead magnets with social media, it’s time to start. A lead magnet is something you give away for free in exchange for someone’s contact information.
Think about what your audience wants or needs, and offer it to them for free. You may also consider offering discounts for your business. Keep trying different things until you find something that converts well.
Here’s a list of some lead magnets you can try:
- Checklist
- Product sample
- Cost calculator
- Planner
- Tutorial
- eBook
- Guide
- Printable
- Exclusive content
- Webinar
- Local event ticket giveaways
- Contest
It’s important to get an email address or a phone number from your prospects. That gives you the ability to reach out to them personally, which is vital for closing the sale and turning them into customers.
Calls-To-Action
To get information from lead magnets, you always need to have a clear call-to-action (CTA). The more simple and clear the process is, the more likely you are to get good leads. Make what you want from them as clear as what you’re offering.
Imagine you had two forms in front of you. Each one will get you the same free product. One of the forms is only asking for your first name and email address. The other is asking for your full name, home address, phone number, job title, company name, and email address.
Which one would you fill out?
If you’re like most people, you’d fill out the shorter form that only wants a couple of pieces of information from you. Keep that in mind while creating lead magnets since a long or complicated CTA is the most common reason people abandon the process.
That goes for every CTA throughout the sales process. You want every step to be as simple and easy as possible. In fact, over 20% of people abandon their shopping cart in online stores because of the length of the process.
Keep in mind that you’re not the only business in your industry. If your process is too complicated, it’s easy for someone to go somewhere else to get what they want. Set yourself apart with easy processes to see sales soar.
Lead Magnet Testing
Once you’ve got a few ideas for lead magnets, start experimenting. You want to find something that converts well, or else there’s no point in having it. To do that, you’ll need to do some testing.
You can do this in a couple different ways. You can use one lead magnet with different types of posts and see how well it converts based on how it’s promoted, or you can use a couple different lead magnets in similar types of posts to compare the lead magnets themselves.
It’s easy to get caught up with this part, so try not to focus too much on perfecting your lead magnets. Just find something that works well, and stick with that as long as it keeps working well.
Part of the testing is analyzing. After all, if you don’t analyze the data, you won’t know which lead magnets are converting well. We love using Google Analytics which can help you figure out what you’re doing wrong and right.
Nurturing Social Media Leads
Now that you have a growing list of email addresses or phone numbers, it’s time to start nurturing those leads. Today, people want to connect with businesses before they buy from them.
When you start communicating with your leads, make it all about them. Ask them what they need and find out what they’re looking for. Show that you recognize they’re a real person and that you actually care about them.
Imagine being out on a blind date, and the first thing the other person does is propose. Would you say yes? Probably not. Now, imagine that person got to know you and you got to know them over a period of months before they proposed. Then would you say yes? Probably!
You need to treat your social media leads the same way you would a first date. Introduce yourself to them and find out more about them. They want to know that you’re compatible before they agree to buy anything from you.
Providing Value
In everything that you do, whether it’s social media posts or email marketing, you want to provide value. That means giving information to your prospects and leads that is useful, helpful, or beneficial in some way.
Before you create a post or piece of content, ask yourself these questions to see if it’s providing value:
- What will the customer learn from this?
- How will this help my readers?
- What problem is this addressing?
- Will this solve that problem?
- Am I providing a new insight into this problem?
- Am I only promoting my own products or services?
The main goal for anything you create should be to address a problem your target audience has and to help them solve it. In most cases, that should involve your services, but it may be best to tell them how to do something themselves.
If all you do is talk about what you’re trying to sell to people, it’s a huge turn-off, and you’ll be seen as an overly-pushy salesperson. But, if you show that you care about meeting your audience’s needs in whatever way possible, they will trust you and be more likely to buy from you.
Knowing Your Target Audience
If you don’t know who you’re reaching out to, it will be impossible to do anything else we’ve already talked about. You need to know who’s in your target audience if you’re going to reach them.
Start by looking at your current customer base. What do they have in common? This will help you narrow down who you’re targeting since there are VERY few businesses that can honestly say everybody fits into their target audience.
Here are the most important things to know about your target audience:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Wage bracket
- Job/industry
- Personal or business goals
- Personal or business problems
The way you’d target a six-figure-income, 50-year-old businessman looking to expand his business overseas would be vastly different from a jobless 19-year-old woman in college who wants to be an artist.
Buyer Personas
One way to really make your target audience come alive is to create a buyer persona. That way, you’re not writing content or posting to social media for a vague group of people that may be interested in your product. You’re doing it for people that have faces, names, wants, and goals.
Put some time into creating several buyer personas that you can keep going back to. You can even find stock photos online to put faces to your buyer personas. Use the characteristics listed above regarding your target audience to give each persona an age, a job, goals, etc.
These will help you with all of your business decisions. Every time you get stuck, you can go back to these and figure out what they want and need from you. Then, help to solve their problems.
Your Next Step
We’ve just given you a ton of information on social media conversion, from creating great lead magnets and simplifying the buying process to learning about your target audience and creating buyer personas.
Now you’re probably wondering what to do with all of this information. We recommend implementing all of these strategies and more one at a time.
If you want some expert guidance, then check out our digital consulting service. We will help you evaluate what you’re currently doing and create a personalized step-by-step implementation plan for your social media marketing.
